2017
TED Listening
24 “FILL IN THE BLANKS” EXERCISES
TU PHAM
IPP EDUCATION | www.ippeducation.vn
Contents
01. Emma Watson - HEFORSHE CAMPAIGN .......................................................................................... 4
Fill in the blanks .................................................................................................................................. 4
Key....................................................................................................................................................... 7
02. Rory Sutherland - PERSPECTIVE IS EVERYTHING ........................................................................... 10
Fill in the blanks ................................................................................................................................ 10
Key..................................................................................................................................................... 15
03. Jill Bolte Taylor - MY STROKE OF INSIGHT ..................................................................................... 19
Fill in the blanks ................................................................................................................................ 19
Key..................................................................................................................................................... 24
04. Tristram Stuart - THE GLOBAL FOOD WASTE SCANDAL ................................................................ 29
Fill in the blanks ................................................................................................................................ 29
Key..................................................................................................................................................... 33
05. Donald Sadoway - THE MISSING LINK TO RENEWABLE ENERGY .................................................. 37
Fill in the blanks ................................................................................................................................ 37
Key..................................................................................................................................................... 41
06. Kevin Robinson - DO SCHOOLS KILL CREATIVITY? ......................................................................... 45
Fill in the blanks ................................................................................................................................ 45
Key..................................................................................................................................................... 53
07. Chystia Freeland - THE RISE OF THE NEW GLOBAL SUPER-RICH ...................................................... 61
Fill in the blanks ................................................................................................................................. 61
Key ..................................................................................................................................................... 65
08. James Hansen - WHY I MUST SPEAK OUT ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE .......................................... 69
Fill in the blanks ................................................................................................................................ 69
Key..................................................................................................................................................... 73
09. Amanda Burden - HOW PUBLIC SPACES MAKE CITIES WORK ...................................................... 78
Fill in the blanks ................................................................................................................................ 78
Key..................................................................................................................................................... 83
10. Maryn McKenna - WHAT DO WE DO WHEN ANTIBIOTICS DON’T WORK ANY MORE? ............... 88
Fill in the blanks ................................................................................................................................ 88
Key..................................................................................................................................................... 92
11. Wade DavisTHE WORLDWIDE WEB OF BELIEF AND RITUAL......................................................... 96
Fill in the blanks ................................................................................................................................ 96
Key................................................................................................................................................... 102
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12. Guy Winch - WHY WE ALL NEED TO PRACTICE EMOTIONAL FIRST AID ..................................... 107
Fill in the blanks .............................................................................................................................. 107
Key................................................................................................................................................... 112
13. Simon Sinek - HOW GREAT LEADERS INSPIRE ACTIONS ............................................................. 117
Fill in the blanks .............................................................................................................................. 117
Key................................................................................................................................................... 123
14. Tim Urban - INSIDE THE MIND OF A MASTER PROCASTINATOR ................................................ 128
Fill in the blanks .............................................................................................................................. 128
Key................................................................................................................................................... 134
15. Adam Alter - WHY OUR SCREENS MAKE US LESS UNHAPPY ...................................................... 139
Fill in the blanks .............................................................................................................................. 139
Key................................................................................................................................................... 143
16. Jonathan Marks - IN PRAISE OF CONFLICT .................................................................................. 146
Fill in the blanks .............................................................................................................................. 146
Key................................................................................................................................................... 149
17. Shawn Achor - THE HAPPY SECRET TO BETTER WORK ................................................................ 153
Fill in the blanks .............................................................................................................................. 153
Key................................................................................................................................................... 158
18. Kelly McGonigal - HOW TO MAKE STRESS YOUR FRIEND ........................................................... 163
Fill in the blanks .............................................................................................................................. 163
Key................................................................................................................................................... 167
19. Amy Cuddy - YOUR BODY LANGUAGE SHAPES WHO YOU ARE .................................................. 171
Fill in the blanks .............................................................................................................................. 171
Key................................................................................................................................................... 177
20. Julian Treasure - HOW TO SPEAK SO THAT PEOPLE WANT TO LISTEN ....................................... 183
Fill in the blanks .............................................................................................................................. 183
Key................................................................................................................................................... 187
21. Anne Milgram - WHY SMART STATISTICS ARE THE KEY TO FIGHTING CRIME ........................... 190
Fill in the blanks .............................................................................................................................. 190
Key................................................................................................................................................... 194
22. Julie Lythcott Haims - HOW TO RAISE SUCCESSFUL KIDS WITHOUT OVER PARENTING ........... 198
Fill in the blanks .............................................................................................................................. 198
Key................................................................................................................................................... 202
23. Naomi Oreskes - WHY WE SHOULD BELIEVE IN SCIENCE............................................................ 206
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Fill in the blanks .............................................................................................................................. 206
Key................................................................................................................................................... 211
24. Simon Anholt - WHICH COUNTRY DOES THE MOST GOOD FOR THE WORLD ............................ 216
Fill in the blanks .............................................................................................................................. 216
Key................................................................................................................................................... 221
3
01. Emma Watson - HEFORSHE CAMPAIGN
Fill in the blanks
Today we are _________ a _________ called for HeForShe. I am _________ out to you
because we need your help. We want to end gender _________, and to do this, we need
everyone _________. This is the first campaign of its kind at the UN. We want to try to
_________ as many men and boys as possible to be _________ for change. And, we don’t
just want to talk about it. We want to try and make sure that it’s tangible.
I was _________ as Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women six months ago. And, the more I
spoke about _________, the more I realized that _________ for women’s rights has too often
become synonymous with man-_________. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that
this has to _________.
For the record, feminism by definition is the _________ that men and women should have
equal rights and _________. It is the theory of political, economic and _________ equality of
the sexes.
I started questioning gender-based _________ a long time ago. When I was 8, I was confused
for being called _________ because I wanted to _________ the plays that we would put on
for our parents, but the boys were not. When at 14, I started to be sexualized by certain
elements of the _________. When at 15, my girlfriends started _________ out of sports teams
because they didn’t want to _________ muscly. When at 18, my male friends were
_________ to express their _________.
I decided that I was a _________, and this seemed _________ to me. But my recent research
has shown me that feminism has become an _________ word. Women are choosing not to
_________ as feminists. Apparently, I’m among the ranks of women whose _________ are
seen as too strong, too _________, isolating, and anti-men. _________, even.
Why has the word become such an _________ one? I am from Britain, and I think it is right I
am paid the same as my male _________. I think it is right that I should be able to make
_________ about my own body. I think it is right that women be involved on my _________
in the _________ and decisions that will _________ my life. I think it is right that
_________, I am afforded the same _________ as men.
But sadly, I can say that there is no one _________ in the world where all women can
_________ to see these rights. No country in the world can yet say that they _________
gender equality. These rights, I _________ to be human rights, but I am one of the lucky
_________.
My life is a sheer _________ because my parents didn’t love me _________ because I was
born a daughter. My school did not _________ me because I was a girl. My mentors didn't
assume that I would go less far because I might give _________ to a child one day. These
_________ were the gender equality ambassadors that made me who I am today. They may
not know it, but they are the inadvertent feminists that are changing the world today. We need
more of _________.
4
And if you still hate the word, it is not the word that is _________. It’s the idea and the
_________ behind it, because not all women have _________ the same rights I have. In fact,
statistically, very _________ have.
In 1997, Hillary Clinton made a _________ speech in Beijing about women’s rights. Sadly,
many of the things that she _________ to _________ are still true today. But what stood out
for me the most was that less than _________ percent of the _________ were male. How can
we affect change in the world when only _________ of it is invited or feel welcome to
participate in the _________?
Men, I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is
your _________, too. Because to date, I’ve seen my father’s role as a _________ being
valued less by _________, despite my need of his _________ as a child, as much as my
mother’s. I’ve seen _________ men suffering from mental _________, unable to ask for help
for fear it would make them _________ of a man. In fact, in the UK, _________ is the biggest
killer of men _________ 20 to 49, eclipsing road accidents, _________ and coronary heart
disease. I’ve seen men made _________ and _________ by a distorted sense of what
constitutes _________ success. Men don’t have the _________ of equality, either.
We don’t _________ talk about men being imprisoned by gender _________, but I can see
that they are, and that when they are _________, things will change for women as a
_________ consequence. If men don’t have to be aggressive in _________ to be accepted,
women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to _________, women won’t
have to be _________.
Both men and women should feel free to be _________. Both men and women should feel free
to be _________. It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum, instead of two
_________ of opposing ideals. If we stop _________ each other by what we are not, and
start defining ourselves by who we are, we can all be _________, and this is what HeForShe
is about. It’s about freedom.
I want men to take up this mantle so that their _________, _________, and _________ can
be free from prejudice, but also so that their sons have _________ to be vulnerable and
human too, reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned, and in doing so, be a more
_________ and _________ version of themselves.
You might be thinking, “Who is this Harry Potter girl, and what is she _________
_________ at the UN?” And, it’s a really good question. I’ve been asking myself the same
thing.
All I know is that I care about this problem, and I want to make it better. And, _________
seen what I’ve seen, and given the _________, I feel it is my _________ to say something.
Statesman Edmund Burke said, “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for
_________ men and women to do _________.”
In my nervousness for this speech and in my _________ of doubt, I told myself firmly, “If not
me, who? If not now, when?” If you have _________ doubts when opportunities are
5
_________ to you, I hope those words will be helpful. Because the _________ is that if we do
nothing, it will take seventy-five years, or for me to be _________ 100, before women can
expect to be paid the same as men for the same work. 15.5 million girls will be _________ in
the next 16 years as children. And at current _________, it won't be until 2086 before all
_________ African girls can have a secondary education.
If you believe in equality, you might be one of those inadvertent feminists that I _________ of
earlier, and for this, I _________ you. We are struggling for a uniting word, but the good
_________ is, we have a uniting movement. It is called HeForShe. I _________ you to step
forward, to be seen and to _________ yourself, “If not me, who? If not now, when?”
Thank you very, very much.
Discussion questions:
-
What are the benefits of feminism to men?
How do you define an inadvertent feminist?
6
Key
Full transcript
Today we are launching a campaign called for HeForShe. I am reaching out to you because
we need your help. We want to end gender inequality, and to do this, we need everyone
involved. This is the first campaign of its kind at the UN. We want to try to mobilize as many
men and boys as possible to be advocates for change. And, we don’t just want to talk about it.
We want to try and make sure that it’s tangible.
I was appointed as Goodwill Ambassador for UN Women six months ago. And, the more I
spoke about feminism, the more I realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often
become synonymous with man-hating. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this
has to stop.
For the record, feminism by definition is the belief that men and women should have equal
rights and opportunities. It is the theory of political, economic and social equality of the
sexes.
I started questioning gender-based assumptions a long time ago. When I was 8, I was
confused for being called bossy because I wanted to direct the plays that we would put on for
our parents, but the boys were not. When at 14, I started to be sexualized by certain elements
of the media. When at 15, my girlfriends started dropping out of sports teams because they
didn’t want to appear muscly. When at 18, my male friends were unable to express their
feelings.
I decided that I was a feminist, and this seemed uncomplicated to me. But my recent research
has shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word. Women are choosing not to
identify as feminists. Apparently, I’m among the ranks of women whose expressions are seen
as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, and anti-men. Unattractive, even.
Why has the word become such an uncomfortable one? I am from Britain, and I think it is
right I am paid the same as my male counterparts. I think it is right that I should be able to
make decisions about my own body. I think it is right that women be involved on my behalf in
the policies and decisions that will affect my life. I think it is right that socially, I am afforded
the same respect as men.
But sadly, I can say that there is no one country in the world where all women can expect to
see these rights. No country in the world can yet say that they achieved gender equality.
These rights, I consider to be human rights, but I am one of the lucky ones.
My life is a sheer privilege because my parents didn’t love me less because I was born a
daughter. My school did not limit me because I was a girl. My mentors didn't assume that I
would go less far because I might give birth to a child one day. These influences were the
gender equality ambassadors that made me who I am today. They may not know it, but they
are the inadvertent feminists that are changing the world today. We need more of those.
7
And if you still hate the word, it is not the word that is important. It’s the idea and the
ambition behind it, because not all women have received the same rights I have. In fact,
statistically, very few have.
In 1997, Hillary Clinton made a famous speech in Beijing about women’s rights. Sadly, many
of the things that she wanted to change are still true today. But what stood out for me the
most was that less than thirty percent of the audience were male. How can we effect change
in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to participate in the conversation?
Men, I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is
your issue, too. Because to date, I’ve seen my father’s role as a parent being valued less by
society, despite my need of his presence as a child, as much as my mother’s. I’ve seen young
men suffering from mental illness, unable to ask for help for fear it would make them less of a
man. In fact, in the UK, suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20 to 49, eclipsing road
accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease. I’ve seen men made fragile and insecure by a
distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don’t have the benefits of equality,
either.
We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes, but I can see that they
are, and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence. If
men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted, women won’t feel compelled to be
submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.
Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to
be strong. It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum, instead of two sets of opposing
ideals. If we stop defining each other by what we are not, and start defining ourselves by who
we are, we can all be freer, and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom.
I want men to take up this mantle so that their daughters, sisters, and mothers can be free
from prejudice, but also so that their sons have permission to be vulnerable and human too,
reclaim those parts of themselves they abandoned, and in doing so, be a more true and
complete version of themselves.
You might be thinking, “Who is this Harry Potter girl, and what is she doing speaking at the
UN?” And, it’s a really good question. I’ve been asking myself the same thing.
All I know is that I care about this problem, and I want to make it better. And, having seen
what I’ve seen, and given the chance, I feel it is my responsibility to say something.
Statesman Edmund Burke said, “All that is needed for the forces of evil to triumph is for good
men and women to do nothing.”
In my nervousness for this speech and in my moments of doubt, I told myself firmly, “If not
me, who? If not now, when?” If you have similar doubts when opportunities are presented to
you, I hope those words will be helpful. Because the reality is that if we do nothing, it will
take seventy-five years, or for me to be nearly 100, before women can expect to be paid the
same as men for the same work. 15.5 million girls will be married in the next 16 years as
8
children. And at current rates, it won't be until 2086 before all rural African girls can have a
secondary education.
If you believe in equality, you might be one of those inadvertent feminists that I spoke of
earlier, and for this, I applaud you. We are struggling for a uniting word, but the good news
is, we have a uniting movement. It is called HeForShe. I invite you to step forward, to be seen
and to ask yourself, “If not me, who? If not now, when?”
Thank you very, very much.
9
02. Rory Sutherland - PERSPECTIVE IS EVERYTHING
Fill in the blanks
00:11
What you have here is an _________ cigarette. It's something that's, since it was
________ a year or two ago, has given me untold ________. (Laughter) A little
bit of it, I think, is the nicotine, but there's something much _________ than
that. Which is ever since, in the U.K., they _________ smoking in public
places, I've never _________ a drinks party ever again. (Laughter) And the
reason, I only _________ out just the other day, which is when you go to a
drinks ________ and you stand up and you hold a glass of _________ wine and
you talk endlessly to people, you don't _________ want to spend all the time
talking. It's really, really _________. Sometimes you just want to stand there
silently, alone with your thoughts. Sometimes you just want to stand in the
corner and _________ out of the window. Now the problem is, when you can't
smoke if you stand and stare out of the window on your own, you're an
antisocial, _________ idiot. (Laughter) If you stand and stare out of the window
on your own with a cigarette, you're a fucking _________. (Laughter)
(Applause)
01:24
So the _________ of reframing things cannot be overstated. What we have is
exactly the same thing, the same _________, but one of them makes you feel
great and the other one, with just a small change_________ of posture, makes
you feel terrible. And I think one of the problems with classical economics is it's
absolutely preoccupied with _________. And reality isn't a particularly good
guide to human happiness. Why, for example, are _________ much happier
than the young _________? Both of them, after all, are in exactly the same stage
of life. You both have too much time on your hand_________ and not much
money. But pensioners are reportedly very, very happy, whereas the
unemployed are _________ unhappy and depressed. The reason, I think, is that
the pensioners believe they've _________ to be pensioners, _________ the
young unemployed feel it's been thrust upon them.
02:25
In England the upper _________ classes have actually solved this problem
perfectly, because they've _________ unemployment. If you're an uppermiddle-class English person, you call unemployment "a year _________."
10
(Laughter) And that's because having a son who's unemployed in Manchester is
really quite _________, but having a son who's unemployed in Thailand is
really viewed as quite an _________. (Laughter) But actually the power to rebrand things -- to understand that actually our experiences, _________, things
don't actually much depend on what they really are, but on how we view them -I _________ think can't be overstated.
03:06
There's an experiment I think Daniel Pink _________ to where you put two
dogs in a box and the box has an electric _________. Every now and then an
electric shock is applied to the floor, which _________ the dogs. The only
difference is one of the dogs has a small button in its half of the box. And when
it nuzzles the button, the electric shock _________. The other dog doesn't have
the button. It's exposed to exactly the same _________ of pain as the dog in the
first box, but it has no _________ over the circumstances. Generally the first
dog can be relatively _________. The second dog lapses into complete
depression.
03:49
The circumstances of our lives may actually matter_________ less to our
happiness than the sense of control we feel over our _________. It's an
interesting question. We ask the question -- the whole debate in the Western
world is about the level of _________. But I think there's another debate to be
asked, which is the level of control we have _________ our tax money. That
what costs us 10 pounds in one context can be a _________. What costs us 10
pounds in a different _________ we may actually welcome. You know, pay
20,000 pounds in tax toward health and you're merely feeling a mug. Pay
20,000 pounds to endow a _________ ward and you're called a philanthropist.
I'm _________ in the wrong country to talk about _________ to pay tax.
(Laughter)
04:40
So I'll give you one in return. How you _________ things really matters. Do
you call it the bailout of Greece or the bailout of a load of stupid _________
which lent to Greece? Because they are actually the same thing. What you call
them actually affects how you _________ to them, viscerally and morally. I
think _________ value is great to be absolutely honest. One of my great friends,
a professor called Nick Chater, who's the Professor of Decision _________ in
London, believes that we should spend far less time looking into _________
11
hidden depths and spend much more time exploring the hidden _________. I
think that's true actually. I think _________ have an insane effect on what we
think and what we do. But what we don't have is a really good _model________
of human psychology. At least pre-Kahneman perhaps, we didn't have a really
good model of human psychology to put alongside models of _________, of __
_______ economics.
05:38
So people who believed in psychological _________ didn't have a model. We
didn't have a framework. This is what Warren Buffett's business _________
Charlie Munger calls "a latticework on which to hang your _________."
Engineers, economists, classical economists all had a very, very _________
existing latticework on which practically every idea could be hung. We merely
have a collection of random individual _________ without an overall model.
And what that means is that in looking at solutions, we've probably _________
too much priority to what I call _________ engineering solutions, Newtonian
solutions, and not nearly enough to the psychological _________.
06:18
You know my example of the Eurostar. Six million pounds spent to _________
the journey time between Paris and London by about 40 minutes. For 0.01
percent of this money you could have put WiFi on the trains, which wouldn't
have reduced the _________ of the journey, but would have improved its
_________ and its usefulness far more. For maybe 10 percent of the money,
you could have paid all of the world's top male and female _________ to walk
up and down the train handing out free Chateau Petrus to all the _________.
You'd still have five [million] pounds in change, and people would ask for the
trains to be slowed down. (Laughter)
06:57
Why were we not given the chance to solve that problem _________? I think it's
because there's an _________, an asymmetry, in the way we treat creative,
emotionally-driven psychological ideas versus the way we treat _________,
numerical, spreadsheet-driven ideas. If you're a _________ person, I think quite
rightly, you have to share all your ideas for _________ with people much more
rational than you. You have to go in and you have to have a cost-benefit
analysis, a _________ study, an ROI study and so forth. And I think that's
probably right. But this does not apply the other way around. People who have
an _________ framework, an economic framework, an engineering framework,
12
feel that actually ________ is its own _________. What they don't say is, "Well
the numbers all seem to add up, but before I _________ this idea, I'll go and
show it to some really crazy people to see if they can come up with something
better." And so we, artificially I think, _________ what I'd call _________ ideas
over psychological ideas.
07:57
An example of a great psychological idea: The single best _________ in
passenger _________ on the London Underground per pound spent came when
they didn't add any extra trains nor change the _________ of the trains, they put
dot matrix display board on the platforms. Because the nature of a wait is not
just _________ on its numerical quality, its duration, but on the level of
_________ you experience during that wait. Waiting seven minutes for a train
with a _________ clock is less frustrating and irritating than waiting four
minutes, knuckle-biting going, "When's this train going to damn well arrive?"
08:33
Here's a beautiful example of a psychological solution deployed in Korea.
_________ Red traffic lights have a countdown _________. It's proven to
reduce the accident rate in experiments. Why? Because road rage, impatience
and general _________ are massively _________ when you can actually see the
time you have to wait. In China, not really understanding the _________ behind
this, they applied the same principle to green traffic lights. (Laughter) Which
isn't a great idea. You're 200 yards away, you _________ you've got five
seconds to go, you _________ it. (Laughter) The Koreans, very assiduously, did
test both. The accident _________ goes down when you apply this to red traffic
lights; it goes up when you apply it to green traffic _________.
09:18
This is all I'm asking for really in human decision making, is the _________ of
these three things. I'm not asking for the _________ primacy of one over the
other. I'm merely saying that when you solve problems, you should look at all
three of these _________ and you should _________ as far as possible to find
solutions which sit in the sweet spot in the middle.
Questions: List all the examples that Rory mentioned and explain how these
examples helped Rory build up his arguments.
13
14
Key
00:11
What you have here is an electronic cigarette. It's something that's, since it was
invented a year or two ago, has given me untold happiness. (Laughter) A little
bit of it, I think, is the nicotine, but there's something much bigger than that.
Which is ever since, in the U.K., they banned smoking in public places, I've
never enjoyed a drinks party ever again. (Laughter) And the reason, I only
worked out just the other day, which is when you go to a drinks party and you
stand up and you hold a glass of red wine and you talk endlessly to people, you
don't actually want to spend all the time talking. It's really, really tiring.
Sometimes you just want to stand there silently, alone with your thoughts.
Sometimes you just want to stand in the corner and stare out of the window.
Now the problem is, when you can't smoke, if you stand and stare out of the
window on your own, you're an antisocial, friendless idiot. (Laughter) If you
stand and stare out of the window on your own with a cigarette, you're a fucking
philosopher. (Laughter) (Applause)
01:24
So the power of reframing things cannot be overstated. What we have is exactly
the same thing, the same activity, but one of them makes you feel great and the
other one, with just a small change of posture, makes you feel terrible. And I
think one of the problems with classical economics is it's absolutely
preoccupied with reality. And reality isn't a particularly good guide to human
happiness. Why, for example, are pensioners much happier than the young
unemployed? Both of them, after all, are in exactly the same stage of life. You
both have too much time on your hands and not much money. But pensioners
are reportedly very, very happy, whereas the unemployed are extraordinarily
unhappy and depressed. The reason, I think, is that the pensioners believe
they've chosen to be pensioners, whereas the young unemployed feel it's been
thrust upon them.
02:25
In England the upper middle classes have actually solved this problem perfectly,
because they've re-branded unemployment. If you're an upper-middle-class
English person, you call unemployment "a year off." (Laughter) And that's
because having a son who's unemployed in Manchester is really quite
embarrassing, but having a son who's unemployed in Thailand is really viewed
as quite an accomplishment. (Laughter) But actually the power to re-brand
15
things -- to understand that actually our experiences, costs, things don't actually
much depend on what they really are, but on how we view them -- I genuinely
think can't be overstated.
03:06
There's an experiment I think Daniel Pink refers to where you put two dogs in a
box and the box has an electric floor. Every now and then an electric shock is
applied to the floor, which pains the dogs. The only difference is one of the
dogs has a small button in its half of the box. And when it nuzzles the button,
the electric shock stops. The other dog doesn't have the button. It's exposed to
exactly the same level of pain as the dog in the first box, but it has no control
over the circumstances. Generally the first dog can be relatively content. The
second dog lapses into complete depression.
03:49
The circumstances of our lives may actually matter less to our happiness than
the sense of control we feel over our lives. It's an interesting question. We ask
the question -- the whole debate in the Western world is about the level of
taxation. But I think there's another debate to be asked, which is the level of
control we have over our tax money. That what costs us 10 pounds in one
context can be a curse. What costs us 10 pounds in a different context we may
actually welcome. You know, pay 20,000 pounds in tax toward health and
you're merely feeling a mug. Pay 20,000 pounds to endow a hospital ward and
you're called a philanthropist. I'm probably in the wrong country to talk about
willingness to pay tax. (Laughter)
04:40
So I'll give you one in return. How you frame things really matters. Do you call
it the bailout of Greece or the bailout of a load of stupid banks which lent to
Greece? Because they are actually the same thing. What you call them actually
affects how you react to them, viscerally and morally. I think psychological
value is great to be absolutely honest. One of my great friends, a professor
called Nick Chater, who's the Professor of Decision Sciences in London,
believes that we should spend far less time looking into humanity's hidden
depths and spend much more time exploring the hidden shallows. I think that's
true actually. I think impressions have an insane effect on what we think and
what we do. But what we don't have is a really good model of human
psychology. At least pre-Kahneman perhaps, we didn't have a really good
16
model of human psychology to put alongside models of engineering, of
neoclassical economics.
05:38
So people who believed in psychological solutions didn't have a model. We
didn't have a framework. This is what Warren Buffett's business partner Charlie
Munger calls "a latticework on which to hang your ideas." Engineers,
economists, classical economists all had a very, very robust existing latticework
on which practically every idea could be hung. We merely have a collection of
random individual insights without an overall model. And what that means is
that in looking at solutions, we've probably given too much priority to what I
call technical engineering solutions, Newtonian solutions, and not nearly
enough to the psychological ones.
06:18
You know my example of the Eurostar. Six million pounds spent to reduce the
journey time between Paris and London by about 40 minutes. For 0.01 percent
of this money you could have put WiFi on the trains, which wouldn't have
reduced the duration of the journey, but would have improved its enjoyment and
its usefullness far more. For maybe 10 percent of the money, you could have
paid all of the world's top male and female supermodels to walk up and down
the train handing out free Chateau Petrus to all the passengers. You'd still have
five [million] pounds in change, and people would ask for the trains to be
slowed down. (Laughter)
06:57
Why were we not given the chance to solve that problem psychologically? I
think it's because there's an imbalance, an asymmetry, in the way we treat
creative, emotionally-driven psychological ideas versus the way we treat
rational, numerical, spreadsheet-driven ideas. If you're a creative person, I think
quite rightly, you have to share all your ideas for approval with people much
more rational than you. You have to go in and you have to have a cost-benefit
analysis, a feasibility study, an ROI study and so forth. And I think that's
probably right. But this does not apply the other way around. People who have
an existing framework, an economic framework, an engineering framework,
feel that actually logic is its own answer. What they don't say is, "Well the
numbers all seem to add up, but before I present this idea, I'll go and show it to
some really crazy people to see if they can come up with something better."
17
And so we, artificially I think, prioritize what I'd call mechanistic ideas over
psychological ideas.
07:57
An example of a great psychological idea: The single best improvement in
passenger satisfaction on the London Underground per pound spent came when
they didn't add any extra trains nor change the frequency of the trains, they put
dot matrix display board on the platforms. Because the nature of a wait is not
just dependent on its numerical quality, its duration, but on the level of
uncertainty you experience during that wait. Waiting seven minutes for a train
with a countdown clock is less frustrating and irritating than waiting four
minutes, knuckle-biting going, "When's this train going to damn well arrive?"
08:33
Here's a beautiful example of a psychological solution deployed in Korea. Red
traffic lights have a countdown delay. It's proven to reduce the accident rate in
experiments. Why? Because road rage, impatience and general irritation are
massively reduced when you can actually see the time you have to wait. In
China, not really understanding the principle behind this, they applied the same
principle to green traffic lights. (Laughter) Which isn't a great idea. You're 200
yards away, you realize you've got five seconds to go, you floor it. (Laughter)
The Koreans, very assiduously, did test both. The accident rate goes down when
you apply this to red traffic lights; it goes up when you apply it to green traffic
lights.
09:18
This is all I'm asking for really in human decision making, is the consideration
of these three things. I'm not asking for the complete primacy of one over the
other. I'm merely saying that when you solve problems, you should look at all
three of these equally and you should seek as far as possible to find solutions
which sit in the sweet spot in the middle.
18
03. Jill Bolte Taylor - MY STROKE OF INSIGHT
Fill in the blanks
00:11 I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who has been _________ with a
brain disorder, schizophrenia. And as a sister and later, as a _________, I wanted to understand,
why is it that I can take my dreams, I can connect them to my _________, and I can make my
dreams come true? What is it about my _________ brain and his schizophrenia that he cannot
connect his dreams to a common and shared reality, so they instead become _________?
00:43 So I _________ my career to research into the severe mental illnesses. And I moved
from my home state of Indiana to Boston, where I was working in the _________ of Dr.
Francine Benes, in the Harvard Department of Psychiatry. And in the lab, we were _________
the question, "What are the _________ differences between the brains of individuals who
would be diagnosed as normal control, as _________ with the brains of individuals diagnosed
with schizophrenia, schizoaffective or bipolar _________?"
01:15 So we were essentially _________ the microcircuitry of the brain: which cells are
communicating with which cells, with which _________, and then in what quantities of those
chemicals? So there was a lot of meaning in my life because I was _________ this type of
research _________ the day, but then in the evenings and on the weekends, I traveled as an
advocate for NAMI, the National Alliance on _________ Illness.
01:42 But on the morning of December 10, 1996, I woke up to _________ that I had a brain
disorder of my own. A blood vessel _________ in the left half of my brain. And in the course
of four hours, I watched my brain completely _________ in its ability to process all
information. On the morning of the hemorrhage, I could not walk, _________, read, write or
recall any of my life. I essentially became an _________ in a woman's body.
02:16 If you've ever seen a human brain, it's _________ that the two hemispheres are
completely _________ from one another. And I have brought for you a real human brain.
02:27 (Groaning, laughter)
02:35 So this is a real human brain. This is the _________ of the brain, the back of brain with
the spinal _________ hanging down, and this is how it would be positioned inside of my head.
And when you look at the brain, it's obvious that the two cerebral cortices are _________
separate from one another.
02:56 For those of you who understand computers, our right hemisphere _________ like a
parallel processor, while our left hemisphere _________ like a serial processor. The two
hemispheres do _________ with one another through the corpus callosum, which is made up
of some 300 million axonal _________. But other than that, the two hemispheres are
completely separate. Because they process information _________, each of our hemispheres
think about different things, they _________ about different things, and, dare I say, they have
very different _________. Excuse me. Thank you. It's been a joy.
03:39 Assistant: It has been.
19
03:41 (Laughter)
03:44 Our right human hemisphere is all about this _________ moment. It's all about "right
here, right now." Our right hemisphere, it thinks in _________ and it learns kinesthetically
through the _________ of our bodies. Information, in the form of energy, streams in
simultaneously through all of our sensory _________ and then it explodes into this enormous
collage of what this present moment looks like, what this present moment _________ like and
tastes like, what it feels like and what it _________ like. I am an energy-being connected to
the energy all around me through the _________ of my right hemisphere. We are energy-beings
connected to one another _________ the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human
family. And right here, right now, we are brothers and sisters on this _________, here to make
the world a better place. And in this moment we are _________, we are whole and we are
beautiful.
04:55 My left hemisphere, our left hemisphere, is a very different _________. Our left
hemisphere thinks linearly and methodically. Our left hemisphere is all about the _________
and it's all about the future. Our left hemisphere is _________ to take that enormous collage of
the present moment and start _________ out details, and more details about those details. It
then categorizes and organizes all that information, _________ it with everything in the past
we've ever learned, and _________ into the future all of our possibilities. And our left
hemisphere thinks in _________. It's that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my
internal world to my external world. It's that little _________ that says to me, "Hey, you've got
to remember to pick up _________ on your way home. I need them in the morning." It's that
calculating _________ that reminds me when I have to do my laundry. But perhaps most
important, it's that little _________ that says to me, "I am. I am."
06:06 And as soon as my _________ hemisphere says to me "I am," I become separate. I
become a single _________ individual, separate from the energy flow around me and separate
from you. And this was the portion of my brain that I lost on the morning of my _________.
06:23 On the morning of the stroke, I woke up to a pounding pain _________ my left eye. And
it was the kind of caustic _________ that you get when you bite into ice cream. And it just
gripped me -- and then it released me. And then it just gripped me -- and then it _________
me. And it was very unusual for me to ever _________ any kind of pain, so I thought, "OK, I'll
just start my normal _________."
06:50 So I got up and I _________ onto my cardio glider, which is a full-body, full-exercise
machine. And I'm jamming away on this thing, and I'm _________ that my hands look like
primitive claws _________ onto the bar. And I thought, "That's very peculiar." And I looked
down at my body and I _________ "Whoa, I'm a weird-looking thing." And it was as though
my consciousness had shifted away from my normal _________ of reality, where I'm the
person on the machine having the experience, to some esoteric space where I'm _________
myself having this experience.
07:27 And it was all very peculiar, and my _________ was just getting worse. So I get off the
machine, and I'm walking across my living room floor, and I realize that everything _________
of my body has slowed way down. And every step is very _________ and very deliberate.
There's no fluidity to my _________, and there's this constriction in my area of perception, so
20
I'm just focused on internal systems. And I'm standing in my _________ getting ready to step
into the shower, and I could actually hear the _________ inside of my body. I heard a little
voice saying, "OK. You muscles, you've got to _________. You muscles, you relax."
08:03 And then I lost my balance, and I'm propped up _________ the wall. And I look down
at my arm and I realize that I can no longer _________ the boundaries of my body. I can't
define where I begin and where I end, because the atoms and the _________ of my arm blended
with the atoms and molecules of the wall. And all I could _________ was this energy -- energy.
08:29 And I'm asking _________, "What is wrong with me? What is going on?" And in that
moment, my left hemisphere brain chatter went totally _________. Just like someone took a
remote control and pushed the _________ button. Total silence. And at first I was shocked to
find myself inside of a silent mind. But then I was immediately _________ by the magnificence
of the energy around me. And because I could no longer _________ the boundaries of my
body, I felt _________ and expansive. I felt at one with all the energy that was, and it was
beautiful there.
09:09 Then all of a sudden my left hemisphere comes back _________ and it says to me, "Hey!
We've got a problem! We've got to get some _________." And I'm going, "Ahh! I've got a
problem!"
09:18 (Laughter)
09:19 So it's like, "OK, I've got a problem." But then I _________ drifted right back out into
the consciousness -- and I affectionately refer to this _________ as La La Land. But it was
beautiful there. Imagine what it would be like to be totally _________ from your brain chatter
that connects you to the external _________.
09:39 So here I am in this space, and my job, and any stress _________ to my job -- it was
gone. And I felt _________ in my body. And imagine all of the relationships in the external
world and any stressors related to any of those -- they were gone. And I felt this _________ of
peacefulness. And imagine what it would feel like to lose 37 years of _________ baggage!
(Laughter) Oh! I felt euphoria -- euphoria. It was _________.
10:14 And again, my left hemisphere comes online and it _________, "Hey! You've got to pay
attention. We've got to get help." And I'm thinking, "I've got to get help. I've got to _________."
So I get out of the shower and I _________ dress and I'm walking around my apartment, and
I'm thinking, "I've got to get to work. Can I _________?"
10:31 And in that moment, my right _________ went totally paralyzed by my side. Then I
realized, "Oh my gosh! I'm having a stroke!" And the next thing my _________ says to me is,
Wow! This is so _________!
10:44 (Laughter)
10:46 This is so cool! How many brain scientists have the _________ to study their own brain
from the inside out?"
21
10:53 (Laughter)
10:55 And then it crosses my mind, "But I'm a very _________ woman!"
10:59 (Laughter)
11:00 "I don't have time for a stroke!" So I'm like, "OK, I can't stop the stroke from _________,
so I'll do this for a week or two, and then I'll get back to my _________. OK. So I've got to call
help. I've got to call work." I couldn't _________ the number at work, so I remembered, in my
office I had a business _________ with my number. So I go into my business room, I pull out
a three-inch stack of business cards. And I'm looking at the card on _________ and even though
I could see clearly in my mind's _________ what my business card looked like, I couldn't tell
if this was my card or not, because all I could see _________ pixels. And the pixels of the
words _________ with the pixels of the background and the pixels of the symbols, and I just
couldn't tell. And then I would wait for what I call a wave of _________. And in that moment,
I would be able to reattach to _________ reality and I could tell that's not the card... that's not
the card. It took me 45 minutes to get one inch down _________ of that stack of cards. In the
meantime, for 45 minutes, the hemorrhage is getting _________ in my left hemisphere. I do
not understand numbers, I do not understand the _________, but it's the only plan I have.
12:07 So I take the phone pad and I put it right here. I take the business card, I put it right here,
and I'm matching the _________ of the squiggles on the card to the shape of the squiggles on
the phone pad. But then I would drift back out into La La Land, and not _________ when I
came back if I'd already dialed _________ numbers. So I had to wield my paralyzed _________
like a stump and cover the numbers as I went along and _________ them, so that as I would
come back to normal reality, I'd be able to tell, "Yes, I've already _________ that number."
12:40 Eventually, the whole number gets dialed and I'm _________ to the phone, and my
colleague picks up the phone and he _________ to me, "Woo woo woo woo." (Laughter)
12:50 (Laughter)
12:53 And I think to myself, "Oh my gosh, he _________ like a Golden Retriever!"
12:58 (Laughter)
13:00 And so I say to him -- _________ in my mind, I say to him: "This is Jill! I need help!"
And what _________ out of my voice is, "Woo woo woo woo woo." I'm thinking, "Oh my
gosh, I sound like a Golden Retriever." So I couldn't know -- I didn't _________ that I couldn't
speak or understand language until I tried. So he _________ that I need help and he gets me
help.
13:21 And a little while later, I am riding in an _________ from one hospital across Boston to
[Massachusetts] General Hospital. And I curl up into a _________ fetal ball. And just like a
balloon with the last bit of air, just right out of the balloon, I just felt my _________ lift and
just I felt my _________ surrender.
22
13:46 And in that _________, I knew that I was no longer the choreographer of my life. And
either the doctors _________ my body and give me a second chance at life, or this was perhaps
my moment of _________.
14:05 When I woke later that afternoon, I was shocked to _________ that I was still alive.
When I felt my spirit surrender, I said goodbye to my life. And my mind was now _________
between two very opposite planes of reality. _________ coming in through my sensory systems
felt like pure pain. Light burned my brain like wildfire, and sounds were so _________ and
chaotic that I could not pick a voice out from the _________ noise, and I just wanted to escape.
Because I could not _________ the position of my body in space, I felt enormous and
expansive, like a genie just liberated from her _________. And my spirit soared free, like a
great whale gliding through the sea of _________ euphoria. Nirvana. I found Nirvana. And I
remember thinking, there's no way I would ever be able to squeeze the _________ of myself
back inside this _________ little body.
15:24 But then I _________, "But I'm still alive! I'm still alive, and I have found Nirvana. And
if I have found Nirvana and I'm still alive, then _________ who is alive can find Nirvana." And
I pictured a world _________ with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew
that they could come to this space at any time. And that they could _________ choose to step
to the right of their left hemispheres -- and find this _________. And then I realized what a
_________ gift this experience could be, what a stroke of insight this could be to how we live
our lives. And it _________ me to recover.
16:20 Two and a half weeks after the hemorrhage, the _________ went in, and they removed
a blood clot the size of a golf ball that was pushing on my language _________. Here I am with
my mama, who is a true _________ in my life. It took me eight years to completely recover.
16:39 So who are we? We are the life-force _________ of the universe, with manual dexterity
and two cognitive _________. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who
and how we want to be in the world. Right here, right now, I can _________ into the
consciousness of my right hemisphere, _________ we are. I am the life-force power of the
universe. I am the life-force power of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular _________ that make
up my _________, at one with all that is. Or, I can choose to step into the consciousness of my
left hemisphere, where I become a single individual, a solid. Separate from the _________,
separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor: _________, neuroanatomist. These are the "we"
inside of me. Which would you choose? Which do you choose? And when? I _________ that
the more time we spend choosing to run the _________ inner-peace circuitry of our right
hemispheres, the more peace we will _________ into the world, and the more peaceful our
planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth _________.
18:12 Thank you.
18:13 (Applause)
23
Key
00:11 I grew up to study the brain because I have a brother who has been diagnosed with a
brain disorder, schizophrenia. And as a sister and later, as a scientist, I wanted to understand,
why is it that I can take my dreams, I can connect them to my reality, and I can make my dreams
come true? What is it about my brother's brain and his schizophrenia that he cannot connect
his dreams to a common and shared reality, so they instead become delusion?
00:43 So I dedicated my career to research into the severe mental illnesses. And I moved from
my home state of Indiana to Boston, where I was working in the lab of Dr. Francine Benes, in
the Harvard Department of Psychiatry. And in the lab, we were asking the question, "What are
the biological differences between the brains of individuals who would be diagnosed as normal
control, as compared with the brains of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia,
schizoaffective or bipolar disorder?"
01:15 So we were essentially mapping the microcircuitry of the brain: which cells are
communicating with which cells, with which chemicals, and then in what quantities of those
chemicals? So there was a lot of meaning in my life because I was performing this type of
research during the day, but then in the evenings and on the weekends, I traveled as an advocate
for NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
01:42 But on the morning of December 10, 1996, I woke up to discover that I had a brain
disorder of my own. A blood vessel exploded in the left half of my brain. And in the course of
four hours, I watched my brain completely deteriorate in its ability to process all information.
On the morning of the hemorrhage, I could not walk, talk, read, write or recall any of my life.
I essentially became an infant in a woman's body.
02:16 If you've ever seen a human brain, it's obvious that the two hemispheres are completely
separate from one another. And I have brought for you a real human brain.
02:27 (Groaning, laughter)
02:35 So this is a real human brain. This is the front of the brain, the back of brain with the
spinal cord hanging down, and this is how it would be positioned inside of my head. And when
you look at the brain, it's obvious that the two cerebral cortices are completely separate from
one another.
02:56 For those of you who understand computers, our right hemisphere functions like a
parallel processor, while our left hemisphere functions like a serial processor. The two
hemispheres do communicate with one another through the corpus callosum, which is made up
of some 300 million axonal fibers. But other than that, the two hemispheres are completely
separate. Because they process information differently, each of our hemispheres think about
different things, they care about different things, and, dare I say, they have very different
personalities. Excuse me. Thank you. It's been a joy.
03:39 Assistant: It has been.
24
03:41 (Laughter)
03:44 Our right human hemisphere is all about this present moment. It's all about "right here,
right now." Our right hemisphere, it thinks in pictures and it learns kinesthetically through the
movement of our bodies. Information, in the form of energy, streams in simultaneously through
all of our sensory systems and then it explodes into this enormous collage of what this present
moment looks like, what this present moment smells like and tastes like, what it feels like and
what it sounds like. I am an energy-being connected to the energy all around me through the
consciousness of my right hemisphere. We are energy-beings connected to one another through
the consciousness of our right hemispheres as one human family. And right here, right now,
we are brothers and sisters on this planet, here to make the world a better place. And in this
moment we are perfect, we are whole and we are beautiful.
04:55 My left hemisphere, our left hemisphere, is a very different place. Our left hemisphere
thinks linearly and methodically. Our left hemisphere is all about the past and it's all about the
future. Our left hemisphere is designed to take that enormous collage of the present moment
and start picking out details, and more details about those details. It then categorizes and
organizes all that information, associates it with everything in the past we've ever learned, and
projects into the future all of our possibilities. And our left hemisphere thinks in language. It's
that ongoing brain chatter that connects me and my internal world to my external world. It's
that little voice that says to me, "Hey, you've got to remember to pick up bananas on your way
home. I need them in the morning." It's that calculating intelligence that reminds me when I
have to do my laundry. But perhaps most important, it's that little voice that says to me, "I am.
I am."
06:06 And as soon as my left hemisphere says to me "I am," I become separate. I become a
single solid individual, separate from the energy flow around me and separate from you. And
this was the portion of my brain that I lost on the morning of my stroke.
06:23 On the morning of the stroke, I woke up to a pounding pain behind my left eye. And it
was the kind of caustic pain that you get when you bite into ice cream. And it just gripped me
-- and then it released me. And then it just gripped me -- and then it released me. And it was
very unusual for me to ever experience any kind of pain, so I thought, "OK, I'll just start my
normal routine."
06:50 So I got up and I jumped onto my cardio glider, which is a full-body, full-exercise
machine. And I'm jamming away on this thing, and I'm realizing that my hands look like
primitive claws grasping onto the bar. And I thought, "That's very peculiar." And I looked
down at my body and I thought, "Whoa, I'm a weird-looking thing." And it was as though my
consciousness had shifted away from my normal perception of reality, where I'm the person on
the machine having the experience, to some esoteric space where I'm witnessing myself having
this experience.
07:27 And it was all very peculiar, and my headache was just getting worse. So I get off the
machine, and I'm walking across my living room floor, and I realize that everything inside of
my body has slowed way down. And every step is very rigid and very deliberate. There's no
fluidity to my pace, and there's this constriction in my area of perception, so I'm just focused
on internal systems. And I'm standing in my bathroom getting ready to step into the shower,
25
and I could actually hear the dialogue inside of my body. I heard a little voice saying, "OK.
You muscles, you've got to contract. You muscles, you relax."
08:03 And then I lost my balance, and I'm propped up against the wall. And I look down at my
arm and I realize that I can no longer define the boundaries of my body. I can't define where I
begin and where I end, because the atoms and the molecules of my arm blended with the atoms
and molecules of the wall. And all I could detect was this energy -- energy.
08:29 And I'm asking myself, "What is wrong with me? What is going on?" And in that
moment, my left hemisphere brain chatter went totally silent. Just like someone took a remote
control and pushed the mute button. Total silence. And at first I was shocked to find myself
inside of a silent mind. But then I was immediately captivated by the magnificence of the
energy around me. And because I could no longer identify the boundaries of my body, I felt
enormous and expansive. I felt at one with all the energy that was, and it was beautiful there.
09:09 Then all of a sudden my left hemisphere comes back online and it says to me, "Hey!
We've got a problem! We've got to get some help." And I'm going, "Ahh! I've got a problem!"
09:18 (Laughter)
09:19 So it's like, "OK, I've got a problem." But then I immediately drifted right back out into
the consciousness -- and I affectionately refer to this space as La La Land. But it was beautiful
there. Imagine what it would be like to be totally disconnected from your brain chatter that
connects you to the external world.
09:39 So here I am in this space, and my job, and any stress related to my job -- it was gone.
And I felt lighter in my body. And imagine all of the relationships in the external world and
any stressors related to any of those -- they were gone. And I felt this sense of peacefulness.
And imagine what it would feel like to lose 37 years of emotional baggage! (Laughter) Oh! I
felt euphoria -- euphoria. It was beautiful.
10:14 And again, my left hemisphere comes online and it says, "Hey! You've got to pay
attention. We've got to get help." And I'm thinking, "I've got to get help. I've got to focus." So
I get out of the shower and I mechanically dress and I'm walking around my apartment, and
I'm thinking, "I've got to get to work. Can I drive?"
10:31 And in that moment, my right arm went totally paralyzed by my side. Then I realized,
"Oh my gosh! I'm having a stroke!" And the next thing my brain says to me is, Wow! This is
so cool!
10:44 (Laughter)
10:46 This is so cool! How many brain scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain
from the inside out?"
10:53 (Laughter)
10:55 And then it crosses my mind, "But I'm a very busy woman!"
26
10:59 (Laughter)
11:00 "I don't have time for a stroke!" So I'm like, "OK, I can't stop the stroke from happening,
so I'll do this for a week or two, and then I'll get back to my routine. OK. So I've got to call
help. I've got to call work." I couldn't remember the number at work, so I remembered, in my
office I had a business card with my number. So I go into my business room, I pull out a threeinch stack of business cards. And I'm looking at the card on top and even though I could see
clearly in my mind's eye what my business card looked like, I couldn't tell if this was my card
or not, because all I could see were pixels. And the pixels of the words blended with the pixels
of the background and the pixels of the symbols, and I just couldn't tell. And then I would wait
for what I call a wave of clarity. And in that moment, I would be able to reattach to normal
reality and I could tell that's not the card... that's not the card. It took me 45 minutes to get one
inch down inside of that stack of cards. In the meantime, for 45 minutes, the hemorrhage is
getting bigger in my left hemisphere. I do not understand numbers, I do not understand the
telephone, but it's the only plan I have.
12:07 So I take the phone pad and I put it right here. I take the business card, I put it right here,
and I'm matching the shape of the squiggles on the card to the shape of the squiggles on the
phone pad. But then I would drift back out into La La Land, and not remember when I came
back if I'd already dialed those numbers. So I had to wield my paralyzed arm like a stump and
cover the numbers as I went along and pushed them, so that as I would come back to normal
reality, I'd be able to tell, "Yes, I've already dialed that number."
12:40 Eventually, the whole number gets dialed and I'm listening to the phone, and my
colleague picks up the phone and he says to me, "Woo woo woo woo." (Laughter)
12:50 (Laughter)
12:53 And I think to myself, "Oh my gosh, he sounds like a Golden Retriever!"
12:58 (Laughter)
13:00 And so I say to him -- clear in my mind, I say to him: "This is Jill! I need help!" And
what comes out of my voice is, "Woo woo woo woo woo." I'm thinking, "Oh my gosh, I sound
like a Golden Retriever." So I couldn't know -- I didn't know that I couldn't speak or understand
language until I tried. So he recognizes that I need help and he gets me help.
13:21 And a little while later, I am riding in an ambulance from one hospital across Boston to
[Massachusetts] General Hospital. And I curl up into a little fetal ball. And just like a balloon
with the last bit of air, just right out of the balloon, I just felt my energy lift and just I felt my
spirit surrender.
13:46 And in that moment, I knew that I was no longer the choreographer of my life. And either
the doctors rescue my body and give me a second chance at life, or this was perhaps my moment
of transition.
14:05 When I woke later that afternoon, I was shocked to discover that I was still alive. When
I felt my spirit surrender, I said goodbye to my life. And my mind was now suspended between
27
two very opposite planes of reality. Stimulation coming in through my sensory systems felt
like pure pain. Light burned my brain like wildfire, and sounds were so loud and chaotic that I
could not pick a voice out from the background noise, and I just wanted to escape. Because I
could not identify the position of my body in space, I felt enormous and expansive, like a genie
just liberated from her bottle. And my spirit soared free, like a great whale gliding through the
sea of silent euphoria. Nirvana. I found Nirvana. And I remember thinking, there's no way I
would ever be able to squeeze the enormousness of myself back inside this tiny little body.
15:24 But then I realized, "But I'm still alive! I'm still alive, and I have found Nirvana. And if
I have found Nirvana and I'm still alive, then everyone who is alive can find Nirvana." And I
pictured a world filled with beautiful, peaceful, compassionate, loving people who knew that
they could come to this space at any time. And that they could purposely choose to step to the
right of their left hemispheres -- and find this peace. And then I realized what a tremendous
gift this experience could be, what a stroke of insight this could be to how we live our lives.
And it motivated me to recover.
16:20 Two and a half weeks after the hemorrhage, the surgeons went in, and they removed a
blood clot the size of a golf ball that was pushing on my language centers. Here I am with my
mama, who is a true angel in my life. It took me eight years to completely recover.
16:39 So who are we? We are the life-force power of the universe, with manual dexterity and
two cognitive minds. And we have the power to choose, moment by moment, who and how we
want to be in the world. Right here, right now, I can step into the consciousness of my right
hemisphere, where we are. I am the life-force power of the universe. I am the life-force power
of the 50 trillion beautiful molecular geniuses that make up my form, at one with all that is. Or,
I can choose to step into the consciousness of my left hemisphere, where I become a single
individual, a solid. Separate from the flow, separate from you. I am Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor:
intellectual, neuroanatomist. These are the "we" inside of me. Which would you choose? Which
do you choose? And when? I believe that the more time we spend choosing to run the deep
inner-peace circuitry of our right hemispheres, the more peace we will project into the world,
and the more peaceful our planet will be. And I thought that was an idea worth spreading.
18:12 Thank you.
18:13 (Applause)
28
04. Tristram Stuart - THE GLOBAL FOOD WASTE SCANDAL
Fill in the blanks
00:11 The job of uncovering the global food ……….. scandal started for me when I was 15
years old. I bought some pigs. I was living in Sussex. And I started to ……….. them in the
most traditional and environmentally …….. way. I went to my school kitchen, and I said,
"Give me the scraps that my school ……… have turned their noses up at." I went to the local
baker and took their stale bread. I went to the local greengrocer, and I went to a ………….
who was throwing away potatoes because they were the wrong shape or size for ………..
This was great. My pigs turned that food waste into ……….. pork. I sold that pork to my
school friends' parents, and I made a good pocket money addition to my teenage ………..
00:52 But I ……….. that most of the food that I was giving my pigs was in fact fit for human
consumption, and that I was only ……….. the surface, and that right the way up the food
supply chain, in supermarkets, greengrocers, bakers, in our …………, in factories and farms,
we were hemorrhaging out food. Supermarkets didn't even want to ………… to me about
how much food they were …………... I'd been round the back. I'd seen bins full of food
being locked and then trucked off to landfill sites, and I thought, surely there is something
more …………… to do with food than waste it.
01:24 One morning, when I was feeding my …………, I noticed a particularly tasty-looking
……….. tomato loaf that used to crop up from time to time. I grabbed hold of it, sat down,
and ate my ……….. with my pigs. (Laughter) That was the first act of what I later learned to
call freeganism, really an exhibition of the …………. of food waste, and the provision of the
………….. to food waste, which is simply to sit down and eat food, rather than throwing it
away. That became, as it were, a way of ………… large businesses in the business of wasting
food, and ……………, most importantly, to the public, that when we're talking about food
being thrown away, we're not talking about …………. stuff, we're not talking about stuff
that's ………….. the pale. We're talking about good, fresh food that is being wasted on a
colossal ………………..
02:11 Eventually, I set about writing my book, really to ………….. the extent of this problem
on a global scale. What this shows is a nation-by-nation ……………… of the likely level of
food waste in each country in the world. Unfortunately, …………….. data, good, hard stats,
don't exist, and therefore to prove my point, I first of all had to find some …………… way of
…………. how much food was being wasted. So I took the food supply of every single
country and I compared it to what was actually likely to be being …………… in each
country. That's based on diet intake surveys, it's based on levels of ………….., it's based on a
range of factors that gives you an ………………… guess as to how much food is actually
going into people's mouths. That black line in the middle of that table is the likely level of
………………. with an allowance for certain levels of ………………….. waste. There will
always be waste. I'm not that ……………….. that I think we can live in a waste-free world.
But that black line shows what a food supply should be in a country if they allow for a good,
stable, secure, ……………….. diet for every person in that country. Any ……………….
above that line, and you'll quickly notice that that includes most countries in the world,
represents unnecessary ………………., and is likely to reflect levels of waste in each
country.
29
03:33 As a country gets richer, it ……………… more and more in getting more and more
surplus into its shops and restaurants, and as you can see, most …………….. and North
American countries fall between 150 and 200 percent of the nutritional ………………. of
their populations. So a country like America has ……………. as much food on its shop
shelves and in its restaurants than is …………… required to feed the American people.
03:59 But the thing that really ……………… me, when I plotted all this data, and it was a lot
of numbers, was that you can see how it ……………….. Countries rapidly shoot towards that
150 mark, and then they level off, and they don't really go on rising as you might
……………….. So I decided to ……………… that data a little bit further to see if that was
true or false. And that's what I came up with. If you ……………. not just the food that ends
up in shops and restaurants, but also the food that people feed to ……………., the maize, the
soy, the wheat, that humans could eat but choose to ……………… livestock instead to
produce increasing amounts of meat and dairy products, what you find is that most
…………… countries have between three and four times the amount of food that their
…………….. needs to feed itself. A country like America has four times the amount of food
that it needs.
04:52 When people talk about the need to increase ……….. food production to feed those
nine billion people that are expected on the planet by 2050, I always think of these
…………... The fact is, we have an ………… buffer in rich countries between ourselves and
hunger. We've never had such …………….. surpluses before. In many ways, this is a great
success story of human …………….., of the agricultural surpluses that we set out to achieve
12,000 years ago. It is a success story. It has been a success story. But what we have to
………………. now is that we are reaching the ………………. limits that our planet can
bear, and when we chop down forests, as we are every day, to grow more and more food,
when we ……………… water from depleting water reserves, when we emit …………….
fuel emissions in the quest to grow more and more food, and then we ……………… so much
of it, we have to think about what we can start saving.
05:51 And yesterday, I went to one of the local supermarkets that I often visit to ………….,
if you like, what they're throwing away. I found quite a few …………… of biscuits amongst
all the fruit and ……………. and everything else that was in there. And I thought, well this
could serve as a ……………… for today.
06:09 So I want you to ……….. that these nine biscuits that I found in the bin represent the
global food supply, okay? We start out with nine. That's what's in …………… around the
world every single year. The first …………… we're going to lose before we even leave the
farm. That's a problem ……………… associated with developing work agriculture, whether
it's a lack of ………………, refrigeration, pasteurization, grain stores, even basic fruit crates,
which means that food goes to waste before it even leaves the ……………... The next three
biscuits are the foods that we decide to feed to livestock, the maize, the wheat and the
………….. Unfortunately, our beasts are ………….. animals, and they turn two-thirds of that
into feces and heat, so we've lost those two, and we've only kept this one in meat and
……………. products. Two more we're going to throw away directly into ………... This is
what most of us think of when we think of food waste, what ends up in the ………….., what
ends up in supermarket bins, what ends up in restaurant bins. We've lost another two, and
we've left ……………. with just four biscuits to feed on. That is not a superlatively efficient
30
use of global …………., especially when you think of the billion …………….. people that
exist already in the world.
07:23 Having gone through the ………., I then needed to demonstrate where that food ends
up. Where does it end up? We're used to seeing the ……………….. on our plates, but what
about all the stuff that goes ………………. in between?
07:34 Supermarkets are an easy place to start. This is the result of my ……………….., which
is unofficial bin inspections. (Laughter) …………….. you might think, but if we could rely
on ……………. to tell us what they were doing in the back of their stores, we wouldn't need
to go sneaking around the back, opening up bins and having a look at what's ………….. But
this is what you can see more or less on every street corner in ………………, in Europe, in
North America. It represents a ……………… waste of food, but what I discovered whilst I
was writing my book was that this very evident ………….. of waste was actually the tip of
the iceberg. When you start going up the supply ………………., you find where the real food
waste is happening on a gargantuan scale.
08:19 Can I have a show of hands if you have a loaf of ………….. bread in your house? Who
lives in a household where that …………. -- that slice at the first and last end of each loaf -who lives in a household where it does get eaten? Okay, most people, not ………….., but
most people, and this is, I'm ………….. to say, what I see across the world, and yet has
anyone seen a supermarket or sandwich shop anywhere in the world that serves …………..
with crusts on it? (Laughter) I certainly haven't. So I kept on ………….., where do those
crusts go? (Laughter) This is the answer, ………………..: 13,000 slices of fresh bread
coming out of this one single factory every single day, day-fresh bread. In the same year that
I visited this ……………, I went to Pakistan, where people in 2008 were going hungry as a
result of a ……………. on global food supplies. We contribute to that squeeze by
…………….. food in bins here in Britain and elsewhere in the world. We take food off the
market …………… that hungry people depend on.
09:20 Go one step up, and you get to farmers, who throw away sometimes a third or even
more of their …………… because of cosmetic standards. This farmer, for example, has
invested 16,000 pounds in growing ……………., not one leaf of which he harvested, because
there was a little bit of grass growing in amongst it. Potatoes that are cosmetically
………….., all going for pigs. Parsnips that are too small for supermarket …………..,
tomatoes in Tenerife, oranges in Florida, bananas in Ecuador, where I visited last year, all
being ……………... This is one day's waste from one banana …………… in Ecuador. All
being discarded, perfectly ……………., because they're the wrong shape or size.
10:01 If we do that to fruit and ………………., you bet we can do it to animals too. Liver,
lungs, heads, tails, kidneys, testicles, all of these things which are ………….., delicious and
nutritious parts of our …………… go to waste. Offal consumption has halved in Britain and
America in the last 30 years. As a result, this stuff gets fed to dogs at best, or is …………...
This man, in Kashgar, Xinjiang province, in Western China, is …………… up his national
dish. It's called sheep's ……………. It's delicious, it's nutritious, and as I learned when I went
to Kashgar, it …………… their taboo against food waste. I was sitting in a roadside cafe. A
chef came to talk to me, I finished my bowl, and ………………. through the conversation, he
stopped talking and he started frowning into my bowl. I thought, "My ………………, what
31
taboo have I broken? How have I insulted my host?" He pointed at three …………. of rice at
the bottom of my bowl, and he said, "……………." (Laughter) I thought, "My God, you
know, I go around the world telling people to stop wasting food. This guy has ……………….
me at my own game." (Laughter)
11:06 But it gave me faith. It gave me ………………. that we, the people, do have the power
to stop this …………….. waste of resources if we regard it as socially unacceptable to waste
food on a colossal scale, if we make noise about it, tell corporations about it, tell
……………. we want to see an end to food waste, we do have the ……………… to bring
about that change.
11:26 Fish, 40 to 60 percent of European ………….. are discarded at sea, they don't even get
landed. In our homes, we've lost touch with food. This is an …………………. I did on three
lettuces. Who keeps lettuces in their fridge? Most people. The one on the left was kept in a
…………. for 10 days. The one in the middle, on my kitchen table. Not much
……………….. The one on the right I treated like cut flowers. It's a living ………………,
cut the slice off, stuck it in a vase of water, it was all right for another two weeks after this.
11:57 Some food waste, as I said at the beginning, will inevitably ……………., so the
question is, what is the ……………. thing to do with it? I answered that question when I was
15. In fact, humans answered that question 6,000 years ago: We domesticated …………… to
turn food waste back into food. And yet, in Europe, that ……………… has become illegal
since 2001 as a result of the foot-and-mouth outbreak. It's ……………... It's unnecessary. If
you cook food for pigs, just as if you cook food for humans, it is rendered safe. It's also a
……………. saving of resources. At the moment, Europe depends on ……………….
millions of tons of soy from South America, where its production contributes to global
warming, to ………………., to biodiversity loss, to feed …………………. here in Europe.
At the same time we throw away millions of tons of food waste which we could and should
be ……………. them. If we did that, and fed it to pigs, we would save that amount of
……………….. If we feed our food waste which is the current government favorite way of
getting rid of food waste, to anaerobic ………………., which turns food waste into gas to
produce electricity, you save a ………………… 448 kilograms of carbon dioxide per ton of
food waste. It's much better to feed it to pigs. We knew that during the …………….
(Laughter)
13:15 A silver lining: It has kicked off globally, the quest to …………….. food waste.
Feeding the 5,000 is an ………………. I first organized in 2009. We fed 5,000 people all on
food that otherwise would have been wasted. Since then, it's happened again in
………………, it's happening internationally, and across the country. It's a way of
………………….. coming together to ……………….. food, to say the best thing to do with
food is to eat and enjoy it, and to stop wasting it. For the sake of the ……………. we live on,
for the sake of our children, for the sake of all the other ……………….. that share our planet
with us, we are a terrestrial animal, and we depend on our land for food. At the moment, we
are ………………. our land to grow food that no one eats. Stop wasting food. Thank you
very much. (Applause) (Applause)
32
Key
00:11 The job of uncovering the global food waste scandal started for me when I was 15
years old. I bought some pigs. I was living in Sussex. And I started to feed them in the most
traditional and environmentally friendly way. I went to my school kitchen, and I said, "Give
me the scraps that my school friends have turned their noses up at." I went to the local baker
and took their stale bread. I went to the local greengrocer, and I went to a farmer who was
throwing away potatoes because they were the wrong shape or size for supermarkets. This
was great. My pigs turned that food waste into delicious pork. I sold that pork to my school
friends' parents, and I made a good pocket money addition to my teenage allowance.
00:52 But I noticed that most of the food that I was giving my pigs was in fact fit for human
consumption, and that I was only scratching the surface, and that right the way up the food
supply chain, in supermarkets, greengrocers, bakers, in our homes, in factories and farms, we
were hemorrhaging out food. Supermarkets didn't even want to talk to me about how much
food they were wasting. I'd been round the back. I'd seen bins full of food being locked and
then trucked off to landfill sites, and I thought, surely there is something more sensible to do
with food than waste it.
01:24 One morning, when I was feeding my pigs, I noticed a particularly tasty-looking sundried tomato loaf that used to crop up from time to time. I grabbed hold of it, sat down, and
ate my breakfast with my pigs. (Laughter) That was the first act of what I later learned to
call freeganism, really an exhibition of the injustice of food waste, and the provision of the
solution to food waste, which is simply to sit down and eat food, rather than throwing it
away. That became, as it were, a way of confronting large businesses in the business of
wasting food, and exposing, most importantly, to the public, that when we're talking about
food being thrown away, we're not talking about rotten stuff, we're not talking about stuff
that's beyond the pale. We're talking about good, fresh food that is being wasted on a colossal
scale.
02:11 Eventually, I set about writing my book, really to demonstrate the extent of this
problem on a global scale. What this shows is a nation-by-nation breakdown of the likely
level of food waste in each country in the world. Unfortunately, empirical data, good, hard
stats, don't exist, and therefore to prove my point, I first of all had to find some proxy way of
uncovering how much food was being wasted. So I took the food supply of every single
country and I compared it to what was actually likely to be being consumed in each country.
That's based on diet intake surveys, it's based on levels of obesity, it's based on a range of
factors that gives you an approximate guess as to how much food is actually going into
people's mouths. That black line in the middle of that table is the likely level of consumption
with an allowance for certain levels of inevitable waste. There will always be waste. I'm not
that unrealistic that I think we can live in a waste-free world. But that black line shows what
a food supply should be in a country if they allow for a good, stable, secure, nutritional diet
for every person in that country. Any dot above that line, and you'll quickly notice that that
includes most countries in the world, represents unnecessary surplus, and is likely to reflect
levels of waste in each country.
33
03:33 As a country gets richer, it invests more and more in getting more and more surplus
into its shops and restaurants, and as you can see, most European and North American
countries fall between 150 and 200 percent of the nutritional requirements of their
populations. So a country like America has twice as much food on its shop shelves and in its
restaurants than is actually required to feed the American people.
03:59 But the thing that really struck me, when I plotted all this data, and it was a lot of
numbers, was that you can see how it levels off. Countries rapidly shoot towards that 150
mark, and then they level off, and they don't really go on rising as you might expect. So I
decided to unpack that data a little bit further to see if that was true or false. And that's what I
came up with. If you include not just the food that ends up in shops and restaurants, but also
the food that people feed to livestock, the maize, the soy, the wheat, that humans could eat
but choose to fatten livestock instead to produce increasing amounts of meat and dairy
products, what you find is that most rich countries have between three and four times the
amount of food that their population needs to feed itself. A country like America has four
times the amount of food that it needs.
04:52 When people talk about the need to increase global food production to feed those nine
billion people that are expected on the planet by 2050, I always think of these graphs. The
fact is, we have an enormous buffer in rich countries between ourselves and hunger. We've
never had such gargantuan surpluses before. In many ways, this is a great success story of
human civilization, of the agricultural surpluses that we set out to achieve 12,000 years ago.
It is a success story. It has been a success story. But what we have to recognize now is that
we are reaching the ecological limits that our planet can bear, and when we chop down
forests, as we are every day, to grow more and more food, when we extract water from
depleting water reserves, when we emit fossil fuel emissions in the quest to grow more and
more food, and then we throw away so much of it, we have to think about what we can start
saving.
05:51 And yesterday, I went to one of the local supermarkets that I often visit to inspect, if
you like, what they're throwing away. I found quite a few packets of biscuits amongst all the
fruit and vegetables and everything else that was in there. And I thought, well this could
serve as a symbol for today.
06:09 So I want you to imagine that these nine biscuits that I found in the bin represent the
global food supply, okay? We start out with nine. That's what's in fields around the world
every single year. The first biscuit we're going to lose before we even leave the farm. That's a
problem primarily associated with developing work agriculture, whether it's a lack of
infrastructure, refrigeration, pasteurization, grain stores, even basic fruit crates, which
means that food goes to waste before it even leaves the fields. The next three biscuits are the
foods that we decide to feed to livestock, the maize, the wheat and the soya. Unfortunately,
our beasts are inefficient animals, and they turn two-thirds of that into feces and heat, so
we've lost those two, and we've only kept this one in meat and dairy products. Two more
we're going to throw away directly into bins. This is what most of us think of when we think
of food waste, what ends up in the garbage, what ends up in supermarket bins, what ends up
in restaurant bins. We've lost another two, and we've left ourselves with just four biscuits to
feed on. That is not a superlatively efficient use of global resources, especially when you
think of the billion hungry people that exist already in the world.
34
07:23 Having gone through the data, I then needed to demonstrate where that food ends up.
Where does it end up? We're used to seeing the stuff on our plates, but what about all the
stuff that goes missing in between?
07:34 Supermarkets are an easy place to start. This is the result of my hobby, which is
unofficial bin inspections. (Laughter) Strange you might think, but if we could rely on
corporations to tell us what they were doing in the back of their stores, we wouldn't need to
go sneaking around the back, opening up bins and having a look at what's inside. But this is
what you can see more or less on every street corner in Britain, in Europe, in North America.
It represents a colossal waste of food, but what I discovered whilst I was writing my book
was that this very evident abundance of waste was actually the tip of the iceberg. When you
start going up the supply chain, you find where the real food waste is happening on a
gargantuan scale.
08:19 Can I have a show of hands if you have a loaf of sliced bread in your house? Who lives
in a household where that crust -- that slice at the first and last end of each loaf -- who lives
in a household where it does get eaten? Okay, most people, not everyone, but most people,
and this is, I'm glad to say, what I see across the world, and yet has anyone seen a
supermarket or sandwich shop anywhere in the world that serves sandwiches with crusts on
it? (Laughter) I certainly haven't. So I kept on thinking, where do those crusts go? (Laughter)
This is the answer, unfortunately: 13,000 slices of fresh bread coming out of this one single
factory every single day, day-fresh bread. In the same year that I visited this factory, I went
to Pakistan, where people in 2008 were going hungry as a result of a squeeze on global food
supplies. We contribute to that squeeze by depositing food in bins here in Britain and
elsewhere in the world. We take food off the market shelves that hungry people depend on.
09:20 Go one step up, and you get to farmers, who throw away sometimes a third or even
more of their harvest because of cosmetic standards. This farmer, for example, has invested
16,000 pounds in growing spinach, not one leaf of which he harvested, because there was a
little bit of grass growing in amongst it. Potatoes that are cosmetically imperfect, all going
for pigs. Parsnips that are too small for supermarket specifications, tomatoes in Tenerife,
oranges in Florida, bananas in Ecuador, where I visited last year, all being discarded. This is
one day's waste from one banana plantation in Ecuador. All being discarded, perfectly
edible, because they're the wrong shape or size.
10:01 If we do that to fruit and vegetables, you bet we can do it to animals too. Liver, lungs,
heads, tails, kidneys, testicles, all of these things which are traditional, delicious and
nutritious parts of our gastronomy go to waste. Offal consumption has halved in Britain and
America in the last 30 years. As a result, this stuff gets fed to dogs at best, or is incinerated.
This man, in Kashgar, Xinjiang province, in Western China, is serving up his national dish.
It's called sheep's organs. It's delicious, it's nutritious, and as I learned when I went to
Kashgar, it symbolizes their taboo against food waste. I was sitting in a roadside cafe. A chef
came to talk to me, I finished my bowl, and halfway through the conversation, he stopped
talking and he started frowning into my bowl. I thought, "My goodness, what taboo have I
broken? How have I insulted my host?" He pointed at three grains of rice at the bottom of
my bowl, and he said, "Clean." (Laughter) I thought, "My God, you know, I go around the
world telling people to stop wasting food. This guy has thrashed me at my own game."
(Laughter)
35
11:06 But it gave me faith. It gave me faith that we, the people, do have the power to stop
this tragic waste of resources if we regard it as socially unacceptable to waste food on a
colossal scale, if we make noise about it, tell corporations about it, tell governments we want
to see an end to food waste, we do have the power to bring about that change.
11:26 Fish, 40 to 60 percent of European fish are discarded at sea, they don't even get landed.
In our homes, we've lost touch with food. This is an experiment I did on three lettuces. Who
keeps lettuces in their fridge? Most people. The one on the left was kept in a fridge for 10
days. The one in the middle, on my kitchen table. Not much difference. The one on the right
I treated like cut flowers. It's a living organism, cut the slice off, stuck it in a vase of water, it
was all right for another two weeks after this.
11:57 Some food waste, as I said at the beginning, will inevitably arise, so the question is,
what is the best thing to do with it? I answered that question when I was 15. In fact, humans
answered that question 6,000 years ago: We domesticated pigs to turn food waste back into
food. And yet, in Europe, that practice has become illegal since 2001 as a result of the footand-mouth outbreak. It's unscientific. It's unnecessary. If you cook food for pigs, just as if
you cook food for humans, it is rendered safe. It's also a massive saving of resources. At the
moment, Europe depends on importing millions of tons of soy from South America, where
its production contributes to global warming, to deforestation, to biodiversity loss, to feed
livestock here in Europe. At the same time we throw away millions of tons of food waste
which we could and should be feeding them. If we did that, and fed it to pigs, we would save
that amount of carbon. If we feed our food waste which is the current government favorite
way of getting rid of food waste, to anaerobic digestion, which turns food waste into gas to
produce electricity, you save a paltry 448 kilograms of carbon dioxide per ton of food waste.
It's much better to feed it to pigs. We knew that during the war. (Laughter)
13:15 A silver lining: It has kicked off globally, the quest to tackle food waste. Feeding the
5,000 is an event I first organized in 2009. We fed 5,000 people all on food that otherwise
would have been wasted. Since then, it's happened again in London, it's happening
internationally, and across the country. It's a way of organizations coming together to
celebrate food, to say the best thing to do with food is to eat and enjoy it, and to stop wasting
it. For the sake of the planet we live on, for the sake of our children, for the sake of all the
other organisms that share our planet with us, we are a terrestrial animal, and we depend on
our land for food. At the moment, we are trashing our land to grow food that no one eats.
Stop wasting food. Thank you very much. (Applause) (Applause)
36
05. Donald Sadoway - THE MISSING LINK TO RENEWABLE ENERGY
Fill in the blanks
00:15 The electricity powering the lights in this theater was ________ just moments ago.
Because the way things stand today, electricity ________ must be in constant balance with
electricity supply. If in the time that it took me to walk out here on this ________, some tens
of megawatts of wind power stopped ________ into the grid, the difference would have to be
made up from other generators ________. But coal plants, nuclear plants can't respond fast
enough. A giant battery could. With a giant ________, we'd be able to address the problem of
intermittency that prevents wind and solar from ________ to the grid in the same way that
coal, gas and nuclear do today.
01:05 You see, the battery is the ________ enabling device here. With it, we could draw
electricity from the sun even when the sun doesn't shine. And that ________ everything.
Because then ________ such as wind and solar come out from the wings, here to center stage.
Today I want to tell you about such a ________. It's called the liquid metal battery. It's a new
form of energy storage that I ________ at MIT along with a team of my students and postdocs.
01:40 Now the ________ of this year's TED Conference is Full Spectrum. The OED defines
spectrum as "The ________ range of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, from the
longest radio waves to the ________ gamma rays of which the range of visible light is only a
small part." So I'm not here today only to tell you how my ________ at MIT has drawn out of
nature a solution to one of the world's great problems. I want to go full ________ and tell you
how, in the process of developing this new technology, we've ________ some surprising
heterodoxies that can serve as lessons for ________, ideas worth spreading. And you know, if
we're going to get this country out of its current energy ________, we can't just conserve our
way out; we can't just drill our way out; we can't ________ our way out. We're going to do it
the old-fashioned American way, we're going to ________ our way out, working together.
02:43 (Applause)
02:46 Now let's get started. The battery was ________ about 200 years ago by a professor,
Alessandro Volta, at the University of Padua in Italy. His invention gave ________ to a new
field of ________, electrochemistry, and new technologies such as electroplating. Perhaps
overlooked, Volta's invention of the battery for the first time also ________ the utility of a
professor. (Laughter) Until Volta, nobody could ________ a professor could be of any use.
03:19 Here's the first battery -- a stack of coins, zinc and silver, ________ by cardboard
soaked in brine. This is the starting point for ________ a battery -- two electrodes, in this
case metals of different ________, and an electrolyte, in this case salt dissolved in water. The
science is that simple. Admittedly, I've left out a few ________.
03:45 Now I've taught you that battery science is ________ and the need for grid-level
storage is ________, but the fact is that today there is simply no battery technology capable
of meeting the demanding performance ________ of the grid -- namely uncommonly high
37
power, long service ________ and super-low cost. We need to think about the problem
differently. We need to think big, we need to think ________.
04:17 So let's abandon the paradigm of let's search for the ________ chemistry and then
hopefully we'll chase down the cost curve by just ________ lots and lots of product. Instead,
let's invent to the price point of the electricity market. So that means that ________ parts of
the periodic table are ________ off-limits. This battery needs to be made out of earthabundant ________. I say, if you want to make something dirt cheap, make it out of dirt -(Laughter) preferably dirt that's locally ________. And we need to be able to build this thing
using simple manufacturing techniques and factories that don't cost us a ________.
05:04 So about six years ago, I started thinking about this ________. And in order to adopt a
fresh perspective, I sought ________ from beyond the field of electricity storage. In fact, I
looked to a technology that ________ stores nor generates electricity, but instead consumes
electricity, huge ________ of it. I'm talking about the production of aluminum. The process
was invented in 1886 by a ________ of 22-year-olds -- Hall in the United States and Heroult
in France. And just a few short years following their ________, aluminum changed from a
precious metal costing as much as silver to a common ________ material.
05:47 You're looking at the ________ house of a modern aluminum smelter. It's about 50 feet
wide and recedes about half a mile -- row after row of cells that, inside, ________ Volta's
battery, with three important ________. Volta's battery works at room temperature. It's fitted
with solid electrodes and an electrolyte that's a ________ of salt and water. The Hall-Heroult
cell operates at high temperature, a temperature high ________ that the aluminum metal
product is liquid. The electrolyte is not a solution of salt and water, but rather salt that's
melted. It's this ________ of liquid metal, molten salt and high temperature that allows us to
send high current ________ this thing. Today, we can produce virgin metal from ore at a cost
of less than 50 cents a pound. That's the economic ________ of modern electrometallurgy.
06:44 It is this that caught and held my ________ to the point that I became obsessed with
inventing a battery that could capture this ________ economy of scale. And I did. I made the
battery all liquid -- liquid ________ for both electrodes and a molten salt for the electrolyte.
I'll show you how. So I put low-density ________ metal at the top, put a high-density liquid
metal at the ________, and molten salt in between.
07:43 So now, how to choose the metals? For me, the design ________ always begins here
with the periodic ________, enunciated by another professor, Dimitri Mendeleyev.
Everything we know is made of some combination of what you see ________ here. And that
includes our own bodies. I recall the very ________ one day when I was searching for a pair
of metals that would meet the ________ of earth abundance, different, opposite density and
high mutual reactivity. I felt the thrill of ________ when I knew I'd come upon the answer.
Magnesium for the top layer. And antimony for the bottom ________. You know, I've got to
tell you, one of the greatest ________ of being a professor: colored chalk.
08:44 (Laughter)
08:47 So to produce current, magnesium loses two electrons to ________ magnesium ion,
which then ________ across the electrolyte, accepts two electrons from the antimony, and
38
then mixes with it to form an alloy. The electrons go to work in the real ________ out here,
powering our devices. Now to ________ the battery, we connect a source of electricity. It
could be something like a wind farm. And then we ________ the current. And this forces
magnesium to de-alloy and return to the upper electrode, restoring the ________ constitution
of the battery. And the current passing between the electrodes ________ enough heat to keep
it at ________.
09:47 It's pretty cool, at least in theory. But does it really work? So what to do ________?
We go to the laboratory. Now do I hire seasoned professionals? No, I hire a ________ and
mentor him, teach him how to think about the problem, to see it from my ________ and then
turn him loose. This is that student, David Bradwell, who, in this ________, appears to be
wondering if this thing will ever work. What I didn't ________ David at the time was I
myself wasn't ________ it would work.
10:26 But David's young and he's smart and he wants a Ph.D., and he ________ to build -(Laughter) He proceeds to build the first ever liquid metal battery of this ________. And
based on David's initial promising results, which were paid with seed ________ at MIT, I
was able to attract major research funding from the private ________ and the federal
government. And that allowed me to ________ my group to 20 people, a mix of graduate
students, post-docs and even some ________.
11:02 And I was able to attract really, really good people, people who share my ________ for
science and service to society, not science and ________ for career building. And if you ask
these people why they work on liquid metal battery, their answer ________ hearken back to
President Kennedy's ________ at Rice University in 1962 when he said -- and I'm taking
liberties here -- "We choose to work on grid-level ________, not because it is easy, but
because it is hard."
11:32 (Applause)
11:39 So this is the ________ of the liquid metal battery. We start here with our workhorse
one watt-hour cell. I called it the shotglass. We've ________ over 400 of these, perfecting
their ________ with a plurality of chemistries -- not just magnesium and antimony. Along the
way we scaled up to the 20 watt-hour ________. I call it the hockey puck. And we got the
same ________ results. And then it was onto the saucer. That's 200 watt-hours. The
technology was proving itself to be ________ and scalable. But the pace wasn't fast enough
for us. So a year and a half ago, David and I, along with another research ________ -member,
formed a company to accelerate the rate of progress and the race to ________ product.
12:25 So today at LMBC, we're building cells 16 inches in diameter with a ________ of one
kilowatt-hour -- 1,000 times the capacity of that ________ shotglass cell. We call that the
pizza. And then we've got a four kilowatt-hour cell on the ________. It's going to be 36
inches in diameter. We call that the bistro ________, but it's not ready yet for prime-time
viewing. And one variant of the technology has us stacking ________ bistro tabletops into
modules, aggregating the modules into a giant battery that fits in a 40-foot ________
container for placement in the ________. And this has a nameplate capacity of two
megawatt-hours -- two million watt-hours. That's enough energy to ________ the daily
electrical needs of 200 American households. So here you have it, grid-level ________:
39
silent, emissions-free, no moving parts, remotely ________, designed to the market price
point without ________.
13:27 So what have we learned from all ________? (Applause) So what have we learned
from all this? Let me share with you some of the ________, the heterodoxies. They lie
beyond the visible. Temperature: ________ wisdom says set it low, at or near room
temperature, and then install a control system to keep it there. Avoid ________ runaway.
Liquid metal battery is designed to operate at ________ temperature with minimum
regulation. Our battery can ________ the very high temperature rises that come from current
surges. Scaling: Conventional wisdom says ________ cost by producing many. Liquid metal
battery is ________ to reduce cost by producing fewer, but they'll be larger. And finally,
human resources: Conventional wisdom says hire battery ________, seasoned professionals,
who can draw upon their ________ experience and knowledge. To develop liquid metal
battery, I hired students and post-docs and ________ them. In a battery, I strive to maximize
electrical potential; when mentoring, I strive to maximize ________ potential. So you see, the
liquid metal battery story is more than an ________ of inventing technology, it's a blueprint
for inventing ________, full-spectrum.
14:57 (Applause)
40
Key
00:15 The electricity powering the lights in this theater was generated just moments ago.
Because the way things stand today, electricity demand must be in constant balance with
electricity supply. If in the time that it took me to walk out here on this stage, some tens of
megawatts of wind power stopped pouring into the grid, the difference would have to be
made up from other generators immediately. But coal plants, nuclear plants can't respond fast
enough. A giant battery could. With a giant battery, we'd be able to address the problem of
intermittency that prevents wind and solar from contributing to the grid in the same way that
coal, gas and nuclear do today.
01:05 You see, the battery is the key enabling device here. With it, we could draw electricity
from the sun even when the sun doesn't shine. And that changes everything. Because then
renewables such as wind and solar come out from the wings, here to center stage. Today I
want to tell you about such a device. It's called the liquid metal battery. It's a new form of
energy storage that I invented at MIT along with a team of my students and post-docs.
01:40 Now the theme of this year's TED Conference is Full Spectrum. The OED defines
spectrum as "The entire range of wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation, from the longest
radio waves to the shortest gamma rays of which the range of visible light is only a small
part." So I'm not here today only to tell you how my team at MIT has drawn out of nature a
solution to one of the world's great problems. I want to go full spectrum and tell you how, in
the process of developing this new technology, we've uncovered some surprising
heterodoxies that can serve as lessons for innovation, ideas worth spreading. And you know,
if we're going to get this country out of its current energy situation, we can't just conserve our
way out; we can't just drill our way out; we can't bomb our way out. We're going to do it the
old-fashioned American way, we're going to invent our way out, working together.
02:43 (Applause)
02:46 Now let's get started. The battery was invented about 200 years ago by a professor,
Alessandro Volta, at the University of Padua in Italy. His invention gave birth to a new field
of science, electrochemistry, and new technologies such as electroplating. Perhaps
overlooked, Volta's invention of the battery for the first time also demonstrated the utility of a
professor. (Laughter) Until Volta, nobody could imagine a professor could be of any use.
03:19 Here's the first battery -- a stack of coins, zinc and silver, separated by cardboard
soaked in brine. This is the starting point for designing a battery -- two electrodes, in this case
metals of different composition, and an electrolyte, in this case salt dissolved in water. The
science is that simple. Admittedly, I've left out a few details.
03:45 Now I've taught you that battery science is straightforward and the need for grid-level
storage is compelling, but the fact is that today there is simply no battery technology capable
of meeting the demanding performance requirements of the grid -- namely uncommonly high
power, long service lifetime and super-low cost. We need to think about the problem
differently. We need to think big, we need to think cheap.
41
04:17 So let's abandon the paradigm of let's search for the coolest chemistry and then
hopefully we'll chase down the cost curve by just making lots and lots of product. Instead,
let's invent to the price point of the electricity market. So that means that certain parts of the
periodic table are axiomatically off-limits. This battery needs to be made out of earthabundant elements. I say, if you want to make something dirt cheap, make it out of dirt -(Laughter) preferably dirt that's locally sourced. And we need to be able to build this thing
using simple manufacturing techniques and factories that don't cost us a fortune.
05:04 So about six years ago, I started thinking about this problem. And in order to adopt a
fresh perspective, I sought inspiration from beyond the field of electricity storage. In fact, I
looked to a technology that neither stores nor generates electricity, but instead consumes
electricity, huge amounts of it. I'm talking about the production of aluminum. The process
was invented in 1886 by a couple of 22-year-olds -- Hall in the United States and Heroult in
France. And just a few short years following their discovery, aluminum changed from a
precious metal costing as much as silver to a common structural material.
05:47 You're looking at the cell house of a modern aluminum smelter. It's about 50 feet wide
and recedes about half a mile -- row after row of cells that, inside, resemble Volta's battery,
with three important differences. Volta's battery works at room temperature. It's fitted with
solid electrodes and an electrolyte that's a solution of salt and water. The Hall-Heroult cell
operates at high temperature, a temperature high enough that the aluminum metal product is
liquid. The electrolyte is not a solution of salt and water, but rather salt that's melted. It's this
combination of liquid metal, molten salt and high temperature that allows us to send high
current through this thing. Today, we can produce virgin metal from ore at a cost of less than
50 cents a pound. That's the economic miracle of modern electrometallurgy.
06:44 It is this that caught and held my attention to the point that I became obsessed with
inventing a battery that could capture this gigantic economy of scale. And I did. I made the
battery all liquid -- liquid metals for both electrodes and a molten salt for the electrolyte. I'll
show you how. So I put low-density liquid metal at the top, put a high-density liquid metal at
the bottom, and molten salt in between.
07:43 So now, how to choose the metals? For me, the design exercise always begins here
with the periodic table, enunciated by another professor, Dimitri Mendeleyev. Everything we
know is made of some combination of what you see depicted here. And that includes our own
bodies. I recall the very moment one day when I was searching for a pair of metals that would
meet the constraints of earth abundance, different, opposite density and high mutual
reactivity. I felt the thrill of realization when I knew I'd come upon the answer. Magnesium
for the top layer. And antimony for the bottom layer. You know, I've got to tell you, one of
the greatest benefits of being a professor: colored chalk.
08:44 (Laughter)
08:47 So to produce current, magnesium loses two electrons to become magnesium ion,
which then migrates across the electrolyte, accepts two electrons from the antimony, and then
mixes with it to form an alloy. The electrons go to work in the real world out here, powering
our devices. Now to charge the battery, we connect a source of electricity. It could be
something like a wind farm. And then we reverse the current. And this forces magnesium to
42
de-alloy and return to the upper electrode, restoring the initial constitution of the battery. And
the current passing between the electrodes generates enough heat to keep it at temperature.
09:47 It's pretty cool, at least in theory. But does it really work? So what to do next? We go
to the laboratory. Now do I hire seasoned professionals? No, I hire a student and mentor him,
teach him how to think about the problem, to see it from my perspective and then turn him
loose. This is that student, David Bradwell, who, in this image, appears to be wondering if
this thing will ever work. What I didn't tell David at the time was I myself wasn't convinced it
would work.
10:26 But David's young and he's smart and he wants a Ph.D., and he proceeds to build -(Laughter) He proceeds to build the first ever liquid metal battery of this chemistry. And
based on David's initial promising results, which were paid with seed funds at MIT, I was
able to attract major research funding from the private sector and the federal government.
And that allowed me to expand my group to 20 people, a mix of graduate students, post-docs
and even some undergraduates.
11:02 And I was able to attract really, really good people, people who share my passion for
science and service to society, not science and service for career building. And if you ask
these people why they work on liquid metal battery, their answer would hearken back to
President Kennedy's remarks at Rice University in 1962 when he said -- and I'm taking
liberties here -- "We choose to work on grid-level storage, not because it is easy, but because
it is hard."
11:32 (Applause)
11:39 So this is the evolution of the liquid metal battery. We start here with our workhorse
one watt-hour cell. I called it the shotglass. We've operated over 400 of these, perfecting their
performance with a plurality of chemistries -- not just magnesium and antimony. Along the
way we scaled up to the 20 watt-hour cell. I call it the hockey puck. And we got the same
remarkable results. And then it was onto the saucer. That's 200 watt-hours. The technology
was proving itself to be robust and scalable. But the pace wasn't fast enough for us. So a year
and a half ago, David and I, along with another research staff-member, formed a company to
accelerate the rate of progress and the race to manufacture product.
12:25 So today at LMBC, we're building cells 16 inches in diameter with a capacity of one
kilowatt-hour -- 1,000 times the capacity of that initial shotglass cell. We call that the pizza.
And then we've got a four kilowatt-hour cell on the horizon. It's going to be 36 inches in
diameter. We call that the bistro table, but it's not ready yet for prime-time viewing. And one
variant of the technology has us stacking these bistro tabletops into modules, aggregating the
modules into a giant battery that fits in a 40-foot shipping container for placement in the
field. And this has a nameplate capacity of two megawatt-hours -- two million watt-hours.
That's enough energy to meet the daily electrical needs of 200 American households. So here
you have it, grid-level storage: silent, emissions-free, no moving parts, remotely controlled,
designed to the market price point without subsidy.
13:27 So what have we learned from all this? (Applause) So what have we learned from all
this? Let me share with you some of the surprises, the heterodoxies. They lie beyond the
43
visible. Temperature: Conventional wisdom says set it low, at or near room temperature, and
then install a control system to keep it there. Avoid thermal runaway. Liquid metal battery is
designed to operate at elevated temperature with minimum regulation. Our battery can handle
the very high temperature rises that come from current surges. Scaling: Conventional wisdom
says reduce cost by producing many. Liquid metal battery is designed to reduce cost by
producing fewer, but they'll be larger. And finally, human resources: Conventional wisdom
says hire battery experts, seasoned professionals, who can draw upon their vast experience
and knowledge. To develop liquid metal battery, I hired students and post-docs and mentored
them. In a battery, I strive to maximize electrical potential; when mentoring, I strive to
maximize human potential. So you see, the liquid metal battery story is more than an account
of inventing technology, it's a blueprint for inventing inventors, full-spectrum.
14:57 (Applause)
44
06. Kevin Robinson - DO SCHOOLS KILL CREATIVITY?
Fill in the blanks
00:11 Good morning. How are you?
00:15 (Laughter)
00:16 It's been great, hasn't it? I've been blown away by the whole thing. In fact, I'm leaving.
00:23 (Laughter)
00:29 There have been three themes _________ through the conference which are relevant to
what I want to talk about. One is the extraordinary _________ of human creativity in all of
the presentations that we've had and in all of the people here. Just the _________ of it and the
range of it. The second is that it's put us in a place where we have no _________ what's going
to happen, in terms of the _________. No idea how this may play out.
00:56 I have an interest in education. Actually, what I _________ is everybody has an
interest in education. Don't you? I find this very interesting. If you're at a _________ party,
and you say you work in education -- Actually, you're not _________ at dinner parties,
frankly.
01:11 (Laughter)
01:15 If you work in education, you're not asked.
01:18 (Laughter)
01:21 And you're never asked back, curiously. That's _________ to me. But if you are, and
you say to somebody, you know, they say, "What do you do?" and you say you work in
education, you can see the _________ run from their face. They're like, "Oh my God," you
know, "Why me?"
01:35 (Laughter)
01:37 "My one night out all week."
01:38 (Laughter)
01:41 But if you ask about their education, they _________ you to the wall. Because it's one
of those things that goes _________ with people, am I right? Like religion, and money and
other things. So I have a big interest in education, and I think we all _________. We have a
huge vested interest in it, partly because it's education that's _________ to take us into this
future that we can't _________. If you think of it, children starting school this year will be
retiring in 2065. Nobody has a _________, despite all the expertise that's been on parade for
the past four days, what the world will look like in five years' _________. And yet we're
meant to be educating them for it. So the _________, I think, is extraordinary.
45
02:23 And the third part of this is that we've all _________, nonetheless, on the really
extraordinary capacities that children have -- their capacities for _________. I mean, Sirena
last night was a marvel, wasn't she? Just seeing what she could do. And she's _________, but
I think she's not, so to speak, exceptional in the whole of _________. What you have there is
a person of extraordinary _________ who found a talent. And my contention is, all kids have
tremendous talents. And we _________ them, pretty ruthlessly.
02:56 So I want to talk about education and I want to talk about creativity. My _________ is
that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should _________ it with
the same _________.
03:09 (Applause) Thank you.
03:11 (Applause)
03:16 That was it, by the way. Thank you very much.
03:18 (Laughter)
03:20 So, 15 minutes left.
03:22 (Laughter)
03:25 Well, I was born... no.
03:27 (Laughter)
03:30 I heard a great story recently -- I love _________ it -- of a little girl who was in a
drawing lesson. She was six, and she was at the back, _________, and the teacher said this
girl hardly ever paid _________, and in this drawing lesson, she did. The teacher was
fascinated. She went over to her, and she said, "What are you drawing?" And the girl said,
"I'm drawing a picture of God." And the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks
like." And the girl said, "They will, in a _________."
03:56 (Laughter)
04:07 When my son was four in England -- Actually, he was four everywhere, to be
_________.
04:12 (Laughter)
04:14 If we're being strict about it, wherever he went, he was four that year. He was in the
Nativity play. Do you _________ the story?
04:20 (Laughter)
04:21 No, it was big, it was a big story. Mel Gibson did the sequel, you may have seen it.
46
04:25 (Laughter)
04:27 "Nativity II." But James got the part of Joseph, which we were _________ about. We
_________ this to be one of the lead parts. We had the place crammed full of agents in Tshirts: "James Robinson IS Joseph!" (Laughter) He didn't have to speak, but you know the bit
where the three kings come in? They come in _________ gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh.
This really happened. We were sitting there and I think they just went out of _________,
because we talked to the little boy afterward and we said, "You OK with that?" And he said,
"Yeah, why? Was that wrong?" They just switched. The three boys came in, four-year-olds
with tea _________ on their heads, and they put these boxes down, and the first boy said, "I
bring you _________." And the second boy said, "I bring you myrrh." And the third boy said,
"Frank sent this."
05:09 (Laughter)
05:21 What these things have in _________ is that kids will take a chance. If they don't
know, they'll have a go. Am I right? They're not _________ of being wrong. I don't mean to
say that being wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is, if you're not
_________ to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original -- if you're not prepared
to be wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have _________ that capacity.
They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our _________ like this. We
stigmatize mistakes. And we're now running national education _________ where mistakes
are the worst thing you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their
creative capacities.
06:05 Picasso once said this, he said that all children are born _________. The problem is to
remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this _________, that we don't grow into creativity,
we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out if it. So why is this?
06:21 I lived in Stratford-on-Avon until about five years ago. In fact, we moved from
Stratford to Los Angeles. So you can imagine what a seamless _________ that was.
06:31 (Laughter)
06:33 Actually, we lived in a place called Snitterfield, just _________ Stratford, which is
where Shakespeare's father was born. Are you struck by a new thought? I was. You don't
think of Shakespeare having a father, do you? Do you? Because you don't think of
Shakespeare being a child, do you? Shakespeare being seven? I never thought of it. I mean,
he was seven at some _________. He was in somebody's English class, wasn't he?
06:54 (Laughter)
07:01 How annoying would that be?
07:03 (Laughter)
07:10 "Must try harder."
47
07:11 (Laughter)
07:15 Being sent to bed by his dad, you know, to Shakespeare, "Go to bed, now! And put the
pencil down."
07:21 (Laughter)
07:22 "And stop speaking like that."
07:24 (Laughter)
07:28 "It's confusing everybody."
07:29 (Laughter)
07:34 Anyway, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles, and I just want to say a word about
the transition. My son didn't want to come. I've got two kids; he's 21 now, my daughter's 16.
He didn't want to come to Los Angeles. He loved it, but he had a _________ in England. This
was the love of his life, Sarah. He'd known her for a month.
07:57 (Laughter)
07:58 Mind you, they'd had their fourth _________, because it's a long time when you're 16.
He was really upset on the plane, he said, "I'll never find another girl like Sarah." And we
were rather pleased about that, frankly -08:10 (Laughter)
08:18 Because she was the main reason we were leaving the country.
08:21 (Laughter)
08:27 But something _________ you when you move to America and travel around the
world: Every education system on Earth has the same hierarchy of _________. Every one.
Doesn't matter where you go. You'd think it would be _________, but it isn't. At the top are
mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the _________ are the arts.
Everywhere on Earth. And in pretty much every system too, there's a hierarchy _________
the arts. Art and music are normally given a higher status in schools than _________ and
dance. There isn't an education system on the planet that _________ dance everyday to
children the way we teach them mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is _________
important. I think math is very important, but so is dance. Children dance all the _________
if they're allowed to, we all do. We all have _________, don't we? Did I miss a meeting?
09:10 (Laughter)
09:13 Truthfully, what happens is, as children grow up, we start to educate them
progressively from the waist up. And then we _________ on their heads. And slightly to one
side.
48
09:22 If you were to visit education, as an alien, and say "What's it for, public education?" I
think you'd have to conclude, if you look at the output, who really _________ by this, who
does everything that they should, who gets all the brownie points, who are the _________ -- I
think you'd have to conclude the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is
to produce university _________. Isn't it? They're the people who come out the top. And I
used to be one, so there.
09:48 (Laughter)
09:51 And I like university professors, but you know, we shouldn't hold them up as the highwater mark of all human _________. They're just a form of life, another form of life. But
they're rather curious, and I say this out of _________ for them. There's something curious
about professors in my experience -- not all of them, but typically, they _________ in their
heads. They live up there, and slightly to one side. They're disembodied, you know, in a kind
of literal way. They look upon their body as a form of _________ for their heads.
10:21 (Laughter)
10:27 Don't they? It's a way of getting their head to meetings.
10:30 (Laughter)
10:36 If you want real evidence of out-of-body experiences, get yourself along to a
residential conference of senior academics, and pop into the discotheque on the final night.
10:45 (Laughter)
10:48 And there, you will see it. Grown men and women writhing uncontrollably, off the
beat.
10:54 (Laughter)
10:56 Waiting until it ends so they can go home and write a paper about it.
11:00 (Laughter)
11:02 Our education system is _________ on the idea of academic ability. And there's a
reason. Around the world, there were no public systems of education, really, before the 19th
century. They all came into being to meet the needs of _________. So the hierarchy is rooted
on two ideas.
11:18 Number one, that the most _________ subjects for work are at the top. So you were
_________ steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you
liked, on the _________ that you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? Don't do
music, you're not going to be a musician; don't do art, you won't be an _________. Benign
advice -- now, _________ mistaken. The whole world is engulfed in a revolution.
49
11:41 And the second is academic _________, which has really come to dominate our view
of intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their _________. If you think
of it, the whole system of public education around the world is a protracted _________ of
university entrance. And the consequence is that many highly-talented, _________, creative
people think they're not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued, or was
actually stigmatized. And I think we can't _________ to go on that way.
12:06 In the next 30 years, _________ to UNESCO, more people worldwide will be
graduating through education than since the beginning of history. More people, and it's the
_________ of all the things we've talked about -- technology and its transformation effect on
work, and demography and the huge _________ in population.
12:23 Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything. Isn't that true? When I was a _________, if
you had a degree, you had a job. If you didn't have a job, it's _________ you didn't want one.
And I didn't want one, frankly. (Laughter) But now kids with degrees are often _________
home to carry on playing _________ games, because you need an MA where the previous job
required a BA, and now you need a PhD for the other. It's a process of academic _________.
And it indicates the whole _________ of education is shifting beneath our feet. We need to
radically rethink our view of _________.
12:56 We know three things about intelligence. One, it's _________. We think about the
world in all the ways that we experience it. We think _________, we think in sound, we think
kinaesthetically. We think in abstract terms, we think in a. Secondly, intelligence is dynamic.
If you look at the _________ of a human brain, as we heard yesterday from a number of
presentations, intelligence is wonderfully _________. The brain isn't divided into
compartments. In fact, creativity -- which I define as the process of having _________ ideas
that have value -- more often than not comes about through the interaction of _________
disciplinary ways of _________ things.
13:33 By the way, there's a shaft of _________ that joins the two halves of the brain called
the corpus callosum. It's thicker in women. Following off from Helen yesterday, this is
probably why women are better at _________. Because you are, aren't you? There's a raft of
research, but I know it from my _________ life. If my wife is cooking a meal at home -which is not often, thankfully.
13:56 (Laughter)
13:58 No, she's good at some things, but if she's cooking, she's _________ with people on the
phone, she's talking to the kids, she's _________ the ceiling, she's doing open-heart surgery
over here. If I'm cooking, the door is shut, the kids are out, the phone's on the hook, if she
comes in I get _________. I say, "Terry, please, I'm trying to fry an egg in here."
14:18 (Laughter)
14:25 "Give me a break."
14:26 (Laughter)
50
14:28 Actually, do you know that old _________ thing, if a tree falls in a forest and nobody
hears it, did it happen? Remember that old chestnut? I saw a great t-shirt recently, which said,
"If a man speaks his mind in a forest, and no _________ hears him, is he still wrong?"
14:43 (Laughter)
14:50 And the third thing about intelligence is, it's distinct. I'm _________ a new book at the
moment called "Epiphany," which is based on a series of _________ with people about how
they _________ their talent. I'm fascinated by how people got to be there. It's really prompted
by a conversation I had with a wonderful _________ who maybe most people have never
heard of, Gillian Lynne. Have you heard of her? Some have. She's a choreographer, and
everybody knows her work. She did "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera." She's _________. I
used to be on the board of The Royal Ballet, as you can see. Anyway, Gillian and I had lunch
one day and I said, "How did you get to be a dancer?" It was _________. When she was at
school, she was really hopeless. And the school, in the '30s, wrote to her _________ and said,
"We think Gillian has a learning disorder." She couldn't _________; she was fidgeting. I
think now they'd say she had ADHD. Wouldn't you? But this was the 1930s, and ADHD
hadn't been invented at this point. It wasn't an _________ condition.
15:46 (Laughter)
15:48 People weren't _________ they could have that.
15:50 (Laughter)
15:53 Anyway, she went to see this _________. So, this oak-paneled room, and she was there
with her mother, and she was led and sat on this chair at the end, and she sat on her hands for
20 minutes while this man talked to her mother about the _________ Gillian was having at
school. Because she was _________ people; her homework was always late; and so on, little
kid of _________. In the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian, and said, "I've listened
to all these things your mother's told me, I need to speak to her _________. Wait here. We'll
be back; we won't be very long," and they went and left her.
16:26 But as they went out of the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk.
And when they got out, he said to her mother, "Just stand and watch her." And the minute
they left the room, she was on her feet, _________ to the music. And they watched for a few
minutes and he turned to her mother and said, "Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick; she's a
_________. Take her to a dance school."
16:50 I said, "What happened?" She said, "She did. I can't tell you how wonderful it was. We
walked in this room and it was full of people like me. People who couldn't sit _________.
People who had to move to think." Who had to move to think. They did _________, they did
tap, jazz; they did modern; they did _________. She was eventually auditioned for the Royal
Ballet School; she became a soloist; she had a wonderful _________ at the Royal Ballet. She
eventually graduated from the Royal Ballet School, _________ the Gillian Lynne Dance
Company, met Andrew Lloyd Webber. She's been _________ for some of the most
successful musical theatre productions in history, she's given _________ to millions, and
51
she's a multi-millionaire. Somebody else might have put her on _________ and told her to
calm down.
17:32 (Applause)
17:39 What I think it comes to is this: Al Gore spoke the other night about _________ and
the revolution that was _________ by Rachel Carson. I believe our only hope for the future is
to adopt a new _________ of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our
conception of the _________ of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds
in the way that we strip-mine the earth: for a _________ commodity. And for the future, it
won't serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental _________ on which we're educating our
children.
18:13 There was a wonderful quote by Jonas Salk, who said, "If all the _________ were to
disappear from the Earth, within 50 years all life on Earth would _________. If all human
beings disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years all forms of life would _________." And
he's right.
18:33 What TED celebrates is the gift of the human _________. We have to be careful now
that we use this gift _________ and that we avert some of the scenarios that we've talked
about. And the only way we'll do it is by seeing our creative _________ for the richness they
are and seeing our children for the hope that they are. And our task is to educate their whole
being, so they can _________ this future. By the way -- we may not see this future, but they
will. And our job is to help them _________ something of it.
19:04 Thank you very much.
19:05 (Applause)
52
Key
00:11 Good morning. How are you?
00:15 (Laughter)
00:16 It's been great, hasn't it? I've been blown away by the whole thing. In fact, I'm leaving.
00:23 (Laughter)
00:29 There have been three themes running through the conference which are relevant to
what I want to talk about. One is the extraordinary evidence of human creativity in all of the
presentations that we've had and in all of the people here. Just the variety of it and the range
of it. The second is that it's put us in a place where we have no idea what's going to happen,
in terms of the future. No idea how this may play out.
00:56 I have an interest in education. Actually, what I find is everybody has an interest in
education. Don't you? I find this very interesting. If you're at a dinner party, and you say you
work in education -- Actually, you're not often at dinner parties, frankly.
01:11 (Laughter)
01:15 If you work in education, you're not asked.
01:18 (Laughter)
01:21 And you're never asked back, curiously. That's strange to me. But if you are, and you
say to somebody, you know, they say, "What do you do?" and you say you work in
education, you can see the blood run from their face. They're like, "Oh my God," you know,
"Why me?"
01:35 (Laughter)
01:37 "My one night out all week."
01:38 (Laughter)
01:41 But if you ask about their education, they pin you to the wall. Because it's one of those
things that goes deep with people, am I right? Like religion, and money and other things. So I
have a big interest in education, and I think we all do. We have a huge vested interest in it,
partly because it's education that's meant to take us into this future that we can't grasp. If you
think of it, children starting school this year will be retiring in 2065. Nobody has a clue,
despite all the expertise that's been on parade for the past four days, what the world will look
like in five years' time. And yet we're meant to be educating them for it. So the
unpredictability, I think, is extraordinary.
53
02:23 And the third part of this is that we've all agreed, nonetheless, on the really
extraordinary capacities that children have -- their capacities for innovation. I mean, Sirena
last night was a marvel, wasn't she? Just seeing what she could do. And she's exceptional, but
I think she's not, so to speak, exceptional in the whole of childhood. What you have there is a
person of extraordinary dedication who found a talent. And my contention is, all kids have
tremendous talents. And we squander them, pretty ruthlessly.
02:56 So I want to talk about education and I want to talk about creativity. My contention is
that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the
same status.
03:09 (Applause) Thank you.
03:11 (Applause)
03:16 That was it, by the way. Thank you very much.
03:18 (Laughter)
03:20 So, 15 minutes left.
03:22 (Laughter)
03:25 Well, I was born... no.
03:27 (Laughter)
03:30 I heard a great story recently -- I love telling it -- of a little girl who was in a drawing
lesson. She was six, and she was at the back, drawing, and the teacher said this girl hardly
ever paid attention, and in this drawing lesson, she did. The teacher was fascinated. She went
over to her, and she said, "What are you drawing?" And the girl said, "I'm drawing a picture
of God." And the teacher said, "But nobody knows what God looks like." And the girl said,
"They will, in a minute."
03:56 (Laughter)
04:07 When my son was four in England -- Actually, he was four everywhere, to be honest.
04:12 (Laughter)
04:14 If we're being strict about it, wherever he went, he was four that year. He was in the
Nativity play. Do you remember the story?
04:20 (Laughter)
04:21 No, it was big, it was a big story. Mel Gibson did the sequel, you may have seen it.
04:25 (Laughter)
54
04:27 "Nativity II." But James got the part of Joseph, which we were thrilled about. We
considered this to be one of the lead parts. We had the place crammed full of agents in Tshirts: "James Robinson IS Joseph!" (Laughter) He didn't have to speak, but you know the bit
where the three kings come in? They come in bearing gifts, gold, frankincense and myrrh.
This really happened. We were sitting there and I think they just went out of sequence,
because we talked to the little boy afterward and we said, "You OK with that?" And he said,
"Yeah, why? Was that wrong?" They just switched. The three boys came in, four-year-olds
with tea towels on their heads, and they put these boxes down, and the first boy said, "I bring
you gold." And the second boy said, "I bring you myrrh." And the third boy said, "Frank sent
this."
05:09 (Laughter)
05:21 What these things have in common is that kids will take a chance. If they don't know,
they'll have a go. Am I right? They're not frightened of being wrong. I don't mean to say that
being wrong is the same thing as being creative. What we do know is, if you're not prepared
to be wrong, you'll never come up with anything original -- if you're not prepared to be
wrong. And by the time they get to be adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have
become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this. We stigmatize
mistakes. And we're now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst
thing you can make. And the result is that we are educating people out of their creative
capacities.
06:05 Picasso once said this, he said that all children are born artists. The problem is to
remain an artist as we grow up. I believe this passionately, that we don't grow into creativity,
we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out if it. So why is this?
06:21 I lived in Stratford-on-Avon until about five years ago. In fact, we moved from
Stratford to Los Angeles. So you can imagine what a seamless transition that was.
06:31 (Laughter)
06:33 Actually, we lived in a place called Snitterfield, just outside Stratford, which is where
Shakespeare's father was born. Are you struck by a new thought? I was. You don't think of
Shakespeare having a father, do you? Do you? Because you don't think of Shakespeare being
a child, do you? Shakespeare being seven? I never thought of it. I mean, he was seven at
some point. He was in somebody's English class, wasn't he?
06:54 (Laughter)
07:01 How annoying would that be?
07:03 (Laughter)
07:10 "Must try harder."
07:11 (Laughter)
55
07:15 Being sent to bed by his dad, you know, to Shakespeare, "Go to bed, now! And put the
pencil down."
07:21 (Laughter)
07:22 "And stop speaking like that."
07:24 (Laughter)
07:28 "It's confusing everybody."
07:29 (Laughter)
07:34 Anyway, we moved from Stratford to Los Angeles, and I just want to say a word about
the transition. My son didn't want to come. I've got two kids; he's 21 now, my daughter's 16.
He didn't want to come to Los Angeles. He loved it, but he had a girlfriend in England. This
was the love of his life, Sarah. He'd known her for a month.
07:57 (Laughter)
07:58 Mind you, they'd had their fourth anniversary, because it's a long time when you're 16.
He was really upset on the plane, he said, "I'll never find another girl like Sarah." And we
were rather pleased about that, frankly -08:10 (Laughter)
08:18 Because she was the main reason we were leaving the country.
08:21 (Laughter)
08:27 But something strikes you when you move to America and travel around the world:
Every education system on Earth has the same hierarchy of subjects. Every one. Doesn't
matter where you go. You'd think it would be otherwise, but it isn't. At the top are
mathematics and languages, then the humanities, and at the bottom are the arts. Everywhere
on Earth. And in pretty much every system too, there's a hierarchy within the arts. Art and
music are normally given a higher status in schools than drama and dance. There isn't an
education system on the planet that teaches dance everyday to children the way we teach
them mathematics. Why? Why not? I think this is rather important. I think math is very
important, but so is dance. Children dance all the time if they're allowed to, we all do. We all
have bodies, don't we? Did I miss a meeting?
09:10 (Laughter)
09:13 Truthfully, what happens is, as children grow up, we start to educate them
progressively from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads. And slightly to one side.
09:22 If you were to visit education, as an alien, and say "What's it for, public education?" I
think you'd have to conclude, if you look at the output, who really succeeds by this, who does
56
everything that they should, who gets all the brownie points, who are the winners -- I think
you'd have to conclude the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to
produce university professors. Isn't it? They're the people who come out the top. And I used
to be one, so there.
09:48 (Laughter)
09:51 And I like university professors, but you know, we shouldn't hold them up as the highwater mark of all human achievement. They're just a form of life, another form of life. But
they're rather curious, and I say this out of affection for them. There's something curious
about professors in my experience -- not all of them, but typically, they live in their heads.
They live up there, and slightly to one side. They're disembodied, you know, in a kind of
literal way. They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads.
10:21 (Laughter)
10:27 Don't they? It's a way of getting their head to meetings.
10:30 (Laughter)
10:36 If you want real evidence of out-of-body experiences, get yourself along to a
residential conference of senior academics, and pop into the discotheque on the final night.
10:45 (Laughter)
10:48 And there, you will see it. Grown men and women writhing uncontrollably, off the
beat.
10:54 (Laughter)
10:56 Waiting until it ends so they can go home and write a paper about it.
11:00 (Laughter)
11:02 Our education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. And there's a
reason. Around the world, there were no public systems of education, really, before the 19th
century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. So the hierarchy is
rooted on two ideas.
11:18 Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. So you were
probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked,
on the grounds that you would never get a job doing that. Is that right? Don't do music, you're
not going to be a musician; don't do art, you won't be an artist. Benign advice -- now,
profoundly mistaken. The whole world is engulfed in a revolution.
11:41 And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of
intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their image. If you think of it, the
whole system of public education around the world is a protracted process of university
57
entrance. And the consequence is that many highly-talented, brilliant, creative people think
they're not, because the thing they were good at at school wasn't valued, or was actually
stigmatized. And I think we can't afford to go on that way.
12:06 In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO, more people worldwide will be
graduating through education than since the beginning of history. More people, and it's the
combination of all the things we've talked about -- technology and its transformation effect
on work, and demography and the huge explosion in population.
12:23 Suddenly, degrees aren't worth anything. Isn't that true? When I was a student, if you
had a degree, you had a job. If you didn't have a job, it's because you didn't want one. And I
didn't want one, frankly. (Laughter) But now kids with degrees are often heading home to
carry on playing video games, because you need an MA where the previous job required a
BA, and now you need a PhD for the other. It's a process of academic inflation. And it
indicates the whole structure of education is shifting beneath our feet. We need to radically
rethink our view of intelligence.
12:56 We know three things about intelligence. One, it's diverse. We think about the world in
all the ways that we experience it. We think visually, we think in sound, we think
kinesthetically. We think in abstract terms, we think in movement. Secondly, intelligence is
dynamic. If you look at the interactions of a human brain, as we heard yesterday from a
number of presentations, intelligence is wonderfully interactive. The brain isn't divided into
compartments. In fact, creativity -- which I define as the process of having original ideas that
have value -- more often than not comes about through the interaction of different
disciplinary ways of seeing things.
13:33 By the way, there's a shaft of nerves that joins the two halves of the brain called the
corpus callosum. It's thicker in women. Following off from Helen yesterday, this is probably
why women are better at multi-tasking. Because you are, aren't you? There's a raft of
research, but I know it from my personal life. If my wife is cooking a meal at home -- which
is not often, thankfully.
13:56 (Laughter)
13:58 No, she's good at some things, but if she's cooking, she's dealing with people on the
phone, she's talking to the kids, she's painting the ceiling, she's doing open-heart surgery over
here. If I'm cooking, the door is shut, the kids are out, the phone's on the hook, if she comes
in I get annoyed. I say, "Terry, please, I'm trying to fry an egg in here."
14:18 (Laughter)
14:25 "Give me a break."
14:26 (Laughter)
14:28 Actually, do you know that old philosophical thing, if a tree falls in a forest and
nobody hears it, did it happen? Remember that old chestnut? I saw a great t-shirt recently,
58
which said, "If a man speaks his mind in a forest, and no woman hears him, is he still
wrong?"
14:43 (Laughter)
14:50 And the third thing about intelligence is, it's distinct. I'm doing a new book at the
moment called "Epiphany," which is based on a series of interviews with people about how
they discovered their talent. I'm fascinated by how people got to be there. It's really prompted
by a conversation I had with a wonderful woman who maybe most people have never heard
of, Gillian Lynne. Have you heard of her? Some have. She's a choreographer, and everybody
knows her work. She did "Cats" and "Phantom of the Opera." She's wonderful. I used to be
on the board of The Royal Ballet, as you can see. Anyway, Gillian and I had lunch one day
and I said, "How did you get to be a dancer?" It was interesting. When she was at school, she
was really hopeless. And the school, in the '30s, wrote to her parents and said, "We think
Gillian has a learning disorder." She couldn't concentrate; she was fidgeting. I think now
they'd say she had ADHD. Wouldn't you? But this was the 1930s, and ADHD hadn't been
invented at this point. It wasn't an available condition.
15:46 (Laughter)
15:48 People weren't aware they could have that.
15:50 (Laughter)
15:53 Anyway, she went to see this specialist. So, this oak-paneled room, and she was there
with her mother, and she was led and sat on this chair at the end, and she sat on her hands for
20 minutes while this man talked to her mother about the problems Gillian was having at
school. Because she was disturbing people; her homework was always late; and so on, little
kid of eight. In the end, the doctor went and sat next to Gillian, and said, "I've listened to all
these things your mother's told me, I need to speak to her privately. Wait here. We'll be back;
we won't be very long," and they went and left her.
16:26 But as they went out of the room, he turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk.
And when they got out, he said to her mother, "Just stand and watch her." And the minute
they left the room, she was on her feet, moving to the music. And they watched for a few
minutes and he turned to her mother and said, "Mrs. Lynne, Gillian isn't sick; she's a dancer.
Take her to a dance school."
16:50 I said, "What happened?" She said, "She did. I can't tell you how wonderful it was. We
walked in this room and it was full of people like me. People who couldn't sit still. People
who had to move to think." Who had to move to think. They did ballet, they did tap, jazz;
they did modern; they did contemporary. She was eventually auditioned for the Royal Ballet
School; she became a soloist; she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet. She eventually
graduated from the Royal Ballet School, founded the Gillian Lynne Dance Company, met
Andrew Lloyd Webber. She's been responsible for some of the most successful musical
theater productions in history, she's given pleasure to millions, and she's a multi-millionaire.
Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.
59
17:32 (Applause)
17:39 What I think it comes to is this: Al Gore spoke the other night about ecology and the
revolution that was triggered by Rachel Carson. I believe our only hope for the future is to
adopt a new conception of human ecology, one in which we start to reconstitute our
conception of the richness of human capacity. Our education system has mined our minds in
the way that we strip-mine the earth: for a particular commodity. And for the future, it won't
serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we're educating our
children.
18:13 There was a wonderful quote by Jonas Salk, who said, "If all the insects were to
disappear from the Earth, within 50 years all life on Earth would end. If all human beings
disappeared from the Earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish." And he's right.
18:33 What TED celebrates is the gift of the human imagination. We have to be careful now
that we use this gift wisely and that we avert some of the scenarios that we've talked about.
And the only way we'll do it is by seeing our creative capacities for the richness they are and
seeing our children for the hope that they are. And our task is to educate their whole being, so
they can face this future. By the way -- we may not see this future, but they will. And our job
is to help them make something of it.
19:04 Thank you very much.
19:05 (Applause)
60
07. Chystia Freeland - THE RISE OF THE NEW GLOBAL SUPER-RICH
Fill in the blanks
00:11 So here's the most important economic fact of our time. We are living in an ________
of surging income inequality, particularly between those at the very ________ and everyone
else. This shift is the most ________ in the U.S. and in the U.K., but it's a global phenomenon.
It's happening in communist China, in formerly communist ________, it's happening in India,
in my own native Canada. We're even seeing it in ________ social democracies like Sweden,
Finland and Germany.
00:45 Let me give you a few numbers to ________ what's happening. In the 1970s, the One
Percent accounted for about 10 ________ of the national income in the United States. Today,
their share has more than ________ to above 20 percent. But what's even more striking is what's
happening at the very tippy top of the income ________. The 0.1 percent in the U.S. today
account for more than eight percent of the ________ income. They are where the One Percent
was 30 years ago. Let me give you another number to put that in ________, and this is a figure
that was ________ in 2005 by Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor in the Clinton
administration. Reich took the wealth of two ________ very rich men, Bill Gates and Warren
Buffett, and he found that it was ________ to the wealth of the bottom 40 percent of the U.S.
population, 120 ________ people. Now, as it happens, Warren Buffett is not only himself a
plutocrat, he is one of the most astute ________ of that phenomenon, and he has his own
favorite number. Buffett likes to point out that in 1992, the ________ wealth of the people on
the Forbes 400 list -- and this is the list of the 400 ________ Americans -- was 300 billion
dollars. Just think about it. You didn't even need to be a ________ to get on that list in 1992.
Well, today, that ________ has more than quintupled to 1.7 trillion, and I probably don't need
to tell you that we haven't seen anything similar happen to the ________ class, whose wealth
has ________ if not actually decreased.
02:43 So we're living in the age of the global plutocracy, but we've been slow to ________ it.
One of the reasons, I think, is a sort of ________ frog phenomenon. Changes which are slow
and gradual can be hard to notice even if their ________ impact is quite dramatic. Think about
what happened, after all, to the ________ frog. But I think there's something else going on.
Talking about income ________, even if you're not on the Forbes 400 list, can make us feel
uncomfortable. It feels less positive, less ________, to talk about how the pie is sliced than to
think about how to make the pie ________. And if you do happen to be on the Forbes 400 list,
talking about ________ distribution, and inevitably its cousin, income redistribution, can be
downright ________.
03:34 So we're living in the age of surging income inequality, ________ at the top. What's
driving it, and what can we do ________ it?
03:44 One set of causes is political: ________ taxes, deregulation, particularly of financial
services, privatization, weaker legal protections for ________ unions, all of these have
contributed to more and more income going to the ________, very top.
04:05 A lot of these political factors can be ________ lumped under the category of "crony
capitalism," political changes that ________ a group of well-connected insiders but don't
61
actually do much good for the rest of us. In practice, getting rid of crony ________ is incredibly
difficult. Think of all the years reformers of ________ stripes have tried to get rid of corruption
in Russia, for instance, or how hard it is to re-regulate the ________ even after the most
profound financial crisis since the Great ________, or even how difficult it is to get the big
multinational companies, ________ those whose motto might be "don't do evil," to pay taxes
at a rate even ________ that paid by the middle class. But while getting rid of crony capitalism
in practice is really, really hard, at least ________, it's an easy problem. After all, no one is
actually in favor of crony capitalism. ________, this is one of those rare issues that unites the
left and the right. A critique of crony capitalism is as ________ to the Tea Party as it is to
Occupy Wall Street.
05:21 But if crony capitalism is, intellectually at least, the easy ________ of the problem, things
get trickier when you look at the economic ________ of surging income inequality. In and of
themselves, these aren't too ________. Globalization and the technology revolution, the twin
economic transformations which are ________ our lives and transforming the global economy,
are also ________ the rise of the super-rich. Just think about it. For the first time in history, if
you are an ________ entrepreneur with a brilliant new idea or a fantastic new product, you
have almost instant, almost frictionless ________ to a global market of more than a billion
people. As a result, if you are very, very ________ and very, very lucky, you can get very, very
rich very, very quickly. The latest poster boy for this ________ is David Karp. The 26-yearold founder of Tumblr recently sold his ________ to Yahoo for 1.1 billion dollars. Think about
that for a minute: 1.1 billion dollars, 26 years old. It's easiest to see how the ________
revolution and globalization are ________ this sort of superstar effect in highly visible fields,
like sports and entertainment. We can all watch how a ________ athlete or a fantastic performer
can today leverage his or her skills ________ the global economy as never before. But today,
that superstar effect is happening across the ________ economy. We have superstar
technologists. We have superstar ________. We have superstar lawyers and superstar
architects. There are superstar cooks and superstar ________. There are even, and this is my
personal favorite example, superstar ________, the most dazzling exemplar of whom is
Bernard Touati, the Frenchman who ________ to the smiles of fellow superstars like Russian
oligarch Roman Abramovich or European-born American ________ designer Diane von
Furstenberg.
07:36 But while it's pretty easy to see how ________ and the technology revolution are creating
this global plutocracy, what's a lot harder is ________ out what to think about it. And that's
because, in ________ with crony capitalism, so much of what globalization and the technology
revolution have done is highly ________. Let's start with technology. I love the Internet. I love
my mobile devices. I love the fact that they mean that whoever ________ to will be able to
watch this talk far ________ this auditorium. I'm even more of a fan of globalization. This is
the transformation which has lifted ________ of millions of the world's poorest people out of
poverty and into the middle class, and if you happen to live in the ________ part of the world,
it's made many new products ________ -- who do you think built your iPhone? — and things
that we've ________ on for a long time much cheaper. Think of your dishwasher or your tshirt.
08:39 So what's not to like? Well, a few things. One of the things that worries me is how easily
what you might call meritocratic plutocracy can become crony plutocracy. ________ you're a
brilliant entrepreneur who has ________ sold that idea or that product to the global billions and
62
become a ________ in the process. It gets tempting at that point to use your economic nous to
manipulate the rules of the global ________ economy in your own favor. And that's no mere
hypothetical ________. Think about Amazon, Apple, Google, Starbucks. These are among the
world's most admired, most beloved, most ________ companies. They also happen to be
particularly adept at working the international tax ________ so as to lower their tax bill very,
very significantly. And why stop at just ________ the global political and economic system as
it exists to your own maximum ________? Once you have the tremendous economic power
that we're seeing at the very, very top of the income ________ and the political power that
inevitably entails, it becomes tempting as well to start trying to change the ________ of the
game in your own favor. Again, this is no ________ hypothetical. It's what the Russian
oligarchs did in creating the sale-of-the-century privatization of Russia's ________ resources.
It's one way of describing what happened with deregulation of the ________ services in the
U.S. and the U.K.
10:19 A second thing that ________ me is how easily meritocratic plutocracy can become
aristocracy. One way of ________ the plutocrats is as alpha geeks, and they are people who
are acutely aware of how important highly ________ analytical and quantitative skills are in
today's economy. That's why they are ________ unprecedented time and resources educating
their own children. The middle class is spending more on ________ too, but in the global
educational arms race that starts at ________ school and ends at Harvard, Stanford or MIT, the
99 percent is increasingly outgunned by the One Percent. The ________ is something that
economists Alan Krueger and Miles Corak call the Great Gatsby Curve. As ________
inequality increases, ________ mobility decreases. The plutocracy may be a meritocracy, but
increasingly you have to be born on the top rung of the ladder to even ________ part in that
race.
11:24 The third thing, and this is what worries me the most, is the ________ to which those
same largely positive forces which are ________ the rise of the global plutocracy also happen
to be hollowing out the ________ class in Western industrialized economies. Let's start with
technology. Those same forces that are ________ billionaires are also devouring many
traditional middle-class jobs. When's the last time you used a ________ agent? And in contrast
with the industrial revolution, the ________ of our new economy aren't creating that many new
jobs. At its zenith, G.M. ________ hundreds of thousands, Facebook fewer than 10,000. The
same is ________ of globalization. For all that it is raising hundreds of millions of people out
of poverty in the emerging ________, it's also outsourcing a lot of jobs from the developed
Western economies. The terrifying reality is that there is no economic rule which ________
translates increased economic growth into widely ________ prosperity. That's shown in what
I consider to be the most scary economic ________ of our time. Since the late 1990s, increases
in productivity have been decoupled from increases in wages and ________. That means that
our countries are getting richer, our companies are getting more ________, but we're not
creating more jobs and we're not ________ people, as a whole, more.
13:00 One scary conclusion you could draw from all of this is to worry about ________
unemployment. What worries me more is a ________ nightmare scenario. After all, in a totally
free labor market, we could ________ jobs for pretty much everyone. The dystopia that worries
me is a universe in which a few geniuses ________ Google and its ilk and the rest of us are
employed giving them ________.
63
13:30 So when I get really depressed about all of this, I ________ myself in thinking about the
Industrial Revolution. After all, for all its grim, satanic mills, it ________ out pretty well, didn't
it? After all, all of us here are richer, ________, taller -- well, there are a few exceptions — and
live longer than our ancestors in the early 19th century. But it's ________ to remember that
before we learned how to share the ________ of the Industrial Revolution with the broad
swathes of society, we had to go through two ________, the Great Depression of the 1930s,
the Long Depression of the 1870s, two world wars, communist revolutions in Russia and in
China, and an era of tremendous ________ and political upheaval in the West. We also, not
coincidentally, went through an era of tremendous social and political ________. We created
the ________ welfare state. We created public education. We created public health care. We
created public pensions. We created ________.
14:43 Today, we are living through an era of economic ________ comparable in its scale and
its scope to the Industrial Revolution. To be sure that this new ________ benefits us all and not
just the plutocrats, we need to embark on an era of comparably ________ social and political
change. We need a new New Deal.
15:06 (Applause)
64
Key
00:11 So here's the most important economic fact of our time. We are living in an age of surging
income inequality, particularly between those at the very top and everyone else. This shift is
the most striking in the U.S. and in the U.K., but it's a global phenomenon. It's happening in
communist China, in formerly communist Russia, it's happening in India, in my own native
Canada. We're even seeing it in cozy social democracies like Sweden, Finland and Germany.
00:45 Let me give you a few numbers to place what's happening. In the 1970s, the One Percent
accounted for about 10 percent of the national income in the United States. Today, their share
has more than doubled to above 20 percent. But what's even more striking is what's happening
at the very tippy top of the income distribution. The 0.1 percent in the U.S. today account for
more than eight percent of the national income. They are where the One Percent was 30 years
ago. Let me give you another number to put that in perspective, and this is a figure that was
calculated in 2005 by Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Reich
took the wealth of two admittedly very rich men, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, and he found
that it was equivalent to the wealth of the bottom 40 percent of the U.S. population, 120 million
people. Now, as it happens, Warren Buffett is not only himself a plutocrat, he is one of the
most astute observers of that phenomenon, and he has his own favorite number. Buffett likes
to point out that in 1992, the combined wealth of the people on the Forbes 400 list -- and this
is the list of the 400 richest Americans -- was 300 billion dollars. Just think about it. You didn't
even need to be a billionaire to get on that list in 1992. Well, today, that figure has more than
quintupled to 1.7 trillion, and I probably don't need to tell you that we haven't seen anything
similar happen to the middle class, whose wealth has stagnated if not actually decreased.
02:43 So we're living in the age of the global plutocracy, but we've been slow to notice it. One
of the reasons, I think, is a sort of boiled frog phenomenon. Changes which are slow and gradual
can be hard to notice even if their ultimate impact is quite dramatic. Think about what
happened, after all, to the poor frog. But I think there's something else going on. Talking about
income inequality, even if you're not on the Forbes 400 list, can make us feel uncomfortable.
It feels less positive, less optimistic, to talk about how the pie is sliced than to think about how
to make the pie bigger. And if you do happen to be on the Forbes 400 list, talking about income
distribution, and inevitably its cousin, income redistribution, can be downright threatening.
03:34 So we're living in the age of surging income inequality, especially at the top. What's
driving it, and what can we do about it?
03:44 One set of causes is political: lower taxes, deregulation, particularly of financial services,
privatization, weaker legal protections for trade unions, all of these have contributed to more
and more income going to the very, very top.
04:05 A lot of these political factors can be broadly lumped under the category of "crony
capitalism," political changes that benefit a group of well-connected insiders but don't actually
do much good for the rest of us. In practice, getting rid of crony capitalism is incredibly
difficult. Think of all the years reformers of various stripes have tried to get rid of corruption
in Russia, for instance, or how hard it is to re-regulate the banks even after the most profound
financial crisis since the Great Depression, or even how difficult it is to get the big multinational
65
companies, including those whose motto might be "don't do evil," to pay taxes at a rate even
approaching that paid by the middle class. But while getting rid of crony capitalism in practice
is really, really hard, at least intellectually, it's an easy problem. After all, no one is actually in
favor of crony capitalism. Indeed, this is one of those rare issues that unites the left and the
right. A critique of crony capitalism is as central to the Tea Party as it is to Occupy Wall Street.
05:21 But if crony capitalism is, intellectually at least, the easy part of the problem, things get
trickier when you look at the economic drivers of surging income inequality. In and of
themselves, these aren't too mysterious. Globalization and the technology revolution, the twin
economic transformations which are changing our lives and transforming the global economy,
are also powering the rise of the super-rich. Just think about it. For the first time in history, if
you are an energetic entrepreneur with a brilliant new idea or a fantastic new product, you have
almost instant, almost frictionless access to a global market of more than a billion people. As
a result, if you are very, very smart and very, very lucky, you can get very, very rich very, very
quickly. The latest poster boy for this phenomenon is David Karp. The 26-year-old founder of
Tumblr recently sold his company to Yahoo for 1.1 billion dollars. Think about that for a
minute: 1.1 billion dollars, 26 years old. It's easiest to see how the technology revolution and
globalization are creating this sort of superstar effect in highly visible fields, like sports and
entertainment. We can all watch how a fantastic athlete or a fantastic performer can today
leverage his or her skills across the global economy as never before. But today, that superstar
effect is happening across the entire economy. We have superstar technologists. We have
superstar bankers. We have superstar lawyers and superstar architects. There are superstar
cooks and superstar farmers. There are even, and this is my personal favorite example, superstar
dentists, the most dazzling exemplar of whom is Bernard Touati, the Frenchman who ministers
to the smiles of fellow superstars like Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich or European-born
American fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg.
07:36 But while it's pretty easy to see how globalization and the technology revolution are
creating this global plutocracy, what's a lot harder is figuring out what to think about it. And
that's because, in contrast with crony capitalism, so much of what globalization and the
technology revolution have done is highly positive. Let's start with technology. I love the
Internet. I love my mobile devices. I love the fact that they mean that whoever chooses to will
be able to watch this talk far beyond this auditorium. I'm even more of a fan of globalization.
This is the transformation which has lifted hundreds of millions of the world's poorest people
out of poverty and into the middle class, and if you happen to live in the rich part of the world,
it's made many new products affordable -- who do you think built your iPhone? — and things
that we've relied on for a long time much cheaper. Think of your dishwasher or your t-shirt.
08:39 So what's not to like? Well, a few things. One of the things that worries me is how easily
what you might call meritocratic plutocracy can become crony plutocracy. Imagine you're a
brilliant entrepreneur who has successfully sold that idea or that product to the global billions
and become a billionaire in the process. It gets tempting at that point to use your economic
nous to manipulate the rules of the global political economy in your own favor. And that's no
mere hypothetical example. Think about Amazon, Apple, Google, Starbucks. These are among
the world's most admired, most beloved, most innovative companies. They also happen to be
particularly adept at working the international tax system so as to lower their tax bill very, very
significantly. And why stop at just playing the global political and economic system as it exists
to your own maximum advantage? Once you have the tremendous economic power that we're
66
seeing at the very, very top of the income distribution and the political power that inevitably
entails, it becomes tempting as well to start trying to change the rules of the game in your own
favor. Again, this is no mere hypothetical. It's what the Russian oligarchs did in creating the
sale-of-the-century privatization of Russia's natural resources. It's one way of describing what
happened with deregulation of the financial services in the U.S. and the U.K.
10:19 A second thing that worries me is how easily meritocratic plutocracy can become
aristocracy. One way of describing the plutocrats is as alpha geeks, and they are people who
are acutely aware of how important highly sophisticated analytical and quantitative skills are
in today's economy. That's why they are spending unprecedented time and resources educating
their own children. The middle class is spending more on schooling too, but in the global
educational arms race that starts at nursery school and ends at Harvard, Stanford or MIT, the
99 percent is increasingly outgunned by the One Percent. The result is something that
economists Alan Krueger and Miles Corak call the Great Gatsby Curve. As income inequality
increases, social mobility decreases. The plutocracy may be a meritocracy, but increasingly
you have to be born on the top rung of the ladder to even take part in that race.
11:24 The third thing, and this is what worries me the most, is the extent to which those same
largely positive forces which are driving the rise of the global plutocracy also happen to be
hollowing out the middle class in Western industrialized economies. Let's start with
technology. Those same forces that are creating billionaires are also devouring many traditional
middle-class jobs. When's the last time you used a travel agent? And in contrast with the
industrial revolution, the titans of our new economy aren't creating that many new jobs. At its
zenith, G.M. employed hundreds of thousands, Facebook fewer than 10,000. The same is true
of globalization. For all that it is raising hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in the
emerging markets, it's also outsourcing a lot of jobs from the developed Western economies.
The terrifying reality is that there is no economic rule which automatically translates increased
economic growth into widely shared prosperity. That's shown in what I consider to be the most
scary economic statistic of our time. Since the late 1990s, increases in productivity have been
decoupled from increases in wages and employment. That means that our countries are getting
richer, our companies are getting more efficient, but we're not creating more jobs and we're not
paying people, as a whole, more.
13:00 One scary conclusion you could draw from all of this is to worry about structural
unemployment. What worries me more is a different nightmare scenario. After all, in a totally
free labor market, we could find jobs for pretty much everyone. The dystopia that worries me
is a universe in which a few geniuses invent Google and its ilk and the rest of us are employed
giving them massages.
13:30 So when I get really depressed about all of this, I comfort myself in thinking about the
Industrial Revolution. After all, for all its grim, satanic mills, it worked out pretty well, didn't
it? After all, all of us here are richer, healthier, taller -- well, there are a few exceptions — and
live longer than our ancestors in the early 19th century. But it's important to remember that
before we learned how to share the fruits of the Industrial Revolution with the broad swathes
of society, we had to go through two depressions, the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Long
Depression of the 1870s, two world wars, communist revolutions in Russia and in China, and
an era of tremendous social and political upheaval in the West. We also, not coincidentally,
went through an era of tremendous social and political inventions. We created the modern
67
welfare state. We created public education. We created public health care. We created public
pensions. We created unions.
14:43 Today, we are living through an era of economic transformation comparable in its scale
and its scope to the Industrial Revolution. To be sure that this new economy benefits us all and
not just the plutocrats, we need to embark on an era of comparably ambitious social and
political change. We need a new New Deal.
68
08. James Hansen - WHY I MUST SPEAK OUT ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE
Fill in the blanks
00:11 What do I know that ________ cause me, a reticent, Midwestern scientist, to get
myself arrested in front of the White House ________? And what would you do if you knew
what I know? Let's start with how I got to this point. I was lucky to ________ up at a time
when it was not difficult for the child of a tenant farmer to make his way to the ________
university.
00:40 And I was really lucky to go to the University of Iowa ________ I could study under
Professor James Van Allen who built ________ for the first U.S. satellites. Professor Van
Allen told me about observations of Venus, that there was ________ microwave radiation.
Did it mean that Venus had an ionosphere? Or was Venus extremely hot? The right answer,
________ by the Soviet Venera spacecraft, was that Venus was very hot -- 900 degrees
Fahrenheit. And it was ________ hot by a thick carbon dioxide ________.
01:22 I was fortunate to join NASA and successfully propose an ________ to fly to Venus.
Our instrument took this ________ of the veil of Venus, which turned out to be a smog of
sulfuric acid. But while our instrument was being built, I became ________ in calculations of
the greenhouse effect here on Earth, because we realized that our atmospheric ________ was
changing. Eventually, I resigned as ________ investigator on our Venus experiment because
a planet changing before our eyes is more interesting and important. Its ________ will affect
all of humanity.
02:06 The greenhouse ________ had been well understood for more than a century. British
physicist John Tyndall, in the 1850's, made laboratory ________ of the infrared radiation,
which is heat. And he ________ that gasses such as CO2 absorb heat, thus acting like a
blanket warming Earth's surface.
02:28 I worked with other scientists to ________ Earth climate observations. In 1981, we
published an article in Science magazine concluding that ________ warming of 0.4 degrees
Celsius in the prior century was consistent with the greenhouse effect of ________ CO2. That
Earth would likely warm in the 1980's, and ________ would exceed the noise level of
random weather by the end of the century. We also said that the 21st century would see
shifting climate ________, creation of drought-prone regions in North America and Asia,
________ of ice sheets, rising sea levels and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage. All of
these impacts have since ________ happened or are now well under way.
03:19 That paper was reported on the front page of the New York Times and ________ to me
testifying to ________ in the 1980's, testimony in which I emphasized that global warming
increases both extremes of the Earth's water ________. Heatwaves and droughts on one hand,
directly from the warming, but also, because a warmer atmosphere ________ more water
vapor with its latent energy, ________ will become in more extreme events. There will be
stronger storms and greater flooding. ________ warming hoopla became time-consuming and
distracted me from doing science -- partly because I had ________ that the White House
altered my testimony. So I decided to go back to strictly doing science and ________ the
communication to others.
69
04:13 By 15 years later, ________ of global warming was much stronger. Most of the things
mentioned in our 1981 paper were ________. I had the privilege to speak twice to the
president's climate task force. But ________ policies continued to focus on finding more
fossil fuels. By then we had two ________, Sophie and Connor. I decided that I did not want
them in the future to say, "Opa understood what was happening, but he didn't make it
________" So I decided to give a public talk criticizing the lack of an ________ energy
policy.
04:54 I gave the ________ at the University of Iowa in 2004 and at the 2005 meeting of the
American Geophysical Union. This led to calls from the White House to NASA ________
and I was told that I could not give any talks or speak with the media without prior explicit
________ by NASA headquarters. After I ________ the New York Times about these
restrictions, NASA was ________. to end the censorship. But there were consequences. I had
been using the first line of the NASA mission ________, "To understand and protect the
home planet," to justify my talks. Soon the first ________ of the mission statement was
deleted, never to appear again.
05:40 Over the next few years I was drawn more and more into trying to ________ the
urgency of a change in energy policies, while still ________ the physics of climate change.
Let me describe the most important conclusion from the ________ -- first, from Earth's
energy balance and, second, from Earth's ________ history.
06:03 Adding CO2 to the air is like throwing another ________ on the bed. It reduces Earth's
heat radiation to space, so there's a ________ energy imbalance. More energy is coming in
than going out, until Earth warms up enough to again ________ to space as much energy as it
absorbs from the Sun. So the key quantity is Earth's energy ________. Is there more energy
coming in than going out? If so, more warming is in the pipeline. It will ________ without
adding any more greenhouse gasses.
06:40 Now finally, we can measure Earth's energy imbalance precisely by ________ the heat
content in Earth's heat reservoirs. The biggest reservoir, the ________, was the least well
measured, until more than 3,000 Argo floats were ________ around the world's ocean. These
floats reveal that the upper half of the ocean is gaining heat at a ________ rate. The deep
ocean is also gaining heat at a smaller rate, and energy is going into the net melting of ice all
around the ________. And the land, to depths of tens of ________, is also warming.
07:20 The total energy imbalance now is about six-tenths of a watt per ________ meter. That
may not sound like much, but when added up over the whole world, it's ________ It's about
20 times greater than the rate of energy use by all of ________. It's equivalent to exploding
400,000 Hiroshima ________ bombs per day 365 days per year. That's how much extra
energy Earth is gaining each day. This imbalance, if we want to stabilize climate, means that
we must ________ CO2 from 391 ppm, parts per ________, back to 350 ppm. That is the
change needed to restore energy balance and prevent ________ warming.
08:11 Climate ________ deniers argue that the Sun is the main cause of climate change. But
the measured energy imbalance occurred during the ________ solar minimum in the record,
when the Sun's energy ________ Earth was least. Yet, there was more energy coming in than
70
going out. This shows that the effect of the Sun's ________ on climate is overwhelmed by the
increasing greenhouse gasses, mainly from ________ fossil fuels.
08:40 Now ________ Earth's climate history. These curves for global temperature,
atmospheric CO2 and sea level were ________ from ocean cores and Antarctic ice cores,
from ocean sediments and ________ that piled up year after year over 800,000 years forming
a two-mile thick ice sheet. As you see, there's a high ________ between temperature, CO2
and sea level. Careful examination shows that the temperature changes ________ lead the
CO2 changes by a few centuries. Climate change deniers like to use this fact to confuse and
trick the ________ by saying, "Look, the temperature ________ CO2 to change, not vice
versa." But that lag is exactly what is expected.
09:31 Small changes in Earth's orbit that occur over tens to ________ of thousands of years
alter the distribution of sunlight on Earth. When there is more ________ at high latitudes in
summer, ice sheets melt. Shrinking ice ________ make the planet darker, so it absorbs more
sunlight and becomes warmer. A warmer ocean ________ CO2, just as a warm Coca-Cola
does. And more CO2 causes more warming. So CO2, methane, and ice sheets were ________
that amplified global temperature change ________ these ancient climate oscillations to be
huge, even though the climate change was initiated by a very ________ forcing.
10:18 The important point is that these same ________ feedbacks will occur today. The
physics does not change. As ________ warms, now because of extra CO2 we put in the
atmosphere, ice will melt, and CO2 and methane will be released by warming ocean and
________ permafrost. While we can't say exactly how fast these amplifying feedbacks will
occur, it is ________ they will occur, unless we stop the warming. There is evidence that
feedbacks are already ________. Precise measurements by GRACE, the gravity ________,
reveal that both Greenland and Antarctica are now losing mass, several hundred cubic
________ per year. And the rate has accelerated since the measurements began ________
years ago. Methane is also beginning to escape from the permafrost.
11:17 What sea level ________ can we look forward to? The last time CO2 was 390 ppm,
today's value, sea level was higher by at least .... meters, 50 feet. Where you are sitting now
would be under water. Most estimates are that, this century, we will get at ________ one
meter. I think it will be more if we keep burning fossil fuels, perhaps even five meters, which
is ________ feet, this century or ________ thereafter.
11:50 The important point is that we will have started a ________ that is out of humanity's
control. Ice sheets would continue to disintegrate for ________. There would be no stable
shoreline. The ________.. consequences are almost unthinkable. Hundreds of New Orleanslike devastations around the world. What may be more reprehensible, if climate ________
continues, is extermination of species. The monarch butterfly could be one of the 20 to 50
percent of all species that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change ________ will be
ticketed for extinction by the end of the century if we stay on business-as-usual fossil
________ use.
12:36 Global warming is already ________ people. The Texas, Oklahoma, Mexico heatwave
and drought last year, Moscow the year before and Europe in 2003, were all ________
events, more than three standard deviations outside the norm. ________ years ago, such
71
anomalies covered only two- to three-tenths of one ________ of the land area. In recent
years, because of global warming, they now cover about ________ percent -- an increase by a
factor of 25 to 50. So we can say with a high degree of confidence that the severe Texas and
Moscow heatwaves were not ________; they were caused by global warming. An important
________, if global warming continues, will be on the breadbasket of our nation and the
world, the Midwest and ________ Plains, which are expected to become prone to extreme
droughts, worse than the Dust Bowl, within just a few ________, if we let global warming
________.
13:42 How did I get dragged deeper and deeper into an attempt to communicate, ________
talks in 10 countries, getting ________, burning up the vacation time that I had accumulated
over 30 years? More grandchildren ________ me along. Jake is a super-positive, enthusiastic
boy. Here at age two and a half years, he thinks he can protect his two and a ________-dayold little sister. It would be ________ to leave these young people with a climate system
spiraling out of control.
14:19 Now the tragedy about climate change is that we can solve it with a simple, ________
approach of a gradually rising carbon fee ________ from fossil fuel companies and
distributed 100 percent ________ every month to all legal residents on a per capita basis,
with the government not keeping one dime. Most ________ would get more in the monthly
dividend than they'd pay in increased prices. This fee and dividend would stimulate the
economy and ________, creating millions of jobs. It is the principal ________ for moving us
rapidly to a clean energy future.
15:03 Several top ________ are coauthors on this proposition. Jim DiPeso of Republicans for
Environmental Protection describes it thusly: "Transparent. ________-based. Does not
enlarge government. Leaves energy decisions to ________ choices. Sounds like a
conservative climate plan."
15:24 But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon ________ to make fossil fuels pay their
true cost to society, our governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels by
________ to 500 billion dollars per year worldwide, thus encouraging extraction of ________
fossil fuel -- mountaintop ________, longwall mining, fracking, tar sands, tar shale, deep
ocean Arctic drilling. This path, if continued, ________ that we will pass tipping points
leading to ice sheet disintegration that will accelerate out of control of future ________. A
large fraction of species will be committed to extinction. And increasing intensity of droughts
and floods will severely ________ breadbaskets of the world, causing massive famines and
economic ________. Imagine a giant asteroid on a direct collision course ________ Earth.
16:29 That is the equivalent of what we face now. Yet, we dither, ________ no action to
divert the asteroid, even though the ________ we wait, the more difficult and expensive it
becomes. If we had started in 2005, it would have required ________ reductions of three
percent per year to restore planetary energy ________ and stabilize climate this century. If
we start next year, it is six percent per year. If we wait 10 ________, it is 15 percent per year
-- extremely difficult and expensive, perhaps ________. But we aren't even starting.
17:10 So now you know what I know that is moving me to sound this ________. Clearly, I
haven't gotten this message across. The ________ is clear. I need your help to communicate
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the gravity and the urgency of this situation and its solutions more ________. We owe it to
our children and ________.
17:34 ________ you.
17:36 (Applause)
Key
00:11 What do I know that would cause me, a reticent, Midwestern scientist, to get myself
arrested in front of the White House protesting? And what would you do if you knew what I
know? Let's start with how I got to this point. I was lucky to grow up at a time when it was
not difficult for the child of a tenant farmer to make his way to the state university.
00:40 And I was really lucky to go to the University of Iowa where I could study under
Professor James Van Allen who built instruments for the first U.S. satellites. Professor Van
Allen told me about observations of Venus, that there was intense microwave radiation. Did it
mean that Venus had an ionosphere? Or was Venus extremely hot? The right answer,
confirmed by the Soviet Venera spacecraft, was that Venus was very hot -- 900 degrees
Fahrenheit. And it was kept hot by a thick carbon dioxide atmosphere.
01:22 I was fortunate to join NASA and successfully propose an experiment to fly to Venus.
Our instrument took this image of the veil of Venus, which turned out to be a smog of
sulfuric acid. But while our instrument was being built, I became involved in calculations of
the greenhouse effect here on Earth, because we realized that our atmospheric composition
was changing. Eventually, I resigned as principal investigator on our Venus experiment
because a planet changing before our eyes is more interesting and important. Its changes will
affect all of humanity.
02:06 The greenhouse effect had been well understood for more than a century. British
physicist John Tyndall, in the 1850's, made laboratory measurements of the infrared
radiation, which is heat. And he showed that gasses such as CO2 absorb heat, thus acting like
a blanket warming Earth's surface.
02:28 I worked with other scientists to analyze Earth climate observations. In 1981, we
published an article in Science magazine concluding that observed warming of 0.4 degrees
Celsius in the prior century was consistent with the greenhouse effect of increasing CO2.
That Earth would likely warm in the 1980's, and warming would exceed the noise level of
random weather by the end of the century. We also said that the 21st century would see
shifting climate zones, creation of drought-prone regions in North America and Asia, erosion
of ice sheets, rising sea levels and opening of the fabled Northwest Passage. All of these
impacts have since either happened or are now well under way.
03:19 That paper was reported on the front page of the New York Times and led to me
testifying to Congress in the 1980's, testimony in which I emphasized that global warming
increases both extremes of the Earth's water cycle. Heatwaves and droughts on one hand,
directly from the warming, but also, because a warmer atmosphere holds more water vapor
73
with its latent energy, rainfall will become in more extreme events. There will be stronger
storms and greater flooding. Global warming hoopla became time-consuming and distracted
me from doing science -- partly because I had complained that the White House altered my
testimony. So I decided to go back to strictly doing science and leave the communication to
others.
04:13 By 15 years later, evidence of global warming was much stronger. Most of the things
mentioned in our 1981 paper were facts. I had the privilege to speak twice to the president's
climate task force. But energy policies continued to focus on finding more fossil fuels. By
then we had two grandchildren, Sophie and Connor. I decided that I did not want them in the
future to say, "Opa understood what was happening, but he didn't make it clear." So I decided
to give a public talk criticizing the lack of an appropriate energy policy.
04:54 I gave the talk at the University of Iowa in 2004 and at the 2005 meeting of the
American Geophysical Union. This led to calls from the White House to NASA headquarters
and I was told that I could not give any talks or speak with the media without prior explicit
approval by NASA headquarters. After I informed the New York Times about these
restrictions, NASA was forced to end the censorship. But there were consequences. I had
been using the first line of the NASA mission statement, "To understand and protect the
home planet," to justify my talks. Soon the first line of the mission statement was deleted,
never to appear again.
05:40 Over the next few years I was drawn more and more into trying to communicate the
urgency of a change in energy policies, while still researching the physics of climate change.
Let me describe the most important conclusion from the physics -- first, from Earth's energy
balance and, second, from Earth's climate history.
06:03 Adding CO2 to the air is like throwing another blanket on the bed. It reduces Earth's
heat radiation to space, so there's a temporary energy imbalance. More energy is coming in
than going out, until Earth warms up enough to again radiate to space as much energy as it
absorbs from the Sun. So the key quantity is Earth's energy imbalance. Is there more energy
coming in than going out? If so, more warming is in the pipeline. It will occur without adding
any more greenhouse gasses.
06:40 Now finally, we can measure Earth's energy imbalance precisely by measuring the heat
content in Earth's heat reservoirs. The biggest reservoir, the ocean, was the least well
measured, until more than 3,000 Argo floats were distributed around the world's ocean. These
floats reveal that the upper half of the ocean is gaining heat at a substantial rate. The deep
ocean is also gaining heat at a smaller rate, and energy is going into the net melting of ice all
around the planet. And the land, to depths of tens of meters, is also warming.
07:20 The total energy imbalance now is about six-tenths of a watt per square meter. That
may not sound like much, but when added up over the whole world, it's enormous. It's about
20 times greater than the rate of energy use by all of humanity. It's equivalent to exploding
400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day 365 days per year. That's how much extra energy
Earth is gaining each day. This imbalance, if we want to stabilize climate, means that we
must reduce CO2 from 391 ppm, parts per million, back to 350 ppm. That is the change
needed to restore energy balance and prevent further warming.
74
08:11 Climate change deniers argue that the Sun is the main cause of climate change. But the
measured energy imbalance occurred during the deepest solar minimum in the record, when
the Sun's energy reaching Earth was least. Yet, there was more energy coming in than going
out. This shows that the effect of the Sun's variations on climate is overwhelmed by the
increasing greenhouse gasses, mainly from burning fossil fuels.
08:40 Now consider Earth's climate history. These curves for global temperature,
atmospheric CO2 and sea level were derived from ocean cores and Antarctic ice cores, from
ocean sediments and snowflakes that piled up year after year over 800,000 years forming a
two-mile thick ice sheet. As you see, there's a high correlation between temperature, CO2 and
sea level. Careful examination shows that the temperature changes slightly lead the CO2
changes by a few centuries. Climate change deniers like to use this fact to confuse and trick
the public by saying, "Look, the temperature causes CO2 to change, not vice versa." But that
lag is exactly what is expected.
09:31 Small changes in Earth's orbit that occur over tens to hundreds of thousands of years
alter the distribution of sunlight on Earth. When there is more sunlight at high latitudes in
summer, ice sheets melt. Shrinking ice sheets make the planet darker, so it absorbs more
sunlight and becomes warmer. A warmer ocean releases CO2, just as a warm Coca-Cola
does. And more CO2 causes more warming. So CO2, methane, and ice sheets were feedbacks
that amplified global temperature change causing these ancient climate oscillations to be
huge, even though the climate change was initiated by a very weak forcing.
10:18 The important point is that these same amplifying feedbacks will occur today. The
physics does not change. As Earth warms, now because of extra CO2 we put in the
atmosphere, ice will melt, and CO2 and methane will be released by warming ocean and
melting permafrost. While we can't say exactly how fast these amplifying feedbacks will
occur, it is certain they will occur, unless we stop the warming. There is evidence that
feedbacks are already beginning. Precise measurements by GRACE, the gravity satellite,
reveal that both Greenland and Antarctica are now losing mass, several hundred cubic
kilometers per year. And the rate has accelerated since the measurements began nine years
ago. Methane is also beginning to escape from the permafrost.
11:17 What sea level rise can we look forward to? The last time CO2 was 390 ppm, today's
value, sea level was higher by at least 15 meters, 50 feet. Where you are sitting now would be
under water. Most estimates are that, this century, we will get at least one meter. I think it
will be more if we keep burning fossil fuels, perhaps even five meters, which is 18 feet, this
century or shortly thereafter.
11:50 The important point is that we will have started a process that is out of humanity's
control. Ice sheets would continue to disintegrate for centuries. There would be no stable
shoreline. The economic consequences are almost unthinkable. Hundreds of New Orleanslike devastations around the world. What may be more reprehensible, if climate denial
continues, is extermination of species. The monarch butterfly could be one of the 20 to 50
percent of all species that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates will be
ticketed for extinction by the end of the century if we stay on business-as-usual fossil fuel
use.
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12:36 Global warming is already affecting people. The Texas, Oklahoma, Mexico heatwave
and drought last year, Moscow the year before and Europe in 2003, were all exceptional
events, more than three standard deviations outside the norm. Fifty years ago, such anomalies
covered only two- to three-tenths of one percent of the land area. In recent years, because of
global warming, they now cover about 10 percent -- an increase by a factor of 25 to 50. So
we can say with a high degree of confidence that the severe Texas and Moscow heatwaves
were not natural; they were caused by global warming. An important impact, if global
warming continues, will be on the breadbasket of our nation and the world, the Midwest and
Great Plains, which are expected to become prone to extreme droughts, worse than the Dust
Bowl, within just a few decades, if we let global warming continue.
13:42 How did I get dragged deeper and deeper into an attempt to communicate, giving talks
in 10 countries, getting arrested, burning up the vacation time that I had accumulated over 30
years? More grandchildren helped me along. Jake is a super-positive, enthusiastic boy. Here
at age two and a half years, he thinks he can protect his two and a half-day-old little sister. It
would be immoral to leave these young people with a climate system spiraling out of control.
14:19 Now the tragedy about climate change is that we can solve it with a simple, honest
approach of a gradually rising carbon fee collected from fossil fuel companies and distributed
100 percent electronically every month to all legal residents on a per capita basis, with the
government not keeping one dime. Most people would get more in the monthly dividend than
they'd pay in increased prices. This fee and dividend would stimulate the economy and
innovations, creating millions of jobs. It is the principal requirement for moving us rapidly to
a clean energy future.
15:03 Several top economists are coauthors on this proposition. Jim DiPeso of Republicans
for Environmental Protection describes it thusly: "Transparent. Market-based. Does not
enlarge government. Leaves energy decisions to individual choices. Sounds like a
conservative climate plan."
15:24 But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their
true cost to society, our governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels by 400 to
500 billion dollars per year worldwide, thus encouraging extraction of every fossil fuel -mountaintop removal, longwall mining, fracking, tar sands, tar shale, deep ocean Arctic
drilling. This path, if continued, guarantees that we will pass tipping points leading to ice
sheet disintegration that will accelerate out of control of future generations. A large fraction
of species will be committed to extinction. And increasing intensity of droughts and floods
will severely impact breadbaskets of the world, causing massive famines and economic
decline. Imagine a giant asteroid on a direct collision course with Earth.
16:29 That is the equivalent of what we face now. Yet, we dither, taking no action to divert
the asteroid, even though the longer we wait, the more difficult and expensive it becomes. If
we had started in 2005, it would have required emission reductions of three percent per year
to restore planetary energy balance and stabilize climate this century. If we start next year, it
is six percent per year. If we wait 10 years, it is 15 percent per year -- extremely difficult and
expensive, perhaps impossible. But we aren't even starting.
76
17:10 So now you know what I know that is moving me to sound this alarm. Clearly, I
haven't gotten this message across. The science is clear. I need your help to communicate the
gravity and the urgency of this situation and its solutions more effectively. We owe it to our
children and grandchildren.
17:34 Thank you.
17:36 (Applause)
77
09. Amanda Burden - HOW PUBLIC SPACES MAKE CITIES WORK
Fill in the blanks
00:12 When people think about cities, they tend to ________of certain things. They think of
buildings and ________and skyscrapers, noisy cabs. But when I think about cities, I think
about people. Cities are ________about people, and where people go and where people meet
are at the core of what makes a city __________. So even more important than buildings in a
city are the public spaces in between them. And today, some of the most ________changes in
cities are happening in these public __________.
00:48 So I believe that lively, enjoyable public spaces are the key to ________a great city.
They are what makes it come alive. But what makes a public space work? What
________people to successful public spaces, and what is it about ________places that keeps
people away? I thought, if I could answer those questions, I could make a huge ________to
my city. But one of the more wonky things about me is that I am an animal behaviorist, and I
use those ________not to study animal ________but to study how people in cities use city
public spaces.
01:33 One of the first spaces that I ________was this little vest pocket park called Paley Park
in midtown Manhattan. This little space became a small phenomenon, and because it
________such a profound impact on New Yorkers, it made an enormous ________on me. I
studied this park very early on in my career because it ________to have been built by my
stepfather, so I knew that places like Paley Park didn't happen by __________. I saw
firsthand that they required incredible dedication and enormous ________to detail. But what
was it about this space that made it special and drew people to it? Well, I would sit in the
park and watch very __________, and first among other things were the comfortable,
movable chairs. People would ________in, find their own seat, move it a bit, actually, and
then stay a while, and then __________, people themselves attracted other people, and
ironically, I felt more ________if there were other people around. And it was green. This
little park provided what New Yorkers crave: ________and greenery. But my question was,
why weren't there more places with greenery and places to sit in the ________of the city
where you didn't feel alone, or like a trespasser? Unfortunately, that's not how cities were
being __________.
03:06 So here you see a ________sight. This is how plazas have been designed for
generations. They have that stylish, Spartan look that we often associate with modern
__________, but it's not surprising that people ________spaces like this. They not only look
desolate, they feel downright dangerous. I mean, where would you ________here? What
would you do here? But architects love them. They are plinths for their creations. They might
________a sculpture or two, but that's about it. And for __________, they are ideal. There's
nothing to water, nothing to maintain, and no undesirable people to worry about. But don't
you think this is a __________? For me, becoming a city planner meant being able to truly
change the city that I ________in and loved. I wanted to be able to ________places that
would give you the feeling that you got in Paley Park, and not allow developers to build bleak
plazas like this. But over the many years, I have ________how hard it is to create successful,
meaningful, ________public spaces. As I learned from my stepfather, they certainly do not
happen by accident, ________in a city like New York, where public space has to be
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________for to begin with, and then for them to be successful, somebody has to think very
hard about every __________.
04:42 Now, open spaces in cities are opportunities. Yes, they are ________for commercial
investment, but they are also opportunities for the common ________of the city, and those
two goals are often not aligned with one another, and therein lies the __________.
05:01 The first opportunity I had to ________for a great public open space was in the early
1980s, when I was leading a team of planners at a ________landfill called Battery Park City
in lower Manhattan on the Hudson River. And this sandy wasteland had lain barren for
________years, and we were told, unless we found a ________in six months, it would go
bankrupt. So we came up with a radical, almost insane idea. Instead of ________a park as a
complement to future development, why don't we reverse that equation and build a small but
very high-________public open space first, and see if that made a __________. So we only
could afford to build a two-block section of what would become a mile-long esplanade, so
whatever we built had to be __________. So just to make sure, I ________that we build a
mock-up in wood, at scale, of the railing and the sea wall. And when I ________down on that
test bench with sand still swirling all around me, the railing hit exactly at eye level,
________my view and ruining my experience at the water's edge.
06:17 So you see, details really do make a difference. But design is not just
________something looks, it's how your body feels on that ________in that space, and I
believe that successful design always depends on that very individual __________. In this
photo, everything looks very finished, but that granite edge, those __________, the back on
that bench, the trees in planting, and the many different kinds of places to sit were all little
battles that turned this ________into a place that people ________to be.
06:57 Now, this proved very ________20 years later when Michael Bloomberg asked me to
be his planning commissioner and put me in ________of shaping the entire city of New
York. And he said to me on that very day, he said that New York was ________to grow from
eight to nine million people. And he asked me, "So where are you going to put one million
________New Yorkers?"
07:21 Well, I didn't have any idea. Now, you know that New York does ________a high
value on attracting immigrants, so we were excited about the ________of growth, but
honestly, where were we going to grow in a city that was already built out to its edges and
________by water? How were we going to find ________for that many new New Yorkers?
And if we couldn't spread out, which was ________a good thing, where could new housing
go? And what about cars? Our city couldn't __________. handle any more cars.
07:58 So what were we going to do? If we couldn't ________out, we had to go up. And if we
had to go up, we had to go up in places where you wouldn't need to ________a car. So that
meant using one of our greatest assets: our transit system. But we had never before
________of how we could make the most of it. So here was the answer to our puzzle. If we
were to ________and redirect all new development around transit, we could actually handle
that ________increase, we thought. And so here was the plan, what we really needed to do:
We ________to redo our zoning -- and zoning is the city planner's ________tool -- and
basically reshape the entire city, targeting where new development could go and
79
________any development at all in our car-oriented, suburban-style neighborhoods. Well,
this was an ________ambitious idea, ambitious because communities had to ________those
plans.
09:05 So how was I going to get this done? By listening. So I began listening, in
__________, thousands of hours of listening just to establish trust. You know, ________can
tell whether or not you understand their __________. It's not something you can just fake.
And so I began walking. I can't tell you how many blocks I walked, in sweltering summers,
in ________winters, year after year, just so I could get to ________the DNA of each
neighborhood and know what each street felt like. I became an ________geeky zoning
expert, finding ways that zoning could address communities' concerns. So little by little,
neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, we began to ________height limits so that
all new development would be ________and near transit. Over the course of 12 years, we
were able to rezone 124 neighborhoods, ________percent of the city, 12,500 blocks, so that
now, 90 percent of all new development of New York is within a 10-________walk of a
subway. In other __________, nobody in those new buildings needs to own a car.
10:23 Well, those rezonings were ________and enervating and important, but rezoning was
never my mission. You can't see zoning and you can't feel zoning. My ________was always
to create great public spaces. So in the areas where we zoned for ________development, I
was determined to create places that would make a difference in people's lives. Here you see
what was two ________of abandoned, ________waterfront in the neighborhoods of
Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn, impossible to get to and impossible to use. Now
the ________here was massive, so I felt an obligation to create ________parks on these
waterfronts, and I spent an incredible amount of time on every square ________of these
plans. I wanted to make sure that there were tree-lined paths from the upland to the water,
that there were trees and ________everywhere, and, of course, lots and lots of places to sit.
Honestly, I had no idea how it would turn out. I had to have ________But I put ________that
I had studied and learned into those plans.
11:36 And then it __________, and I have to tell you, it was incredible. People came from all
over the city to be in these parks. I know they changed the ________of the people who live
there, but they also changed New Yorkers' ________image of their city. I often come down
and watch people get on this little ferry that now ________between the boroughs, and I can't
tell you why, but I'm ____________________.. moved by the fact that people are using it as
if it had always been there.
12:05 And here is a new park in ________Manhattan. Now, the water's edge in lower
Manhattan was a complete mess before 9/11. Wall Street was ________landlocked because
you couldn't get anywhere near this edge. And after 9/11, the city had very little __________.
But I thought if we went to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and got money
to reclaim this ________miles of degraded ________that it would have an enormous effect
on the rebuilding of lower Manhattan. And it did. Lower Manhattan finally has a public
waterfront on all three __________.
12:42 I really love this park. You know, railings have to be ________now, so we put bar
seating at the edge, and you can get so close to the water you're ________on it. And see how
the railing widens and flattens out so you can ________down your lunch or your laptop. And
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I love when people come there and look up and they say, "Wow, there's Brooklyn, and it's so
__________"
13:06 So what's the trick? How do you turn a ________into a place that people want to be?
Well, it's up to you, not as a city planner but as a human __________. You don't tap into your
design expertise. You tap into your humanity. I __________, would you want to go there?
Would you want to stay there? Can you see into it and out of it? Are there other people there?
Does it ________green and friendly? Can you find your very own __________?
13:42 Well now, all over New York City, there are ________where you can find your very
own seat. Where there used to be parking spaces, there are now pop-up __________. Where
Broadway __________... used to run, there are now tables and chairs. Where 12 years ago,
sidewalk cafes were not allowed, they are now everywhere. But ________these spaces for
public use was not simple, and it's even ________to keep them that way.
14:09 So now I'm going to tell you a story about a very ________park called the High Line.
The High Line was an elevated railway. (Applause) The High Line was an ________railway
that ran through three neighborhoods on Manhattan's West Side, and when the train
________running, it became a self-seeded __________, a kind of a garden in the sky. And
when I saw it the first time, honestly, ________I went up on that old viaduct, I fell in love the
way you fall in love with a person, honestly. And when I was appointed, saving the first two
________of the High Line from demolition became my first ________and my most
important project. I knew if there was a day that I didn't worry about the High __________, it
would come down. And the High Line, even though it is widely known now and
phenomenally __________, it is the most contested public space in the city. You might see a
________park, but not everyone does. You know, it's true, commercial interests will always
battle ________public space. You might say, "How wonderful it is that more than four
million people come from all over the world to visit the High Line." Well, a developer
________just one thing: __________. Hey, why not take out those plantings and have shops
all along the High Line? Wouldn't that be ________and won't it mean a lot more money for
the city? Well no, it would not be terrific. It would be a __________, and not a park.
(Applause) And you know what, it might mean more money for the city, but a city has to take
the ________view, the view for the common good. Most recently, the last section of the High
Line, the ________section of the High Line, the final section of the High Line, has been
pitted against development __________, where some of the city's leading developers are
building more than 17 million square ________at the Hudson Yards. And they came to me
and proposed that they "________disassemble" that third and final section. Perhaps the High
Line didn't ________in with their image of a gleaming city of skyscrapers on a hill. Perhaps
it was just in their way. But in any case, it took nine ________of nonstop daily negotiation to
finally get the signed ________to prohibit its demolition, and that was only two years ago.
16:55 So you see, no ________how popular and successful a public space may be, it can
never be taken for granted. Public spaces always -- this is it saved -- public spaces
________need vigilant __________, not only to claim them at the outset for public use, but
to design them for the people that use them, then to maintain them to ________that they are
for everyone, that they are not violated, invaded, abandoned or ignored. If there is any one
________that I have learned in my life as a city planner, it is that public spaces have
__________. It's not just the number of people using them, it's the even greater number of
81
people who feel ________about their city just knowing that they are there. Public space can
change how you live in a city, how you feel about a city, ________you choose one city over
another, and public space is one of the most important __________. why you stay in a city.
17:59 I believe that a successful city is like a ________party. People stay because they are
having a ________time.
18:08 Thank you.
82
Key
00:12 When people think about cities, they tend to think of certain things. They think of
buildings and streets and skyscrapers, noisy cabs. But when I think about cities, I think about
people. Cities are fundamentally about people, and where people go and where people meet
are at the core of what makes a city work. So even more important than buildings in a city are
the public spaces in between them. And today, some of the most transformative changes in
cities are happening in these public spaces.
00:48 So I believe that lively, enjoyable public spaces are the key to planning a great city.
They are what makes it come alive. But what makes a public space work? What attracts
people to successful public spaces, and what is it about unsuccessful places that keeps people
away? I thought, if I could answer those questions, I could make a huge contribution to my
city. But one of the more wonky things about me is that I am an animal behaviorist, and I use
those skills not to study animal behavior but to study how people in cities use city public
spaces.
01:33 One of the first spaces that I studied was this little vest pocket park called Paley Park in
midtown Manhattan. This little space became a small phenomenon, and because it had such a
profound impact on New Yorkers, it made an enormous impression on me. I studied this park
very early on in my career because it happened to have been built by my stepfather, so I knew
that places like Paley Park didn't happen by accident. I saw firsthand that they required
incredible dedication and enormous attention to detail. But what was it about this space that
made it special and drew people to it? Well, I would sit in the park and watch very carefully,
and first among other things were the comfortable, movable chairs. People would come in,
find their own seat, move it a bit, actually, and then stay a while, and then interestingly,
people themselves attracted other people, and ironically, I felt more peaceful if there were
other people around. And it was green. This little park provided what New Yorkers crave:
comfort and greenery. But my question was, why weren't there more places with greenery
and places to sit in the middle of the city where you didn't feel alone, or like a trespasser?
Unfortunately, that's not how cities were being designed.
03:06 So here you see a familiar sight. This is how plazas have been designed for
generations. They have that stylish, Spartan look that we often associate with modern
architecture, but it's not surprising that people avoid spaces like this. They not only look
desolate, they feel downright dangerous. I mean, where would you sit here? What would you
do here? But architects love them. They are plinths for their creations. They might tolerate a
sculpture or two, but that's about it. And for developers, they are ideal. There's nothing to
water, nothing to maintain, and no undesirable people to worry about. But don't you think this
is a waste? For me, becoming a city planner meant being able to truly change the city that I
lived in and loved. I wanted to be able to create places that would give you the feeling that
you got in Paley Park, and not allow developers to build bleak plazas like this. But over the
many years, I have learned how hard it is to create successful, meaningful, enjoyable public
spaces. As I learned from my stepfather, they certainly do not happen by accident, especially
in a city like New York, where public space has to be fought for to begin with, and then for
them to be successful, somebody has to think very hard about every detail.
83
04:42 Now, open spaces in cities are opportunities. Yes, they are opportunities for
commercial investment, but they are also opportunities for the common good of the city, and
those two goals are often not aligned with one another, and therein lies the conflict.
05:01 The first opportunity I had to fight for a great public open space was in the early 1980s,
when I was leading a team of planners at a gigantic landfill called Battery Park City in lower
Manhattan on the Hudson River. And this sandy wasteland had lain barren for 10 years, and
we were told, unless we found a developer in six months, it would go bankrupt. So we came
up with a radical, almost insane idea. Instead of building a park as a complement to future
development, why don't we reverse that equation and build a small but very high-quality
public open space first, and see if that made a difference. So we only could afford to build a
two-block section of what would become a mile-long esplanade, so whatever we built had to
be perfect. So just to make sure, I insisted that we build a mock-up in wood, at scale, of the
railing and the sea wall. And when I sat down on that test bench with sand still swirling all
around me, the railing hit exactly at eye level, blocking my view and ruining my experience
at the water's edge.
06:17 So you see, details really do make a difference. But design is not just how something
looks, it's how your body feels on that seat in that space, and I believe that successful design
always depends on that very individual experience. In this photo, everything looks very
finished, but that granite edge, those lights, the back on that bench, the trees in planting, and
the many different kinds of places to sit were all little battles that turned this project into a
place that people wanted to be.
06:57 Now, this proved very valuable 20 years later when Michael Bloomberg asked me to
be his planning commissioner and put me in charge of shaping the entire city of New York.
And he said to me on that very day, he said that New York was projected to grow from eight
to nine million people. And he asked me, "So where are you going to put one million
additional New Yorkers?"
07:21 Well, I didn't have any idea. Now, you know that New York does place a high value on
attracting immigrants, so we were excited about the prospect of growth, but honestly, where
were we going to grow in a city that was already built out to its edges and surrounded by
water? How were we going to find housing for that many new New Yorkers? And if we
couldn't spread out, which was probably a good thing, where could new housing go? And
what about cars? Our city couldn't possibly handle any more cars.
07:58 So what were we going to do? If we couldn't spread out, we had to go up. And if we
had to go up, we had to go up in places where you wouldn't need to own a car. So that meant
using one of our greatest assets: our transit system. But we had never before thought of how
we could make the most of it. So here was the answer to our puzzle. If we were to channel
and redirect all new development around transit, we could actually handle that population
increase, we thought. And so here was the plan, what we really needed to do: We needed to
redo our zoning -- and zoning is the city planner's regulatory tool -- and basically reshape the
entire city, targeting where new development could go and prohibiting any development at all
in our car-oriented, suburban-style neighborhoods. Well, this was an unbelievably ambitious
idea, ambitious because communities had to approve those plans.
84
09:05 So how was I going to get this done? By listening. So I began listening, in fact,
thousands of hours of listening just to establish trust. You know, communities can tell
whether or not you understand their neighborhoods. It's not something you can just fake. And
so I began walking. I can't tell you how many blocks I walked, in sweltering summers, in
freezing winters, year after year, just so I could get to understand the DNA of each
neighborhood and know what each street felt like. I became an incredibly geeky zoning
expert, finding ways that zoning could address communities' concerns. So little by little,
neighborhood by neighborhood, block by block, we began to set height limits so that all new
development would be predictable and near transit. Over the course of 12 years, we were able
to rezone 124 neighborhoods, 40 percent of the city, 12,500 blocks, so that now, 90 percent
of all new development of New York is within a 10-minute walk of a subway. In other words,
nobody in those new buildings needs to own a car.
10:23 Well, those rezonings were exhausting and enervating and important, but rezoning was
never my mission. You can't see zoning and you can't feel zoning. My mission was always to
create great public spaces. So in the areas where we zoned for significant development, I was
determined to create places that would make a difference in people's lives. Here you see what
was two miles of abandoned, degraded waterfront in the neighborhoods of Greenpoint and
Williamsburg in Brooklyn, impossible to get to and impossible to use. Now the zoning here
was massive, so I felt an obligation to create magnificent parks on these waterfronts, and I
spent an incredible amount of time on every square inch of these plans. I wanted to make sure
that there were tree-lined paths from the upland to the water, that there were trees and
plantings everywhere, and, of course, lots and lots of places to sit. Honestly, I had no idea
how it would turn out. I had to have faith. But I put everything that I had studied and learned
into those plans.
11:36 And then it opened, and I have to tell you, it was incredible. People came from all over
the city to be in these parks. I know they changed the lives of the people who live there, but
they also changed New Yorkers' whole image of their city. I often come down and watch
people get on this little ferry that now runs between the boroughs, and I can't tell you why,
but I'm completely moved by the fact that people are using it as if it had always been there.
12:05 And here is a new park in lower Manhattan. Now, the water's edge in lower Manhattan
was a complete mess before 9/11. Wall Street was essentially landlocked because you
couldn't get anywhere near this edge. And after 9/11, the city had very little control. But I
thought if we went to the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and got money to
reclaim this two miles of degraded waterfront that it would have an enormous effect on the
rebuilding of lower Manhattan. And it did. Lower Manhattan finally has a public waterfront
on all three sides.
12:42 I really love this park. You know, railings have to be higher now, so we put bar seating
at the edge, and you can get so close to the water you're practically on it. And see how the
railing widens and flattens out so you can lay down your lunch or your laptop. And I love
when people come there and look up and they say, "Wow, there's Brooklyn, and it's so close."
13:06 So what's the trick? How do you turn a park into a place that people want to be? Well,
it's up to you, not as a city planner but as a human being. You don't tap into your design
expertise. You tap into your humanity. I mean, would you want to go there? Would you want
85
to stay there? Can you see into it and out of it? Are there other people there? Does it seem
green and friendly? Can you find your very own seat?
13:42 Well now, all over New York City, there are places where you can find your very own
seat. Where there used to be parking spaces, there are now pop-up cafes. Where Broadway
traffic used to run, there are now tables and chairs. Where 12 years ago, sidewalk cafes were
not allowed, they are now everywhere. But claiming these spaces for public use was not
simple, and it's even harder to keep them that way.
14:09 So now I'm going to tell you a story about a very unusual park called the High Line.
The High Line was an elevated railway. (Applause) The High Line was an elevated railway
that ran through three neighborhoods on Manhattan's West Side, and when the train stopped
running, it became a self-seeded landscape, a kind of a garden in the sky. And when I saw it
the first time, honestly, when I went up on that old viaduct, I fell in love the way you fall in
love with a person, honestly. And when I was appointed, saving the first two sections of the
High Line from demolition became my first priority and my most important project. I knew if
there was a day that I didn't worry about the High Line, it would come down. And the High
Line, even though it is widely known now and phenomenally popular, it is the most contested
public space in the city. You might see a beautiful park, but not everyone does. You know,
it's true, commercial interests will always battle against public space. You might say, "How
wonderful it is that more than four million people come from all over the world to visit the
High Line." Well, a developer sees just one thing: customers. Hey, why not take out those
plantings and have shops all along the High Line? Wouldn't that be terrific and won't it mean
a lot more money for the city? Well no, it would not be terrific. It would be a mall, and not a
park. (Applause) And you know what, it might mean more money for the city, but a city has
to take the long view, the view for the common good. Most recently, the last section of the
High Line, the third section of the High Line, the final section of the High Line, has been
pitted against development interests, where some of the city's leading developers are building
more than 17 million square feet at the Hudson Yards. And they came to me and proposed
that they "temporarily disassemble" that third and final section. Perhaps the High Line didn't
fit in with their image of a gleaming city of skyscrapers on a hill. Perhaps it was just in their
way. But in any case, it took nine months of nonstop daily negotiation to finally get the
signed agreement to prohibit its demolition, and that was only two years ago.
16:55 So you see, no matter how popular and successful a public space may be, it can never
be taken for granted. Public spaces always -- this is it saved -- public spaces always need
vigilant champions, not only to claim them at the outset for public use, but to design them for
the people that use them, then to maintain them to ensure that they are for everyone, that they
are not violated, invaded, abandoned or ignored. If there is any one lesson that I have learned
in my life as a city planner, it is that public spaces have power. It's not just the number of
people using them, it's the even greater number of people who feel better about their city just
knowing that they are there. Public space can change how you live in a city, how you feel
about a city, whether you choose one city over another, and public space is one of the most
important reasons why you stay in a city.
17:59 I believe that a successful city is like a fabulous party. People stay because they are
having a great time.
86
18:08 Thank you.
87
10. Maryn McKenna - WHAT DO WE DO WHEN ANTIBIOTICS DON’T
WORK ANY MORE?
Fill in the blanks
00:11 This is my great uncle, my father's father's younger brother. His name was Joe McKenna.
He was a young __________ and a semi-pro basketball player and a _________ in New York
City. Family history says he loved being a fireman, and so in 1938, on one of his days off, he
_______ to hang out at the firehouse. To make himself _______ that day, he started polishing
all the brass, the _________ on the fire truck, the fittings on the walls, and one of the fire hose
nozzles, a ______, heavy piece of metal, toppled off a shelf and hit him. A few days later, his
________ started to hurt. Two days after that, he spiked a _______. The fever climbed and
climbed. His ________ was taking care of him, but nothing she did made a difference, and
when they got the _______ doctor in, nothing he did mattered either.
01:13 They flagged down a cab and took him to the hospital. The _______ there recognized
right away that he had an infection, what at the time they would have called "________
poisoning," and though they probably didn't say it, they would have known right away that
there was nothing they could do.
01:32 There was nothing they could do because the things we use now to cure ________ didn't
exist yet. The first test of penicillin, the first _________, was three years in the future. People
who got infections either ________, if they were lucky, or they died. My great uncle was not
lucky. He was in the _______ for a week, shaking with chills, dehydrated and delirious,
________ into a coma as his organs failed. His condition grew so desperate that the people
from his firehouse lined up to give him transfusions hoping to ________ the infection surging
through his blood.
02:12 Nothing worked. He died. He was 30 years old.
02:19 If you _______ back through history, most people died the way my great uncle died.
Most people didn't die of _______ or heart disease, the lifestyle diseases that afflict us in the
West today. They didn't die of those diseases because they didn't live long enough to ______
them. They died of injuries -- being gored by an ox, shot on a _________, crushed in one of
the new factories of the Industrial Revolution -- and most of the time from infection, which
finished what those injuries began.
02:55 All of that changed when antibiotics arrived. _________, infections that had been a death
sentence became something you recovered from in days. It seemed like a _______, and ever
since, we have been living inside the golden epoch of the miracle ________.
03:16 And now, we are coming to an ________ of it. My great uncle died in the last days of
the pre-antibiotic era. We _______ today on the threshold of the post-antibiotic era, in the
_______ days of a time when simple infections such as the one Joe had will kill people once
again.
88
03:39 In fact, they already are. People are dying of infections again because of a _________
called antibiotic resistance. Briefly, it works like this. Bacteria ________ against each other for
resources, for food, by manufacturing lethal compounds that they _______ against each other.
Other bacteria, to protect themselves, _________ defenses against that chemical attack. When
we first made antibiotics, we took those compounds into the ______ and made our own
versions of them, and bacteria responded to our ________ the way they always had.
04:18 Here is what happened next: Penicillin was _________ in 1943, and widespread
penicillin resistance arrived by _______. Vancomycin arrived in 1972, vancomycin resistance
in 1988. Imipenem in _______, and resistance to in 1998. Daptomycin, one of the most recent
drugs, in 2003, and resistance to it just a year _______ in 2004.
04:49 For 70 years, we played a game of leapfrog -- our drug and their resistance, and then
_______ drug, and then resistance again -- and now the game is ending. Bacteria develop
resistance so quickly that pharmaceutical companies have ________ making antibiotics is not
in their best interest, so there are infections moving across the world for which, out of the more
than 100 antibiotics ________ on the market, two drugs might work with side _______, or one
drug, or none.
05:27 This is what that looks like. In 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and ________, the
CDC, identified a single case in a hospital in North Carolina of an infection resistant to all but
two drugs. Today, that infection, known as KPC, has _______ to every state but three, and to
South America, Europe and the Middle East. In 2008, doctors in Sweden ________ a man from
India with a different infection resistant to all but one drug that time. The gene that creates that
resistance, known as NDM, has now spread from India into China, Asia, Africa, ________ and
Canada, and the United States.
06:16 It would be natural to hope that these infections are __________ cases, but in fact, in the
United States and Europe, ________ people a year die of infections which no drugs can help.
A project chartered by the British government known as the ________ on Antimicrobial
Resistance estimates that the worldwide toll right now is _________ deaths a year.
06:49 That is a lot of deaths, and yet, the chances are good that you don't feel at _______, that
you imagine these people were hospital patients in ________ care units or nursing home
residents near the ends of their lives, people whose infections are ________ from us, in
situations we can't identify with.
07:13 What you didn't think about, none of us do, is that antibiotics ________ almost all of
modern life.
07:22 If we lost antibiotics, here's what else we'd lose: First, any protection for people with
weakened _________ systems -- cancer patients, AIDS patients, transplant recipients,
premature babies.
07:38 Next, any ________ that installs foreign objects in the body: stents for stroke, pumps for
diabetes, dialysis, joint replacements. How many athletic baby _______ need new hips and
knees? A recent study estimates that without antibiotics, one out of ever six would die.
89
08:01 Next, we'd probably lose _______. Many operations are preceded by prophylactic doses
of antibiotics. Without that protection, we'd lose the ability to open the ______ spaces of the
body. So no heart operations, no prostate biopsies, no Cesarean sections. We'd have to learn to
fear infections that now seem _______. Strep throat used to cause heart failure. Skin infections
led to amputations. Giving birth killed, in the cleanest hospitals, almost one woman out of
every 100. __________ took three children out of every 10.
08:48 More than anything else, we'd lose the _________ way we live our everyday lives. If
you knew that any injury could kill you, would you ride a motorcycle, bomb down a ______
slope, climb a ladder to hang your Christmas lights, let your kid ________ into home plate?
After all, the first person to receive penicillin, a British policeman named Albert Alexander,
who was so ________ by infection that his scalp oozed pus and doctors had to take out an eye,
was infected by doing something very simple. He walked into his garden and ________ his
face on a thorn. That British project I mentioned which estimates that the worldwide toll right
now is 700,000 deaths a year also ________ that if we can't get this under control by 2050, not
long, the worldwide toll will be 10 million deaths a year.
10:01 How did we get to this _______ where what we have to look forward to is those terrifying
numbers? The difficult answer is, we did it to ourselves. Resistance is an ________ biological
process, but we bear the responsibility for accelerating it. We did this by squandering
antibiotics with a __________ that now seems shocking. Penicillin was sold over the counter
until the _______. In much of the developing world, most antibiotics still are. In the United
States, 50 percent of the antibiotics given in hospitals are _________. Forty-five percent of the
prescriptions written in doctor's offices are for conditions that antibiotics cannot help. And
that's just in ________. On much of the planet, most meat animals get antibiotics every day of
their lives, not to cure illnesses, but to fatten them up and to protect them against the factory
farm conditions they are ________ in. In the United States, possibly 80 percent of the
antibiotics sold every year go to farm animals, not to _______, creating resistant bacteria that
move off the farm in water, in dust, in the meat the animals become. _________ depends on
antibiotics too, particularly in Asia, and fruit growing relies on antibiotics to protect apples,
pears, citrus, against disease. And because bacteria can pass their DNA to each other like a
________ handing off a suitcase at an airport, once we have encouraged that resistance into
existence, there is no knowing where it will spread.
12:04 This was _________. In fact, it was predicted by Alexander Fleming, the man who
discovered penicillin. He was given the Nobel Prize in 1945 in ________, and in an interview
shortly after, this is what he said:
12:22 "The thoughtless person playing with penicillin treatment is ________ responsible for
the death of a man who succumbs to infection with a pencillin-resistant organism." He added,
"I hope this evil can be averted."
12:39 Can we avert it? There are companies working on _______ antibiotics, things the
superbugs have never seen before. We need those new drugs badly, and we need _________:
discovery grants, extended patents, prizes, to lure other companies into making antibiotics
again.
90
13:04 But that probably won't be ________. Here's why: Evolution always wins. Bacteria birth
a new generation every 20 minutes. It takes pharmaceutical chemistry 10 years to _____ a new
drug. Every time we use an antibiotic, we give the bacteria billions of chances to crack the
codes of the defenses we've _________. There has never yet been a drug they could not defeat.
13:36 This is asymmetric warfare, but we can change the outcome. We could build systems to
_______ data to tell us automatically and specifically how antibiotics are being used. We could
build gatekeeping into drug order systems so that every _________ gets a second look. We
could require agriculture to give up antibiotic use. We could build surveillance systems to tell
us where resistance is _________ next.
14:14 Those are the tech solutions. They probably aren't enough either, unless we help.
Antibiotic resistance is a _______. We all know how hard it is to change a habit. But as a
society, we've done that in the past. People used to toss litter into the streets, used to not wear
________, used to smoke inside public buildings. We don't do those things anymore. We don't
trash the environment or court devastating accidents or _______ others to the possibility of
cancer, because we decided those things were expensive, destructive, not in our best interest.
We changed social _______. We could change social norms around antibiotic use too.
15:16 I know that the scale of antibiotic resistance seems _________, but if you've ever bought
a fluorescent lightbulb because you were concerned about climate change, or read the
________ on a box of crackers because you think about the deforestation from palm oil, you
already know what it feels like to take a tiny step to address an overwhelming problem. We
could take those kinds of ________ for antibiotic use too. We could forgo giving an antibiotic
if we're not sure it's the right one. We could stop insisting on a prescription for our kid's ear
infection before we're sure what ________ it. We could ask every restaurant, every
supermarket, where their meat comes from. We could promise each other never again to buy
chicken or _______ or fruit raised with routine antibiotic use, and if we did those things, we
could slow down the ________ of the post-antibiotic world.
16:28 But we have to do it soon. Penicillin began the antibiotic _______ in 1943. In just 70
years, we walked ourselves up to the edge of ________. We won't get 70 years to find our way
back out again.
16:49 Thank you very much.
16:51 (Applause)
91
Key
00:11 This is my great uncle, my father's father's younger brother. His name was Joe McKenna.
He was a young husband and a semi-pro basketball player and a fireman in New York City.
Family history says he loved being a fireman, and so in 1938, on one of his days off, he elected
to hang out at the firehouse. To make himself useful that day, he started polishing all the brass,
the railings on the fire truck, the fittings on the walls, and one of the fire hose nozzles, a giant,
heavy piece of metal, toppled off a shelf and hit him. A few days later, his shoulder started to
hurt. Two days after that, he spiked a fever. The fever climbed and climbed. His wife was
taking care of him, but nothing she did made a difference, and when they got the local doctor
in, nothing he did mattered either.
01:13 They flagged down a cab and took him to the hospital. The nurses there recognized right
away that he had an infection, what at the time they would have called "blood poisoning," and
though they probably didn't say it, they would have known right away that there was nothing
they could do.
01:32 There was nothing they could do because the things we use now to cure infections didn't
exist yet. The first test of penicillin, the first antibiotic, was three years in the future. People
who got infections either recovered, if they were lucky, or they died. My great uncle was not
lucky. He was in the hospital for a week, shaking with chills, dehydrated and delirious, sinking
into a coma as his organs failed. His condition grew so desperate that the people from his
firehouse lined up to give him transfusions hoping to dilute the infection surging through his
blood.
02:12 Nothing worked. He died. He was 30 years old.
02:19 If you look back through history, most people died the way my great uncle died. Most
people didn't die of cancer or heart disease, the lifestyle diseases that afflict us in the West
today. They didn't die of those diseases because they didn't live long enough to develop them.
They died of injuries -- being gored by an ox, shot on a battlefield, crushed in one of the new
factories of the Industrial Revolution -- and most of the time from infection, which finished
what those injuries began.
02:55 All of that changed when antibiotics arrived. Suddenly, infections that had been a death
sentence became something you recovered from in days. It seemed like a miracle, and ever
since, we have been living inside the golden epoch of the miracle drugs.
03:16 And now, we are coming to an end of it. My great uncle died in the last days of the preantibiotic era. We stand today on the threshold of the post-antibiotic era, in the earliest days of
a time when simple infections such as the one Joe had will kill people once again.
03:39 In fact, they already are. People are dying of infections again because of a phenomenon
called antibiotic resistance. Briefly, it works like this. Bacteria compete against each other for
resources, for food, by manufacturing lethal compounds that they direct against each other.
Other bacteria, to protect themselves, evolve defenses against that chemical attack. When we
92
first made antibiotics, we took those compounds into the lab and made our own versions of
them, and bacteria responded to our attack the way they always had.
04:18 Here is what happened next: Penicillin was distributed in 1943, and widespread penicillin
resistance arrived by 1945. Vancomycin arrived in 1972, vancomycin resistance in 1988.
Imipenem in 1985, and resistance to in 1998. Daptomycin, one of the most recent drugs, in
2003, and resistance to it just a year later in 2004.
04:49 For 70 years, we played a game of leapfrog -- our drug and their resistance, and then
another drug, and then resistance again -- and now the game is ending. Bacteria develop
resistance so quickly that pharmaceutical companies have decided making antibiotics is not in
their best interest, so there are infections moving across the world for which, out of the more
than 100 antibiotics available on the market, two drugs might work with side effects, or one
drug, or none.
05:27 This is what that looks like. In 2000, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the
CDC, identified a single case in a hospital in North Carolina of an infection resistant to all but
two drugs. Today, that infection, known as KPC, has spread to every state but three, and to
South America, Europe and the Middle East. In 2008, doctors in Sweden diagnosed a man from
India with a different infection resistant to all but one drug that time. The gene that creates that
resistance, known as NDM, has now spread from India into China, Asia, Africa, Europe and
Canada, and the United States.
06:16 It would be natural to hope that these infections are extraordinary cases, but in fact, in
the United States and Europe, 50,000 people a year die of infections which no drugs can help.
A project chartered by the British government known as the Review on Antimicrobial
Resistance estimates that the worldwide toll right now is 700,000 deaths a year.
06:49 That is a lot of deaths, and yet, the chances are good that you don't feel at risk, that you
imagine these people were hospital patients in intensive care units or nursing home residents
near the ends of their lives, people whose infections are remote from us, in situations we can't
identify with.
07:13 What you didn't think about, none of us do, is that antibiotics support almost all of
modern life.
07:22 If we lost antibiotics, here's what else we'd lose: First, any protection for people with
weakened immune systems -- cancer patients, AIDS patients, transplant recipients, premature
babies.
07:38 Next, any treatment that installs foreign objects in the body: stents for stroke, pumps for
diabetes, dialysis, joint replacements. How many athletic baby boomers need new hips and
knees? A recent study estimates that without antibiotics, one out of ever six would die.
08:01 Next, we'd probably lose surgery. Many operations are preceded by prophylactic doses
of antibiotics. Without that protection, we'd lose the ability to open the hidden spaces of the
body. So no heart operations, no prostate biopsies, no Cesarean sections. We'd have to learn to
fear infections that now seem minor. Strep throat used to cause heart failure. Skin infections
93
led to amputations. Giving birth killed, in the cleanest hospitals, almost one woman out of
every 100. Pneumonia took three children out of every 10.
08:48 More than anything else, we'd lose the confident way we live our everyday lives. If you
knew that any injury could kill you, would you ride a motorcycle, bomb down a ski slope,
climb a ladder to hang your Christmas lights, let your kid slide into home plate? After all, the
first person to receive penicillin, a British policeman named Albert Alexander, who was so
ravaged by infection that his scalp oozed pus and doctors had to take out an eye, was infected
by doing something very simple. He walked into his garden and scratched his face on a thorn.
That British project I mentioned which estimates that the worldwide toll right now is 700,000
deaths a year also predicts that if we can't get this under control by 2050, not long, the
worldwide toll will be 10 million deaths a year.
10:01 How did we get to this point where what we have to look forward to is those terrifying
numbers? The difficult answer is, we did it to ourselves. Resistance is an inevitable biological
process, but we bear the responsibility for accelerating it. We did this by squandering
antibiotics with a heedlessness that now seems shocking. Penicillin was sold over the counter
until the 1950s. In much of the developing world, most antibiotics still are. In the United States,
50 percent of the antibiotics given in hospitals are unnecessary. Forty-five percent of the
prescriptions written in doctor's offices are for conditions that antibiotics cannot help. And
that's just in healthcare. On much of the planet, most meat animals get antibiotics every day of
their lives, not to cure illnesses, but to fatten them up and to protect them against the factory
farm conditions they are raised in. In the United States, possibly 80 percent of the antibiotics
sold every year go to farm animals, not to humans, creating resistant bacteria that move off the
farm in water, in dust, in the meat the animals become. Aquaculture depends on antibiotics too,
particularly in Asia, and fruit growing relies on antibiotics to protect apples, pears, citrus,
against disease. And because bacteria can pass their DNA to each other like a traveler handing
off a suitcase at an airport, once we have encouraged that resistance into existence, there is no
knowing where it will spread.
12:04 This was predictable. In fact, it was predicted by Alexander Fleming, the man who
discovered penicillin. He was given the Nobel Prize in 1945 in recognition, and in an interview
shortly after, this is what he said:
12:22 "The thoughtless person playing with penicillin treatment is morally responsible for the
death of a man who succumbs to infection with a pencillin-resistant organism." He added, "I
hope this evil can be averted."
12:39 Can we avert it? There are companies working on novel antibiotics, things the superbugs
have never seen before. We need those new drugs badly, and we need incentives: discovery
grants, extended patents, prizes, to lure other companies into making antibiotics again.
13:04 But that probably won't be enough. Here's why: Evolution always wins. Bacteria birth a
new generation every 20 minutes. It takes pharmaceutical chemistry 10 years to derive a new
drug. Every time we use an antibiotic, we give the bacteria billions of chances to crack the
codes of the defenses we've constructed. There has never yet been a drug they could not defeat.
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13:36 This is asymmetric warfare, but we can change the outcome. We could build systems to
harvest data to tell us automatically and specifically how antibiotics are being used. We could
build gatekeeping into drug order systems so that every prescription gets a second look. We
could require agriculture to give up antibiotic use. We could build surveillance systems to tell
us where resistance is emerging next.
14:14 Those are the tech solutions. They probably aren't enough either, unless we help.
Antibiotic resistance is a habit. We all know how hard it is to change a habit. But as a society,
we've done that in the past. People used to toss litter into the streets, used to not wear seatbelts,
used to smoke inside public buildings. We don't do those things anymore. We don't trash the
environment or court devastating accidents or expose others to the possibility of cancer,
because we decided those things were expensive, destructive, not in our best interest. We
changed social norms. We could change social norms around antibiotic use too.
15:16 I know that the scale of antibiotic resistance seems overwhelming, but if you've ever
bought a fluorescent lightbulb because you were concerned about climate change, or read the
label on a box of crackers because you think about the deforestation from palm oil, you already
know what it feels like to take a tiny step to address an overwhelming problem. We could take
those kinds of steps for antibiotic use too. We could forgo giving an antibiotic if we're not sure
it's the right one. We could stop insisting on a prescription for our kid's ear infection before
we're sure what caused it. We could ask every restaurant, every supermarket, where their meat
comes from. We could promise each other never again to buy chicken or shrimp or fruit raised
with routine antibiotic use, and if we did those things, we could slow down the arrival of the
post-antibiotic world.
16:28 But we have to do it soon. Penicillin began the antibiotic era in 1943. In just 70 years,
we walked ourselves up to the edge of disaster. We won't get 70 years to find our way back out
again.
16:49 Thank you very much.
16:51 (Applause)
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11. Wade DavisTHE WORLDWIDE WEB OF BELIEF AND RITUAL
Fill in the blanks
00:11 You know, _________ was born of the imagination, and the imagination -- the
imagination as we know it -- came into being when our species _________ from our progenitor,
Homo erectus, and, infused with consciousness, began a journey that would ________ it to
every corner of the habitable world. For a time, we shared the stage with our distant cousins,
Neanderthal, who clearly had some spark of _________, but -- whether it was the increase in
the size of the brain, or the development of language, or some other _________ catalyst -- we
quickly left Neanderthal gasping for survival. By the time the last Neanderthal disappeared in
Europe, 27,000 years ago, our direct ________ had already, and for 5,000 years, been crawling
into the belly of the earth, where in the light of the flickers of tallow ________, they had
brought into being the great art of the Upper Paleolithic.
01:04 And I spent two months in the caves of southwest France with the ______ Clayton
Eshleman, who wrote a beautiful book called "Juniper Fuse." And you could look at this art
and you could, of course, see the ________ social organization of the people who brought it
into being. But more importantly, it spoke of a deeper yearning, something far more _________
than hunting magic. And the way Clayton put it was this way. He said, "You know, clearly at
some point, we were all of an animal nature, and at some point, we weren't." And he viewed
proto-shamanism as a kind of original ________, through ritual, to rekindle a connection that
had been irrevocably lost. So, he saw this art not as hunting magic, but as postcards of nostalgia.
And viewed in that ________, it takes on a whole other resonance.
01:48 And the most amazing thing about the Upper Paleolithic art is that as an aesthetic
________, it lasted for almost 20,000 years. If these were postcards of nostalgia, ours was a
very long farewell indeed. And it was also the beginning of our discontent, because if you
wanted to ________ all of our experience since the Paleolithic, it would come down to two
words: how and why. And these are the slivers of insight upon which cultures have been forged.
Now, all people share the same raw, _________ imperatives. We all have children. We all have
to deal with the mystery of death, the world that waits beyond death, the _______ who fall
away into their elderly years. All of this is part of our common experience, and this shouldn't
surprise us, because, after all, ________ have finally proven it to be true, something that
philosophers have always dreamt to be true. And that is the fact that we are all brothers and
sisters. We are all cut from the same ________ cloth. All of humanity, probably, is descended
from a thousand people who left Africa roughly 70,000 years ago.
02:47 But the corollary of that is that, if we all are brothers and sisters and share the same
genetic ________, all human populations share the same raw human genius, the same
intellectual acuity. And so whether that genius is placed into -- technological wizardry has been
the great _________ of the West -- or by contrast, into unraveling the complex threads of
memory inherent in a myth, is simply a matter of choice and ________ orientation. There is no
progression of affairs in human experience. There is no trajectory of ________. There's no
pyramid that conveniently places Victorian England at the apex and descends down the flanks
to the so-called _________ of the world. All peoples are simply cultural options, different
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visions of life itself. But what do I mean by different visions of life making for completely
different possibilities for _________?
03:35 Well, let's slip for a moment into the greatest culture sphere ever brought into being by
the _________, that of Polynesia. 10,000 square kilometers, tens of thousands of islands flung
like jewels upon the southern sea. I recently ________ on the Hokulea, named after the sacred
star of Hawaii, throughout the South Pacific to make a film about the ________. These are men
and women who, even today, can name 250 stars in the night sky. These are men and women
who can sense the presence of ________ atolls of islands beyond the visible horizon, simply
by watching the reverberation of waves across the hull of their vessel, knowing full well that
every island group in the Pacific has its ________ refractive pattern that can be read with the
same perspicacity with which a forensic scientist would read a _________. These are sailors
who in the darkness, in the hull of the vessel, can _________ as many as 32 different sea swells
moving through the canoe at any one point in time, distinguishing local wave disturbances from
the great _________ that pulsate across the ocean, that can be followed with the same ease that
a terrestrial explorer would follow a river to the sea. _______, if you took all of the genius that
allowed us to put a man on the moon and applied it to an understanding of the ________, what
you would get is Polynesia.
04:46 And if we slip from the realm of the sea into the realm of the _______ of the imagination,
you enter the realm of Tibetan Buddhism. And I recently made a film called "The Buddhist
Science of the Mind." Why did we use that word, science? What is _________ but the empirical
pursuit of the truth? What is Buddhism but 2,500 years of empirical __________ as to the
nature of mind? I travelled for a month in Nepal with our good friend, Matthieu Ricard, and
you'll remember Matthieu famously said to all of us here once at TED, "Western science is a
major ________ to minor needs." We spend all of our lifetime trying to live to be 100 without
losing our teeth. The Buddhist spends all their lifetime trying to understand the nature of
__________.
05:24 Our billboards celebrate naked children in underwear. Their billboards are _________,
prayers to the well-being of all sentient creatures. And with the blessing of Trulshik Rinpoche,
we began a pilgrimage to a _________ destination, accompanied by a great doctor. And the
destination was a single room in a nunnery, where a woman had gone into ________ retreat 55
years before. And en route, we took darshan from Rinpoche, and he sat with us and told us
about the Four Noble Truths, the essence of the Buddhist ________. All life is suffering. That
doesn't mean all life is negative. It means things happen. The cause of suffering is _________.
By that, the Buddha did not mean stupidity; he meant clinging to the illusion that life is static
and predictable. The third noble _________ said that ignorance can be overcome. And the
fourth and most important, of course, was the delineation of a contemplative __________ that
not only had the possibility of a transformation of the human heart, but had 2,500 years of
empirical evidence that such a transformation was a _________.
06:22 And so, when this door opened onto the face of a ________ who had not been out of that
room in 55 years, you did not see a mad woman. You saw a woman who was more clear than
a pool of water in a _________ stream. And of course, this is what the Tibetan monks told us.
They said, at one point, you know, we don't really believe you went to the ________, but you
did. You may not believe that we achieve enlightenment in one lifetime, but we do. And if we
move from the realm of the spirit to the realm of the _________, to the sacred geography of
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Peru -- I've always been interested in the relationships of indigenous people that literally
believe that the Earth is alive, __________ to all of their aspirations, all of their needs. And, of
course, the human population has its own reciprocal obligations.
07:07 I spent 30 years living ________ the people of Chinchero and I always heard about an
event that I always wanted to participate in. Once each year, the _________ young boy in each
hamlet is given the honor of becoming a woman. And for one day, he wears the clothing of his
sister and he becomes a transvestite, a waylaka. And for that day, he ______ all able-bodied
men on a run, but it's not your ordinary run. You start off at 11,500 feet. You run down to the
base of the _________ mountain, Antakillqa. You run up to 15,000 feet, descend 3,000 feet.
Climb again over the course of 24 hours. And of course, the waylakama spin, the trajectory of
the ________, is marked by holy mounds of Earth, where coke is given to the Earth, libations
of alcohol to the wind, the vortex of the feminine is brought to the mountaintop. And the
_________ is clear: you go into the mountain as an individual, but through exhaustion, through
sacrifice, you emerge as a __________ that has once again reaffirmed its sense of place in the
planet. And at 48, I was the only outsider ever to go through this, only one to finish it. I only
________ to do it by chewing more coca leaves in one day than anyone in the 4,000-year
history of the _________.
08:18 But these localized ________ become pan-Andean, and these fantastic festivals, like that
of the Qoyllur Rit'i, which occurs when the Pleiades reappear in the ________ sky. It's kind of
like an Andean Woodstock: 60,000 Indians on pilgrimage to the end of a dirt road that leads to
the sacred ________, called the Sinakara, which is dominated by three tongues of the great
glacier. The metaphor is so clear. You bring the crosses from your community, in this
wonderful ________ of Christian and pre-Columbian ideas. You place the cross into the ice,
in the shadow of Ausangate, the most sacred of all Apus, or sacred mountains of the Inca. And
then you do the ritual dances that _________ the crosses.
08:56 Now, these ideas and these events allow us even to __________ iconic places that many
of you have been to, like Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu was never a lost city. On the contrary,
it was completely _________ in to the 14,000 kilometers of royal roads the Inca made in less
than a century. But more importantly, it was linked in to the Andean notions of sacred
__________. The intiwatana, the hitching post to the sun, is actually an obelisk that constantly
__________ the light that falls on the sacred Apu of Machu Picchu, which is Sugarloaf
Mountain, called Huayna Picchu. If you come to the south of the intiwatana, you find an altar.
Climb Huayna Picchu, find another altar. Take a _________ north-south bearing, you find to
your astonishment that it bisects the intiwatana stone, goes to the skyline, hits the ________ of
Salcantay, the second of the most important mountains of the Incan empire. And then beyond
Salcantay, of course, when the southern cross reaches the _________ point in the sky, directly
in that same alignment, the Milky Way overhead. But what is enveloping Machu Picchu from
below? The sacred river, the Urubamba, or the Vilcanota, which is itself the Earthly
__________ of the Milky Way, but it's also the trajectory that Viracocha walked at the dawn
of time when he brought the _________ into being. And where does the river rise? Right on
the slopes of the Koariti.
10:16 So, 500 years after Columbus, these ancient rhythms of landscape are played out in
________. Now, when I was here at the first TED, I showed this photograph: two men of the
Elder Brothers, the _________, survivors of El Dorado. These, of course, are the descendants
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of the ancient Tairona civilization. If those of you who are here remember that I ________ that
they remain ruled by a ritual priesthood, but the training for the priesthood is extraordinary.
Taken from their families, sequestered in a shadowy world of ________ for 18 years -- two
nine-year periods deliberately chosen to evoke the nine months they spend in the ________
mother's womb. All that time, the world only exists as an abstraction, as they are taught the
values of their society. Values that maintain the _________ that their prayers, and their prayers
alone, maintain the cosmic _________. Now, the measure of a society is not only what it does,
but the quality of its aspirations.
11:10 And I always wanted to go back into these mountains, to see if this could ________ be
true, as indeed had been reported by the great anthropologist, Reichel-Dolmatoff. So, literally
two weeks ago, I _________ from having spent six weeks with the Elder Brothers on what was
clearly the most extraordinary trip of my life. These really are a people who live and _______
the realm of the sacred, a baroque religiosity that is simply awesome. They consume more coca
leaves than any human _________, half a pound per man, per day. The gourd you see here is - everything in their lives is symbolic. Their central metaphor is a _______. They say, "Upon
this loom, I weave my life." They refer to the movements as they exploit the ________ niches
of the gradient as "threads." When they pray for the dead, they make these gestures with their
hands, spinning their thoughts into the _________.
12:02 You can see the calcium buildup on the head of the poporo gourd. The gourd is a
feminine ________; the stick is a male. You put the stick in the powder to take the sacred ashes
-- well, they're not ashes, they're burnt ________ -- to empower the coca leaf, to change the pH
of the mouth to facilitate the absorption of cocaine hydrochloride. But if you _______ a gourd,
you cannot simply throw it away, because every stroke of that stick that has built up that
calcium, the ________ of a man's life, has a thought behind it. Fields are planted in such an
extraordinary way, that the one side of the ________ is planted like that by the women. The
other side is planted like that by the men. Metaphorically, you turn it on the side, and you have
a ________ of cloth. And they are the descendants of the ancient Tairona civilization, the
greatest goldsmiths of South America, who in the wake of the conquest, ________ into this
isolated volcanic massif that soars to 20,000 _______ above the Caribbean coastal plain.
12:57 There are four ________: the Kogi, the Wiwa, the Kankwano and the Arhuacos. I
traveled with the Arhuacos, and the wonderful thing about this story was that this ______,
Danilo Villafane -- if we just jump back here for a second. When I first met Danilo, in the
Colombian ________ in Washington, I couldn't help but say, "You know, you look a lot like
an old friend of mine." Well, it turns out he was the son of my friend, Adalberto, from 1974,
who had been ________ by the FARC. And I said, "Danilo, you won't remember this, but when
you were an infant, I carried you on my back, up and down the mountains." And because of
that, Danilo _________ us to go to the very heart of the world, a place where no journalist had
ever been permitted. Not simply to the flanks of the mountains, but to the very iced _________
which are the destiny of the pilgrims.
13:43 And this man sitting cross-legged is now a grown-up Eugenio, a man who I've known
since 1974. And this is one of those _________. No, it's not true that they're kept in the darkness
for 18 years, but they are kept within the confines of the ceremonial men's ______ for 18 years.
This little boy will never step _______ of the sacred fields that surround the men's hut for all
that time, ______ he begins his journey of initiation. For that entire time, the world only exists
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as an abstraction, as he is taught the values of society, including this _______ that their prayers
alone maintain the cosmic balance. Before we could begin our journey, we had to be cleansed
at the portal of the Earth. And it was extraordinary to be taken by a ________. And you see
that the priest never wears shoes because holy feet -- there must be nothing between the feet
and the Earth for a mamo. And this is _________ the place where the Great Mother sent the
spindle into the world that elevated the mountains and created the ________ that they call the
heart of the world.
14:43 We traveled high into the paramo, and as we crested the hills, we realized that the men
were _________ every single bump on the landscape in terms of their own intense religiosity.
And then of course, as we reached our final destination, a place _______ Mamancana, we were
in for a surprise, because the FARC were waiting to kidnap us. And so we ended up being taken
aside into these ________, hidden away until the darkness. And then, abandoning all our gear,
we were forced to ride out in the middle of the night, in a quite _________ scene. It's going to
look like a John Ford Western. And we ran into a FARC patrol at dawn, so it was quite
harrowing. It will be a very __________ film. But what was fascinating is that the minute there
was a ________ of dangers, the mamos went into a circle of divination.
15:28 And of course, this is a photograph literally taken the ________ we were in hiding, as
they divine their route to take us out of the mountains. We were able to, because we had trained
people in _________, continue with our work, and send our Wiwa and Arhuaco filmmakers to
the final sacred lakes to get the last ________ for the film, and we followed the rest of the
Arhuaco back to the sea, taking the elements from the _________ to the sea. And here you see
how their sacred landscape has been covered by brothels and hotels and casinos, and yet, still
they _______. And it's an amazing thing to think that this close to Miami, two hours from
Miami, there is an entire civilization of people praying every day for your well-being. They
call ________ the Elder Brothers. They dismiss the rest of us who have ruined the world as the
Younger Brothers. They cannot understand why it is that we do what we do to the _______.
16:23 Now, if we slip to another end of the world, I was up in the high ________ to tell a story
about global warming, inspired in part by the former Vice President's wonderful book. And
what _______ me so extraordinary was to be again with the Inuit -- a people who don't fear the
cold, but take advantage of it. A people who ________ a way, with their imagination, to carve
life out of that very frozen. A people for whom blood on ice is not a sign of death, but an
__________ of life. And yet tragically, when you now go to those northern communities, you
find to your astonishment that whereas the sea ______ used to come in in September and stay
till July, in a place like Kanak in northern Greenland, it literally comes in now in November
and stays until March. So, their ________ year has been cut in half.
17:09 Now, I want to stress that none of these peoples that I've been quickly talking about here
are _________ worlds. These are not dying peoples. On the contrary, you know, if you have
the heart to feel and the eyes to see, you discover that the world is not _______. The world
remains a rich tapestry. It remains a rich topography of the spirit. These myriad voices of
________ are not failed attempts at being new, failed attempts at being modern. They're unique
facets of the human imagination. They're unique answers to a _________ question: what does
it mean to be human and alive? And when asked that question, they respond with 6,000
different _________. And collectively, those voices become our human repertoire for dealing
with the challenges that will confront us in the ______ millennia.
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17:54 Our industrial society is scarcely 300 years old. That shallow history shouldn't ________
to anyone that we have all of the answers for all of the questions that will confront us in the
ensuing millennia. The _______ voices of humanity are not failed attempts at being us. They
are unique answers to that fundamental _________: what does it mean to be human and alive?
And there is indeed a fire burning over the Earth, taking with it not only plants and animals,
but the _________ of humanity's brilliance.
18:22 Right now, as we sit here in this room, of those 6,000 languages spoken the day that you
were born, fully ________ aren't being taught to children. So, you're living through a time
when virtually half of humanity's intellectual, social and ________ legacy is being allowed to
slip away. This does not have to happen. These peoples are not failed ________ at being
modern -- quaint and colorful and destined to _______ away as if by natural law.
18:47 In every case, these are dynamic, living peoples being ________ out of existence by
identifiable forces. That's actually an _________ observation, because it suggests that if human
beings are the agents of cultural destruction, we can also be, and must be, the _________ of
cultural survival.
19:03 Thank you very much.
101
Key
00:11 You know, culture was born of the imagination, and the imagination -- the imagination
as we know it -- came into being when our species descended from our progenitor, Homo
erectus, and, infused with consciousness, began a journey that would carry it to every corner
of the habitable world. For a time, we shared the stage with our distant cousins, Neanderthal,
who clearly had some spark of awareness, but -- whether it was the increase in the size of the
brain, or the development of language, or some other evolutionary catalyst -- we quickly left
Neanderthal gasping for survival. By the time the last Neanderthal disappeared in Europe,
27,000 years ago, our direct ancestors had already, and for 5,000 years, been crawling into the
belly of the earth, where in the light of the flickers of tallow candles, they had brought into
being the great art of the Upper Paleolithic.
01:04 And I spent two months in the caves of southwest France with the poet Clayton
Eshleman, who wrote a beautiful book called "Juniper Fuse." And you could look at this art
and you could, of course, see the complex social organization of the people who brought it into
being. But more importantly, it spoke of a deeper yearning, something far more sophisticated
than hunting magic. And the way Clayton put it was this way. He said, "You know, clearly at
some point, we were all of an animal nature, and at some point, we weren't." And he viewed
proto-shamanism as a kind of original attempt, through ritual, to rekindle a connection that had
been irrevocably lost. So, he saw this art not as hunting magic, but as postcards of nostalgia.
And viewed in that light, it takes on a whole other resonance.
01:48 And the most amazing thing about the Upper Paleolithic art is that as an aesthetic
expression, it lasted for almost 20,000 years. If these were postcards of nostalgia, ours was a
very long farewell indeed. And it was also the beginning of our discontent, because if you
wanted to distill all of our experience since the Paleolithic, it would come down to two words:
how and why. And these are the slivers of insight upon which cultures have been forged. Now,
all people share the same raw, adaptive imperatives. We all have children. We all have to deal
with the mystery of death, the world that waits beyond death, the elders who fall away into
their elderly years. All of this is part of our common experience, and this shouldn't surprise us,
because, after all, biologists have finally proven it to be true, something that philosophers have
always dreamt to be true. And that is the fact that we are all brothers and sisters. We are all cut
from the same genetic cloth. All of humanity, probably, is descended from a thousand people
who left Africa roughly 70,000 years ago.
02:47 But the corollary of that is that, if we all are brothers and sisters and share the same
genetic material, all human populations share the same raw human genius, the same intellectual
acuity. And so whether that genius is placed into -- technological wizardry has been the great
achievement of the West -- or by contrast, into unraveling the complex threads of memory
inherent in a myth, is simply a matter of choice and cultural orientation. There is no progression
of affairs in human experience. There is no trajectory of progress. There's no pyramid that
conveniently places Victorian England at the apex and descends down the flanks to the socalled primitives of the world. All peoples are simply cultural options, different visions of life
itself. But what do I mean by different visions of life making for completely different
possibilities for existence?
102
03:35 Well, let's slip for a moment into the greatest culture sphere ever brought into being by
the imagination, that of Polynesia. 10,000 square kilometers, tens of thousands of islands flung
like jewels upon the southern sea. I recently sailed on the Hokulea, named after the sacred star
of Hawaii, throughout the South Pacific to make a film about the navigators. These are men
and women who, even today, can name 250 stars in the night sky. These are men and women
who can sense the presence of distant atolls of islands beyond the visible horizon, simply by
watching the reverberation of waves across the hull of their vessel, knowing full well that every
island group in the Pacific has its unique refractive pattern that can be read with the same
perspicacity with which a forensic scientist would read a fingerprint. These are sailors who in
the darkness, in the hull of the vessel, can distinguish as many as 32 different sea swells moving
through the canoe at any one point in time, distinguishing local wave disturbances from the
great currents that pulsate across the ocean, that can be followed with the same ease that a
terrestrial explorer would follow a river to the sea. Indeed, if you took all of the genius that
allowed us to put a man on the moon and applied it to an understanding of the ocean, what you
would get is Polynesia.
04:46 And if we slip from the realm of the sea into the realm of the spirit of the imagination,
you enter the realm of Tibetan Buddhism. And I recently made a film called "The Buddhist
Science of the Mind." Why did we use that word, science? What is science but the empirical
pursuit of the truth? What is Buddhism but 2,500 years of empirical observation as to the nature
of mind? I travelled for a month in Nepal with our good friend, Matthieu Ricard, and you'll
remember Matthieu famously said to all of us here once at TED, "Western science is a major
response to minor needs." We spend all of our lifetime trying to live to be 100 without losing
our teeth. The Buddhist spends all their lifetime trying to understand the nature of existence.
05:24 Our billboards celebrate naked children in underwear. Their billboards are manuals,
prayers to the well-being of all sentient creatures. And with the blessing of Trulshik Rinpoche,
we began a pilgrimage to a curious destination, accompanied by a great doctor. And the
destination was a single room in a nunnery, where a woman had gone into lifelong retreat 55
years before. And en route, we took darshan from Rinpoche, and he sat with us and told us
about the Four Noble Truths, the essence of the Buddhist path. All life is suffering. That doesn't
mean all life is negative. It means things happen. The cause of suffering is ignorance. By that,
the Buddha did not mean stupidity; he meant clinging to the illusion that life is static and
predictable. The third noble truth said that ignorance can be overcome. And the fourth and most
important, of course, was the delineation of a contemplative practice that not only had the
possibility of a transformation of the human heart, but had 2,500 years of empirical evidence
that such a transformation was a certainty.
06:22 And so, when this door opened onto the face of a woman who had not been out of that
room in 55 years, you did not see a mad woman. You saw a woman who was more clear than
a pool of water in a mountain stream. And of course, this is what the Tibetan monks told us.
They said, at one point, you know, we don't really believe you went to the moon, but you did.
You may not believe that we achieve enlightenment in one lifetime, but we do. And if we move
from the realm of the spirit to the realm of the physical, to the sacred geography of Peru -- I've
always been interested in the relationships of indigenous people that literally believe that the
Earth is alive, responsive to all of their aspirations, all of their needs. And, of course, the human
population has its own reciprocal obligations.
103
07:07 I spent 30 years living amongst the people of Chinchero and I always heard about an
event that I always wanted to participate in. Once each year, the fastest young boy in each
hamlet is given the honor of becoming a woman. And for one day, he wears the clothing of his
sister and he becomes a transvestite, a waylaka. And for that day, he leads all able-bodied men
on a run, but it's not your ordinary run. You start off at 11,500 feet. You run down to the base
of the sacred mountain, Antakillqa. You run up to 15,000 feet, descend 3,000 feet. Climb again
over the course of 24 hours. And of course, the waylakama spin, the trajectory of the route, is
marked by holy mounds of Earth, where coke is given to the Earth, libations of alcohol to the
wind, the vortex of the feminine is brought to the mountaintop. And the metaphor is clear: you
go into the mountain as an individual, but through exhaustion, through sacrifice, you emerge
as a community that has once again reaffirmed its sense of place in the planet. And at 48, I was
the only outsider ever to go through this, only one to finish it. I only managed to do it by
chewing more coca leaves in one day than anyone in the 4,000-year history of the plant.
08:18 But these localized rituals become pan-Andean, and these fantastic festivals, like that of
the Qoyllur Rit'i, which occurs when the Pleiades reappear in the winter sky. It's kind of like
an Andean Woodstock: 60,000 Indians on pilgrimage to the end of a dirt road that leads to the
sacred valley, called the Sinakara, which is dominated by three tongues of the great glacier.
The metaphor is so clear. You bring the crosses from your community, in this wonderful fusion
of Christian and pre-Columbian ideas. You place the cross into the ice, in the shadow of
Ausangate, the most sacred of all Apus, or sacred mountains of the Inca. And then you do the
ritual dances that empower the crosses.
08:56 Now, these ideas and these events allow us even to deconstruct iconic places that many
of you have been to, like Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu was never a lost city. On the contrary,
it was completely linked in to the 14,000 kilometers of royal roads the Inca made in less than
a century. But more importantly, it was linked in to the Andean notions of sacred geography.
The intiwatana, the hitching post to the sun, is actually an obelisk that constantly reflects the
light that falls on the sacred Apu of Machu Picchu, which is Sugarloaf Mountain, called Huayna
Picchu. If you come to the south of the intiwatana, you find an altar. Climb Huayna Picchu,
find another altar. Take a direct north-south bearing, you find to your astonishment that it
bisects the intiwatana stone, goes to the skyline, hits the heart of Salcantay, the second of the
most important mountains of the Incan empire. And then beyond Salcantay, of course, when
the southern cross reaches the southernmost point in the sky, directly in that same alignment,
the Milky Way overhead. But what is enveloping Machu Picchu from below? The sacred river,
the Urubamba, or the Vilcanota, which is itself the Earthly equivalent of the Milky Way, but
it's also the trajectory that Viracocha walked at the dawn of time when he brought the universe
into being. And where does the river rise? Right on the slopes of the Koariti.
10:16 So, 500 years after Columbus, these ancient rhythms of landscape are played out in ritual.
Now, when I was here at the first TED, I showed this photograph: two men of the Elder
Brothers, the descendants, survivors of El Dorado. These, of course, are the descendants of the
ancient Tairona civilization. If those of you who are here remember that I mentioned that they
remain ruled by a ritual priesthood, but the training for the priesthood is extraordinary. Taken
from their families, sequestered in a shadowy world of darkness for 18 years -- two nine-year
periods deliberately chosen to evoke the nine months they spend in the natural mother's womb.
All that time, the world only exists as an abstraction, as they are taught the values of their
society. Values that maintain the proposition that their prayers, and their prayers alone,
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maintain the cosmic balance. Now, the measure of a society is not only what it does, but the
quality of its aspirations.
11:10 And I always wanted to go back into these mountains, to see if this could possibly be
true, as indeed had been reported by the great anthropologist, Reichel-Dolmatoff. So, literally
two weeks ago, I returned from having spent six weeks with the Elder Brothers on what was
clearly the most extraordinary trip of my life. These really are a people who live and breathe
the realm of the sacred, a baroque religiosity that is simply awesome. They consume more coca
leaves than any human population, half a pound per man, per day. The gourd you see here is - everything in their lives is symbolic. Their central metaphor is a loom. They say, "Upon this
loom, I weave my life." They refer to the movements as they exploit the ecological niches of
the gradient as "threads." When they pray for the dead, they make these gestures with their
hands, spinning their thoughts into the heavens.
12:02 You can see the calcium buildup on the head of the poporo gourd. The gourd is a
feminine aspect; the stick is a male. You put the stick in the powder to take the sacred ashes -well, they're not ashes, they're burnt limestone -- to empower the coca leaf, to change the pH
of the mouth to facilitate the absorption of cocaine hydrochloride. But if you break a gourd,
you cannot simply throw it away, because every stroke of that stick that has built up that
calcium, the measure of a man's life, has a thought behind it. Fields are planted in such an
extraordinary way, that the one side of the field is planted like that by the women. The other
side is planted like that by the men. Metaphorically, you turn it on the side, and you have a
piece of cloth. And they are the descendants of the ancient Tairona civilization, the greatest
goldsmiths of South America, who in the wake of the conquest, retreated into this isolated
volcanic massif that soars to 20,000 feet above the Caribbean coastal plain.
12:57 There are four societies: the Kogi, the Wiwa, the Kankwano and the Arhuacos. I traveled
with the Arhuacos, and the wonderful thing about this story was that this man, Danilo Villafane
-- if we just jump back here for a second. When I first met Danilo, in the Colombian embassy
in Washington, I couldn't help but say, "You know, you look a lot like an old friend of mine."
Well, it turns out he was the son of my friend, Adalberto, from 1974, who had been killed by
the FARC. And I said, "Danilo, you won't remember this, but when you were an infant, I carried
you on my back, up and down the mountains." And because of that, Danilo invited us to go to
the very heart of the world, a place where no journalist had ever been permitted. Not simply to
the flanks of the mountains, but to the very iced peaks which are the destiny of the pilgrims.
13:43 And this man sitting cross-legged is now a grown-up Eugenio, a man who I've known
since 1974. And this is one of those initiates. No, it's not true that they're kept in the darkness
for 18 years, but they are kept within the confines of the ceremonial men's circle for 18 years.
This little boy will never step outside of the sacred fields that surround the men's hut for all
that time, until he begins his journey of initiation. For that entire time, the world only exists as
an abstraction, as he is taught the values of society, including this notion that their prayers alone
maintain the cosmic balance. Before we could begin our journey, we had to be cleansed at the
portal of the Earth. And it was extraordinary to be taken by a priest. And you see that the priest
never wears shoes because holy feet -- there must be nothing between the feet and the Earth
for a mamo. And this is actually the place where the Great Mother sent the spindle into the
world that elevated the mountains and created the homeland that they call the heart of the world.
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14:43 We traveled high into the paramo, and as we crested the hills, we realized that the men
were interpreting every single bump on the landscape in terms of their own intense religiosity.
And then of course, as we reached our final destination, a place called Mamancana, we were
in for a surprise, because the FARC were waiting to kidnap us. And so we ended up being taken
aside into these huts, hidden away until the darkness. And then, abandoning all our gear, we
were forced to ride out in the middle of the night, in a quite dramatic scene. It's going to look
like a John Ford Western. And we ran into a FARC patrol at dawn, so it was quite harrowing.
It will be a very interesting film. But what was fascinating is that the minute there was a sense
of dangers, the mamos went into a circle of divination.
15:28 And of course, this is a photograph literally taken the night we were in hiding, as they
divine their route to take us out of the mountains. We were able to, because we had trained
people in filmmaking, continue with our work, and send our Wiwa and Arhuaco filmmakers to
the final sacred lakes to get the last shots for the film, and we followed the rest of the Arhuaco
back to the sea, taking the elements from the highlands to the sea. And here you see how their
sacred landscape has been covered by brothels and hotels and casinos, and yet, still they pray.
And it's an amazing thing to think that this close to Miami, two hours from Miami, there is an
entire civilization of people praying every day for your well-being. They call themselves the
Elder Brothers. They dismiss the rest of us who have ruined the world as the Younger Brothers.
They cannot understand why it is that we do what we do to the Earth.
16:23 Now, if we slip to another end of the world, I was up in the high Arctic to tell a story
about global warming, inspired in part by the former Vice President's wonderful book. And
what struck me so extraordinary was to be again with the Inuit -- a people who don't fear the
cold, but take advantage of it. A people who find a way, with their imagination, to carve life
out of that very frozen. A people for whom blood on ice is not a sign of death, but an affirmation
of life. And yet tragically, when you now go to those northern communities, you find to your
astonishment that whereas the sea ice used to come in in September and stay till July, in a place
like Kanak in northern Greenland, it literally comes in now in November and stays until March.
So, their entire year has been cut in half.
17:09 Now, I want to stress that none of these peoples that I've been quickly talking about here
are disappearing worlds. These are not dying peoples. On the contrary, you know, if you have
the heart to feel and the eyes to see, you discover that the world is not flat. The world remains
a rich tapestry. It remains a rich topography of the spirit. These myriad voices of humanity are
not failed attempts at being new, failed attempts at being modern. They're unique facets of the
human imagination. They're unique answers to a fundamental question: what does it mean to
be human and alive? And when asked that question, they respond with 6,000 different voices.
And collectively, those voices become our human repertoire for dealing with the challenges
that will confront us in the ensuing millennia.
17:54 Our industrial society is scarcely 300 years old. That shallow history shouldn't suggest
to anyone that we have all of the answers for all of the questions that will confront us in the
ensuing millennia. The myriad voices of humanity are not failed attempts at being us. They are
unique answers to that fundamental question: what does it mean to be human and alive? And
there is indeed a fire burning over the Earth, taking with it not only plants and animals, but the
legacy of humanity's brilliance.
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18:22 Right now, as we sit here in this room, of those 6,000 languages spoken the day that you
were born, fully half aren't being taught to children. So, you're living through a time when
virtually half of humanity's intellectual, social and spiritual legacy is being allowed to slip
away. This does not have to happen. These peoples are not failed attempts at being modern -quaint and colorful and destined to fade away as if by natural law.
18:47 In every case, these are dynamic, living peoples being driven out of existence by
identifiable forces. That's actually an optimistic observation, because it suggests that if human
beings are the agents of cultural destruction, we can also be, and must be, the facilitators of
cultural survival.
19:03 Thank you very much.
12. Guy Winch - WHY WE ALL NEED TO PRACTICE EMOTIONAL FIRST
AID
Fill in the blanks
I grew up with my ______________ twin, who was an incredibly loving brother. Now, one thing about
being a twin is, it makes you an ______________ at spotting favouritism. If his cookie was even slightly
bigger than my cookie, I had questions. And clearly, I wasn't ______________.
(Laughter)
When I became a ______________, I began to notice favouritism of a different kind; and that is, how
much more we value the body than we do the ______________. I spent nine years at university earning
my ______________ in psychology, and I can't tell you how many people look at my business card and
say, "Oh -- a psychologist. So, not a ______________ doctor," as if it should say that on my card.
[Dr Guy Winch, Just a Psychologist (Not a Real Doctor)]
(Laughter)
This favouritism we show the body over the mind -- I see it everywhere.
I recently was at a friend's house, and their five-year-old was getting ready for bed. He was standing on
a stool by the sink, brushing his teeth, when he ______________ and scratched his leg on the stool
when he ______________. He cried for a minute, but then he got back up, got back on the stool, and
reached out for a box of Band-Aids to put one on his cut. Now, this kid could ______________ tie his
shoelaces, but he knew you have to cover a cut so it doesn't become ______________, and you have to
care for your teeth by brushing twice a day. We all know how to ______________ our physical health
and how to practice ______________ hygiene, right? We've known it since we were five years old. But
what do we know about maintaining our ______________ health? Well, nothing. What do we teach our
children about ______________ hygiene? Nothing. How is it that we spend more time taking care of
our teeth than we ______________ our minds? Why is it that our physical health is so much more
important to us than our psychological ______________?
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We sustain psychological ______________ even more often than we do physical ones, injuries like
failure or ______________ or loneliness. And they can also get worse if we ignore them, and they can
impact our lives in ______________ ways. And yet, even though there are scientifically proven
techniques we could use to ______________ these kinds of psychological injuries, we don't. It doesn't
even occur to us that we should. "Oh, you're feeling ______________? Just shake it off; it's all in your
head." Can you imagine saying that to somebody with a ______________ leg: "Oh, just walk it off; it's
all in your leg."
(Laughter)
It is time we ______________ the gap between our physical and our psychological health. It's time we
made them more equal, more like twins.
Speaking of which, my brother is also a psychologist. So he's not a real doctor, either.
(Laughter)
We didn't study together, though. In fact, the ______________ thing I've ever done in my life is move
across the Atlantic to New York City to get my doctorate in psychology. We were ______________
then for the first time in our lives, and the ______________ was brutal for both of us. But while he
remained among family and friends, I was alone in a new country. We ______________ each other
terribly, but international phone calls were really expensive then, and we could only ______________
to speak for five minutes a week. When our birthday ______________, it was the first we wouldn't be
spending together. We decided to ______________, and that week, we would talk for 10 minutes.
(Laughter)
I spent the morning ______________ around my room, waiting for him to call -- and waiting ... and
waiting. But the phone didn't ring. Given the time ______________, I assumed, "OK, he's out with
friends, he'll call later." There were no cell phones then. But he didn't. And I ______________ to realize
that after being away for over 10 months, he no longer missed me the way I missed him. I knew he
would call in the morning, but that night was one of the saddest and longest nights of my life. I woke
up the next morning. I ______________ down at the phone, and I realized I had kicked it off the hook
when pacing the day before. I ______________ out of bed, I put the phone back on the
______________, and it rang a second later. And it was my brother, and boy, was he pissed.
(Laughter)
It was the saddest and longest night of his life as well. Now, I tried to ______________ what happened,
but he said, "I don't understand. If you saw I ______________ calling you, why didn't you just pick up
the phone and call me?" He was right. Why didn't I call him? I didn't have an answer then. But I do
today, and it's a simple one: ______________.
Loneliness creates a deep psychological wound, one that ______________ our perceptions and
______________ our thinking. It makes us believe that those around us care much less than they
actually do. It makes us really afraid to ______________, because why set yourself up for rejection and
______________ when your heart is already aching more than you can stand? I was in the grips of real
loneliness back then, but I was ______________ by people all day, so it never occurred to me. But
108
loneliness is defined purely subjectively. It depends ______________ on whether you feel emotionally
or ______________ disconnected from those around you. And I did. There is a lot of research on
loneliness, and all of it is horrifying. Loneliness won't just make you ______________; it will kill you.
I'm not kidding. ______________ loneliness increases your likelihood of an early death by 14 percent.
Fourteen percent! Loneliness causes high blood ______________, high cholesterol. It even suppresses
the functioning of your ______________ system, making you vulnerable to all kinds of illnesses and
diseases. In fact, scientists have ______________ that taken together, chronic loneliness poses as
significant a risk for your long-term health and ______________ as cigarette smoking. Now, cigarette
packs come with ______________ saying, "This could kill you." But loneliness doesn't. And that's why
it's so important that we ______________ our psychological health, that we ______________
emotional hygiene. Because you can't treat a psychological wound if you don't even know you're
______________. Loneliness isn't the only psychological wound that distorts our perceptions and
______________ us.
______________ does that as well. I once visited a day care centre, where I saw three toddlers play
with identical plastic toys. You had to ______________ the red button, and a cute doggie would pop
out. One little girl tried pulling the ______________ button, then pushing it, and then she just sat back
and looked at the box with her lower lip ______________. The little boy next to her watched this
happen, then turned to his box and ______________ into tears without even touching it. Meanwhile,
another little girl tried ______________ she could think of until she slid the red button, the cute doggie
popped out, and she squealed with delight. So: three ______________ with identical plastic toys, but
with very different reactions to failure. The first two toddlers were perfectly ______________ of sliding
a red button. The only thing that ______________ them from succeeding was that their mind tricked
them into believing they could not. Now, adults get ______________ this way as well, all the time. In
fact, we all have a default set of ______________ and beliefs that gets triggered whenever we encounter
frustrations and setbacks.
Are you aware of how your mind ______________ to failure? You need to be. Because if your mind
tries to ______________ you you're incapable of something, and you believe it, then like those two
toddlers, you'll begin to feel ______________ and you'll stop trying too soon, or you won't even try at
all. And then you'll be even more convinced you can't ______________. You see, that's why so many
people function below their actual ______________. Because somewhere along the way, sometimes a
______________ failure convinced them that they couldn't succeed, and they believed it.
Once we become convinced of something, it's very difficult to ______________ our mind. I learned
that lesson the hard way when I was a teenager with my brother. We were ______________ with friends
down a dark road at night, when a police car stopped us. There had been a ______________ in the area
and they were looking for suspects. The officer ______________ the car, and shined his flashlight on
the driver, then on my brother in the ______________ seat, and then on me. And his eyes opened wide
and he said, "Where have I ______________ your face before?"
(Laughter)
And I said, "In the front seat."
(Laughter)
But that made no sense to him whatsoever, so now he thought I was on ______________.
109
(Laughter)
So he drags me out of the car, he ______________ me, he marches me over to the police car, and only
when he ______________ I didn't have a police record, could I show him I had a twin in the front seat.
But even as we were driving away, you could see by the ______________ on his face he was convinced
that I was getting ______________ with something.
(Laughter)
Our mind is hard to change once we become convinced. So it might be very ______________ to feel
demoralized and ______________ after you fail. But you cannot allow yourself to become convinced
you can't succeed. You have to fight feelings of helplessness. You have to ______________ control
over the situation. And you have to ______________ this kind of negative cycle before it begins.
[Stop Emotional Bleeding]
Our minds and our feelings -- they're not the ______________ friends we thought they were. They're
more like a really moody friend, who can be totally ______________ one minute, and really unpleasant
the next. I once worked with this woman who, after 20 years ______________ and an extremely ugly
divorce, was finally ready for her first ______________. She had met this guy online, and he seemed
nice and he seemed successful, and most importantly, he seemed really ______________ her. So she
was very excited, she bought a new dress, and they met at an ______________ New York City bar for
a drink. Ten minutes into the date, the man ______________ up and says, "I'm not interested," and
walks out. ______________ is extremely painful. The woman was so hurt she couldn't move. All she
could do was call a friend. Here's what the friend said: "Well, what do you ______________? You have
big hips, you have ______________ interesting to say. Why would a handsome, successful man like
that ever go out with a loser like you?" Shocking, right, that a friend could be so ______________? But
it would be much less ______________ if I told you it wasn't the friend who said that. It's what the
woman said to ______________. And that's something we all do, especially after a rejection. We all
start thinking of all our faults and all our ______________, what we wish we were, what we wish we
weren't. We call ourselves names. Maybe not as ______________, but we all do it. And it's interesting
that we do, because our ______________ is already hurting. Why would we want to go and damage it
even further? We wouldn't make a physical injury ______________ on purpose. You wouldn't get a cut
on your arm and decide, "Oh! I know -- I'm going to take a ______________ and see how much
______________ I can make it."
But we do that with psychological injuries all the time. Why? Because of ______________ emotional
hygiene. Because we don't ______________ our psychological health. We know from dozens of studies
that when your self-esteem is lower, you are more ______________ to stress and to anxiety; that failures
and rejections hurt more, and it takes longer to ______________ from them. So when you get rejected,
the first thing you should be doing is to ______________ your self-esteem, not join Fight Club and beat
it into a pulp. When you're in emotional ______________, treat yourself with the same
______________ you would expect from a truly good friend.
[Protect Your Self-Esteem]
We have to catch our unhealthy psychological ______________ and change them. And one of
unhealthiest and most common is called ______________. To ruminate means to chew over. It's when
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your boss yells at you or your professor makes you feel ______________ in class, or you have big fight
with a friend and you just can't stop ______________ the scene in your head for days, sometimes for
weeks on end. Now, ruminating about ______________ events in this way can easily become a habit,
and it's a very ______________ one, because by spending so much time focused on upsetting and
negative ______________, you are actually putting yourself at significant risk for developing clinical
depression, alcoholism, eating ______________, and even cardiovascular disease.
The problem is, the ______________ to ruminate can feel really strong and really important, so it's a
difficult habit to stop. I know this for a fact, because a little over a year ago, I ______________ the
habit myself. You see, my twin brother was ______________ with stage 3 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
His ______________ was extremely aggressive. He had visible tumours all over his body. And he had
to start a harsh ______________ of chemotherapy. And I couldn't stop thinking about what he was
going through. I couldn't stop thinking about how much he was ______________, even though he never
______________, not once. He had this incredibly positive attitude. His psychological health was
amazing. I was physically healthy, but psychologically, I was a ______________. But I knew what to
do. Studies tell us that even a two-minute ______________ is sufficient to break the urge to ruminate
in that ______________. And so each time I had a worrying, upsetting, negative thought, I forced
myself to concentrate on something else until the urge ______________. And within one week, my
whole ______________ changed and became more positive and more hopeful.
[Battle Negative Thinking]
Nine weeks after he ______________ chemotherapy, my brother had a CAT scan, and I was by his side
when he got the results. All the ______________ were gone. He still had three more rounds of
chemotherapy to go, but we knew he would recover. This ______________ was taken two weeks ago.
By taking action when you're lonely, by changing your ______________ to failure, by protecting your
self-esteem, by ______________ negative thinking, you won't just heal your psychological wounds,
you will build emotional ______________, you will thrive. A hundred years ago, people began
practicing personal hygiene, and life expectancy ______________ rose by over 50 percent in just a
matter of decades. I believe our ______________ of life could rise just as dramatically if we all began
______________ emotional hygiene.
Can you imagine what the world would be like if everyone was psychologically ______________? If
there were less loneliness and less depression? If people knew how to ______________ failure? If they
felt better about themselves and more ______________? If they were happier and more
______________? I can, because that's the world I want to live in. And that's the world my brother
wants to live in as well. And if you just become ______________ and change a few simple habits, well
-- that's the world we can all live in.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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Key
I grew up with my identical twin, who was an incredibly loving brother. Now, one thing about being a
twin is, it makes you an expert at spotting favouritism. If his cookie was even slightly bigger than my
cookie, I had questions. And clearly, I wasn't starving.
(Laughter)
When I became a psychologist, I began to notice favouritism of a different kind; and that is, how much
more we value the body than we do the mind. I spent nine years at university earning my doctorate in
psychology, and I can't tell you how many people look at my business card and say, "Oh -- a
psychologist. So, not a real doctor," as if it should say that on my card.
[Dr Guy Winch, Just a Psychologist (Not a Real Doctor)]
(Laughter)
This favouritism we show the body over the mind -- I see it everywhere.
I recently was at a friend's house, and their five-year-old was getting ready for bed. He was standing on
a stool by the sink, brushing his teeth, when he slipped and scratched his leg on the stool when he fell.
He cried for a minute, but then he got back up, got back on the stool, and reached out for a box of BandAids to put one on his cut. Now, this kid could barely tie his shoelaces, but he knew you have to cover
a cut so it doesn't become infected, and you have to care for your teeth by brushing twice a day. We all
know how to maintain our physical health and how to practice dental hygiene, right? We've known it
since we were five years old. But what do we know about maintaining our psychological health? Well,
nothing. What do we teach our children about emotional hygiene? Nothing. How is it that we spend
more time taking care of our teeth than we do our minds? Why is it that our physical health is so much
more important to us than our psychological health?
We sustain psychological injuries even more often than we do physical ones, injuries like failure or
rejection or loneliness. And they can also get worse if we ignore them, and they can impact our lives in
dramatic ways. And yet, even though there are scientifically proven techniques we could use to treat
these kinds of psychological injuries, we don't. It doesn't even occur to us that we should. "Oh, you're
feeling depressed? Just shake it off; it's all in your head." Can you imagine saying that to somebody
with a broken leg: "Oh, just walk it off; it's all in your leg."
(Laughter)
It is time we closed the gap between our physical and our psychological health. It's time we made them
more equal, more like twins.
Speaking of which, my brother is also a psychologist. So he's not a real doctor, either.
(Laughter)
We didn't study together, though. In fact, the hardest thing I've ever done in my life is move across the
Atlantic to New York City to get my doctorate in psychology. We were apart then for the first time in
112
our lives, and the separation was brutal for both of us. But while he remained among family and friends,
I was alone in a new country. We missed each other terribly, but international phone calls were really
expensive then, and we could only afford to speak for five minutes a week. When our birthday rolled
around, it was the first we wouldn't be spending together. We decided to splurge, and that week, we
would talk for 10 minutes.
(Laughter)
I spent the morning pacing around my room, waiting for him to call -- and waiting ... and waiting. But
the phone didn't ring. Given the time difference, I assumed, "OK, he's out with friends, he'll call later."
There were no cell phones then. But he didn't. And I began to realize that after being away for over 10
months, he no longer missed me the way I missed him. I knew he would call in the morning, but that
night was one of the saddest and longest nights of my life. I woke up the next morning. I glanced down
at the phone, and I realized I had kicked it off the hook when pacing the day before. I stumbled out of
bed, I put the phone back on the receiver, and it rang a second later. And it was my brother, and boy,
was he pissed.
(Laughter)
It was the saddest and longest night of his life as well. Now, I tried to explain what happened, but he
said, "I don't understand. If you saw I wasn't calling you, why didn't you just pick up the phone and call
me?" He was right. Why didn't I call him? I didn't have an answer then. But I do today, and it's a simple
one: loneliness.
Loneliness creates a deep psychological wound, one that distorts our perceptions and scrambles our
thinking. It makes us believe that those around us care much less than they actually do. It makes us
really afraid to reach out, because why set yourself up for rejection and heartache when your heart is
already aching more than you can stand? I was in the grips of real loneliness back then, but I was
surrounded by people all day, so it never occurred to me. But loneliness is defined purely subjectively.
It depends solely on whether you feel emotionally or socially disconnected from those around you. And
I did. There is a lot of research on loneliness, and all of it is horrifying. Loneliness won't just make you
miserable; it will kill you. I'm not kidding. Chronic loneliness increases your likelihood of an early
death by 14 percent. Fourteen percent! Loneliness causes high blood pressure, high cholesterol. It even
suppresses the functioning of your immune system, making you vulnerable to all kinds of illnesses and
diseases. In fact, scientists have concluded that taken together, chronic loneliness poses as significant a
risk for your long-term health and longevity as cigarette smoking. Now, cigarette packs come with
warnings saying, "This could kill you." But loneliness doesn't. And that's why it's so important that we
prioritize our psychological health, that we practice emotional hygiene. Because you can't treat a
psychological wound if you don't even know you're injured. Loneliness isn't the only psychological
wound that distorts our perceptions and misleads us.
Failure does that as well. I once visited a day care centre, where I saw three toddlers play with identical
plastic toys. You had to slide the red button, and a cute doggie would pop out. One little girl tried pulling
the purple button, then pushing it, and then she just sat back and looked at the box with her lower lip
trembling. The little boy next to her watched this happen, then turned to his box and burst into tears
without even touching it. Meanwhile, another little girl tried everything she could think of until she slid
the red button, the cute doggie popped out, and she squealed with delight. So: three toddlers with
identical plastic toys, but with very different reactions to failure. The first two toddlers were perfectly
113
capable of sliding a red button. The only thing that prevented them from succeeding was that their mind
tricked them into believing they could not. Now, adults get tricked this way as well, all the time. In fact,
we all have a default set of feelings and beliefs that gets triggered whenever we encounter frustrations
and setbacks.
Are you aware of how your mind reacts to failure? You need to be. Because if your mind tries to
convince you you're incapable of something, and you believe it, then like those two toddlers, you'll
begin to feel helpless and you'll stop trying too soon, or you won't even try at all. And then you'll be
even more convinced you can't succeed. You see, that's why so many people function below their actual
potential. Because somewhere along the way, sometimes a single failure convinced them that they
couldn't succeed, and they believed it.
Once we become convinced of something, it's very difficult to change our mind. I learned that lesson
the hard way when I was a teenager with my brother. We were driving with friends down a dark road
at night, when a police car stopped us. There had been a robbery in the area and they were looking for
suspects. The officer approached the car, and shined his flashlight on the driver, then on my brother in
the front seat, and then on me. And his eyes opened wide and he said, "Where have I seen your face
before?"
(Laughter)
And I said, "In the front seat."
(Laughter)
But that made no sense to him whatsoever, so now he thought I was on drugs.
(Laughter)
So he drags me out of the car, he searches me, he marches me over to the police car, and only when he
verified I didn't have a police record, could I show him I had a twin in the front seat. But even as we
were driving away, you could see by the look on his face he was convinced that I was getting away with
something.
(Laughter)
Our mind is hard to change once we become convinced. So it might be very natural to feel demoralized
and defeated after you fail. But you cannot allow yourself to become convinced you can't succeed. You
have to fight feelings of helplessness. You have to gain control over the situation. And you have to
break this kind of negative cycle before it begins.
[Stop Emotional Bleeding]
Our minds and our feelings -- they're not the trustworthy friends we thought they were. They're more
like a really moody friend, who can be totally supportive one minute, and really unpleasant the next. I
once worked with this woman who, after 20 years marriage and an extremely ugly divorce, was finally
ready for her first date. She had met this guy online, and he seemed nice and he seemed successful, and
most importantly, he seemed really into her. So she was very excited, she bought a new dress, and they
114
met at an upscale New York City bar for a drink. Ten minutes into the date, the man stands up and says,
"I'm not interested," and walks out. Rejection is extremely painful. The woman was so hurt she couldn't
move. All she could do was call a friend. Here's what the friend said: "Well, what do you expect? You
have big hips, you have nothing interesting to say. Why would a handsome, successful man like that
ever go out with a loser like you?" Shocking, right, that a friend could be so cruel? But it would be
much less shocking if I told you it wasn't the friend who said that. It's what the woman said to herself.
And that's something we all do, especially after a rejection. We all start thinking of all our faults and all
our shortcomings, what we wish we were, what we wish we weren't. We call ourselves names. Maybe
not as harshly, but we all do it. And it's interesting that we do, because our self-esteem is already hurting.
Why would we want to go and damage it even further? We wouldn't make a physical injury worse on
purpose. You wouldn't get a cut on your arm and decide, "Oh! I know -- I'm going to take a knife and
see how much deeper I can make it."
But we do that with psychological injuries all the time. Why? Because of poor emotional hygiene.
Because we don't prioritize our psychological health. We know from dozens of studies that when your
self-esteem is lower, you are more vulnerable to stress and to anxiety; that failures and rejections hurt
more, and it takes longer to recover from them. So when you get rejected, the first thing you should be
doing is to revive your self-esteem, not join Fight Club and beat it into a pulp. When you're in emotional
pain, treat yourself with the same compassion you would expect from a truly good friend.
[Protect Your Self-Esteem]
We have to catch our unhealthy psychological habits and change them. And one of unhealthiest and
most common is called rumination. To ruminate means to chew over. It's when your boss yells at you
or your professor makes you feel stupid in class, or you have big fight with a friend and you just can't
stop replaying the scene in your head for days, sometimes for weeks on end. Now, ruminating about
upsetting events in this way can easily become a habit, and it's a very costly one, because by spending
so much time focused on upsetting and negative thoughts, you are actually putting yourself at significant
risk for developing clinical depression, alcoholism, eating disorders, and even cardiovascular disease.
The problem is, the urge to ruminate can feel really strong and really important, so it's a difficult habit
to stop. I know this for a fact, because a little over a year ago, I developed the habit myself. You see,
my twin brother was diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. His cancer was extremely
aggressive. He had visible tumours all over his body. And he had to start a harsh course of
chemotherapy. And I couldn't stop thinking about what he was going through. I couldn't stop thinking
about how much he was suffering, even though he never complained, not once. He had this incredibly
positive attitude. His psychological health was amazing. I was physically healthy, but psychologically,
I was a mess. But I knew what to do. Studies tell us that even a two-minute distraction is sufficient to
break the urge to ruminate in that moment. And so each time I had a worrying, upsetting, negative
thought, I forced myself to concentrate on something else until the urge passed. And within one week,
my whole outlook changed and became more positive and more hopeful.
[Battle Negative Thinking]
Nine weeks after he started chemotherapy, my brother had a CAT scan, and I was by his side when he
got the results. All the tumours were gone. He still had three more rounds of chemotherapy to go, but
we knew he would recover. This picture was taken two weeks ago.
115
By taking action when you're lonely, by changing your responses to failure, by protecting your selfesteem, by battling negative thinking, you won't just heal your psychological wounds, you will build
emotional resilience, you will thrive. A hundred years ago, people began practicing personal hygiene,
and life expectancy rates rose by over 50 percent in just a matter of decades. I believe our quality of life
could rise just as dramatically if we all began practicing emotional hygiene.
Can you imagine what the world would be like if everyone was psychologically healthier? If there were
less loneliness and less depression? If people knew how to overcome failure? If they felt better about
themselves and more empowered? If they were happier and more fulfilled? I can, because that's the
world I want to live in. And that's the world my brother wants to live in as well. And if you just become
informed and change a few simple habits, well -- that's the world we can all live in.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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13. Simon Sinek - HOW GREAT LEADERS INSPIRE ACTIONS
Fill in the blanks
https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_ mjgreat_leaders_inspire_action#t-168958
How do you explain when things don't go as we ______________? Or better, how do you explain when
others are able to achieve things that seem to ______________ all of the assumptions? For example:
Why is Apple so ______________? Year after year, after year, they're more innovative than all their
competition. And yet, they're just a computer company. They're just like everyone else. They have the
same ______________ to the same talent, the same agencies, the same ______________, the same
media. Then why is it that they seem to have something different? Why is it that Martin Luther King
led the Civil Rights Movement? He wasn't the only man who ______________in pre-civil rights
America, and he certainly wasn't the only great ______________ of the day. Why him? And why is it
that the Wright brothers were able to figure out controlled, ______________ man flight when there
were certainly other teams who were better ______________, better funded -- and they didn't achieve
powered man flight, and the Wright brothers beat them to it. There's something else at
______________ here.
About three and a half years ago, I made a ______________. And this discovery ______________
changed my view on how I thought the world worked, and it even profoundly changed the way in which
I ______________ in it. As it turns out, there's a pattern. As it turns out, all the great ______________
leaders and organizations in the world, whether it's Apple or Martin Luther King or the Wright brothers,
they all think, act and communicate the ______________ same way. And it's the complete opposite to
everyone else. All I did was ______________ it, and it's probably the world's simplest idea. I call it the
______________ circle.
Why? How? What? This little idea explains why some organizations and some leaders are able to inspire
______________ others aren't. Let me define the ______________ really quickly. Every single
person, every single organization on the planet knows what they do, 100 percent. Some know how they
do it, whether you call it your ______________ value proposition or your proprietary process or your
USP. But very, very few people or organizations know why they do what they do. And by "why" I don't
mean "to make a ______________ . It's always a result. By "why," I mean: What's your
______________ ? What's your cause? What's your belief? Why does your organization
______________ ? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why should anyone care? As a
result, the way we think, we act, the way we communicate is from the ______________ in, it's obvious.
We go from the clearest thing to the ______________ thing. But the inspired leaders and the inspired
organizations -- regardless of their size, regardless of their ______________ -- all think, act and
communicate from the inside out.
Let me give you an example. I use Apple because they're easy to ______________ and everybody gets
it. If Apple were like everyone else, a ______________ message from them might sound like this: "We
make great computers. They're ______________ designed, simple to use and user friendly. Want to
buy one?" "Meh." That's how most of us ______________. That's how most marketing and
______________ are done, that's how we communicate interpersonally. We say what we do, we say
how we're different or better and we expect some sort of a ______________, a purchase, a vote,
something like that. Here's our new ______________ firm: We have the best lawyers with the
117
______________ clients, we always perform for our clients. Here's our new car: It gets great gas
mileage, it has ______________ seats. Buy our car. But it's uninspiring.
Here's how Apple actually communicates. "Everything we do, we believe in ______________ the status
quo. We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our
______________ beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. We just ______________ to
make great computers. Want to buy one?" Totally different, right? You're ready to buy a computer from
me. I just ______________ the order of the information. What it ______________ to us is that people
don't buy what you do; people buy why you do it.
This explains why every single person in this room is perfectly ______________ buying a computer
from Apple. But we're also perfectly comfortable buying an MP3 _____________ from Apple, or a
phone from Apple, or a DVR from Apple. As I said before, Apple's just a computer ______________.
Nothing distinguishes them structurally from any of their ______________. Their competitors are
equally qualified to make all of these products. In fact, they ______________. A few years ago,
Gateway came out with flat-screen TVs. They're eminently qualified to make flat-screen TVs. They've
been making flat-screen monitors for years. Nobody bought one. Dell came out with MP3 players and
PDAs, and they make ______________ quality products, and they can make perfectly well-designed
products -- and nobody bought one. In fact, ______________ about it now, we can't even imagine
buying an MP3 player from Dell. Why would you buy one from a computer company? But we do it
every day. People don't buy what you ______________; they buy why you do it. The goal is not to do
business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who
______________ what you believe.
Here's the best part: None of what I'm telling you is my ______________. It's all grounded in the tenets
of biology. Not ______________, biology. If you look at a cross-section of the human brain, from the
top down, the human brain is actually ______________ into three major components that correlate
perfectly with the golden ______________. Our newest brain, our Homo sapien brain, our neocortex,
corresponds with the "what" ______________. The neocortex is responsible for all of our rational and
analytical ______________ and language. The middle two sections ______________ our limbic brains,
and our limbic brains are responsible for all of our feelings, like trust and ______________. It's also
responsible for all human behavior, all decision-making, and it has no capacity for language.
In other words, when we communicate from the outside in, yes, people can understand vast amounts of
______________ information like features and benefits and facts and figures. It just doesn't
______________ behavior. When we can communicate from the inside out, we're talking directly to
the ______________ of the brain that controls behavior, and then we allow people to rationalize it with
the tangible things we say and do. This is where ______________ decisions come from. Sometimes
you can give somebody all the facts and ______________, and they say, "I know what all the facts and
details say, but it just doesn't feel right." Why would we use that ______________, it doesn't "feel"
right? Because the part of the brain that ______________ decision-making doesn't control language.
The best we can muster up is, "I don't know. It just doesn't feel right." Or sometimes you say you're
______________ with your heart or soul. I hate to break it to you, those aren't other ______________
parts controlling your behavior. It's all happening here in your limbic ______________, the part of the
brain that controls decision-making and not language.
118
But if you don't know why you do what you do, and people ______________ to why you do what you
do, then how will you ever get people to ______________ for you, or buy something from you, or,
more importantly, be loyal and want to be a part of what it is that you do. The ______________ is not
just to sell to people who need what you have; the goal is to sell to people who believe what you believe.
The goal is not just to ______________ people who need a job; it's to hire people who believe what
you believe. I always say that, you know, if you hire people just because they can do a job, they'll
______________ for your money, but if they believe what you believe, they'll work for you with
______________ and sweat and ______________. Nowhere else is there a
______________ example than with the Wright brothers.
Most people don't know about Samuel Pierpont Langley. And back in the early 20th century, the pursuit
of powered man ______________ was like the dot com of the day. Everybody was trying it. And
Samuel Pierpont Langley had, what we assume, to be the ______________ for success. Even now, you
ask people, "Why did your product or why did your company ______________?" and people always
give you the ______________ permutation of the same three things: under-capitalized, the wrong
people, bad market ______________. It's always the same three things, so let's ______________ that.
Samuel Pierpont Langley was given 50,000 dollars by the War Department to figure out this flying
machine. Money was no problem. He held a seat at Harvard and worked at the Smithsonian and was
extremely ______________; he knew all the big ______________ of the day. He hired the best minds
money could find and the market conditions were ______________ The New York Times followed
him around everywhere, and everyone was rooting for Langley. Then how come we've never
______________ of Samuel Pierpont Langley?
A few hundred miles away in Dayton, Ohio, Orville and Wilbur Wright, they had ______________ of
what we consider to be the recipe for success. They had no money; they paid for their dream with the
______________ from their bicycle shop. Not a single person on the Wright brothers' team had a
______________ education, not even Orville or Wilbur. And The New York Times followed them
______________ nowhere.
The difference was, Orville and Wilbur were driven by a ______________, by a purpose, by a belief.
They believed that if they could ______________ this flying machine, it'll change the ______________
of the world. Samuel Pierpont Langley was different. He wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be
______________. He was in ______________ of the result. He was in pursuit of the riches. And lo and
behold, look what happened. The people who believed in the Wright brothers' dream ______________
with them with blood and sweat and tears. The others just worked for the ______________. They tell
stories of how every time the Wright brothers went out, they would have to take five ______________
of parts, because that's how many times they would ______________ before supper.
And, eventually, on December 17th, 1903, the Wright brothers took flight, and no one was there to even
______________ it. We found out about it a few days later. And further ______________ that Langley
was motivated by the wrong thing: the day the Wright brothers took flight, he quit. He could have said,
"That's an amazing discovery, guys, and I will improve upon your technology," but he didn't. He wasn't
first, he didn't get ______________, he didn't get famous, so he quit.
People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. If you talk about what you believe, you will
______________ those who believe what you believe.
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But why is it important to attract those who believe what you believe?Something ______________ the
law of diffusion of innovation, if you don't know the ______________ you know the terminology. The
first 2.5% of our population are our innovators. The next 13.5% of our population are our early
______________. The next 34% are your early majority, your late ______________ and your laggards.
The only reason these people buy touch-tone phones is because you can't buy rotary ______________
anymore.
(Laughter)
We all sit at ______________ places at various times on this ______________, but what the law of
diffusion of innovation tells us is that if you want mass-market ______________ or mass-market
acceptance of an idea, you cannot have it until you achieve this ______________ point between 15 and
18 percent market penetration, and then the system tips. I love asking ______________, "What's your
conversion on new business?" They love to tell you, "It's about 10 percent," proudly. Well, you can trip
over 10% of the customers. We all have about 10% who just "______________ it." That's how we
describe them, right? That's like that gut ______________, "Oh, they just get it."
The problem is: How do you find the ones that get it before ______________ business versus the ones
who don't get it? So it's this here, this little ______________ that you have to close, as Jeffrey Moore
calls it, "Crossing the Chasm" -- because, you see, the early majority will not try something until
someone else has tried it first. And these guys, the ______________ and the early adopters, they're
comfortable ______________ those gut decisions. They're more comfortable making those intuitive
decisions that are driven by what they believe about the world and not just what product is
______________. These are the people who stood in ______________ for six hours to buy an iPhone
when they first came out, when you could have bought one off the shelf the next week. These are the
people who spent 40,000 dollars on flat-screen TVs when they first came out, even though the
______________ was substandard. And, by the way, they didn't do it because the technology was so
great; they did it for ______________. It's because they wanted to be first. People don't buy what you
do; they buy ______________ you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe. In fact,
people will do the things that prove what they believe. The reason that person bought the iPhone in the
______________ six hours, stood in line for six hours, was because of what they believed about the
______________, and how they wanted everybody to see them: they were first. People don't buy what
you do; they buy why you do it.
So let me give you a famous example, a famous failure and a famous success of the law of diffusion of
______________. First, the famous failure. It's a ______________ example. As we said before, the
recipe for success is money and the ______________ people and the right market conditions. You
should have success then. Look at TiVo. From the time TiVo _____________ about eight or nine years
ago to this ______________ day, they are the single highest-quality product on the market, hands
______________, there is no dispute. They were extremely ______________. Market conditions were
fantastic. I mean, we use TiVo as verb. I TiVo ______________on my piece-of-junk Time Warner
DVR all the time.
(Laughter)
But TiVo's a commercial failure. They've never made money. And when they went IPO, their stock was
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at about 30 or 40 dollars and then ______________, and it's never traded above 10. In fact, I don't think
it's even traded above six, except for a couple of little spikes.
Because you see, when TiVo ______________ their product, they told us all what they had. They said,
"We have a product that pauses live TV, skips commercials, ______________ live TV and memorizes
your ______________ habits without you even asking." And the cynical majority said, "We don't
believe you. We don't need it. We don't like it. You're scaring us."
What if they had said, "If you're the kind of person who likes to have ______________ control over
every aspect of your life, boy, do we have a product for you. It pauses live TV, skips commercials,
memorizes your viewing habits, etc., etc." People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it, and
what you do ______________ serves as the proof of what you believe.
Now let me give you a successful example of the law of diffusion of innovation. In the summer of 1963,
250,000 people ______________ on the mall in Washington to hear Dr. King speak. They sent out no
______________, and there was no ______________ to check the date. How do you do that? Well, Dr.
King wasn't the only man in America who was a great orator. He wasn't the only man in America who
suffered in a pre-civil ______________ America. In fact, some of his ideas were bad. But he had a
______________. He didn't go around telling people what needed to change in America. He went
around and told people what he ______________. "I believe, I believe, I believe," he told people. And
people who believed what he believed took his ______________, and they made it their own, and they
told people. And some of those people created structures to get the ______________ out to even more
people. And lo and behold, 250,000 people showed up on the ______________ day at the right time to
hear him speak.
How many of them showed up for him? ______________. They showed up for themselves. It's what
they believed about America that ______________ them to travel in a bus for eight hours to stand in
the sun in Washington in the ______________of August. It's what they believed, and it wasn't about
black versus white: 25% of the audience was white.
Dr. King believed that there are two ______________ of laws in this world: those that are made by a
higher ______________ and those that are made by men. And not until all the laws that are made by
men are ______________ with the laws made by the higher authority will we live in a just world. It just
so happened that the Civil Rights Movement was the perfect thing to help him bring his cause to life.
We ______________, not for him, but for ourselves. By the way, he gave the "I have a dream" speech,
not the "I have a plan" speech.
(Laughter)
Listen to ______________ now, with their comprehensive 12-point plans. They're not inspiring
anybody. Because there are leaders and there are those who lead. Leaders ______________ a position
of power or authority, but those who lead inspire us. Whether they're individuals or organizations, we
follow those who lead, not because we have to, but because we want to. We follow those who lead, not
for them, but for ourselves. And it's those who start with "why" that have the ______________ to inspire
those around them or find others who inspire them.
Thank you very much.
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(Applause)
122
Key
https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action#t-168958
How do you explain when things don't go as we assume? Or better, how do you explain when others
are able to achieve things that seem to defy all of the assumptions? For example: Why is Apple so
innovative? Year after year, after year, they're more innovative than all their competition. And yet,
they're just a computer company. They're just like everyone else. They have the same access to the same
talent, the same agencies, the same consultants, the same media. Then why is it that they seem to have
something different? Why is it that Martin Luther King led the Civil Rights Movement? He wasn't the
only man who suffered in pre-civil rights America, and he certainly wasn't the only great orator of the
day. Why him? And why is it that the Wright brothers were able to figure out controlled, powered man
flight when there were certainly other teams who were better qualified, better funded -- and they didn't
achieve powered man flight, and the Wright brothers beat them to it. There's something else at play
here.
About three and a half years ago, I made a discovery. And this discovery profoundly changed my view
on how I thought the world worked, and it even profoundly changed the way in which I operate in it.
As it turns out, there's a pattern. As it turns out, all the great inspiring leaders and organizations in the
world, whether it's Apple or Martin Luther King or the Wright brothers, they all think, act and
communicate the exact same way. And it's the complete opposite to everyone else. All I did was codify
it, and it's probably the world's simplest idea. I call it the golden circle.
Why? How? What? This little idea explains why some organizations and some leaders are able to inspire
where others aren't. Let me define the terms really quickly. Every single person, every single
organization on the planet knows what they do, 100 percent. Some know how they do it, whether you
call it your differentiated value proposition or your proprietary process or your USP. But very, very few
people or organizations know why they do what they do. And by "why" I don't mean "to make a profit."
That's a result. It's always a result. By "why," I mean: What's your purpose? What's your cause? What's
your belief? Why does your organization exist? Why do you get out of bed in the morning? And why
should anyone care? As a result, the way we think, we act, the way we communicate is from the outside
in, it's obvious. We go from the clearest thing to the fuzziest thing. But the inspired leaders and the
inspired organizations -- regardless of their size, regardless of their industry -- all think, act and
communicate from the inside out.
Let me give you an example. I use Apple because they're easy to understand and everybody gets it. If
Apple were like everyone else, a marketing message from them might sound like this: "We make great
computers. They're beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. Want to buy one?" "Meh."
That's how most of us communicate. That's how most marketing and sales are done, that's how we
communicate interpersonally. We say what we do, we say how we're different or better and we expect
some sort of a behavior, a purchase, a vote, something like that. Here's our new law firm: We have the
best lawyers with the biggest clients, we always perform for our clients. Here's our new car: It gets great
gas mileage, it has leather seats. Buy our car. But it's uninspiring.
Here's how Apple actually communicates. "Everything we do, we believe in challenging the status quo.
We believe in thinking differently. The way we challenge the status quo is by making our products
beautifully designed, simple to use and user friendly. We just happen to make great computers. Want
123
to buy one?" Totally different, right? You're ready to buy a computer from me. I just reversed the order
of the information. What it proves to us is that people don't buy what you do; people buy why you do
it.
This explains why every single person in this room is perfectly comfortable buying a computer from
Apple. But we're also perfectly comfortable buying an MP3 player from Apple, or a phone from Apple,
or a DVR from Apple. As I said before, Apple's just a computer company. Nothing distinguishes them
structurally from any of their competitors. Their competitors are equally qualified to make all of these
products. In fact, they tried. A few years ago, Gateway came out with flat-screen TVs. They're eminently
qualified to make flat-screen TVs. They've been making flat-screen monitors for years. Nobody bought
one. Dell came out with MP3 players and PDAs, and they make great quality products, and they can
make perfectly well-designed products -- and nobody bought one. In fact, talking about it now, we can't
even imagine buying an MP3 player from Dell. Why would you buy one from a computer company?
But we do it every day. People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. The goal is not to do
business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe
what you believe.
Here's the best part: None of what I'm telling you is my opinion. It's all grounded in the tenets of biology.
Not psychology, biology. If you look at a cross-section of the human brain, from the top down, the
human brain is actually broken into three major components that correlate perfectly with the golden
circle. Our newest brain, our Homo sapien brain, our neocortex, corresponds with the "what" level. The
neocortex is responsible for all of our rational and analytical thought and language. The middle two
sections make up our limbic brains, and our limbic brains are responsible for all of our feelings, like
trust and loyalty. It's also responsible for all human behavior, all decision-making, and it has no capacity
for language.
In other words, when we communicate from the outside in, yes, people can understand vast amounts of
complicated information like features and benefits and facts and figures. It just doesn't drive behavior.
When we can communicate from the inside out, we're talking directly to the part of the brain that
controls behavior, and then we allow people to rationalize it with the tangible things we say and do.
This is where gut decisions come from. Sometimes you can give somebody all the facts and figures,
and they say, "I know what all the facts and details say, but it just doesn't feel right." Why would we
use that verb, it doesn't "feel" right? Because the part of the brain that controls decision-making doesn't
control language. The best we can muster up is, "I don't know. It just doesn't feel right." Or sometimes
you say you're leading with your heart or soul. I hate to break it to you, those aren't other body parts
controlling your behavior. It's all happening here in your limbic brain, the part of the brain that controls
decision-making and not language.
But if you don't know why you do what you do, and people respond to why you do what you do, then
how will you ever get people to vote for you, or buy something from you, or, more importantly, be loyal
and want to be a part of what it is that you do. The goal is not just to sell to people who need what you
have; the goal is to sell to people who believe what you believe. The goal is not just to hire people who
need a job; it's to hire people who believe what you believe. I always say that, you know, if you hire
people just because they can do a job, they'll work for your money, but if they believe what you believe,
they'll work for you with blood and sweat and tears. Nowhere else is there a better example than with
the Wright brothers.
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Most people don't know about Samuel Pierpont Langley. And back in the early 20th century, the pursuit
of powered man flight was like the dot com of the day. Everybody was trying it. And Samuel Pierpont
Langley had, what we assume, to be the recipe for success. Even now, you ask people, "Why did your
product or why did your company fail?" and people always give you the same permutation of the same
three things: under-capitalized, the wrong people, bad market conditions. It's always the same three
things, so let's explore that. Samuel Pierpont Langley was given 50,000 dollars by the War Department
to figure out this flying machine. Money was no problem. He held a seat at Harvard and worked at the
Smithsonian and was extremely well-connected; he knew all the big minds of the day. He hired the best
minds money could find and the market conditions were fantastic. The New York Times followed him
around everywhere, and everyone was rooting for Langley. Then how come we've never heard of
Samuel Pierpont Langley?
A few hundred miles away in Dayton, Ohio, Orville and Wilbur Wright, they had none of what we
consider to be the recipe for success. They had no money; they paid for their dream with the proceeds
from their bicycle shop. Not a single person on the Wright brothers' team had a college education, not
even Orville or Wilbur. And The New York Times followed them around nowhere.
The difference was, Orville and Wilbur were driven by a cause, by a purpose, by a belief. They believed
that if they could figure out this flying machine, it'll change the course of the world. Samuel Pierpont
Langley was different. He wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be famous. He was in pursuit of the
result. He was in pursuit of the riches. And lo and behold, look what happened. The people who believed
in the Wright brothers' dream worked with them with blood and sweat and tears. The others just worked
for the paycheck. They tell stories of how every time the Wright brothers went out, they would have to
take five sets of parts, because that's how many times they would crash before supper.
And, eventually, on December 17th, 1903, the Wright brothers took flight, and no one was there to even
experience it. We found out about it a few days later. And further proof that Langley was motivated by
the wrong thing: the day the Wright brothers took flight, he quit. He could have said, "That's an amazing
discovery, guys, and I will improve upon your technology," but he didn't. He wasn't first, he didn't get
rich, he didn't get famous, so he quit.
People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it. If you talk about what you believe, you will
attract those who believe what you believe.
But why is it important to attract those who believe what you believe? Something called the law of
diffusion of innovation, if you don't know the law, you know the terminology. The first 2.5% of our
population are our innovators. The next 13.5% of our population are our early adopters. The next 34%
are your early majority, your late majority and your laggards. The only reason these people buy touchtone phones is because you can't buy rotary phones anymore.
(Laughter)
We all sit at various places at various times on this scale, but what the law of diffusion of innovation
tells us is that if you want mass-market success or mass-market acceptance of an idea, you cannot have
it until you achieve this tipping point between 15 and 18 percent market penetration, and then the system
tips. I love asking businesses, "What's your conversion on new business?" They love to tell you, "It's
about 10 percent," proudly. Well, you can trip over 10% of the customers. We all have about 10% who
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just "get it." That's how we describe them, right? That's like that gut feeling, "Oh, they just get it."
The problem is: How do you find the ones that get it before doing business versus the ones who don't
get it? So it's this here, this little gap that you have to close, as Jeffrey Moore calls it, "Crossing the
Chasm" -- because, you see, the early majority will not try something until someone else has tried it
first. And these guys, the innovators and the early adopters, they're comfortable making those gut
decisions. They're more comfortable making those intuitive decisions that are driven by what they
believe about the world and not just what product is available. These are the people who stood in line
for six hours to buy an iPhone when they first came out, when you could have bought one off the shelf
the next week. These are the people who spent 40,000 dollars on flat-screen TVs when they first came
out, even though the technology was substandard. And, by the way, they didn't do it because the
technology was so great; they did it for themselves. It's because they wanted to be first. People don't
buy what you do; they buy why you do it and what you do simply proves what you believe. In fact,
people will do the things that prove what they believe. The reason that person bought the iPhone in the
first six hours, stood in line for six hours, was because of what they believed about the world, and how
they wanted everybody to see them: they were first. People don't buy what you do; they buy why you
do it.
So let me give you a famous example, a famous failure and a famous success of the law of diffusion of
innovation. First, the famous failure. It's a commercial example. As we said before, the recipe for
success is money and the right people and the right market conditions. You should have success then.
Look at TiVo. From the time TiVo came out about eight or nine years ago to this current day, they are
the single highest-quality product on the market, hands down, there is no dispute. They were extremely
well-funded. Market conditions were fantastic. I mean, we use TiVo as verb. I TiVo stuff on my pieceof-junk Time Warner DVR all the time.
(Laughter)
But TiVo's a commercial failure. They've never made money. And when they went IPO, their stock was
at about 30 or 40 dollars and then plummeted, and it's never traded above 10. In fact, I don't think it's
even traded above six, except for a couple of little spikes.
Because you see, when TiVo launched their product, they told us all what they had. They said, "We
have a product that pauses live TV, skips commercials, rewinds live TV and memorizes your viewing
habits without you even asking." And the cynical majority said, "We don't believe you. We don't need
it. We don't like it. You're scaring us."
What if they had said, "If you're the kind of person who likes to have total control over every aspect of
your life, boy, do we have a product for you. It pauses live TV, skips commercials, memorizes your
viewing habits, etc., etc." People don't buy what you do; they buy why you do it, and what you do
simply serves as the proof of what you believe.
Now let me give you a successful example of the law of diffusion of innovation. In the summer of 1963,
250,000 people showed up on the mall in Washington to hear Dr. King speak. They sent out no
invitations, and there was no website to check the date. How do you do that? Well, Dr. King wasn't the
only man in America who was a great orator. He wasn't the only man in America who suffered in a precivil rights America. In fact, some of his ideas were bad. But he had a gift. He didn't go around telling
126
people what needed to change in America. He went around and told people what he believed. "I believe,
I believe, I believe," he told people. And people who believed what he believed took his cause, and they
made it their own, and they told people. And some of those people created structures to get the word
out to even more people. And lo and behold, 250,000 people showed up on the right day at the right
time to hear him speak.
How many of them showed up for him? Zero. They showed up for themselves. It's what they believed
about America that got them to travel in a bus for eight hours to stand in the sun in Washington in the
middle of August. It's what they believed, and it wasn't about black versus white: 25% of the audience
was white.
Dr. King believed that there are two types of laws in this world: those that are made by a higher authority
and those that are made by men. And not until all the laws that are made by men are consistent with the
laws made by the higher authority will we live in a just world. It just so happened that the Civil Rights
Movement was the perfect thing to help him bring his cause to life. We followed, not for him, but for
ourselves. By the way, he gave the "I have a dream" speech, not the "I have a plan" speech.
(Laughter)
Listen to politicians now, with their comprehensive 12-point plans. They're not inspiring anybody.
Because there are leaders and there are those who lead. Leaders hold a position of power or authority,
but those who lead inspire us. Whether they're individuals or organizations, we follow those who lead,
not because we have to, but because we want to. We follow those who lead, not for them, but for
ourselves. And it's those who start with "why" that have the ability to inspire those around them or find
others who inspire them.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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14. Tim Urban - INSIDE THE MIND OF A MASTER PROCASTINATOR
Fill in the blanks
https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator
So in college, I was a government ______________, which means I had to write a lot of papers. Now,
when a ______________ student writes a paper, they might ______________ the work out a little like
this. So, you know -(Laughter)
you get started maybe a little ______________, but you get enough done in the first week that, with
some heavier days later on, everything gets done, things stay ______________.
(Laughter)
And I would want to do that like that. That would be the plan. I would have it all ______________ to
go, but then, actually, the paper would ______________, and then I would kind of do this.
(Laughter)
And that would happen every single paper.
But then came my 90-page ______________thesis, a paper you're supposed to spend a year on. And I
knew for a paper like that, my normal work ______________ was not an option. It was way too big a
project. So I ______________ things out, and I decided I kind of had to go something like this. This is
how the year would go. So I'd start off light, and I'd ______________ it up in the middle months, and
then at the end, I would kick it up into high gear just like a little ______________. How hard could it
be to walk up the stairs? No big deal, right?
But then, the ______________ thing happened. Those first few months? They came and went, and I
couldn't ______________ do stuff. So we had an awesome new revised plan.
(Laughter)
And then -(Laughter)
But then those middle months actually went by, and I didn't really write ______________, and so we
were here. And then two months ______________ into one month, which turned into two weeks. And
one day I woke up with three days until the ______________, still not having written a word, and so I
did the only thing I could: I wrote 90 pages over 72 hours, ______________ not one but two all-nighters
-- humans are not supposed to pull two all-nighters -- sprinted across campus, dove in ______________
motion, and got it in just at the deadline.
I thought that was the end of everything. But a week later I ______________ a call, and it's the school.
And they say, "Is this Tim Urban?" And I say, "Yeah." And they say, "We need to talk about your
______________." And I say, "OK." And they say, "It's the best one we've ever seen."
128
(Laughter)
(Applause)
That did not happen.
(Laughter)
It was a very, very bad thesis.
(Laughter)
I just wanted to enjoy that one moment when all of you thought, "This guy is amazing!"
(Laughter)
No, no, it was very, very bad. Anyway, today I'm a writer-blogger guy. I write the ______________
Wait But Why. And a couple of years ago, I decided to write about procrastination. My
______________ has always perplexed the non-procrastinators around me, and I wanted to explain to
the non-procrastinators of the world what ______________ in the heads of procrastinators, and why
we are the ______________ we are. Now, I had a hypothesis that the brains of procrastinators were
actually different than the brains of other people. And to ______________ this, I found an MRI lab that
actually let me ______________ both my brain and the brain of a proven non-procrastinator, so I could
compare them. I actually brought them here to show you today. I want you to take a look
______________ to see if you can notice a difference. I know that if you're not a trained brain
______________, it's not that obvious, but just take a look, OK? So here's the brain of a nonprocrastinator.
(Laughter)
Now ... here's my brain.
(Laughter)
There is a ______________. Both brains have a Rational Decision-Maker in them, but the
procrastinator's brain also has an Instant Gratification Monkey. Now, what does this mean for the
procrastinator? Well, it means everything's ______________ until this happens.
[This is a perfect time to get some work done.] [Nope!]
So the Rational Decision-Maker will make the rational decision to do something ______________, but
the Monkey doesn't like that plan, so he actually takes the ______________, and he says, "Actually,
let's read the entire Wikipedia page of the Nancy Kerrigan/ Tonya Harding scandal, because I just
remembered that that happened.
(Laughter)
Then -(Laughter)
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Then we're going to go over to the ______________, to see if there's anything new in there since 10
minutes ago. After that, we're going to go on a YouTube spiral that ______________ with videos of
Richard Feynman talking about magnets and ends much, much ______________ with us watching
interviews with Justin Bieber's mom.
(Laughter)
"All of that's going to take a ______________
for any work today. Sorry!"
, so we're not going to really have room on the schedule
(Sigh)
Now, what is going on here? The Instant Gratification Monkey does not seem like a guy you want
______________ the wheel. He lives entirely in the present moment. He has no ______________ of
the past, no knowledge of the future, and he only cares about two things: easy and fun.
Now, in the animal world, that ______________ fine. If you're a dog and you spend your whole life
doing nothing other than easy and fun things, you're a huge success!
(Laughter)
And to the Monkey, humans are just another animal species. You have to keep ______________, wellfed and propagating into the next generation, which in tribal ______________ might have worked OK.
But, if you haven't noticed, now we're not in tribal times. We're in an ______________ civilization, and
the Monkey does not know what that is. Which is why we have another guy in our brain, the Rational
Decision-Maker, who gives us the ability to do things no other animal can do. We can ______________
the future. We can see the big picture. We can make ______________ plans. And he wants to take all
of that into account. And he wants to just have us do whatever makes ______________ to be doing
right now. Now, sometimes it makes sense to be doing things that are easy and fun, like when you're
having ______________ or going to bed or enjoying well-earned leisure time. That's why there's an
______________. Sometimes they agree. But other times, it makes much more sense to be doing things
that are harder and less ______________, for the sake of the big picture. And that's when we have a
conflict. And for the procrastinator, that conflict tends to end a ______________ way every time,
leaving him spending a lot of time in this orange ______________, an easy and fun place that's entirely
out of the Makes Sense circle. I call it the Dark Playground.
(Laughter)
Now, the Dark Playground is a place that all of you procrastinators out there know very well. It's where
leisure ______________ happen at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening. The
fun you have in the Dark Playground isn't actually fun, because it's completely ______________, and
the air is filled with guilt, dread, anxiety, self-hatred -- all of those good procrastinator feelings. And
the question is, in this ______________, with the Monkey behind the wheel, how does the
procrastinator ever get himself over here to this ______________ zone, a less pleasant place, but where
really ______________ things happen?
Well, turns out the procrastinator has a guardian ______________, someone who's always looking
down on him and watching over him in his darkest ______________ -- someone called the Panic
Monster.
130
(Laughter)
Now, the Panic Monster is dormant most of the time, but he suddenly ______________ anytime a
deadline gets too close or there's danger of public embarrassment, a career ______________ or some
other scary consequence. And ______________, he's the only thing the Monkey is terrified of. Now,
he became very ______________ in my life pretty recently, because the people of TED reached out to
me about six months ago and ______________ me to do a TED Talk.
(Laughter)
Now, of course, I said yes. It's always been a dream of mine to have done a TED Talk in the past.
(Laughter)
(Applause) But in the middle of all this ______________, the Rational Decision-Maker seemed to have
something else on his mind. He was saying, "Are we ______________ on what we just accepted? Do
we get what's going to be now ______________ one day in the future? We need to sit down and work
on this right now." And the Monkey said, "Totally agree, but let's just open Google Earth and
______________ in to the bottom of India, like 200 feet above the ground, and scroll up for two and a
half hours til we get to the top of the country, so we can get a ______________ feel for India."
(Laughter)
So that's what we did that day.
(Laughter)
As six months turned into four and then two and then one, the people of TED decided to
______________ the speakers. And I opened up the website, and there was my face ______________
right back at me. And guess who woke up?
(Laughter)
So the Panic Monster starts losing his mind, and a few seconds later, the whole system's in mayhem.
(Laughter)
And the Monkey -- remember, he's ______________ of the Panic Monster -- boom, he's up the tree!
And finally, finally, the Rational Decision-Maker can take the wheel and I can start working on the
talk.
Now, the Panic Monster explains all kinds of pretty ______________ procrastinator behavior, like how
someone like me could spend two weeks unable to start the ______________ sentence of a paper, and
then miraculously find the unbelievable work ethic to stay up all night and write eight pages. And this
______________ situation, with the three characters -- this is the procrastinator's system. It's not pretty,
but in the end, it works. This is what I decided to write about on the blog a couple of years ago.
When I did, I was ______________ by the response. Literally thousands of emails came in, from all
different kinds of people from all over the world, doing all different kinds of things. These are people
who were nurses, ______________, painters, engineers and lots and lots of PhD students.
131
(Laughter)
And they were all writing, saying the same thing: "I have this problem too." But what ______________
me was the contrast between the light tone of the post and the heaviness of these emails. These people
were writing with ______________ frustration about what procrastination had done to their lives, about
what this Monkey had done to them. And I thought about this, and I said, well, if the procrastinator's
______________ works, then what's going on? Why are all of these people in such a dark
______________?
Well, it turns out that there's two kinds of procrastination. Everything I've talked about today, the
______________ I've given, they all have deadlines. And when there's deadlines, the effects of
procrastination are contained to the short term because the Panic Monster gets ______________. But
there's a second kind of procrastination that happens in situations when there is no deadline. So if you
wanted a ______________ where you're a self-starter -- something in the arts, something
entrepreneurial -- there's no deadlines on those things at first, because nothing's happening, not until
you've gone out and done the ______________ work to get momentum, get things going. There's also
all kinds of important things ______________ of your career that don't involve any deadlines, like
seeing your family or exercising and taking care of your health, working on your ______________ or
getting out of a relationship that isn't working.
Now if the procrastinator's only mechanism of doing these hard things is the Panic Monster, that's a
problem, because in all of these non-deadline ______________, the Panic Monster doesn't show up. He
has nothing to ______________ for, so the effects of procrastination, they're not contained; they just
______________ outward forever. And it's this long-term kind of procrastination that's much less
visible and much less talked about than the funnier, short-term deadline-based kind. It's usually suffered
quietly and ______________. And it can be the source of a huge amount of long-term unhappiness, and
______________. And I thought, that's why those people are emailing, and that's why they're in such a
bad place. It's not that they're ______________ for some project. It's that long-term procrastination has
made them feel like a spectator, at times, in their own lives. The ______________is not that they
couldn't achieve their dreams; it's that they weren't even able to start ______________them.
So I read these emails and I had a little bit of an epiphany -- that I don't think non-procrastinators
______________. That's right -- I think all of you are procrastinators. Now, you might not all be a
______________, like some of us,
(Laughter)
and some of you may have a ______________ relationship with deadlines, but remember: the Monkey's
sneakiest ______________ is when the deadlines aren't there.
Now, I want to show you one last thing. I call this a Life Calendar. That's one ______________ for
every week of a 90-year life. That's not that many boxes, especially since we've already used a
______________ of those. So I think we need to all take a long, hard look at that ______________. We
need to think about what we're really procrastinating on, because everyone is procrastinating on
something in life. We need to stay ______________ of the Instant Gratification Monkey. That's a
______________ for all of us. And because there's not that many boxes on there, it's a job that should
probably start today.
Well, maybe not today, but ...
132
(Laughter)
You know. Sometime soon.
Thank you.
(Applause)
133
Key
https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_master_procrastinator
So in college, I was a government major, which means I had to write a lot of papers. Now, when a
normal student writes a paper, they might spread the work out a little like this. So, you know -(Laughter)
you get started maybe a little slowly, but you get enough done in the first week that, with some heavier
days later on, everything gets done, things stay civil.
(Laughter)
And I would want to do that like that. That would be the plan. I would have it all ready to go, but then,
actually, the paper would come along, and then I would kind of do this.
(Laughter)
And that would happen every single paper.
But then came my 90-page senior thesis, a paper you're supposed to spend a year on. And I knew for a
paper like that, my normal work flow was not an option. It was way too big a project. So I planned
things out, and I decided I kind of had to go something like this. This is how the year would go. So I'd
start off light, and I'd bump it up in the middle months, and then at the end, I would kick it up into high
gear just like a little staircase. How hard could it be to walk up the stairs? No big deal, right?
But then, the funniest thing happened. Those first few months? They came and went, and I couldn't
quite do stuff. So we had an awesome new revised plan.
(Laughter)
And then -(Laughter)
But then those middle months actually went by, and I didn't really write words, and so we were here.
And then two months turned into one month, which turned into two weeks. And one day I woke up with
three days until the deadline, still not having written a word, and so I did the only thing I could: I wrote
90 pages over 72 hours, pulling not one but two all-nighters -- humans are not supposed to pull two allnighters -- sprinted across campus, dove in slow motion, and got it in just at the deadline.
I thought that was the end of everything. But a week later I get a call, and it's the school. And they say,
"Is this Tim Urban?" And I say, "Yeah." And they say, "We need to talk about your thesis." And I say,
"OK." And they say, "It's the best one we've ever seen."
(Laughter)
(Applause)
That did not happen.
134
(Laughter)
It was a very, very bad thesis.
(Laughter)
I just wanted to enjoy that one moment when all of you thought, "This guy is amazing!"
(Laughter)
No, no, it was very, very bad. Anyway, today I'm a writer-blogger guy. I write the blog Wait But Why.
And a couple of years ago, I decided to write about procrastination. My behavior has always perplexed
the non-procrastinators around me, and I wanted to explain to the non-procrastinators of the world what
goes on in the heads of procrastinators, and why we are the way we are. Now, I had a hypothesis that
the brains of procrastinators were actually different than the brains of other people. And to test this, I
found an MRI lab that actually let me scan both my brain and the brain of a proven non-procrastinator,
so I could compare them. I actually brought them here to show you today. I want you to take a look
carefully to see if you can notice a difference. I know that if you're not a trained brain expert, it's not
that obvious, but just take a look, OK? So here's the brain of a non-procrastinator.
(Laughter)
Now ... here's my brain.
(Laughter)
There is a difference. Both brains have a Rational Decision-Maker in them, but the procrastinator's brain
also has an Instant Gratification Monkey. Now, what does this mean for the procrastinator? Well, it
means everything's fine until this happens.
[This is a perfect time to get some work done.] [Nope!]
So the Rational Decision-Maker will make the rational decision to do something productive, but the
Monkey doesn't like that plan, so he actually takes the wheel, and he says, "Actually, let's read the entire
Wikipedia page of the Nancy Kerrigan/ Tonya Harding scandal, because I just remembered that that
happened.
(Laughter)
Then -(Laughter)
Then we're going to go over to the fridge, to see if there's anything new in there since 10 minutes ago.
After that, we're going to go on a YouTube spiral that starts with videos of Richard Feynman talking
about magnets and ends much, much later with us watching interviews with Justin Bieber's mom.
(Laughter)
"All of that's going to take a while, so we're not going to really have room on the schedule for any work
135
today. Sorry!"
(Sigh)
Now, what is going on here? The Instant Gratification Monkey does not seem like a guy you want
behind the wheel. He lives entirely in the present moment. He has no memory of the past, no knowledge
of the future, and he only cares about two things: easy and fun.
Now, in the animal world, that works fine. If you're a dog and you spend your whole life doing nothing
other than easy and fun things, you're a huge success!
(Laughter)
And to the Monkey, humans are just another animal species. You have to keep well-slept, well-fed and
propagating into the next generation, which in tribal times might have worked OK. But, if you haven't
noticed, now we're not in tribal times. We're in an advanced civilization, and the Monkey does not know
what that is. Which is why we have another guy in our brain, the Rational Decision-Maker, who gives
us the ability to do things no other animal can do. We can visualize the future. We can see the big
picture. We can make long-term plans. And he wants to take all of that into account. And he wants to
just have us do whatever makes sense to be doing right now. Now, sometimes it makes sense to be
doing things that are easy and fun, like when you're having dinner or going to bed or enjoying wellearned leisure time. That's why there's an overlap. Sometimes they agree. But other times, it makes
much more sense to be doing things that are harder and less pleasant, for the sake of the big picture.
And that's when we have a conflict. And for the procrastinator, that conflict tends to end a certain way
every time, leaving him spending a lot of time in this orange zone, an easy and fun place that's entirely
out of the Makes Sense circle. I call it the Dark Playground.
(Laughter)
Now, the Dark Playground is a place that all of you procrastinators out there know very well. It's where
leisure activities happen at times when leisure activities are not supposed to be happening. The fun you
have in the Dark Playground isn't actually fun, because it's completely unearned, and the air is filled
with guilt, dread, anxiety, self-hatred -- all of those good procrastinator feelings. And the question is,
in this situation, with the Monkey behind the wheel, how does the procrastinator ever get himself over
here to this blue zone, a less pleasant place, but where really important things happen?
Well, turns out the procrastinator has a guardian angel, someone who's always looking down on him
and watching over him in his darkest moments -- someone called the Panic Monster.
(Laughter)
Now, the Panic Monster is dormant most of the time, but he suddenly wakes up anytime a deadline gets
too close or there's danger of public embarrassment, a career disaster or some other scary consequence.
And importantly, he's the only thing the Monkey is terrified of. Now, he became very relevant in my
life pretty recently, because the people of TED reached out to me about six months ago and invited me
to do a TED Talk.
(Laughter)
Now, of course, I said yes. It's always been a dream of mine to have done a TED Talk in the past.
136
(Laughter)
(Applause) But in the middle of all this excitement, the Rational Decision-Maker seemed to have
something else on his mind. He was saying, "Are we clear on what we just accepted? Do we get what's
going to be now happening one day in the future? We need to sit down and work on this right now."
And the Monkey said, "Totally agree, but let's just open Google Earth and zoom in to the bottom of
India, like 200 feet above the ground, and scroll up for two and a half hours til we get to the top of the
country, so we can get a better feel for India."
(Laughter)
So that's what we did that day.
(Laughter)
As six months turned into four and then two and then one, the people of TED decided to release the
speakers. And I opened up the website, and there was my face staring right back at me. And guess who
woke up?
(Laughter)
So the Panic Monster starts losing his mind, and a few seconds later, the whole system's in mayhem.
(Laughter)
And the Monkey -- remember, he's terrified of the Panic Monster -- boom, he's up the tree! And finally,
finally, the Rational Decision-Maker can take the wheel and I can start working on the talk.
Now, the Panic Monster explains all kinds of pretty insane procrastinator behavior, like how someone
like me could spend two weeks unable to start the opening sentence of a paper, and then miraculously
find the unbelievable work ethic to stay up all night and write eight pages. And this entire situation,
with the three characters -- this is the procrastinator's system. It's not pretty, but in the end, it works.
This is what I decided to write about on the blog a couple of years ago.
When I did, I was amazed by the response. Literally thousands of emails came in, from all different
kinds of people from all over the world, doing all different kinds of things. These are people who were
nurses, bankers, painters, engineers and lots and lots of PhD students.
(Laughter)
And they were all writing, saying the same thing: "I have this problem too." But what struck me was
the contrast between the light tone of the post and the heaviness of these emails. These people were
writing with intense frustration about what procrastination had done to their lives, about what this
Monkey had done to them. And I thought about this, and I said, well, if the procrastinator's system
works, then what's going on? Why are all of these people in such a dark place?
Well, it turns out that there's two kinds of procrastination. Everything I've talked about today, the
examples I've given, they all have deadlines. And when there's deadlines, the effects of procrastination
are contained to the short term because the Panic Monster gets involved. But there's a second kind of
procrastination that happens in situations when there is no deadline. So if you wanted a career where
137
you're a self-starter -- something in the arts, something entrepreneurial -- there's no deadlines on those
things at first, because nothing's happening, not until you've gone out and done the hard work to get
momentum, get things going. There's also all kinds of important things outside of your career that don't
involve any deadlines, like seeing your family or exercising and taking care of your health, working on
your relationship or getting out of a relationship that isn't working.
Now if the procrastinator's only mechanism of doing these hard things is the Panic Monster, that's a
problem, because in all of these non-deadline situations, the Panic Monster doesn't show up. He has
nothing to wake up for, so the effects of procrastination, they're not contained; they just extend outward
forever. And it's this long-term kind of procrastination that's much less visible and much less talked
about than the funnier, short-term deadline-based kind. It's usually suffered quietly and privately. And
it can be the source of a huge amount of long-term unhappiness, and regrets. And I thought, that's why
those people are emailing, and that's why they're in such a bad place. It's not that they're cramming for
some project. It's that long-term procrastination has made them feel like a spectator, at times, in their
own lives. The frustration is not that they couldn't achieve their dreams; it's that they weren't even able
to start chasing them.
So I read these emails and I had a little bit of an epiphany -- that I don't think non-procrastinators exist.
That's right -- I think all of you are procrastinators. Now, you might not all be a mess, like some of us,
(Laughter)
and some of you may have a healthy relationship with deadlines, but remember: the Monkey's sneakiest
trick is when the deadlines aren't there.
Now, I want to show you one last thing. I call this a Life Calendar. That's one box for every week of a
90-year life. That's not that many boxes, especially since we've already used a bunch of those. So I think
we need to all take a long, hard look at that calendar. We need to think about what we're really
procrastinating on, because everyone is procrastinating on something in life. We need to stay aware of
the Instant Gratification Monkey. That's a job for all of us. And because there's not that many boxes on
there, it's a job that should probably start today.
Well, maybe not today, but ...
(Laughter)
You know. Sometime soon.
Thank you.
(Applause)
138
15. Adam Alter - WHY OUR SCREENS MAKE US LESS UNHAPPY
Fill in the blanks
https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_alter_why_our_screens_make_us_less_happy
So, a few years ago I heard an interesting ______________. Apparently, the head of a large pet food
company would go into the annual shareholder's ______________ with can of dog food. And he would
eat the can of dog food. And this was his way of ______________ them that if it was good enough for
him, it was good enough for their pets. This strategy is now known as "dogfooding," and it's a
______________ strategy in the business world. It doesn't mean everyone goes in and eats dog food,
but businesspeople will use their own products to ______________ that they feel -- that they're
confident in them. Now, this is a widespread practice, but I think what's really interesting is when you
find ______________ to this rule, when you find cases of businesses or people in businesses who don't
use their own products. Turns out there's one ______________ where this happens in a common way,
in a pretty ______________ way, and that is the screen-based tech industry.
So, in 2010, Steve Jobs, when he was releasing the iPad, ______________ the iPad as a device that was
"extraordinary." "The best browsing experience you've ever had; way better than a laptop, way better
than a smartphone. It's an ______________ experience." A couple of months later, he was approached
by a ______________ from the New York Times, and they had a long phone call. At the end of the call,
the journalist ______________ in a question that seemed like a sort of softball. He said to him, "Your
kids must love the iPad." There's an obvious ______________ to this, but what Jobs said really
staggered the journalist. He was very ______________, because he said, "They haven't used it. We
______________how much technology our kids use at home."
This is a very common thing in the tech world. In fact, there's a school quite near Silicon Valley called
the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, and they don't ______________ screens until the eighth grade.
What's really interesting about the school is that 75 percent of the kids who go there have parents who
are ______________ Silicon Valley tech execs. So when I heard about this, I thought it was interesting
and surprising, and it ______________ me to consider what screens were doing to me and to my family
and the people I loved, and to people at ______________.
So for the last five years, as a professor of ______________ and psychology, I've been studying the
effect of ______________ on our lives. And I want to start by just focusing on how much time they
take from us, and then we can talk about what that time ______________ like. What I'm showing you
here is the average 24-hour workday at three different points in ______________: 2007 -- 10 years ago
-- 2015 and then data that I collected, actually, only last week. And a lot of things haven't changed all
that much. We sleep ______________ seven-and-a-half to eight hours a day; some people say that's
declined slightly, but it hasn't changed much. We work eight-and-a-half to nine hours a day. We
______________ in survival activities -- these are things like eating and ______________ and looking
after kids -- about three hours a day.
That ______________ this white space. That's our personal time. That space is incredibly important to
us. That's the space where we do things that make us ______________. That's where hobbies happen,
where we have ______________ relationships, where we really think about our lives, where we get
______________, where we zoom back and try to work out whether our lives have been meaningful.
We get some of that from ______________ as well, but when people look back on their lives and
______________ what their lives have been like at the end of their lives, you look at the
______________ things they say -- they are talking about those ______________ that happen in that
white ______________ space. So it's sacred; it's important to us.
139
Now, what I'm going to do is show you how much of that space is taken up by screens _____________
time. In 2007, this much. That was the year that Apple introduced the first iPhone. Eight years later,
this much. Now, this much. That's how much time we ______________ of that free time in front of our
screens. This yellow area, this thin sliver, is where the magic happens. That's where your
______________ lives. And right now, it's in a very small ______________.
So what do we do about this? Well, the first question is: What does that red ______________ look
like? Now, of course, screens are miraculous in a lot of ways. I live in New York, a lot of my family
______________ in Australia, and I have a one-year-old son. The way I've been able to introduce them
to him is with screens. I couldn't have done that 15 or 20 years ago in ______________ the same way.
So there's a lot of good that ______________ from them.
One thing you can do is ask yourself: What goes on during that time? How ______________ are the
apps that we're using? And some are enriching. If you stop people while they're using them and say,
"Tell us how you feel ______________ now," they say they feel pretty good about these apps -- those
that focus on relaxation, exercise, weather, ______________, education and health. They spend an
average of nine minutes a day on each of these. These apps make them much less happy. About half the
people, when you ______________ them and say, "How do you feel?" say they don't feel good about
using them. What's interesting about these -- ______________, social networking, gaming,
entertainment, news, web ______________ -- people spend 27 minutes a day on each of these. We're
spending three times longer on the apps that don't make us happy. That doesn't seem very
______________.
One of the reasons we spend so much time on these apps that make us unhappy is they ______________
us of stopping cues. Stopping cues were everywhere in the 20th century. They were baked into
everything we did. A stopping cue is basically a ______________ that it's time to move on, to do
something new, to do something different. And -- think about newspapers; eventually you get to the
end, you ______________ the newspaper away, you put it aside. The same with magazines, books -you get to the end of a ______________, prompts you to consider whether you want to continue. You
watched a show on TV, eventually the show would end, and then you'd have a week until the next one
came. There were stopping ______________ everywhere. But the way we consume media today is such
that there are no stopping cues. The news feed just rolls on, and everything's ______________: Twitter,
Facebook, Instagram, email, text ______________, the news. And when you do ______________ all
sorts of other sources, you can just keep going on and on and on.
So, we can get a cue about what to do from Western Europe, where they seem to have a number of
pretty good ideas in the ______________. Here's one example. This is a Dutch design
______________. And what they've done is rigged the desks to the ______________. And at 6pm every
day, it doesn't matter who you're emailing or what you're doing, the desks ______________ to the
ceiling.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Four days a week, the space turns into a yoga ______________ , one day a week, into a dance club.
It's really ______________ to you which ones you stick around for. But this is a great stopping rule,
because it means at the end of the day, everything stops, there's no way to work. At Daimler, the German
car company, they've got another great______________. When you go on vacation, instead of saying,
"This person's on vacation, they'll get ______________ to you eventually," they say, "This person's on
vacation, so we've ______________ your email. This person will never see the email you just sent."
140
(Laughter)
"You can email back in a couple of weeks, or you can email someone else."
(Laughter)
And so -(Applause)
You can imagine what that's like. You go on ______________, and you're actually on vacation. The
people who work at this company feel that they actually get a ______________ from work.
But of course, that doesn't tell us much about what we should do at home in our own lives, so I want to
______________ some suggestions. It's easy to say, between 5 and 6pm, I'm going to not use my phone.
The problem is, 5 and 6pm looks different on ______________ days. I think a far better strategy is to
say, I do certain things every day, there are certain ______________ that happen every day, like eating
dinner. Sometimes I'll be alone, sometimes with other people, sometimes in a restaurant, sometimes at
home, but the ______________that I've adopted is: I will never use my phone at the table. It's far away,
as far away as possible. Because we're really bad at resisting ______________. But when you have a
stopping cue that, every time dinner begins, my phone goes far away, you avoid temptation all
together.
At first, it hurts. I had massive FOMO.
(Laughter)
I struggled.
But what happens is, you get used to it. You ______________ the withdrawal the same way you would
from a drug, and what happens is, life becomes more ______________, richer, more interesting -- you
have better conversations. You really ______________ with the people who are there with you. I think
it's a fantastic strategy, and we know it works, because when people do this -- and I've ______________
a lot of people who have tried this -- it expands. They feel so good about it, they start doing it for the
first hour of the day in the ______________. They start putting their phones on ______________ mode
on the weekend. That way, your phone remains a ______________, but it's no longer a phone. It's a
really powerful idea, and we know people feel much better about their ______________ when they do
this.
So what's the take ______________ here? Screens are miraculous; I've already said that, and I feel that
it's true. But the way we use them is a lot like driving ______________ a really fast, long road, and
you're in a car where the accelerator is mashed to the floor, it's kind of hard to ______________ the
brake pedal. You've got a choice. You can either glide by, past, say, the beautiful ocean
______________ and take snaps out the window -- that's the easy thing to do -- or you can go
______________ of your way to move the car to the side of the road, to push that brake pedal, to get
out, take off your shoes and socks, take a ______________ of steps onto the sand, feel what the sand
feels like under your feet, walk to the ocean, and let the ocean ______________ at your ankles. Your
life will be richer and more meaningful because you ______________ in that experience, and because
you've left your ______________ in the car.
Thank you.
(Applause)
141
142
Key
https://www.ted.com/talks/adam_alter_why_our_screens_make_us_less_happy
So, a few years ago I heard an interesting rumor. Apparently, the head of a large pet food company
would go into the annual shareholder's meeting with can of dog food. And he would eat the can of dog
food. And this was his way of convincing them that if it was good enough for him, it was good enough
for their pets. This strategy is now known as "dogfooding," and it's a common strategy in the business
world. It doesn't mean everyone goes in and eats dog food, but businesspeople will use their own
products to demonstrate that they feel -- that they're confident in them. Now, this is a widespread
practice, but I think what's really interesting is when you find exceptions to this rule, when you find
cases of businesses or people in businesses who don't use their own products. Turns out there's one
industry where this happens in a common way, in a pretty regular way, and that is the screen-based tech
industry.
So, in 2010, Steve Jobs, when he was releasing the iPad, described the iPad as a device that was
"extraordinary." "The best browsing experience you've ever had; way better than a laptop, way better
than a smartphone. It's an incredible experience." A couple of months later, he was approached by a
journalist from the New York Times, and they had a long phone call. At the end of the call, the journalist
threw in a question that seemed like a sort of softball. He said to him, "Your kids must love the iPad."
There's an obvious answer to this, but what Jobs said really staggered the journalist. He was very
surprised, because he said, "They haven't used it. We limit how much technology our kids use at
home."
This is a very common thing in the tech world. In fact, there's a school quite near Silicon Valley called
the Waldorf School of the Peninsula, and they don't introduce screens until the eighth grade. What's
really interesting about the school is that 75 percent of the kids who go there have parents who are highlevel Silicon Valley tech execs. So when I heard about this, I thought it was interesting and surprising,
and it pushed me to consider what screens were doing to me and to my family and the people I loved,
and to people at large.
So for the last five years, as a professor of business and psychology, I've been studying the effect of
screens on our lives. And I want to start by just focusing on how much time they take from us, and then
we can talk about what that time looks like. What I'm showing you here is the average 24-hour workday
at three different points in history: 2007 -- 10 years ago -- 2015 and then data that I collected, actually,
only last week. And a lot of things haven't changed all that much. We sleep roughly seven-and-a-half
to eight hours a day; some people say that's declined slightly, but it hasn't changed much. We work
eight-and-a-half to nine hours a day. We engage in survival activities -- these are things like eating and
bathing and looking after kids -- about three hours a day.
That leaves this white space. That's our personal time. That space is incredibly important to us. That's
the space where we do things that make us individuals. That's where hobbies happen, where we have
close relationships, where we really think about our lives, where we get creative, where we zoom back
and try to work out whether our lives have been meaningful. We get some of that from work as well,
but when people look back on their lives and wonder what their lives have been like at the end of their
lives, you look at the last things they say -- they are talking about those moments that happen in that
white personal space. So it's sacred; it's important to us.
Now, what I'm going to do is show you how much of that space is taken up by screens across time. In
2007, this much. That was the year that Apple introduced the first iPhone. Eight years later, this much.
Now, this much. That's how much time we spend of that free time in front of our screens. This yellow
area, this thin sliver, is where the magic happens. That's where your humanity lives. And right now, it's
143
in a very small box.
So what do we do about this? Well, the first question is: What does that red space look like? Now, of
course, screens are miraculous in a lot of ways. I live in New York, a lot of my family lives in Australia,
and I have a one-year-old son. The way I've been able to introduce them to him is with screens. I couldn't
have done that 15 or 20 years ago in quite the same way. So there's a lot of good that comes from them.
One thing you can do is ask yourself: What goes on during that time? How enriching are the apps that
we're using? And some are enriching. If you stop people while they're using them and say, "Tell us how
you feel right now," they say they feel pretty good about these apps -- those that focus on relaxation,
exercise, weather, reading, education and health. They spend an average of nine minutes a day on each
of these. These apps make them much less happy. About half the people, when you interrupt them and
say, "How do you feel?" say they don't feel good about using them. What's interesting about these -dating, social networking, gaming, entertainment, news, web browsing -- people spend 27 minutes a
day on each of these. We're spending three times longer on the apps that don't make us happy. That
doesn't seem very wise.
One of the reasons we spend so much time on these apps that make us unhappy is they rob us of stopping
cues. Stopping cues were everywhere in the 20th century. They were baked into everything we did. A
stopping cue is basically a signal that it's time to move on, to do something new, to do something
different. And -- think about newspapers; eventually you get to the end, you fold the newspaper away,
you put it aside. The same with magazines, books -- you get to the end of a chapter, prompts you to
consider whether you want to continue. You watched a show on TV, eventually the show would end,
and then you'd have a week until the next one came. There were stopping cues everywhere. But the way
we consume media today is such that there are no stopping cues. The news feed just rolls on, and
everything's bottomless: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, email, text messaging, the news. And when you
do check all sorts of other sources, you can just keep going on and on and on.
So, we can get a cue about what to do from Western Europe, where they seem to have a number of
pretty good ideas in the workplace. Here's one example. This is a Dutch design firm. And what they've
done is rigged the desks to the ceiling. And at 6pm every day, it doesn't matter who you're emailing or
what you're doing, the desks rise to the ceiling.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Four days a week, the space turns into a yoga studio, one day a week, into a dance club. It's really up to
you which ones you stick around for. But this is a great stopping rule, because it means at the end of
the day, everything stops, there's no way to work. At Daimler, the German car company, they've got
another great strategy. When you go on vacation, instead of saying, "This person's on vacation, they'll
get back to you eventually," they say, "This person's on vacation, so we've deleted your email. This
person will never see the email you just sent."
(Laughter)
"You can email back in a couple of weeks, or you can email someone else."
(Laughter)
And so -(Applause)
144
You can imagine what that's like. You go on vacation, and you're actually on vacation. The people who
work at this company feel that they actually get a break from work.
But of course, that doesn't tell us much about what we should do at home in our own lives, so I want to
make some suggestions. It's easy to say, between 5 and 6pm, I'm going to not use my phone. The
problem is, 5 and 6pm looks different on different days. I think a far better strategy is to say, I do certain
things every day, there are certain occasions that happen every day, like eating dinner. Sometimes I'll
be alone, sometimes with other people, sometimes in a restaurant, sometimes at home, but the rule that
I've adopted is: I will never use my phone at the table. It's far away, as far away as possible. Because
we're really bad at resisting temptation. But when you have a stopping cue that, every time dinner
begins, my phone goes far away, you avoid temptation all together.
At first, it hurts. I had massive FOMO.
(Laughter)
I struggled.
But what happens is, you get used to it. You overcome the withdrawal the same way you would from a
drug, and what happens is, life becomes more colorful, richer, more interesting -- you have better
conversations. You really connect with the people who are there with you. I think it's a fantastic strategy,
and we know it works, because when people do this -- and I've tracked a lot of people who have tried
this -- it expands. They feel so good about it, they start doing it for the first hour of the day in the
morning. They start putting their phones on airplane mode on the weekend. That way, your phone
remains a camera, but it's no longer a phone. It's a really powerful idea, and we know people feel much
better about their lives when they do this.
So what's the take home here? Screens are miraculous; I've already said that, and I feel that it's true. But
the way we use them is a lot like driving down a really fast, long road, and you're in a car where the
accelerator is mashed to the floor, it's kind of hard to reach the brake pedal. You've got a choice. You
can either glide by, past, say, the beautiful ocean scenes and take snaps out the window -- that's the easy
thing to do -- or you can go out of your way to move the car to the side of the road, to push that brake
pedal, to get out, take off your shoes and socks, take a couple of steps onto the sand, feel what the sand
feels like under your feet, walk to the ocean, and let the ocean lap at your ankles. Your life will be richer
and more meaningful because you breathe in that experience, and because you've left your phone in the
car.
Thank you.
(Applause)
145
16. Jonathan Marks - IN PRAISE OF CONFLICT
Fill in the blanks
https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_marks_in_praise_of_conflict
Twenty years ago, when I was a barrister and human rights lawyer in full-time ______________
practice in London, and the highest court in the land still convened, some would say by an accident of
history, in this building here, I met a young man who had just ______________ his job in the British
Foreign Office. When I asked him, "Why did you leave," he told me this ______________.
He had gone to his boss one morning and said, "Let's do something about ______________ rights
abuses in China." And his boss had replied, "We can't do anything about human rights abuses in China
because we have trade ______________ with China."
So my friend went away with his tail between his ______________, and six months later, he returned
again to his boss, and he said this time, "Let's do something about human rights in Burma," as it was
then ______________.
His boss once again ______________ and said, "Oh, but we can't do anything about human rights in
Burma because we don't have any trade relations with Burma."
(Laughter)
This was the moment he knew he had to leave. It wasn't just the hypocrisy that ______________ to
him. It was the unwillingness of his government to engage in ______________ with other governments,
intense discussions, all the while, ______________ people were being harmed.
We are constantly told that conflict is bad that compromise is ______________; that conflict is bad but
consensus is good; that conflict is bad and collaboration is good. But in my view, that's far too simple
a ______________ of the world. We cannot know whether conflict is bad unless we know who is
______________, why they are fighting and how they are fighting. And compromises can be thoroughly
rotten if they harm people who are not at the ______________, people who are vulnerable,
disempowered, people whom we have an ______________ to protect.
Now, you might be somewhat skeptical of a lawyer arguing about the benefits of conflict and creating
______________ for compromise, but I did also qualify as a mediator, and these days, I spend my time
giving talks about ______________ for free. So as my bank manager likes to remind me, I'm
downwardly mobile. But if you accept my argument, it should change not just the way we
______________ our personal lives, which I wish to put to one side for the moment, but it will change
the way we think about ______________problems of public health and the environment. Let me
explain.
Every middle ______________ in the United States, my 12-year-old daughter included, learns that there
are three branches of government, the legislative, the executive and the judicial branch. James Madison
wrote, "If there is any ______________ more sacred in our Constitution, and indeed in any free
constitution, than any other, it is that which ______________ the legislative, the executive and the
judicial powers." Now, the framers were not just concerned about the ______________ and exercise of
power. They also understood the perils of influence. Judges cannot ______________ the
constitutionality of laws if they participate in making those laws, nor can they hold the other branches
of government accountable if they ______________ with them or enter into close relationships with
them. The Constitution is, as one famous ______________ put it, "an invitation to struggle." And we
the people are served when those branches do, indeed, struggle with each other.
146
Now, we recognize the importance of struggle not just in the public sector ______________ our
branches of government. We also know it too in the private sector, in relationships among
______________. Let's imagine that two American airlines get together and agree that they will not
______________ the price of their economy class airfares below 250 dollars a ticket. That is
collaboration, some would say collusion, not competition, and we the people are harmed because we
pay more for our tickets. ______________ similarly two airlines were to say, "Look, Airline A, we'll
take the ______________ from LA to Chicago," and Airline B says, "We'll take the route from Chicago
to DC, and we won't compete." Once again, that's collaboration or collusion instead of competition, and
we the people are harmed.
So we understand the importance of ______________ when it comes to relationships between
______________ of government, the public sector. We also understand the importance of conflict when
it comes to relationships among corporations, the private sector. But where we have forgotten it is in
the ______________ between the public and the private. And governments all over the world are
collaborating with ______________ to solve problems of public health and the environment, often
collaborating with the very corporations that are ______________ or exacerbating the problems they
are trying to solve. We are told that these relationships are a win-win. But what if someone is losing
______________?
Let me give you some examples. A United Nations agency decided to ______________ a serious
problem: poor sanitation in schools in rural India. They did so not just in collaboration with
______________ and local governments but also with a television company and with a major
multinational soda company. In ______________ for less than one million dollars, that corporation
received the benefits of a months-long promotional ______________ including a 12-hour telethon all
using the company's ______________ and color scheme. This was an arrangement which was totally
understandable from the corporation's point of view. It ______________ the reputation of the compa.
When you collaborate with industry, you necessarily put off the table things that might promote the
common good to which industry will not agree. Industry will not agree to increased regulation unless it
believes this will stave off even more regulation or perhaps knock some comny and it creates brand
loyalty for its products. But in my view, this is profoundly ______________ for the intergovernmental
agency, an agency that has a mission to promote ______________ living. By increasing consumption
of sugar-sweetened beverages made from ______________ local water supplies and drunk out of plastic
bottles in a country that is already grappling with ______________, this is neither sustainable from a
public health nor an environmental point of view. And in order to solve one public health problem, the
agency is sowing the ______________ of another.
This is just one example of ______________ I discovered in researching a book on the relationships
between government and industry. I could also have told you about the initiatives in ______________
in London and throughout Britain, involving the same company, promoting exercise, or indeed of the
British government creating ______________ pledges in partnership with industry instead of regulating
industry. These collaborations or partnerships have become the paradigm in public health, and once
again, they make ______________ from the point of view of industry. It allows them to frame public
health problems and their solutions in ways that are ______________ threatening to, most consonant
with their commercial interests. So obesity becomes a problem of individual decision-making, of
personal behavior, personal ______________ and lack of physical activity. It is not a problem, when
framed this way, of a multinational food ______________involving major corporations.
And again, I don't ______________ industry. Industry naturally engages in strategies of influence to
promote its commercial ______________. But governments have a responsibility to develop
counterstrategies to protect us and the common good.
147
The mistake that governments are making when they ______________ in this way with industry is that
they conflate the common good with common ______________. When you collaborate with industry,
you necessarily put off the table things that might ______________ the common good to which industry
will not agree. Industry will not agree to increased regulation unless it believes this will stave off even
more regulation or perhaps ______________ some competitors out of the market. Nor can companies
______________ to do certain things, for example raise the prices of their unhealthy products, because
that would ______________ competition law, as we've established. So our governments should not
______________ the common good and common ground, especially when common ground means
reaching ______________ with industry.
I want to give you another example, moving from high-profile collaboration to something that is below
ground both ______________ and figuratively: the hydraulic fracturing of natural gas. Imagine that
you purchase a plot of land not knowing the ______________ rights have been sold. This is before the
fracking ______________. You build your dream home on that plot, and ______________ afterwards,
you discover that a gas company is building a well pad on your land. That was the plight of the
Hallowich family. Within a very short ______________ of time, they began to complain of headaches,
of sore throats, of ______________ eyes, in addition to the interference of the noise, vibration and the
______________ lights from the flaring of natural gas. They were very vocal in their criticisms, and
then they ______________ silent. And thanks to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where this image
______________, and one other newspaper, we discovered why they fell silent. The newspapers went
to the ______________ and said, "What happened to the Hallowiches?" And it turned out the
Hallowiches had made a secret settlement with the gas ______________, and it was a take-it-or-leaveit settlement. The gas company said, you can have a six-figure sum to move elsewhere and start your
lives again, but in ______________ you must promise not to speak of your experience with our
company, not to speak of your experience with fracking, not to speak about the health ______________
that might have been revealed by a medical examination. Now, I do not blame the Hallowiches for
accepting a take-it-or-leave-it ______________ and starting their lives elsewhere. And one can
understand why the company would wish to ______________ a squeaky wheel. What I want to point
the finger at is the legal and regulatory system, a system in which there are ______________ of
agreements just like this one which serve to silence people and seal off data points from public health
______________ and epidemiologists, a system in which regulators will even refrain from issuing a
violation notice in the ______________ of pollution if the landowner and the gas company agree to
settle. This is a system which isn't just bad from a public health point of view; it exposes
______________ to local families who remain in the ______________.
Now, I have given you two examples not because they are ______________ examples. They are
examples of a systemic problem. I could share some counterexamples, the case for example of the
public ______________ who sues the pharmaceutical company for concealing the fact that its
antidepressant increases suicidal thoughts in ______________. I can tell you about the regulator who
went after the food company for exaggerating the purported health benefits of its ______________.
And I can tell you about the legislator who despite ______________ lobbying directed at both sides of
the aisle pushes for ______________ protections. These are isolated examples, but they are beacons of
light in the darkness, and they can show us the way.
I began by suggesting that sometimes we need to engage in ______________. Governments should
tussle with, struggle with, at ______________ engage in direct conflict with corporations. This is not
because governments are inherently good and corporations are inherently ______________. Each is
capable of good or ill. But corporations understandably ______________to promote their commercial
interests, and they do so either sometimes ______________ or promoting the common good. But it is
the responsibility of governments to protect and promote the common good. And we should
148
______________ that they fight to do so. This is because governments are the ______________ of
public health; governments are the guardians of the environment; and it is governments that are
guardians of these ______________ parts of our common good.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Key
https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_marks_in_praise_of_conflict
Twenty years ago, when I was a barrister and human rights lawyer in full-time legal practice in London,
and the highest court in the land still convened, some would say by an accident of history, in this
building here, I met a young man who had just quit his job in the British Foreign Office. When I asked
him, "Why did you leave," he told me this story.
He had gone to his boss one morning and said, "Let's do something about human rights abuses in China."
And his boss had replied, "We can't do anything about human rights abuses in China because we have
trade relations with China."
So my friend went away with his tail between his legs, and six months later, he returned again to his
boss, and he said this time, "Let's do something about human rights in Burma," as it was then called.
His boss once again paused and said, "Oh, but we can't do anything about human rights in Burma
because we don't have any trade relations with Burma."
(Laughter)
This was the moment he knew he had to leave. It wasn't just the hypocrisy that got to him. It was the
unwillingness of his government to engage in conflict with other governments, in tense discussions, all
the while, innocent people were being harmed.
We are constantly told that conflict is bad that compromise is good; that conflict is bad but consensus
is good; that conflict is bad and collaboration is good. But in my view, that's far too simple a vision of
the world. We cannot know whether conflict is bad unless we know who is fighting, why they are
fighting and how they are fighting. And compromises can be thoroughly rotten if they harm people who
are not at the table, people who are vulnerable, disempowered, people whom we have an obligation to
protect.
Now, you might be somewhat skeptical of a lawyer arguing about the benefits of conflict and creating
problems for compromise, but I did also qualify as a mediator, and these days, I spend my time giving
talks about ethics for free. So as my bank manager likes to remind me, I'm downwardly mobile. But if
you accept my argument, it should change not just the way we lead our personal lives, which I wish to
put to one side for the moment, but it will change the way we think about major problems of public
health and the environment. Let me explain.
Every middle schooler in the United States, my 12-year-old daughter included, learns that there are
three branches of government, the legislative, the executive and the judicial branch. James Madison
wrote, "If there is any principle more sacred in our Constitution, and indeed in any free constitution,
than any other, it is that which separates the legislative, the executive and the judicial powers." Now,
the framers were not just concerned about the concentration and exercise of power. They also
understood the perils of influence. Judges cannot determine the constitutionality of laws if they
participate in making those laws, nor can they hold the other branches of government accountable if
149
they collaborate with them or enter into close relationships with them. The Constitution is, as one
famous scholar put it, "an invitation to struggle." And we the people are served when those branches
do, indeed, struggle with each other.
Now, we recognize the importance of struggle not just in the public sector between our branches of
______________. We also know it too in the private sector, in relationships among corporations. Let's
imagine that two American airlines get together and agree that they will not drop the price of their
economy class airfares below 250 dollars a ticket. That is collaboration, some would say collusion, not
competition, and we the people are harmed because we pay more for our tickets. Imagine similarly two
airlines were to say, "Look, Airline A, we'll take the route from LA to Chicago," and Airline B says,
"We'll take the route from Chicago to DC, and we won't compete." Once again, that's collaboration or
collusion instead of competition, and we the people are harmed.
So we understand the importance of struggle when it comes to relationships between branches of
government, the public sector. We also understand the importance of conflict when it comes to
relationships among corporations, the private sector. But where we have forgotten it is in the
relationships between the public and the private. And governments all over the world are collaborating
with industry to solve problems of public health and the environment, often collaborating with the very
corporations that are creating or exacerbating the problems they are trying to solve. We are told that
these relationships are a win-win. But what if someone is losing out?
Let me give you some examples. A United Nations agency decided to address a serious problem: poor
sanitation in schools in rural India. They did so not just in collaboration with national and local
governments but also with a television company and with a major multinational soda company. In
exchange for less than one million dollars, that corporation received the benefits of a months-long
promotional campaign including a 12-hour telethon all using the company's logo and color scheme.
This was an arrangement which was totally understandable from the corporation's point of view. It
enhances the reputation of the company and it creates brand loyalty for its products. But in my view,
this is profoundly problematic for the intergovernmental agency, an agency that has a mission to
promote sustainable living. By increasing consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages made from scarce
local water supplies and drunk out of plastic bottles in a country that is already grappling with obesity,
this is neither sustainable from a public health nor an environmental point of view. And in order to solve
one public health problem, the agency is sowing the seeds of another.
This is just one example of dozens I discovered in researching a book on the relationships between
government and industry. I could also have told you about the initiatives in parks in London and
throughout Britain, involving the same company, promoting exercise, or indeed of the British
government creating voluntary pledges in partnership with industry instead of regulating industry.
These collaborations or partnerships have become the paradigm in public health, and once again, they
make sense from the point of view of industry. It allows them to frame public health problems and their
solutions in ways that are least threatening to, most consonant with their commercial interests. So
obesity becomes a problem of individual decision-making, of personal behavior, personal responsibility
and lack of physical activity. It is not a problem, when framed this way, of a multinational food system
involving major corporations.
And again, I don't blame industry. Industry naturally engages in strategies of influence to promote its
commercial interests. But governments have a responsibility to develop counterstrategies to protect us
and the common good.
The mistake that governments are making when they collaborate in this way with industry is that they
conflate the common good with common ground. When you collaborate with industry, you necessarily
150
put off the table things that might promote the common good to which industry will not agree. Industry
will not agree to increased regulation unless it believes this will stave off even more regulation or
perhaps knock some competitors out of the market. Nor can companies agree to do certain things, for
example raise the prices of their unhealthy products, because that would violate competition law, as
we've established. So our governments should not confound the common good and common ground,
especially when common ground means reaching agreement with industry.
I want to give you another example, moving from high-profile collaboration to something that is below
ground both literally and figuratively: the hydraulic fracturing of natural gas. Imagine that you purchase
a plot of land not knowing the mineral rights have been sold. This is before the fracking boom. You
build your dream home on that plot, and shortly afterwards, you discover that a gas company is building
a well pad on your land. That was the plight of the Hallowich family. Within a very short period of
time, they began to complain of headaches, of sore throats, of itchy eyes, in addition to the interference
of the noise, vibration and the bright lights from the flaring of natural gas. They were very vocal in their
criticisms, and then they fell silent. And thanks to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where this image
appeared, and one other newspaper, we discovered why they fell silent. The newspapers went to the
court and said, "What happened to the Hallowiches?" And it turned out the Hallowiches had made a
secret settlement with the gas operators, and it was a take-it-or-leave-it settlement. The gas company
said, you can have a six-figure sum to move elsewhere and start your lives again, but in return you must
promise not to speak of your experience with our company, not to speak of your experience with
fracking, not to speak about the health consequences that might have been revealed by a medical
examination. Now, I do not blame the Hallowiches for accepting a take-it-or-leave-it settlement and
starting their lives elsewhere. And one can understand why the company would wish to silence a
squeaky wheel. What I want to point the finger at is the legal and regulatory system, a system in which
there are networks of agreements just like this one which serve to silence people and seal off data points
from public health experts and epidemiologists, a system in which regulators will even refrain from
issuing a violation notice in the event of pollution if the landowner and the gas company agree to settle.
This is a system which isn't just bad from a public health point of view; it exposes hazards to local
families who remain in the dark.
Now, I have given you two examples not because they are isolated examples. They are examples of a
systemic problem. I could share some counterexamples, the case for example of the public official who
sues the pharmaceutical company for concealing the fact that its antidepressant increases suicidal
thoughts in adolescents. I can tell you about the regulator who went after the food company for
exaggerating the purported health benefits of its yogurt. And I can tell you about the legislator who
despite heavy lobbying directed at both sides of the aisle pushes for environmental protections. These
are isolated examples, but they are beacons of light in the darkness, and they can show us the way.
I began by suggesting that sometimes we need to engage in conflict. Governments should tussle with,
struggle with, at times engage in direct conflict with corporations. This is not because governments are
inherently good and corporations are inherently evil. Each is capable of good or ill. But corporations
understandably act to promote their commercial interests, and they do so either sometimes undermining
or promoting the common good. But it is the responsibility of governments to protect and promote the
common good. And we should insist that they fight to do so. This is because governments are the
guardians of public health; governments are the guardians of the environment; and it is governments
that are guardians of these essential parts of our common good.
Thank you.
(Applause)
151
152
17. Shawn Achor - THE HAPPY SECRET TO BETTER WORK
Fill in the blanks
https://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work
When I was seven years old and my sister was just five years old, we were playing on ______________
of a bunk bed. I was two years older than my sister at the time -- I mean, I'm two years older than her
now -- but at the time it ______________ she had to do everything that I wanted to do, and I wanted to
play ______________. So we were up on top of our bunk beds. And on one side of the bunk bed, I had
put out all of my G.I. Joe ______________ and weaponry. And on the other ______________ were all
my sister's My Little Ponies ready for a cavalry ______________.
There are ______________ accounts of what actually happened that afternoon, but since my sister is
not here with us today, let me tell you the true story -(Laughter)
which is my sister's a little on the ______________ side. Somehow, without any help or push from her
older brother at ______________, Amy disappeared ______________ of the top of the bunk bed and
landed with this crash on the floor. I nervously peered over the side of the bed to see what had
______________ my fallen sister and saw that she had ______________ painfully on her hands and
knees on all fours on the ground.
I was nervous because my parents had charged me with making ______________ that my sister and I
played as safely and as quietly as possible. And seeing as how I had ______________ broken Amy's
arm just one week before -(Laughter)
(Laughter ends)
heroically pushing her out of the way of an ______________ imaginary sniper bullet,
(Laughter) for which I have yet to be thanked, I was trying as hard as I could -- she didn't even see it
______________ -- I was trying hard to be on my best behavior.
And I saw my sister's face, this wail of pain and ______________ and surprise threatening to erupt from
her mouth and wake my parents from the long winter's ______________ for which they had settled. So
I did the only thing my frantic seven year-old brain could think to do to avert this ______________.
And if you have children, you've seen this hundreds of times. I said, "Amy, wait. Don't cry. Did you
see how you landed? No ______________ lands on all fours like that. Amy, I think this means you're
a unicorn."
(Laughter)
Now, that was ______________, because there was nothing she would want more than not to be Amy
the hurt five year-old little sister, but Amy the special ______________. Of course, this option was
open to her brain at no point in the past. And you could see how my poor, manipulated sister
______________ conflict, as her little brain attempted to devote resources to feeling the pain and
suffering and surprise she just experienced, or contemplating her new-found ______________ as a
unicorn. And the latter ______________. Instead of crying or ceasing our play, instead of waking my
parents, with all the negative consequences for me, a smile ______________ across her face and she
scrambled back up onto the bunk bed with all the ______________ of a baby unicorn -153
(Laughter)
with one broken leg.
What we stumbled across at this ______________ age of just five and seven -- we had no idea at the
time -- was was going be at the vanguard of a scientific ______________ occurring two decades later
in the way that we look at the human brain. We had stumbled across something called
______________psychology, which is the reason I'm here today and the reason that I wake up every
morning.
When I started talking about this research ______________outside of academia, with companies and
schools, the first thing they said to never do is to start with a ______________. The first thing I want
to do is start with a graph. This graph looks ______________, but it is the reason I get excited and wake
up every morning. And this graph doesn't even mean anything; it's fake ______________. What we
found is -(Laughter)
If I got this data studying you, I would be ______________, because there's a trend there, and that
means that I can get ______________, which is all that really matters. There is one weird red dot above
the curve, there's one weirdo in the room -- I know who you are, I saw you ______________-- that's no
problem. That's no problem, as most of you know, because I can just delete that ______________. I can
delete that dot because that's clearly a measurement ______________. And we know that's a
measurement error because it's ______________ my data.
(Laughter)
So one of the first things we teach people in economics, statistics, business and psychology courses is
how, in a statistically ______________ way, do we eliminate the weirdos. How do we eliminate the
outliers so we can find the line of best ______________? Which is fantastic if I'm trying to find out
how many Advil the ______________ person should be taking -- two.
But if I'm interested in your ______________, or for happiness or productivity or energy or creativity,
we're creating the cult of the average with ______________. If I asked a question like, "How fast can a
child learn how to read in a classroom?" scientists change the answer to "How ______________ does
the average child learn how to read in that classroom?" and we tailor the class ______________ the
average. If you fall below the average, then psychologists get thrilled, because that means you're
depressed or have a ______________, or hopefully both. We're hoping for both because our business
model is, if you come into a therapy ______________ with one problem, we want to make sure you
leave knowing you have ten, so you keep coming back. We'll go back ______________ your childhood
if necessary, but eventually we want to make you ______________ again. But normal is merely
average.
And positive psychology posits that if we study what is merely average, we will ______________
merely average. Then instead of deleting those positive outliers, what I intentionally do is come into a
population like this one and say, why? Why are some of you ______________ above the curve in terms
of intellectual, athletic, ______________ ability, creativity, ______________ levels, resiliency in the
face of challenge, sense of humor? Whatever it is, ______________ of deleting you, what I want to do
is study you. Because maybe we can glean information, not just how to move people up to the average,
but move the ______________ average up in our companies and schools worldwide.
The reason this graph is important to me is, on the ______________, the majority of the information is
not positive. in fact it's negative. Most of it's about murder, corruption, ______________, natural
154
disasters. And very quickly, my brain starts to think that's the ______________ ratio of negative to
positive in the world. This creates "the ______________ school syndrome." During the first year of
medical training, as you read through a list of all the ______________ and diseases, suddenly you
realize you have all of them.
(Laughter)
I have a brother in-law named Bobo, which is a ______________ other story. Bobo married Amy the
unicorn. Bobo called me on the phone -(Laughter)
from Yale Medical School, and Bobo said, "Shawn, I have leprosy."
(Laughter)
Which, even at Yale, is extraordinarily ______________. But I had no idea how to console poor Bobo
because he had just gotten over an entire week of menopause.
(Laughter)
We're finding it's not necessarily the reality that ______________ us, but the lens through which your
brain views the world that shapes your reality. And if we can ______________ the lens, not only can
we change your happiness, we can change every single educational and business ______________ at
the same time.
I applied to Harvard on a ______________. I didn't expect to get in, and my family had no money for
college. When I got a military ______________ two weeks later, they let me go. Something that wasn't
even a ______________ became a reality. I assumed everyone there would see it as a privilege as well,
that they'd be excited to be there. Even in a classroom full of people ______________ than you, I felt
you'd be happy just to be in that classroom. But what I found is, while some people ______________
that, when I graduated after my four years and then spent the next eight years living in the
______________ with the students -- Harvard asked me to; I wasn't that guy.
(Laughter)
I was an ______________ to counsel students through the difficult four years. And in my research and
my teaching, I found that these students, no matter how happy they were with their ______________
success of getting into the school, two weeks later their ______________ were focused, not on the
privilege of being there, nor on their philosophy or ______________, but on the competition, the
workload, the hassles, stresses, ______________.
When I first went in there, I walked into the freshmen dining ______________, which is where my
friends from Waco, Texas, which is where I grew up -- I know some of you know this. When they'd
visit, they'd look ______________, and say, "This dining hall looks like something ______________
of Hogwart's." It does, because that was Hogwart's and that's Harvard. And when they see this, they
say, ''Why do you waste your time studying ______________ at Harvard? What does a Harvard student
possibly have to be unhappy about?"
Embedded ______________ that question is the key to understanding the science of happiness. Because
what that question ______________ is that our external world is predictive of our happiness levels,
when in reality, if I know everything about your ______________ world, I can only predict 10% of
your long-term happiness. 90 percent of your long-term happiness is ______________ not by the
external world, but by the way your brain processes the world. And if we change it, if we change our
155
______________ for happiness and success, we can change the way that we can then ______________
reality. What we found is that only 25% of job successes are predicted by IQ, 75 percent of job successes
are predicted by your ______________ levels, your social support and your ability to see stress as a
challenge instead of as a ______________.
I talked to a New England ______________ school, probably the most prestigious one, and they said,
"We already know that. So every year, instead of just teaching our students, we have a ______________
week. And we're so excited. wellness week. And we're so excited. Monday night we have the world's
leading expert will speak about adolescent______________ depression. Tuesday night it's school
violence and ______________. Wednesday night is ______________ disorders. Thursday night is
illicit drug use. And Friday night we're trying to decide between risky ______________ or
happiness."
(Laughter)
I said, "That's most people's Friday nights."
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Which I'm glad you liked, but they did not like that at all. Silence on the phone. And ______________
the silence, I said, "I'd be happy to speak at your school, but that's not a wellness week, that's a
______________ week. You've outlined all the negative things that can happen, but not
______________ about the positive."
The ______________ of disease is n. If you can raise somebody's level of positivity in the present, then
their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive
performs significantly better than at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity
rises, youot health. Here's how we get to health: We need to reverse the formula for happiness and
success. In the ______________ three years, I've traveled to 45 countries, working with schools and
companies in the midst of an economic ______________. And I found that most companies and schools
follow a formula for success, which is this: If I work harder, I'll be more ______________. And if I'm
more successful, then I'll be happier. That undergirds most of our parenting and managing
______________, the way that we motivate our behavior.
And the problem is it's scientifically broken and ______________ for two reasons. Every time your
brain has a success, you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like. You got good
______________, now you have to get better grades, you got into a good school and after you get into
a better one, you got a good job, now you have to get a better job, you ______________ your sales
target, we're going to change it. And if happiness is on the ______________ side of success, your brain
never gets there. We've pushed happiness over the cognitive ______________, as a society. And that's
because we think we have to be successful, then we'll be happier.
But our brains work in the opposite ______________. If you can raise somebody's level of positivity in
the present, then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness ______________, which is your
brain at positive performs significantly better than at negative, ______________ or stressed. Your
intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your ______________ levels rise. In fact, we've found that every
single business outcome improves. Your brain at positive is 31% more ______________ than your
brain at negative, neutral or stressed. You're 37% better at ______________. Doctors are 19 percent
faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis when positive instead of negative, neutral
or stressed.
156
Which means we can reverse the formula. If we can find a way of becoming positive in the
______________, then our brains work even more successfully as we're able to work ______________,
faster and more intelligently. We need to be able to reverse this formula so we can start to see what our
brains are actually ______________ of. Because dopamine, which floods into your system when you're
positive, has two ______________. Not only does it make you happier, it turns on all of the learning
centers in your brain allowing you to ______________ to the world in a different way.
We've found there are ways that you can ______________ your brain to be able to become more
positive. In just a two-minute ______________ of time done for 21 days in a row, we can actually
rewire your brain, allowing your brain to actually work more optimistically and more successfully.
We've done these things in ______________ now in every company that I've worked with, getting them
to write down three new things that they're ______________ for for 21 days in a row, three new things
each day. And at the end of that, their brain starts to retain a pattern of scanning the ______________
not for the negative, but for the positive ______________.
Journaling about one positive experience you've had over the past 24 hours allows your brain to
______________ it. Exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters. We find that meditation
allows your brain to get over the ______________ ADHD that we've been creating by trying to do
multiple tasks at once and allows our brains to focus on the task at ______________. And finally,
random acts of kindness are ______________ acts of kindness. We get people, when they open up their
inbox, to write one positive email praising or thanking somebody in their support ______________
And by doing these activities and by training your brain just like we train our bodies, what we've found
is we can ______________ the formula for happiness and success, and in doing so, not only create
ripples of positivity, but a real revolution.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
157
Key
https://www.ted.com/talks/shawn_achor_the_happy_secret_to_better_work
When I was seven years old and my sister was just five years old, we were playing on top of a bunk
bed. I was two years older than my sister at the time -- I mean, I'm two years older than her now -- but
at the time it meant she had to do everything that I wanted to do, and I wanted to play war. So we were
up on top of our bunk beds. And on one side of the bunk bed, I had put out all of my G.I. Joe soldiers
and weaponry. And on the other side were all my sister's My Little Ponies ready for a cavalry charge.
There are differing accounts of what actually happened that afternoon, but since my sister is not here
with us today, let me tell you the true story -(Laughter)
which is my sister's a little on the clumsy side. Somehow, without any help or push from her older
brother at all, Amy disappeared off of the top of the bunk bed and landed with this crash on the floor. I
nervously peered over the side of the bed to see what had befallen my fallen sister and saw that she had
landed painfully on her hands and knees on all fours on the ground.
I was nervous because my parents had charged me with making sure that my sister and I played as
safely and as quietly as possible. And seeing as how I had accidentally broken Amy's arm just one week
before -(Laughter)
(Laughter ends)
heroically pushing her out of the way of an oncoming imaginary sniper bullet,
(Laughter) for which I have yet to be thanked, I was trying as hard as I could -- she didn't even see it
coming -- I was trying hard to be on my best behavior.
And I saw my sister's face, this wail of pain and suffering and surprise threatening to erupt from her
mouth and wake my parents from the long winter's nap for which they had settled. So I did the only
thing my frantic seven year-old brain could think to do to avert this tragedy. And if you have children,
you've seen this hundreds of times. I said, "Amy, wait. Don't cry. Did you see how you landed? No
human lands on all fours like that. Amy, I think this means you're a unicorn."
(Laughter)
Now, that was cheating, because there was nothing she would want more than not to be Amy the hurt
five year-old little sister, but Amy the special unicorn. Of course, this option was open to her brain at
no point in the past. And you could see how my poor, manipulated sister faced conflict, as her little
brain attempted to devote resources to feeling the pain and suffering and surprise she just experienced,
or contemplating her new-found identity as a unicorn. And the latter won. Instead of crying or ceasing
our play, instead of waking my parents, with all the negative consequences for me, a smile spread across
her face and she scrambled back up onto the bunk bed with all the grace of a baby unicorn -(Laughter)
with one broken leg.
What we stumbled across at this tender age of just five and seven -- we had no idea at the time -- was
was going be at the vanguard of a scientific revolution occurring two decades later in the way that we
158
look at the human brain. We had stumbled across something called positive psychology, which is the
reason I'm here today and the reason that I wake up every morning.
When I started talking about this research outside of academia, with companies and schools, the first
thing they said to never do is to start with a graph. The first thing I want to do is start with a graph. This
graph looks boring, but it is the reason I get excited and wake up every morning. And this graph doesn't
even mean anything; it's fake data. What we found is -(Laughter)
If I got this data studying you, I would be thrilled, because there's a trend there, and that means that I
can get published, which is all that really matters. There is one weird red dot above the curve, there's
one weirdo in the room -- I know who you are, I saw you earlier -- that's no problem. That's no problem,
as most of you know, because I can just delete that dot. I can delete that dot because that's clearly a
measurement error. And we know that's a measurement error because it's messing up my data.
(Laughter)
So one of the first things we teach people in economics, statistics, business and psychology courses is
how, in a statistically valid way, do we eliminate the weirdos. How do we eliminate the outliers so we
can find the line of best fit? Which is fantastic if I'm trying to find out how many Advil the average
person should be taking -- two.
But if I'm interested in your potential, or for happiness or productivity or energy or creativity, we're
creating the cult of the average with science. If I asked a question like, "How fast can a child learn how
to read in a classroom?" scientists change the answer to "How fast does the average child learn how to
read in that classroom?" and we tailor the class towards the average. If you fall below the average, then
psychologists get thrilled, because that means you're depressed or have a disorder, or hopefully both.
We're hoping for both because our business model is, if you come into a therapy session with one
problem, we want to make sure you leave knowing you have ten, so you keep coming back. We'll go
back into your childhood if necessary, but eventually we want to make you normal again. But normal
is merely average.
And positive psychology posits that if we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average.
Then instead of deleting those positive outliers, what I intentionally do is come into a population like
this one and say, why? Why are some of you high above the curve in terms of intellectual, athletic,
musical ability, creativity, energy levels, resiliency in the face of challenge, sense of humor? Whatever
it is, instead of deleting you, what I want to do is study you. Because maybe we can glean information,
not just how to move people up to the average, but move the entire average up in our companies and
schools worldwide.
The reason this graph is important to me is, on the news, the majority of the information is not positive.
in fact it's negative. Most of it's about murder, corruption, diseases, natural disasters. And very quickly,
my brain starts to think that's the accurate ratio of negative to positive in the world. This creates "the
medical school syndrome." During the first year of medical training, as you read through a list of all the
symptoms and diseases, suddenly you realize you have all of them.
(Laughter)
I have a brother in-law named Bobo, which is a whole other story. Bobo married Amy the unicorn.
Bobo called me on the phone -(Laughter)
159
from Yale Medical School, and Bobo said, "Shawn, I have leprosy."
(Laughter)
Which, even at Yale, is extraordinarily rare. But I had no idea how to console poor Bobo because he
had just gotten over an entire week of menopause.
(Laughter)
We're finding it's not necessarily the reality that shapes us, but the lens through which your brain views
the world that shapes your reality. And if we can change the lens, not only can we change your
happiness, we can change every single educational and business outcome at the same time.
I applied to Harvard on a dare. I didn't expect to get in, and my family had no money for college. When
I got a military scholarship two weeks later, they let me go. Something that wasn't even a possibility
became a reality. I assumed everyone there would see it as a privilege as well, that they'd be excited to
be there. Even in a classroom full of people smarter than you, I felt you'd be happy just to be in that
classroom. But what I found is, while some people experience that, when I graduated after my four
years and then spent the next eight years living in the dorms with the students -- Harvard asked me to;
I wasn't that guy.
(Laughter)
I was an officer to counsel students through the difficult four years. And in my research and my
teaching, I found that these students, no matter how happy they were with their original success of
getting into the school, two weeks later their brains were focused, not on the privilege of being there,
nor on their philosophy or physics, but on the competition, the workload, the hassles, stresses,
complaints.
When I first went in there, I walked into the freshmen dining hall, which is where my friends from
Waco, Texas, which is where I grew up -- I know some of you know this. When they'd visit, they'd look
around, and say, "This dining hall looks like something out of Hogwart's." It does, because that was
Hogwart's and that's Harvard. And when they see this, they say, "Why do you waste your time studying
happiness at Harvard? What does a Harvard student possibly have to be unhappy about?"
Embedded within that question is the key to understanding the science of happiness. Because what that
question assumes is that our external world is predictive of our happiness levels, when in reality, if I
know everything about your external world, I can only predict 10% of your long-term happiness. 90
percent of your long-term happiness is predicted not by the external world, but by the way your brain
processes the world. And if we change it, if we change our formula for happiness and success, we can
change the way that we can then affect reality. What we found is that only 25% of job successes are
predicted by IQ, 75 percent of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels, your social support
and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of as a threat.
I talked to a New England boarding school, probably the most prestigious one, and they said, "We
already know that. So every year, instead of just teaching our students, we have a wellness week. And
we're so excited. Monday night we have the world's leading expert will speak about adolescent
depression. Tuesday night it's school violence and bullying. Wednesday night is eating disorders.
Thursday night is illicit drug use. And Friday night we're trying to decide between risky sex or
happiness."
(Laughter)
160
I said, "That's most people's Friday nights."
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Which I'm glad you liked, but they did not like that at all. Silence on the phone. And into the silence, I
said, "I'd be happy to speak at your school, but that's not a wellness week, that's a sickness week. You've
outlined all the negative things that can happen, but not talked about the positive."
The absence of disease is not health. Here's how we get to health: We need to reverse the happiness and
success. In the last three years, I've traveledto 45 countries, working with schools and companies in the
midst of an economic downturn. And I found that most companies and schools follow a formula for
success, which is this: If I work harder, I'll be more successful. And if I'm more successful, then I'll be
happier. That undergirds most of our parenting and managing styles, the way that we motivate our
behavior.
And the problem is it's scientifically broken and backwards for two reasons. Every time your brain has
a success, you just changed the goalpost of what success looked like. You got good grades, now you
have to get better grades, you got into a good school and after you get into a better one, you got a good
job, now you have to get a better job, you hit your sales target, we're going to change it. And if happiness
is on the opposite side of success, your brain never gets there. We've pushed happiness over the
cognitive horizon, as a society. And that's because we think we have to be successful, then we'll be
happier.
But our brains work in the opposite order. If you can raise somebody's level of positivity in the present,
then their brain experiences what we now call a happiness advantage, which is your brain at positive
performs significantly better than at negative, neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity
rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, we've found that every single business outcome improves. Your
brain at positive is 31% more productive than your brain at negative, neutral or stressed. You're 37%
better at sales. Doctors are 19 percent faster, more accurate at coming up with the correct diagnosis
when positive instead of negative, neutral or stressed.
Which means we can reverse the formula. If we can find a way of becoming positive in the present,
then our brains work even more successfully as we're able to work harder, faster and more intelligently.
We need to be able to reverse this formula so we can start to see what our brains are actually capable
of. Because dopamine, which floods into your system when you're positive, has two functions. Not only
does it make you happier, it turns on all of the learning centers in your brain allowing you to adapt to
the world in a different way.
We've found there are ways that you can train your brain to be able to become more positive. In just a
two-minute span of time done for 21 days in a row, we can actually rewire your brain, allowing your
brain to actually work more optimistically and more successfully. We've done these things in research
now in every company that I've worked with, getting them to write down three new things that they're
grateful for for 21 days in a row, three new things each day. And at the end of that, their brain starts to
retain a pattern of scanning the world not for the negative, but for the positive first.
Journaling about one positive experience you've had over the past 24 hours allows your brain to relive
it. Exercise teaches your brain that your behavior matters. We find that meditation allows your brain to
get over the cultural ADHD that we've been creating by trying to do multiple tasks at once and allows
our brains to focus on the task at hand. And finally, random acts of kindness are conscious acts of
kindness. We get people, when they open up their inbox, to write one positive email praising or thanking
161
somebody in their support network.
And by doing these activities and by training your brain just like we train our bodies, what we've found
is we can reverse the formula for happiness and success, and in doing so, not only create ripples of
positivity, but a real revolution.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
162
18. Kelly McGonigal - HOW TO MAKE STRESS YOUR FRIEND
Fill in the blanks
https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend
I have a confession to make. But first, I want you to make a little confession to me. In the past year, I
want you to just ______________ your hand if you've experienced relatively little stress. Anyone?
How about a ______________ amount of stress?
Who has experienced a lot of stress? Yeah. Me too.
But that is not my confession. My confession is this: I am a health psychologist, and my
______________ is to help people be happier and healthier. But I fear that something I've been teaching
for the last 10 years is doing more ______________ than good, and it has to do with stress. For years
I've been telling people, stress makes you ______________. It increases the risk of everything from the
common cold to cardiovascular ______________. Basically, I've turned stress into the
______________. But I have changed my mind about stress, and today, I want to change yours.
Let me start with the study that made me ______________ my whole approach to stress. This study
tracked 30,000 adults in the United States for eight years, and they started by asking people, "How
much stress have you ______________ in the last year?" They also asked, "Do you believe that stress
is harmful for your health?" And then they used public death ______________ to find out who died.
(Laughter)
Okay. Some bad news first. People who experienced a lot of stress in the ______________ year had
a 43 percent increased ______________ of dying. But that was only true for the people who also
believed that stress is harmful for your health.
(Laughter)
People who experienced a lot of stress but did not ______________ stress as harmful were no more
likely to die. In fact, they had the ______________ risk of dying of anyone in the study, including
people who had relatively little stress.
Now the researchers estimated that over the eight years they were ______________ deaths, 182,000
Americans died prematurely, not from stress, but from the ______________ that stress is bad for you.
(Laughter)
That is over 20,000 deaths a year. Now, if that estimate is correct, that would make believing stress is
bad for you the 15th largest _____________ of death in the United States last year, killing more people
than ______________ cancer, HIV/AIDS and homicide.
(Laughter)
You can see why this study ______________ me out. Here I've been spending so much energy telling
people stress is bad for your health.
So this study got me ______________: Can changing how you think about stress make you healthier?
And here the science says yes. When you change your mind about stress, you can change your body's
______________ to stress.
Now to explain how this works, I want you all to pretend that you are participants in a study designed
163
to stress you ______________. It's called the social stress test. You come into the laboratory, and you're
told you have to give a five-minute impromptu ______________ on your personal weaknesses to a
______________of expert evaluators sitting right in front of you, and to make sure you feel the
______________, there are bright lights and a ______________ in your face, kind of like this.
(Laughter)
And the evaluators have been trained to give you discouraging, non-verbal ______________, like this.
(Exhales)
(Laughter)
Now that you're sufficiently demoralized, time for part two: a math test. And unbeknownst to you, the
experimenter has been trained to ______________ you during it. Now we're going to all do this
together. It's going to be fun. For me.
Okay.
(Laughter)
I want you all to ______________ backwards from 996 in increments of seven. You're going to do this
out ______________, as fast as you can, starting with 996. Go!
(Audience counting)
Go faster. Faster please. You're going too slow.
(Audience counting)
Stop. Stop, stop, stop. That guy made a mistake. We are going to have to start all over again.
(Laughter)
You're not very good at this, are you? Okay, so you ______________ the idea. If you were actually in
this study, you'd probably be a little stressed out. Your heart might be ______________, you might be
breathing faster, maybe breaking out into a ______________. And normally, we interpret these physical
changes as anxiety or signs that we aren't ______________ very well with the pressure.
But what if you viewed them instead as ______________ that your body was energized, was preparing
you to meet this challenge? Now that is exactly what ______________ were told in a study conducted
at Harvard University. Before they went through the social stress test, they were taught to
______________their stress response as helpful. That pounding heart is preparing you for
______________. If you're breathing faster, it's no problem. It's getting more ______________ to your
brain. And participants who learned to view the stress response as helpful for their ______________,
well, they were less stressed out, less anxious, more confident, but the most fascinating finding to me
was how their ______________ stress response changed.
Now, in a typical stress response, your heart ______________ goes up, and your blood vessels constrict
like this. And this is one of the reasons that chronic stress is sometimes ______________ with
cardiovascular disease. It's not really healthy to be in this ______________ all the time. But in the study,
when participants viewed their stress response as helpful, their blood vessels stayed ______________
like this. Their heart was still pounding, but this is a much healthier cardiovascular ______________.
It actually looks a lot like what happens in moments of joy and ______________. Over a lifetime of
stressful experiences, this one biological change could be the difference between a stress-induced heart
164
attack at age 50 and living well ______________ your 90s. And this is really what the new science of
stress reveals, that how you think about stress ______________.
So my goal as a health psychologist has changed. I no longer want to get ______________ of your
stress. I want to make you ______________ at stress. And we just did a little intervention. If you raised
your hand and said you'd had a lot of stress in the last year, we could have saved your ______________,
because hopefully the next time your heart is ______________ from stress, you're going to remember
this talk and you're going to think to yourself, this is my body helping me ______________ to this
challenge. And when you view stress in that way, your body ______________ you, and your stress
response becomes ______________.
Now I said I have over a ______________ of demonizing stress to redeem myself from, so we are going
to do one more intervention. I want to tell you about one of the most under-appreciated
______________ of the stress response, and the idea is this: Stress makes you _____________.
To understand this side of stress, we need to talk about a hormone, oxytocin, and I know oxytocin has
already gotten as much hype as a hormone can get. It even has its own cute nickname, the
______________ hormone, because it's released when you hug someone. But this is a very small part
of what oxytocin is ______________ in.
Oxytocin is a neuro-hormone. It fine-tunes your brain's social instincts. It primes you to do things that
______________ close relationships. Oxytocin makes you crave physical contact with your friends and
family. It enhances your ______________. It even makes you more willing to help and support the
people you care about. Some people have even suggested we should snort oxytocin... to become more
______________ and caring. But here's what most people don't understand about oxytocin. It's a stress
hormone. Your pituitary gland ______________ this stuff out as part of the stress response. It's as much
a part of your stress ______________ as the adrenaline that makes your heart ______________. And
when oxytocin is released in the stress response, it is motivating you to ______________ support. Your
biological stress response is nudging you to tell someone how you feel, instead of ______________ it
up. Your stress response wants to make sure you notice when someone else in your life is
______________ so that you can support each other. When life is difficult, your stress response wants
you to be ______________ by people who care about you.
Okay, so how is ______________ this side of stress going to make you healthier? Well, oxytocin doesn't
only ______________ on your brain. It also acts on your body, and one of its main roles in your body
is to protect your cardiovascular system from the ______________ of stress. It's a natural antiinflammatory. It also helps your blood vessels stay relaxed during stress. But my ______________
effect on the body is actually on the heart. Your heart has receptors for this hormone, and oxytocin helps
heart cells ______________ and heal from any stress-induced damage. This stress hormone strengthens
your heart.
And the ______________ thing is that all of these physical benefits of oxytocin are enhanced by social
______________ and social support. So when you reach ______________ to others under stress, either
to seek support or to help someone else, you release more of this hormone, your stress response becomes
______________, and you actually recover faster from stress. I find this amazing, that your stress
response has a built-in mechanism for stress ______________, and that mechanism is human
______________.
I want to finish by telling you about one more study. And ______________, because this study could
also save a life. This study tracked about 1,000 adults in the United States, and they ______________
in age from 34 to 93, and they started the study by asking, "How much stress have you experienced in
165
the last year?" They also asked, "How much time have you spent ______________ out friends,
______________, people in your community?" And then they used public records for the next five
years to ______________ out who died.
Okay, so the bad news first: For every ______________ life experience, like financial difficulties or
family crisis, that increased the risk of dying by 30 percent. But -- and I hope you are ______________
a "but" by now -- but that wasn't ______________ for everyone. People who spent time caring for
others showed absolutely no stress-related increase in dying. Zero. ______________ created
resilience.
And so we see once again that the harmful effects of stress on your health are not ______________.
How you think and how you act can transform your experience of stress. When you choose to view
your stress response as helpful, you create the ______________ of courage. And when you choose
to connect with others ______________ stress, you can create resilience. Now I wouldn't necessarily
ask for more stressful experiences in my life, but this science has given me a whole new
______________ for stress. Stress gives us access to our hearts. The compassionate heart that finds joy
and ______________ in connecting with others, and yes, your pounding physical heart, working so
hard to give you ______________ and energy. And when you choose to view stress in this way, you're
not just getting better at stress, you're actually making a pretty ______________ statement. You're
saying that you can trust yourself to handle life's challenges. And you're remembering that you don't
have to ______________ them alone.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Chris Anderson: This is ______________ of amazing, what you're telling us. It seems amazing to me
that a belief about stress can make so much difference to someone's life ______________. How would
that extend to advice, like, if someone is making a ______________ choice between, say, a stressful
job and a non-stressful job, does it matter which way they go? It's equally wise to go for the stressful
job so long as you believe that you can ______________ it, in some sense?
KM: Yeah, and one thing we know for ______________ is that chasing meaning is better for your
health than trying to avoid ______________. And so I would say that's really the best way to make
decisions, is go ______________ what it is that creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself to
handle the stress that follows.
CA: Thank you so much, Kelly. It's pretty cool.
(Applause)
166
Key
https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend
I have a confession to make. But first, I want you to make a little confession to me. In the past year, I
want you to just raise your hand if you've experienced relatively little stress. Anyone?
How about a moderate amount of stress?
Who has experienced a lot of stress? Yeah. Me too.
But that is not my confession. My confession is this: I am a health psychologist, and my mission is to
help people be happier and healthier. But I fear that something I've been teaching for the last 10 years
is doing more harm than good, and it has to do with stress. For years I've been telling people, stress
makes you sick. It increases the risk of everything from the common cold to cardiovascular disease.
Basically, I've turned stress into the enemy. But I have changed my mind about stress, and today, I want
to change yours.
Let me start with the study that made me rethink my whole approach to stress. This study tracked 30,000
adults in the United States for eight years, and they started by asking people, " How much stress have
you experienced in the last year?" They also asked, "Do you believe that stress is harmful for your
health?" And then they used public death records to find out who died.
(Laughter)
Okay. Some bad news first. People who experienced a lot of stress in the previous year had a 43 percent
increased risk of dying. But that was only true for the people who also believed that stress is harmful
for your health.
(Laughter)
People who experienced a lot of stress but did not view stress as harmful were no more likely to die. In
fact, they had the lowest risk of dying of anyone in the study, including people who had relatively little
stress.
Now the researchers estimated that over the eight years they were tracking deaths, 182,000 Americans
died prematurely, not from stress, but from the belief that stress is bad for you.
(Laughter)
That is over 20,000 deaths a year. Now, if that estimate is correct, that would make believing stress is
bad for you the 15th largest cause of death in the United States last year, killing more people than skin
cancer, HIV/AIDS and homicide.
(Laughter)
You can see why this study freaked me out. Here I've been spending so much energy telling people
stress is bad for your health.
So this study got me wondering: Can changing how you think about stress make you healthier? And
here the science says yes. When you change your mind about stress, you can change your body's
response to stress.
Now to explain how this works, I want you all to pretend that you are participants in a study designed
to stress you out. It's called the social stress test. You come into the laboratory, and you're told you have
to give a five-minute impromptu speech on your personal weaknesses to a panel of expert evaluators
167
sitting right in front of you, and to make sure you feel the pressure, there are bright lights and a camera
in your face, kind of like this.
(Laughter)
And the evaluators have been trained to give you discouraging, non-verbal feedback, like this.
(Exhales)
(Laughter)
Now that you're sufficiently demoralized, time for part two: a math test. And unbeknownst to you, the
experimenter has been trained to harass you during it. Now we're going to all do this together. It's going
to be fun. For me.
Okay.
(Laughter)
I want you all to count backwards from 996 in increments of seven. You're going to do this out loud, as
fast as you can, starting with 996. Go!
(Audience counting)
Go faster. Faster please. You're going too slow.
(Audience counting)
Stop. Stop, stop, stop. That guy made a mistake. We are going to have to start all over again.
(Laughter)
You're not very good at this, are you? Okay, so you get the idea. If you were actually in this study, you'd
probably be a little stressed out. Your heart might be pounding, you might be breathing faster, maybe
breaking out into a sweat. And normally, we interpret these physical changes as anxiety or signs that
we aren't coping very well with the pressure.
But what if you viewed them instead as signs that your body was energized, was preparing you to meet
this challenge? Now that is exactly what participants were told in a study conducted at Harvard
University. Before they went through the social stress test, they were taught to rethink their stress
response as helpful. That pounding heart is preparing you for action. If you're breathing faster, it's no
problem. It's getting more oxygen to your brain. And participants who learned to view the stress
response as helpful for their performance, well, they were less stressed out, less anxious, more
confident, but the most fascinating finding to me was how their physical stress response changed.
Now, in a typical stress response, your heart rate goes up, and your blood vessels constrict like this.
And this is one of the reasons that chronic stress is sometimes associated with cardiovascular disease.
It's not really healthy to be in this state all the time. But in the study, when participants viewed their
stress response as helpful, their blood vessels stayed relaxed like this. Their heart was still pounding,
but this is a much healthier cardiovascular profile. It actually looks a lot like what happens in moments
of joy and courage. Over a lifetime of stressful experiences, this one biological change could be the
difference between a stress-induced heart attack at age 50 and living well into your 90s. And this is
really what the new science of stress reveals, that how you think about stress matters.
So my goal as a health psychologist has changed. I no longer want to get rid of your stress. I want to
168
make you better at stress. And we just did a little intervention. If you raised your hand and said you'd
had a lot of stress in the last year, we could have saved your life, because hopefully the next time your
heart is pounding from stress, you're going to remember this talk and you're going to think to yourself,
this is my body helping me rise to this challenge. And when you view stress in that way, your body
believes you, and your stress response becomes healthier.
Now I said I have over a decade of demonizing stress to redeem myself from, so we are going to do one
more intervention. I want to tell you about one of the most under-appreciated aspects of the stress
response, and the idea is this: Stress makes you social.
To understand this side of stress, we need to talk about a hormone, oxytocin, and I know oxytocin has
already gotten as much hype as a hormone can get. It even has its own cute nickname, the cuddle
hormone, because it's released when you hug someone. But this is a very small part of what oxytocin is
involved in.
Oxytocin is a neuro-hormone. It fine-tunes your brain's social instincts. It primes you to do things that
strengthen close relationships. Oxytocin makes you crave physical contact with your friends and family.
It enhances your empathy. It even makes you more willing to help and support the people you care
about. Some people have even suggested we should snort oxytocin... to become more compassionate
and caring. But here's what most people don't understand about oxytocin. It's a stress hormone. Your
pituitary gland pumps this stuff out as part of the stress response. It's as much a part of your stress
response as the adrenaline that makes your heart pound. And when oxytocin is released in the stress
response, it is motivating you to seek support. Your biological stress response is nudging you to tell
someone how you feel, instead of bottling it up. Your stress response wants to make sure you notice
when someone else in your life is struggling so that you can support each other. When life is difficult,
your stress response wants you to be surrounded by people who care about you.
Okay, so how is knowing this side of stress going to make you healthier? Well, oxytocin doesn't only
act on your brain. It also acts on your body, and one of its main roles in your body is to protect your
cardiovascular system from the effects of stress. It's a natural anti-inflammatory. It also helps your blood
vessels stay relaxed during stress. But my favorite effect on the body is actually on the heart. Your heart
has receptors for this hormone, and oxytocin helps heart cells regenerate and heal from any stressinduced damage. This stress hormone strengthens your heart.
And the cool thing is that all of these physical benefits of oxytocin are enhanced by social contact and
social support. So when you reach out to others under stress, either to seek support or to help someone
else, you release more of this hormone, your stress response becomes healthier, and you actually recover
faster from stress. I find this amazing, that your stress response has a built-in mechanism for stress
resilience, and that mechanism is human connection.
I want to finish by telling you about one more study. And listen up, because this study could also save
a life. This study tracked about 1,000 adults in the United States, and they ranged in age from 34 to 93,
and they started the study by asking, "How much stress have you experienced in the last year?" They
also asked, "How much time have you spent helping out friends, neighbors, people in your community?"
And then they used public records for the next five years to find out who died.
Okay, so the bad news first: For every major stressful life experience, like financial difficulties or family
crisis, that increased the risk of dying by 30 percent. But -- and I hope you are expecting a "but" by now
-- but that wasn't true for everyone. People who spent time caring for others showed absolutely no
stress-related increase in dying. Zero. Caring created resilience.
And so we see once again that the harmful effects of stress on your health are not inevitable. How you
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think and how you act can transform your experience of stress. When you choose to view your stress
response as helpful, you create the biology of courage. And when you choose to connect with others
under stress, you can create resilience. Now I wouldn't necessarily ask for more stressful experiences
in my life, but this science has given me a whole new appreciation for stress. Stress gives us access to
our hearts. The compassionate heart that finds joy and meaning in connecting with others, and yes, your
pounding physical heart, working so hard to give you strength and energy. And when you choose to
view stress in this way, you're not just getting better at stress, you're actually making a pretty profound
statement. You're saying that you can trust yourself to handle life's challenges. And you're remembering
that you don't have to face them alone.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Chris Anderson: This is kind of amazing, what you're telling us. It seems amazing to me that a belief
about stress can make so much difference to someone's life expectancy. How would that extend to
advice, like, if someone is making a lifestyle choice between, say, a stressful job and a non-stressful
job, does it matter which way they go? It's equally wise to go for the stressful job so long as you believe
that you can handle it, in some sense?
KM: Yeah, and one thing we know for certain is that chasing meaning is better for your health than
trying to avoid discomfort. And so I would say that's really the best way to make decisions, is go after
what it is that creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself to handle the stress that follows.
CA: Thank you so much, Kelly. It's pretty cool.
(Applause)
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19. Amy Cuddy - YOUR BODY LANGUAGE SHAPES WHO YOU ARE
Fill in the blanks
https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are
So I want to start by offering you a free no-tech life hack, and all it requires of you is this: that you
change your ______________ for two minutes. But before I give it away, I want to ask you to right
now do a little audit of your body and what you're doing with your body. So how many of you are
______________of making yourselves smaller? Maybe you're hunching, crossing your legs, maybe
wrapping your ankles. Sometimes we hold ______________ our arms like this. Sometimes we
______________. (Laughter) I see you. So I want you to pay attention to what you're doing right now.
We're going to come back to that in a few minutes, and I'm ______________that if you learn to tweak
this a little bit, it could significantly change the way your life ______________.
So, we're really ______________ with body language, and we're particularly interested in other people's
body language. You know, we're interested in, like, you know — (Laughter) — an awkward
______________, or a smile, or a contemptuous glance, or maybe a very awkward ______________,,
or maybe even something like a ______________.
Narrator: Here they are arriving at Number 10. This lucky policeman gets to shake hands with the
______________ of the United States. Here comes the Prime Minister -- No. (Laughter) (Applause)
(Laughter) (Applause)
Amy Cuddy: So a handshake, or the lack of a handshake, can ______________ us talking for weeks
and weeks and weeks. Even the BBC and The New York Times. So obviously when we think about
nonverbal ______________, or body language -- but we call it nonverbals as ______________
scientists -- it's language, so we think about communication. When we think about communication, we
think about ______________. So what is your body language communicating to me? What's
______________ communicating to you?
And there's a lot of ______________ to believe that this is a valid way to look at this. So social scientists
have spent a lot of time ______________ at the effects of our body language, or other people's body
language, on judgments. And we make sweeping ______________ and inferences from body language.
And those judgments can predict really meaningful life outcomes like who we hire or promote, who we
______________ out on a date. For example, Nalini Ambady, a researcher at Tufts University, shows
that when people watch 30-second ______________, clips of real physician-patient interactions, their
judgments of the physician's ______________ predict whether or not that physician will be sued. So it
doesn't have to do so much with whether or not that physician was ______________, but do we like
that person and how they interacted? Even more dramatic, Alex Todorov at Princeton has shown us that
judgments of political candidates' faces in just one second predict 70 percent of U.S. Senate and
gubernatorial ______________ outcomes, and even, let's go ______________, emoticons used well in
online negotiations can lead you to claim more value from that ______________. If you use them
poorly, bad idea. Right?
So when we think of nonverbals, we think of how we judge others, how they judge us and what the
______________ are. We tend to forget, though, the other audience that's influenced by our nonverbals,
and that's ourselves. We are also ______________ by our nonverbals, our thoughts and our feelings
and our physiology.
So what ______________ am I talking about? I'm a social psychologist. I study prejudice, and I teach
at a competitive business school, so it was inevitable that I would become interested in power
171
______________. I became especially interested in nonverbal expressions of power and dominance.
And what are nonverbal expressions of power and dominance? Well, this is what they are. So in the
animal ______________, they are about expanding. So you make yourself big, you stretch out, you take
up ______________, you're basically opening up. It's about opening up. And this is true across the
animal kingdom. It's not just ______________ to primates. And humans do the same thing. (Laughter)
So they do this both when they have power sort of chronically, and also when they're feeling powerful
in the ______________. And this one is especially interesting because it really shows us how universal
and ______________ these expressions of power are. This expression, which is known as
______________, Jessica Tracy has studied. She shows that people who are born with sight and people
who are congenitally ______________ do this when they win at a physical competition. So when they
cross the finish ______________ and they've won, it doesn't matter if they've never seen anyone do it.
They do this. So the ______________ up in the V, the chin is slightly ______________.
What do we do when we feel powerless? We do exactly the opposite. We close up. We ______________
ourselves up. We make ourselves ______________. We don't want to bump into the person next to us.
So again, both animals and humans do the same thing. And this is what happens when you put together
high and low power. So what we tend to do when it comes to power is that we ______________ the
other's nonverbals. So if someone is being really powerful with us, we tend to make ourselves smaller.
We don't ______________ them. We do the opposite of them.
So I'm watching this behavior in the classroom, and what do I notice? I notice that MBA students really
______________ the full range of power nonverbals. So you have people who are like caricatures of
alphas, really coming into the room, they get right into the middle of the room before class even starts,
like they really want to ______________ space. When they sit down, they're sort of spread out. They
raise their hands like this. You have other people who are virtually ______________ when they come
in. As soon they come in, you see it. You see it on their faces and their ______________, and they sit
in their chair and they make themselves ______________ and they go like this when they raise their
hand.
I notice a couple of things about this. One, you're not going to be surprised. It seems to be
______________ to gender. So women are much more likely to do this kind of thing than men. Women
feel chronically less powerful than men, so this is not surprising.
But the other thing I noticed is that it also seemed to be related to the ______________ to which the
students were participating, and how well they were participating. And this is really important in the
MBA classroom, because participation ______________ for half the grade.
So business schools have been struggling with this gender grade ______________. You get these
equally qualified women and men ______________ in and then you get these differences in grades, and
it seems to be partly attributable to ______________. So I started to wonder, you know, okay, so you
have these people coming in like this, and they're participating. Is it ______________ that we could get
people to fake it and would it lead them to participate more?
So my main collaborator Dana Carney, who's at Berkeley, and I really wanted to know, can you fake it
______________ you make it? Like, can you do this just for a little while and actually experience a
behavioral outcome that makes you seem more powerful? So we know that our nonverbals
______________ how other people think and feel about us. There's a lot of evidence. But our question
really was, do our nonverbals govern how we think and ______________ about ourselves?
There's some evidence that they do. So, for example, we smile when we feel happy, but also, when
we're ______________ to smile by holding a pen in our teeth like this, it makes us feel happy. So it
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goes ______________ ways. When it comes to power, it also goes both ways. So when you feel
powerful, you're more likely to do this, but it's also possible that when you ______________ to be
powerful, you are more likely to actually feel powerful.
So the second question really was, you know, so we know that our minds change our bodies, but is it
also true that our bodies change our minds? And when I say minds, in the _____________ of the
powerful, what am I talking about? So I'm talking about thoughts and feelings and the sort of
physiological things that ______________ our thoughts and feelings, and in my case, that's hormones.
I look at hormones. So what do the minds of the powerful versus the powerless ______________ like?
So powerful people tend to be, not surprisingly, more assertive and more confident,
more ______________. They actually feel they're going to win even at games of chance. They also
tend to be able to think more abstractly. So there are a lot of differences. They take more risks. There
are a lot of differences between powerful and _____________ people. Physiologically, there also are
differences on two key hormones: testosterone, which is the dominance hormone, and cortisol, which
is the _____________ hormone.
So what we find is that high-power alpha males in primate hierarchies have ______________
testosterone and low cortisol, and powerful and effective leaders also have high testosterone and low
cortisol. So what does that mean? When you think about ______________, people tended to think only
about testosterone, because that was about dominance. But really, power is also about how
you ______________ to stress. So do you want the high-power leader that's dominant, high on
testosterone, but really stress ______________? Probably not, right? You want the person who's
powerful and assertive and dominant, but not very stress reactive, the person who's ______________
back.
So we know that in primate hierarchies, if an alpha needs to take over, if an individual needs to take
over an alpha ______________ sort of suddenly, within a few days, that individual's testosterone has
gone up significantly and his cortisol has dropped significantly. So we have this evidence, both that the
body can shape the mind, at least at the ______________ level, and also that role changes
can ______________ the mind. So what happens, okay, you take a role change, what happens if you
do that at a really minimal level, like this ______________ manipulation, this tiny intervention? "For
two minutes," you say, "I want you to stand like this, and it's going to make you feel more powerful."
So this is what we did. We decided to bring people into the ______________ and run a little
experiment, and these people adopted, for two minutes, either high-power poses or lowpower ______________, and I'm just going to show you five of the poses, although they took on only
two. So here's one. A ______________ more. This one has been dubbed the "Wonder Woman" by the
media. Here are a couple more. So you can be standing or you can be sitting. And here are the lowpower poses. So you're folding up, you're making yourself ______________. This one is very lowpower. When you're ______________ your neck, you're really protecting yourself.
So this is what happens. They come in, they ______________ into a vial, for two minutes, we say,
"You need to do this or this." They don't look at pictures of the poses. We don't want to prime them
with a ______________ of power. We want them to be feeling power. So two minutes they do this.
We then ask them, "How powerful do you feel?" on a series of ______________, and then we give
them an opportunity to gamble, and then we take another saliva ______________. That's it. That's the
whole experiment.
So this is what we find. Risk tolerance, which is the ______________, we find that when you are in
the high-power pose condition, 86 percent of you will gamble. When you're in the low-power pose
______________ only 60 percent, and that's a whopping ______________ difference.
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Here's what we ______________ on testosterone. From their baseline when they come in, high-power
people experience about a 20-percent increase, and low-power people experience about a 10percent ______________. So again, two minutes, and you get these changes. Here's what you get on
cortisol. High-power people experience about a 25-percent decrease, and the low-power people
experience about a 15-percent increase. So two minutes ______________ to these hormonal changes
that configure your brain to basically be either assertive, ______________ and comfortable, or really
stress-reactive, and feeling sort of ______________ down. And we've all had the feeling, right? So it
seems that our nonverbals do govern how we think and feel about ourselves, so it's not just others, but
it's also ourselves. Also, our bodies ______________ our minds.
But the next question, of course, is, can power posing for a few minutes really change your life
in ______________ ways? This is in the lab, it's this little task, it's just a couple of minutes. Where can
you actually ______________ this? Which we cared about, of course. And so we think where you want
to use this is evaluative situations, like social ______________ situations. Where are you being
evaluated, either by your friends? For teenagers, it's at the ______________ table. For some people it's
speaking at a school board meeting. It might be giving a ______________ or giving a talk like this or
doing a job interview. We decided that the one that most people could relate to because most people
had been ______________, was the job interview.
So we published these findings, and the media are all ______________ it, and they say, Okay, so this
is what you do when you go in for the job interview, right?
(Laughter)
You know, so we were of course horrified, and said, Oh my God, no, that's not what we meant at all.
For ______________ reasons, no, don't do that. Again, this is not about you talking to other people.
It's you talking to yourself. What do you do before you go into a job interview? You do this. You're
sitting down. You're looking at your iPhone -- or your Android, not trying to ______________ anyone
out. You're looking at your notes, you're hunching up, making yourself small, when really what you
should be doing maybe is this, like, in the bathroom, right? Do that. Find two minutes. So that's what
we want to ______________. Okay? So we bring people into a lab, and they do either high- or lowpower poses again, they go through a very stressful job interview. It's five minutes long. They are
being ______________. They're being judged also, and the judges are trained to give no nonverbal
feedback, so they look like this. Imagine this is the person interviewing you. So for five minutes,
nothing, and this is ______________ than being heckled. People hate this. It's what Marianne LaFrance
calls "standing in social quicksand." So this really spikes your cortisol. So this is the job interview we
put them through, because we really wanted to see what ______________. We then have these coders
look at these ______________, four of them. They're blind to the hypothesis. They're blind to the
conditions. They have no idea who's been posing in what pose, and they ______________ looking at
these sets of tapes, and they say, "We want to hire these people," all the high-power posers. "We don't
want to hire these people. We also ______________ these people much more positively overall." But
what's driving it? It's not about the content of the speech. It's about the ______________ that they're
bringing to the speech. Because we rate them on all these variables related to competence, like, how
well- ______________ is the speech? How good is it? What are their qualifications? No effect on those
things. This is what's affected. These kinds of things. People are bringing their true ______________,
basically. They're bringing themselves. They bring their ideas, but as themselves, with no, you know,
residue over them. So this is what's driving the ______________, or mediating the effect.
So when I tell people about this, that our bodies change our minds and our minds can change our
behavior, and our behavior can change our ______________, they say to me, "It feels fake." Right? So
174
I said, fake it till you make it. It's not me. I don't want to get ______________ and then still feel like a
fraud. I don't want to feel like an impostor. I don't want to get there only to feel like I'm
not ______________ to be here. And that really resonated with me, because I want to tell you a
little ______________ about being an impostor and feeling like I'm not supposed to be here.
When I was 19, I was in a really bad car accident. I was ______________ out of a car, rolled several
times. I was thrown from the car. And I woke up in a head ______________ rehab ward, and I had
been withdrawn from college, and I learned that my IQ had dropped by two ______________
deviations, which was very traumatic. I knew my IQ because I had ______________ with being smart,
and I had been called gifted as a child. So I'm taken out of college, I keep trying to go back. They say,
"You're not going to finish college. Just, you know, there are other things for you to do, but that's not
going to ______________ for you."
So I really struggled with this, and I have to say, having your identity taken from you,
your ______________identity, and for me it was being smart, having that taken from you, there's
nothing that ______________you feeling more powerless than that. So I felt entirely powerless. I
worked and worked, and I ______________lucky, and worked, and got lucky, and worked.
Eventually I graduated from college. It took me four years longer than my ______________, and I
convinced someone, my angel advisor, Susan Fiske, to take me ______________, and so I ended up at
Princeton, and I was like, I am not supposed to be here. I am an impostor. And the night before my firstyear talk, and the first-year talk at Princeton is a 20-minute talk to 20 people. That's it. I was so afraid
of being ______________out the next day that I called her and said, "I'm quitting." She was like, "You
are not quitting, because I ______________ a gamble on you, and you're staying. You're going to stay,
and this is what you're going to do. You are going to fake it.
You're going to do every talk that you ever ______________ asked to do. You're just going to do it and
do it and do it, even if you're ______________ and just paralyzed and having an out-of-body experience,
until you have this moment where you say, 'Oh my gosh, I'm doing it. Like, I have ______________
this. I am actually doing this.'" So that's what I did. Five years in grad school, a few years, you know,
I'm at Northwestern, I moved to Harvard, I'm at Harvard, I'm not really thinking about it anymore, but
for a long time I had been thinking, "Not ______________ to be here."
So at the end of my first year at Harvard, a student who had not talked in class the entire
______________, who I had said, "Look, you've gotta participate or else you're going to fail," came
into my office. I really didn't know her at all. She came in totally ______________, and she said, "I'm
not supposed to be here." And that was the moment for me. Because two things happened. One was that
I realized, oh my gosh, I don't feel like that anymore. I don't feel that ______________, but she does,
and I get that feeling. And the ______________ was, she is supposed to be here! Like, she can fake it,
she can become it.
So I was like, "Yes, you are! You are supposed to be here! And tomorrow you're going to fake it, you're
going to make yourself ______________, and, you know -(Applause)
And you're going to go into the classroom, and you are going to give the best ______________ ever."
You know? And she gave the best comment ever, and people turned around and were like, oh my God,
I didn't even notice her sitting there. (Laughter)
175
She comes back to me months later, and I realized that she had not just faked it till she made it, she had
actually faked it till she ______________ it. So she had changed. And so I want to say to you, don't
fake it till you make it. Fake it till you become it. Do it enough until you actually become it and
______________.
The last thing I'm going to leave you with is this. Tiny tweaks can lead to big ______________. So,
this is two minutes. Two minutes, two minutes, two minutes. Before you go into the next stressful
evaluative situation, for two minutes, try doing this, in the ______________, in a bathroom stall, at your
desk behind closed doors. That's what you want to do. Configure your brain to ______________ the
best in that situation. Get your testosterone up. Get your cortisol down. Don't leave that situation feeling
like, oh, I didn't show them who I am. Leave that situation ______________ like, I really feel like I got
to say who I am and show who I am.
So I want to ask you first, you know, both to try power ______________, and also I want to ask you to
share the science, because this is simple. I don't have ______________ involved in this. (Laughter)
Give it away. Share it with people, because the people who can use it the most are the ones with no
______________ and no technology and no status and no power. Give it to them because they can do
it in ______________. They need their bodies, privacy and two minutes, and it can significantly change
the outcomes of their life.
Thank you.
(Applause)
176
Key
https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are
So I want to start by offering you a free no-tech life hack, and all it requires of you is this: that you
change your posture for two minutes. But before I give it away, I want to ask you to right now do a little
audit of your body and what you're doing with your body. So how many of you are sort of making
yourselves smaller? Maybe you're hunching, crossing your legs, maybe wrapping your ankles.
Sometimes we hold onto our arms like this. Sometimes we spread out. (Laughter) I see you. So I want
you to pay attention to what you're doing right now. We're going to come back to that in a few minutes,
and I'm hoping that if you learn to tweak this a little bit, it could significantly change the way your life
unfolds.
So, we're really fascinated with body language, and we're particularly interested in other people's body
language. You know, we're interested in, like, you know — (Laughter) — an awkward interaction, or a
smile, or a contemptuous glance, or maybe a very awkward wink, or maybe even something like a
handshake.
Narrator: Here they are arriving at Number 10. This lucky policeman gets to shake hands with the
President of the United States. Here comes the Prime Minister -- No. (Laughter) (Applause)
(Laughter) (Applause)
Amy Cuddy: So a handshake, or the lack of a handshake, can have us talking for weeks and weeks and
weeks. Even the BBC and The New York Times. So obviously when we think about nonverbal
behavior, or body language -- but we call it nonverbals as social scientists -- it's language, so we think
about communication. When we think about communication, we think about interactions. So what is
your body language communicating to me? What's mine communicating to you?
And there's a lot of reason to believe that this is a valid way to look at this. So social scientists have
spent a lot of time looking at the effects of our body language, or other people's body language, on
judgments. And we make sweeping judgments and inferences from body language. And those
judgments can predict really meaningful life outcomes like who we hire or promote, who we ask out on
a date. For example, Nalini Ambady, a researcher at Tufts University, shows that when people watch
30-second soundless clips of real physician-patient interactions, their judgments of the physician's
niceness predict whether or not that physician will be sued. So it doesn't have to do so much with
whether or not that physician was incompetent, but do we like that person and how they interacted?
Even more dramatic, Alex Todorov at Princeton has shown us that judgments of political candidates'
faces in just one second predict 70 percent of U.S. Senate and gubernatorial race outcomes, and even,
let's go digital, emoticons used well in online negotiations can lead you to claim more value from that
negotiation. If you use them poorly, bad idea. Right?
So when we think of nonverbals, we think of how we judge others, how they judge us and what the
outcomes are. We tend to forget, though, the other audience that's influenced by our nonverbals, and
that's ourselves. We are also influenced by our nonverbals, our thoughts and our feelings and our
physiology.
So what nonverbals am I talking about? I'm a social psychologist. I study prejudice, and I teach at a
competitive business school, so it was inevitable that I would become interested in power dynamics. I
became especially interested in nonverbal expressions of power and dominance.
And what are nonverbal expressions of power and dominance? Well, this is what they are. So in the
animal kingdom, they are about expanding. So you make yourself big, you stretch out, you take up
177
space, you're basically opening up. It's about opening up. And this is true across the animal kingdom.
It's not just limited to primates. And humans do the same thing. (Laughter) So they do this both when
they have power sort of chronically, and also when they're feeling powerful in the moment. And this
one is especially interesting because it really shows us how universal and old these expressions of power
are. This expression, which is known as pride, Jessica Tracy has studied. She shows that people who
are born with sight and people who are congenitally blind do this when they win at a physical
competition. So when they cross the finish line and they've won, it doesn't matter if they've never seen
anyone do it. They do this. So the arms up in the V, the chin is slightly lifted.
What do we do when we feel powerless? We do exactly the opposite. We close up. We wrap ourselves
up. We make ourselves small. We don't want to bump into the person next to us. So again, both animals
and humans do the same thing. And this is what happens when you put together high and low power.
So what we tend to do when it comes to power is that we complement the other's nonverbals. So if
someone is being really powerful with us, we tend to make ourselves smaller. We don't mirror them.
We do the opposite of them.
So I'm watching this behavior in the classroom, and what do I notice? I notice that MBA students really
exhibit the full range of power nonverbals. So you have people who are like caricatures of alphas, really
coming into the room, they get right into the middle of the room before class even starts, like they really
want to occupy space. When they sit down, they're sort of spread out. They raise their hands like this.
You have other people who are virtually collapsing when they come in. As soon they come in, you see
it. You see it on their faces and their bodies, and they sit in their chair and they make themselves tiny,
and they go like this when they raise their hand.
I notice a couple of things about this. One, you're not going to be surprised. It seems to be related to
gender. So women are much more likely to do this kind of thing than men. Women feel chronically less
powerful than men, so this is not surprising.
But the other thing I noticed is that it also seemed to be related to the extent to which the students were
participating, and how well they were participating. And this is really important in the MBA classroom,
because participation counts for half the grade.
So business schools have been struggling with this gender grade gap. You get these equally qualified
women and men coming in and then you get these differences in grades, and it seems to be partly
attributable to participation. So I started to wonder, you know, okay, so you have these people coming
in like this, and they're participating. Is it possible that we could get people to fake it and would it lead
them to participate more?
So my main collaborator Dana Carney, who's at Berkeley, and I really wanted to know, can you fake it
till you make it? Like, can you do this just for a little while and actually experience a behavioral outcome
that makes you seem more powerful? So we know that our nonverbals govern how other people think
and feel about us. There's a lot of evidence. But our question really was, do our nonverbals govern how
we think and feel about ourselves?
There's some evidence that they do. So, for example, we smile when we feel happy, but also, when
we're forced to smile by holding a pen in our teeth like this, it makes us feel happy. So it goes both
ways. When it comes to power, it also goes both ways. So when you feel powerful, you're more likely
to do this, but it's also possible that when you pretend to be powerful, you are more likely to actually
feel powerful.
So the second question really was, you know, so we know that our minds change our bodies, but is it
also true that our bodies change our minds? And when I say minds, in the case of the powerful, what
178
am I talking about? So I'm talking about thoughts and feelings and the sort of physiological things that
make up our thoughts and feelings, and in my case, that's hormones. I look at hormones. So what do the
minds of the powerful versus the powerless look like? So powerful people tend to be, not surprisingly,
more assertive and more confident, more optimistic. They actually feel they're going to win even at
games of chance. They also tend to be able to think more abstractly. So there are a lot of differences.
They take more risks. There are a lot of differences between powerful and powerless people.
Physiologically, there also are differences on two key hormones: testosterone, which is the dominance
hormone, and cortisol, which is the stress hormone.
So what we find is that high-power alpha males in primate hierarchies have high testosterone and low
cortisol, and powerful and effective leaders also have high testosterone and low cortisol. So what does
that mean? When you think about power, people tended to think only about testosterone, because that
was about dominance. But really, power is also about how you react to stress. So do you want the highpower leader that's dominant, high on testosterone, but really stress reactive? Probably not, right? You
want the person who's powerful and assertive and dominant, but not very stress reactive, the person
who's laid back.
So we know that in primate hierarchies, if an alpha needs to take over, if an individual needs to take
over an alpha role sort of suddenly, within a few days, that individual's testosterone has gone up
significantly and his cortisol has dropped significantly. So we have this evidence, both that the body
can shape the mind, at least at the facial level, and also that role changes can shape the mind. So what
happens, okay, you take a role change, what happens if you do that at a really minimal level, like this
tiny manipulation, this tiny intervention? "For two minutes," you say, "I want you to stand like this, and
it's going to make you feel more powerful."
So this is what we did. We decided to bring people into the lab and run a little experiment, and these
people adopted, for two minutes, either high-power poses or low-power poses, and I'm just going to
show you five of the poses, although they took on only two. So here's one. A couple more. This one has
been dubbed the "Wonder Woman" by the media. Here are a couple more. So you can be standing or
you can be sitting. And here are the low-power poses. So you're folding up, you're making yourself
small. This one is very low-power. When you're touching your neck, you're really protecting yourself.
So this is what happens. They come in, they spit into a vial, for two minutes, we say, "You need to do
this or this." They don't look at pictures of the poses. We don't want to prime them with a concept of
power. We want them to be feeling power. So two minutes they do this. We then ask them, "How
powerful do you feel?" on a series of items, and then we give them an opportunity to gamble, and then
we take another saliva sample. That's it. That's the whole experiment.
So this is what we find. Risk tolerance, which is the gambling, we find that when you are in the highpower pose condition, 86 percent of you will gamble. When you're in the low-power pose condition,
only 60 percent, and that's a whopping significant difference.
Here's what we find on testosterone. From their baseline when they come in, high-power people
experience about a 20-percent increase, and low-power people experience about a 10-percent decrease.
So again, two minutes, and you get these changes. Here's what you get on cortisol. High-power people
experience about a 25-percent decrease, and the low-power people experience about a 15-percent
increase. So two minutes lead to these hormonal changes that configure your brain to basically be either
assertive, confident and comfortable, or really stress-reactive, and feeling sort of shut down. And we've
all had the feeling, right? So it seems that our nonverbals do govern how we think and feel about
ourselves, so it's not just others, but it's also ourselves. Also, our bodies change our minds.
179
But the next question, of course, is, can power posing for a few minutes really change your life in
meaningful ways? This is in the lab, it's this little task, it's just a couple of minutes. Where can you
actually apply this? Which we cared about, of course. And so we think where you want to use this is
evaluative situations, like social threat situations. Where are you being evaluated, either by your
friends? For teenagers, it's at the lunchroom table. For some people it's speaking at a school board
meeting. It might be giving a pitch or giving a talk like this or doing a job interview. We decided that
the one that most people could relate to because most people had been through, was the job interview.
So we published these findings, and the media are all over it, and they say, Okay, so this is what you
do when you go in for the job interview, right?
(Laughter)
You know, so we were of course horrified, and said, Oh my God, no, that's not what we meant at all.
For numerous reasons, no, don't do that. Again, this is not about you talking to other people. It's you
talking to yourself. What do you do before you go into a job interview? You do this. You're sitting
down. You're looking at your iPhone -- or your Android, not trying to leave anyone out. You're looking
at your notes, you're hunching up, making yourself small, when really what you should be doing maybe
is this, like, in the bathroom, right? Do that. Find two minutes. So that's what we want to test. Okay?
So we bring people into a lab, and they do either high- or low-power poses again, they go through a
very stressful job interview. It's five minutes long. They are being recorded. They're being judged also,
and the judges are trained to give no nonverbal feedback, so they look like this. Imagine this is the
person interviewing you. So for five minutes, nothing, and this is worse than being heckled. People hate
this. It's what Marianne LaFrance calls "standing in social quicksand." So this really spikes your
cortisol. So this is the job interview we put them through, because we really wanted to see what
happened. We then have these coders look at these tapes, four of them. They're blind to the hypothesis.
They're blind to the conditions. They have no idea who's been posing in what pose, and they end up
looking at these sets of tapes, and they say, "We want to hire these people," all the high-power posers.
"We don't want to hire these people. We also evaluate these people much more positively overall." But
what's driving it? It's not about the content of the speech. It's about the presence that they're bringing to
the speech. Because we rate them on all these variables related to competence, like, how well-structured
is the speech? How good is it? What are their qualifications? No effect on those things. This is what's
affected. These kinds of things. People are bringing their true selves, basically. They're bringing
themselves. They bring their ideas, but as themselves, with no, you know, residue over them. So this is
what's driving the effect, or mediating the effect.
So when I tell people about this, that our bodies change our minds and our minds can change our
behavior, and our behavior can change our outcomes, they say to me, "It feels fake." Right? So I said,
fake it till you make it. It's not me. I don't want to get there and then still feel like a fraud. I don't want
to feel like an impostor. I don't want to get there only to feel like I'm not supposed to be here. And that
really resonated with me, because I want to tell you a little story about being an impostor and feeling
like I'm not supposed to be here.
When I was 19, I was in a really bad car accident. I was thrown out of a car, rolled several times. I was
thrown from the car. And I woke up in a head injury rehab ward, and I had been withdrawn from college,
and I learned that my IQ had dropped by two standard deviations, which was very traumatic. I knew
my IQ because I had identified with being smart, and I had been called gifted as a child. So I'm taken
out of college, I keep trying to go back. They say, "You're not going to finish college. Just, you know,
there are other things for you to do, but that's not going to work out for you."
So I really struggled with this, and I have to say, having your identity taken from you, your core identity,
180
and for me it was being smart, having that taken from you, there's nothing that leaves you feeling more
powerless than that. So I felt entirely powerless. I worked and worked, and I got lucky, and worked,
and got lucky, and worked.
Eventually I graduated from college. It took me four years longer than my peers, and I convinced
someone, my angel advisor, Susan Fiske, to take me on, and so I ended up at Princeton, and I was like,
I am not supposed to be here. I am an impostor. And the night before my first-year talk, and the firstyear talk at Princeton is a 20-minute talk to 20 people. That's it. I was so afraid of being found out the
next day that I called her and said, "I'm quitting." She was like, "You are not quitting, because I took a
gamble on you, and you're staying. You're going to stay, and this is what you're going to do. You are
going to fake it. You're going to do every talk that you ever get asked to do. You're just going to do it
and do it and do it, even if you're terrified and just paralyzed and having an out-of-body experience,
until you have this moment where you say, 'Oh my gosh, I'm doing it. Like, I have become this. I am
actually doing this.'" So that's what I did. Five years in grad school, a few years, you know, I'm at
Northwestern, I moved to Harvard, I'm at Harvard, I'm not really thinking about it anymore, but for a
long time I had been thinking, "Not supposed to be here."
So at the end of my first year at Harvard, a student who had not talked in class the entire semester, who
I had said, "Look, you've gotta participate or else you're going to fail," came into my office. I really
didn't know her at all. She came in totally defeated, and she said, "I'm not supposed to be here." And
that was the moment for me. Because two things happened. One was that I realized, oh my gosh, I don't
feel like that anymore. I don't feel that anymore, but she does, and I get that feeling. And the second
was, she is supposed to be here! Like, she can fake it, she can become it.
So I was like, "Yes, you are! You are supposed to be here! And tomorrow you're going to fake it, you're
going to make yourself powerful, and, you know -(Applause)
And you're going to go into the classroom, and you are going to give the best comment ever." You
know? And she gave the best comment ever, and people turned around and were like, oh my God, I
didn't even notice her sitting there. (Laughter)
She comes back to me months later, and I realized that she had not just faked it till she made it, she had
actually faked it till she became it. So she had changed. And so I want to say to you, don't fake it till
you make it. Fake it till you become it. Do it enough until you actually become it and internalize.
The last thing I'm going to leave you with is this. Tiny tweaks can lead to big changes. So, this is two
minutes. Two minutes, two minutes, two minutes. Before you go into the next stressful evaluative
situation, for two minutes, try doing this, in the elevator, in a bathroom stall, at your desk behind closed
doors. That's what you want to do. Configure your brain to cope the best in that situation. Get your
testosterone up. Get your cortisol down. Don't leave that situation feeling like, oh, I didn't show them
who I am. Leave that situation feeling like, I really feel like I got to say who I am and show who I am.
So I want to ask you first, you know, both to try power posing, and also I want to ask you to share the
science, because this is simple. I don't have ego involved in this. (Laughter) Give it away. Share it with
people, because the people who can use it the most are the ones with no resources and no technology
and no status and no power. Give it to them because they can do it in private. They need their bodies,
privacy and two minutes, and it can significantly change the outcomes of their life.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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182
20. Julian Treasure - HOW TO SPEAK SO THAT PEOPLE WANT TO LISTEN
Fill in the blanks
https://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_how_to_speak_so_that_people_want_to_listen
The human voice: It's the ______________ we all play. It's the most powerful sound in the world,
probably. It's the only one that can start a ______________ or say "I love you." And yet many people
______________ the experience that when they speak, people don't listen to them. And why is that?
How can we speak powerfully to make change in the world?
What I'd like to ______________ there are a number of habits that we need to ______________from.
I've assembled for your pleasure here seven deadly ______________ of speaking. I'm not pretending
this is an exhaustive list, but these seven, I think, are pretty large habits that we can all
______________.
First, gossip. Speaking ______________ of somebody who's not present. Not a nice habit, and we
know perfectly ______________ the person gossiping, five minutes later, will be gossiping about us.
Second, judging. We know people who are ______________ this in conversation, and it's very hard to
listen to somebody if you know that you're being judged and ______________ wanting at the same
time.
Third, negativity. You can fall into this. My mother, in the last years of her life, became very
______________, and it's hard to listen. I remember one day, I said to her, "It's October 1 today," and
she said, "I know, isn't it dreadful?"
(Laughter)
It's hard to listen when somebody's that negative.
(Laughter)
And another form of negativity, complaining. Well, this is the national ______________ of the U.K.
It's our national sport. We complain about the weather, sport, about politics, about everything, but
actually, complaining is ______________ misery. It's not spreading sunshine and ______________ in
the world.
Excuses.
We've all met this guy. Maybe we've all been this guy. Some people have a ______________. They
just pass it on to everybody else and don't take responsibility for their ______________, and again, hard
to listen to somebody who is being like that.
Penultimate, the sixth of the seven, embroidery, ______________. It demeans our language, actually,
sometimes. For example, if I see something that really is ______________, what do I call it?
(Laughter)
And then, of course, this exaggeration becomes ______________, and we don't want to listen to people
we know are lying to us.
And finally, dogmatism. The ______________ of facts with opinions. When those two things get
conflated, you're listening into the ______________. You know, somebody is bombarding you with
their ______________ as if they were true. It's difficult to listen to that.
183
So here they are, seven deadly sins of speaking. These are things I think we need to ______________.
But is there a positive way to think about this? Yes, there is. I'd like to suggest that there are four really
powerful ______________, foundations, that we can stand on if we want our speech to be powerful and
to make ______________ in the world. Fortunately, these things ______________ a word. The word
is "hail," and it has a great definition as well. I'm not talking about the stuff that ______________ from
the sky and hits you on the head. I'm talking about this definition, to greet or ______________
enthusiastically, which is how I think our words will be received if we ______________ these four
things.
So what do they stand for? See if you can ______________. The H, honesty, of course, being true in
what you say, being straight and clear. The A is ______________, just being yourself. A friend of mine
described it as standing in your own ______________, which I think is a lovely way to put it. The I is
______________, being your word, actually ______________ what you say, and being somebody
people can trust. And the L is love. I don't mean romantic love, but I do mean wishing people
______________, for two reasons. First of all, I think ______________ honesty may not be what we
want. I mean, my goodness, you look ugly this morning. Perhaps that's not ______________. Tempered
with love, of course, honesty is a great thing. But also, if you're really wishing somebody well, it's very
hard to ______________ them at the same time. I'm not even sure you can do those two things
simultaneously. So hail.
Also, now that's what you say, and it's like the old ______________, it is what you say, it's also the way
that you say it. You have an amazing ______________. This instrument is incredible, and yet this is a
toolbox that very few people have ever ______________. I'd like to have a little rummage in there with
you now and just ______________ a few tools out that you might like to ______________ and play
with, which will increase the power of your speaking.
Register, for example. Now, falsetto register may not be very ______________ most of the time, but
there's a register in between. I'm not going to get very ______________ about this for any of you who
are voice coaches. You can ______________ your voice, however. So if I talk up here in my
______________, you can hear the difference. If I go down here in my ______________ which is where
most of us speak from most of the time. But if you want ______________, you need to go down here
to the chest. You hear the difference? We vote for politicians with lower ______________, it's true,
because we associate ______________ with power and with authority. That's register.
Then we have timbre. It's the way your voice ______________. Again, the research shows that we
prefer voices which are rich, ______________, warm, like hot chocolate. Well if that's not you, that's
not the end of the world, because you can train. Go and get a voice ______________. And there are
amazing things you can do with breathing, with ______________, and with exercises to improve the
timbre of your voice.
Then prosody. I love prosody. This is the sing-song, the meta-language that we use in order to
______________ meaning. It's root one for ______________ in conversation. People who speak all
______________ one note are really quite hard to listen to if they don't have any prosody at all. That's
where the word "monotonic" ______________, or monotonous, monotone. Also, we have
______________ prosody now coming in, where every sentence ends as if it were a question when it's
actually not a question, it's a ______________?
(Laughter)
And if you repeat that one, it's actually ______________ your ability to communicate through prosody,
which I think is a ______________, so let's try and break that ______________.
184
Pace.
I can get very excited by saying something really quickly, or I can slow ______________ down to
emphasize, and at the end of that, of course, is our old friend ______________. There's nothing wrong
with a bit of silence in a talk, is there? We don't have to ______________ it with ums and ahs. It can
be very powerful.
Of course, pitch often goes along with pace to indicate ______________, but you can do it just with
pitch. Where did you leave my keys? (Higher pitch) Where did you leave my keys? So, slightly different
meaning in those two ______________.
And finally, volume. (Loud) I can get really excited by using volume. Sorry about that, if I
______________ anybody. Or, I can have you really pay attention by ______________ very quiet.
Some people ______________ the whole time. Try not to do that. That's called sodcasting,
(Laughter)
Imposing your ______________ on people around you carelessly and inconsiderately. Not nice.
Of course, where this all comes into ______________ most of all is when you've got something really
important to do. It might be ______________ on a stage like this and giving a talk to people. It might
be proposing marriage, asking for a raise, a wedding ______________. Whatever it is, if it's really
important, you ______________ it to yourself to look at this toolbox and the ______________ that
it's going to work on, and no engine works well without being ______________. Warm up your voice.
Actually, let me show you how to do that. Would you all like to stand up for a moment? I'm going to
show you the six ______________ warm-up exercises that I do before every talk I ever do. Any time
you're going to talk to anybody important, do these. First, ______________ up, deep breath in, and
______________ out, ahhhhh, like that. One more time. Ahhhh, very good. Now we're going to warm
up our lips, and we're going to go Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba. Very good. And now, brrrrrrrrrr, just
like when you were a kid. Brrrr. Now your lips should be coming ______________. We're going to do
the tongue next with ______________ la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. Beautiful. You're getting really good
at this. And then, roll an R. Rrrrrrr. That's like ______________ for the tongue. Finally, and if I can
only do one, the pros call this the ______________. It's really good. It starts with "we" and goes to
"aw." The "we" is high, the "aw" is low. So you go, weeeaawww, weeeaawww.
Fantastic. Give yourselves a round of ______________. Take a seat, thank you.
(Applause)
Next time you speak, do those in ______________.
Now let me just put this in context to ______________. This is a serious point here. This is where we
are now, right? We speak not very well to people who simply aren't listening in an environment that's
all about noise and bad ______________. I have talked about that on this stage in different
______________. What would the world be like if we were speaking powerfully to people who were
listening ______________ in environments which were actually fit for purpose? Or to make that a bit
______________, what would the world be like if we were creating sound consciously and
______________ sound consciously and designing all our environments consciously for sound? That
would be a world that does ______________ beautiful, and one where understanding would be the
______________, and that is an idea worth spreading.
Thank you.
185
(Applause)
186
Key
https://www.ted.com/talks/julian_treasure_how_to_speak_so_that_people_want_to_listen
The human voice: It's the instrument we all play. It's the most powerful sound in the world, probably.
It's the only one that can start a war or say "I love you." And yet many people have the experience that
when they speak, people don't listen to them. And why is that? How can we speak powerfully to make
change in the world?
What I'd like to suggest, there are a number of habits that we need to move away from. I've assembled
for your pleasure here seven deadly sins of speaking. I'm not pretending this is an exhaustive list, but
these seven, I think, are pretty large habits that we can all fall into.
First, gossip. Speaking ill of somebody who's not present. Not a nice habit, and we know perfectly well
the person gossiping, five minutes later, will be gossiping about us.
Second, judging. We know people who are like this in conversation, and it's very hard to listen to
somebody if you know that you're being judged and found wanting at the same time.
Third, negativity. You can fall into this. My mother, in the last years of her life, became very negative,
and it's hard to listen. I remember one day, I said to her, "It's October 1 today," and she said, "I know,
isn't it dreadful?"
(Laughter)
It's hard to listen when somebody's that negative.
(Laughter)
And another form of negativity, complaining. Well, this is the national art of the U.K. It's our national
sport. We complain about the weather, sport, about politics, about everything, but actually, complaining
is viral misery. It's not spreading sunshine and lightness in the world.
Excuses.
We've all met this guy. Maybe we've all been this guy. Some people have a blamethrower. They just
pass it on to everybody else and don't take responsibility for their actions, and again, hard to listen to
somebody who is being like that.
Penultimate, the sixth of the seven, embroidery, exaggeration. It demeans our language, actually,
sometimes. For example, if I see something that really is awesome, what do I call it?
(Laughter)
And then, of course, this exaggeration becomes lying, and we don't want to listen to people we know
are lying to us.
And finally, dogmatism. The confusion of facts with opinions. When those two things get conflated,
you're listening into the wind. You know, somebody is bombarding you with their opinions as if they
were true. It's difficult to listen to that.
So here they are, seven deadly sins of speaking. These are things I think we need to avoid. But is there
a positive way to think about this? Yes, there is. I'd like to suggest that there are four really powerful
cornerstones, foundations, that we can stand on if we want our speech to be powerful and to make
change in the world. Fortunately, these things spell a word. The word is "hail," and it has a great
definition as well. I'm not talking about the stuff that falls from the sky and hits you on the head. I'm
187
talking about this definition, to greet or acclaim enthusiastically, which is how I think our words will
be received if we stand on these four things.
So what do they stand for? See if you can guess. The H, honesty, of course, being true in what you say,
being straight and clear. The A is authenticity, just being yourself. A friend of mine described it as
standing in your own truth, which I think is a lovely way to put it. The I is integrity, being your word,
actually doing what you say, and being somebody people can trust. And the L is love. I don't mean
romantic love, but I do mean wishing people well, for two reasons. First of all, I think absolute honesty
may not be what we want. I mean, my goodness, you look ugly this morning. Perhaps that's not
necessary. Tempered with love, of course, honesty is a great thing. But also, if you're really wishing
somebody well, it's very hard to judge them at the same time. I'm not even sure you can do those two
things simultaneously. So hail.
Also, now that's what you say, and it's like the old song, it is what you say, it's also the way that you
say it. You have an amazing toolbox. This instrument is incredible, and yet this is a toolbox that very
few people have ever opened. I'd like to have a little rummage in there with you now and just pull a few
tools out that you might like to take away and play with, which will increase the power of your
speaking.
Register, for example. Now, falsetto register may not be very useful most of the time, but there's a
register in between. I'm not going to get very technical about this for any of you who are voice coaches.
You can locate your voice, however. So if I talk up here in my nose, you can hear the difference. If I go
down here in my throat, which is where most of us speak from most of the time. But if you want weight,
you need to go down here to the chest. You hear the difference? We vote for politicians with lower
voices, it's true, because we associate depth with power and with authority. That's register.
Then we have timbre. It's the way your voice feels. Again, the research shows that we prefer voices
which are rich, smooth, warm, like hot chocolate. Well if that's not you, that's not the end of the world,
because you can train. Go and get a voice coach. And there are amazing things you can do with
breathing, with posture, and with exercises to improve the timbre of your voice.
Then prosody. I love prosody. This is the sing-song, the meta-language that we use in order to impart
meaning. It's root one for meaning in conversation. People who speak all on one note are really quite
hard to listen to if they don't have any prosody at all. That's where the word "monotonic" comes from,
or monotonous, monotone. Also, we have repetitive prosody now coming in, where every sentence ends
as if it were a question when it's actually not a question, it's a statement?
(Laughter)
And if you repeat that one, it's actually restricting your ability to communicate through prosody, which
I think is a shame, so let's try and break that habit.
Pace.
I can get very excited by saying something really quickly, or I can slow right down to emphasize, and
at the end of that, of course, is our old friend silence. There's nothing wrong with a bit of silence in a
talk, is there? We don't have to fill it with ums and ahs. It can be very powerful.
Of course, pitch often goes along with pace to indicate arousal, but you can do it just with pitch. Where
did you leave my keys? (Higher pitch) Where did you leave my keys? So, slightly different meaning in
those two deliveries.
And finally, volume. (Loud) I can get really excited by using volume. Sorry about that, if I startled
188
anybody. Or, I can have you really pay attention by getting very quiet. Some people broadcast the whole
time. Try not to do that. That's called sodcasting,
(Laughter)
Imposing your sound on people around you carelessly and inconsiderately. Not nice.
Of course, where this all comes into play most of all is when you've got something really important to
do. It might be standing on a stage like this and giving a talk to people. It might be proposing marriage,
asking for a raise, a wedding speech. Whatever it is, if it's really important, you owe it to yourself to
look at this toolbox and the engine that it's going to work on, and no engine works well without being
warmed up. Warm up your voice.
Actually, let me show you how to do that. Would you all like to stand up for a moment? I'm going to
show you the six vocal warm-up exercises that I do before every talk I ever do. Any time you're going
to talk to anybody important, do these. First, arms up, deep breath in, and sigh out, ahhhhh, like that.
One more time. Ahhhh, very good. Now we're going to warm up our lips, and we're going to go Ba, Ba,
Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba, Ba. Very good. And now, brrrrrrrrrr, just like when you were a kid. Brrrr. Now your
lips should be coming alive. We're going to do the tongue next with exaggerated la, la, la, la, la, la, la,
la, la. Beautiful. You're getting really good at this. And then, roll an R. Rrrrrrr. That's like champagne
for the tongue. Finally, and if I can only do one, the pros call this the siren. It's really good. It starts with
"we" and goes to "aw." The "we" is high, the "aw" is low. So you go, weeeaawww, weeeaawww.
Fantastic. Give yourselves a round of applause. Take a seat, thank you.
(Applause)
Next time you speak, do those in advance.
Now let me just put this in context to close. This is a serious point here. This is where we are now,
right? We speak not very well to people who simply aren't listening in an environment that's all about
noise and bad acoustics. I have talked about that on this stage in different phases. What would the world
be like if we were speaking powerfully to people who were listening consciously in environments which
were actually fit for purpose? Or to make that a bit larger, what would the world be like if we were
creating sound consciously and consuming sound consciously and designing all our environments
consciously for sound? That would be a world that does sound beautiful, and one where understanding
would be the norm, and that is an idea worth spreading.
Thank you.
(Applause)
189
21. Anne Milgram - WHY SMART STATISTICS ARE THE KEY TO FIGHTING
CRIME
Fill in the blanks
https://www.ted.com/talks/anne_milgram_why_smart_statistics_are_the_key_to_fighting_crime
In 2007, I became the ______________ general of the state of New Jersey. Before that, I'd been a
criminal prosecutor, first in the Manhattan ______________ attorney's office, and then at the United
States Department of Justice.
But when I became the attorney general, two things ______________ that changed the way I see
criminal justice. The first is that I asked what I thought were really ______________ questions. I
wanted to understand who we were ______________, who we were charging, and who we were putting
in our nation's ______________ and prisons. I also wanted to understand if we were making decisions
in a way that made us ______________. And I couldn't get this information ______________. It turned
out that most big criminal justice ______________ like my own didn't track the things that matter. So
after about a month of being incredibly ______________, I walked down into a conference room that
was ______________ with detectives and stacks and stacks of case files, and the detectives were sitting
there with yellow ______________ pads taking notes. They were trying to get the information I was
looking for by ______________ case by case for the past five years. And as you can imagine, when we
______________ got the results, they weren't good. It turned out that we were doing a lot of low-level
______________ cases on the streets just around the ______________ from our office in Trenton.
The second thing that happened is that I spent the day in the Camden, New Jersey police
______________. Now, at that time, Camden, New Jersey, was the most ______________ city in
America. I ran the Camden Police Department because of that. I spent the day in the police department,
and I was taken into a room with ______________ police officials, all of whom were working hard
and trying very hard to reduce ______________ in Camden. And what I saw in that room, as we talked
about how to reduce crime, were a series of ______________ with a lot of little yellow sticky notes.
And they would take a yellow ______________ and they would write something on it and they would
put it up on a ______________. And one of them said, "We had a robbery two weeks ago. We have no
______________." And another said, "We had a ______________ in this neighborhood last week. We
have no suspects." We weren't using data-driven ______________. We were essentially trying to
______________ crime with yellow Post-it notes.
Now, both of these things made me ______________ fundamentally that we were failing. We didn't
even know who was in our criminal ______________ system, we didn't have any data about the things
that mattered, and we didn't ______________ data or use analytics or ______________ to help us
make better decisions and to reduce crime. And for the first time, I started to think about how we made
decisions. When I was an ______________ D.A., and when I was a federal prosecutor, I looked at the
cases in front of me, and I generally made decisions based on my ______________ and my experience.
When I became attorney general, I could look at the system as a ______________, and what surprised
me is that I found that that was exactly how we were doing it ______________ the entire system -- in
police departments, in prosecutors's offices, in ______________ and in jails. And what I learned very
quickly is that we weren't doing a good job. So I wanted to do things differently. I wanted to introduce
______________ and analytics and rigorous statistical analysis into our work. In short, I wanted to
______________ l criminal justice.
Now, moneyball, as many of you know, is what the Oakland A's did, where they used smart data and
190
statistics to ______________ how to pick players that would help them win games, and they went from
a ______________ that was based on baseball scouts who used to go out and watch ______________
and use their instinct and experience, the scouts' instincts and experience, to pick players, from one to
use ______________ data and rigorous statistical analysis to figure out how to pick players that would
help them win games.
It worked for the Oakland A's, and it worked in the ______________ of New Jersey. We took Camden
______________ the top of the list as the most dangerous city in America. We reduced murders there
by 41 percent, which actually ______________ 37 lives were saved. And we reduced all crime in the
city by 26 percent. We also changed the way we did criminal prosecutions. So we went from doing
______________ drug crimes that were outside our building to doing cases of statewide importance,
______________ things like reducing violence with the most violent offenders, prosecuting street
______________, gun and drug trafficking, and political ______________.
And all of this ______________ greatly, because public safety to me is the most important
______________of government. If we're not safe, we can't be ______________, we can't be healthy,
we can't do any of the other things we want to do in our lives. And we live in a country today where we
face ______________ criminal justice problems. We have 12 million ______________ every single
year. The ______________ majority of those arrests are for low-level crimes, like misdemeanors, 70 to
80 percent. Less than five percent of all arrests are for ______________ crime. Yet we spend 75 billion,
that's b for billion, dollars a year on state and local ______________ costs. Right now, today, we have
2.3 million people in our jails and prisons. And we face ______________ public safety challenges
because we have a situation in which two thirds of the people in our jails are there ______________ for
trial. They haven't yet been convicted of a ______________. They're just waiting for their day in court.
And 67 percent of people come back. Our recidivism rate is ______________ the highest in the world.
Almost seven in 10 people who are released from prison will be ______________ in a constant cycle
of crime and incarceration.
So when I started my job at the Arnold Foundation, I ______________ to looking at a lot of these
questions, and I came back to thinking about how we had used data and analytics to ______________
the way we did criminal justice in New Jersey. And when I look at the criminal justice ______________
in the United States today, I feel the exact same way that I did about the state of New Jersey when I
______________ there, which is that we absolutely have to do better, and I know that we can do better.
So I decided to ______________ on using data and analytics to help make the most ______________
decision in public safety, and that decision is the determination of whether, when someone has been
arrested, whether they ______________ a risk to public safety and should be detained, or whether they
don't pose a risk to public safety and should be ______________. Everything that happens in criminal
cases comes out of this one decision. It ______________ everything. It impacts ______________. It
impacts whether someone gets drug ______________. It impacts crime and violence. And when I talk
to ______________ around the United States, which I do all the time now, they all say the same thing,
which is that we put dangerous people in jail, and we let non-dangerous, ______________ people out.
They mean it and they believe it. But when you start to look at the data, which, by the way, the judges
don't have, when we start to look at the data, what we find time and time again, is that this isn't the case.
We find low-risk ______________, which makes up 50 percent of our entire criminal justice
______________, we find that they're in jail. Take Leslie Chew, who was a Texas man who stole four
______________ on a cold winter night. He was arrested, and he was kept in jail on 3,500 dollars bail,
an amount that he could not ______________ to pay. And he stayed in jail for eight months until his
case came up for ______________, at a cost to taxpayers of more than 9,000 dollars. And at the other
end of the spectrum, we're doing an equally ______________ job. The people who we find are the
191
highest-risk offenders, the people who we think have the highest likelihood of ______________ a new
crime if they're released, we see nationally that 50 percent of those people are being released.
The reason for this is the way we make decisions. Judges have the best ______________ when they
make these decisions about risk, but they're making them subjectively. They're like the baseball
______________ 20 years ago who were using their instinct and their experience to try to decide what
______________ someone poses. They're being ______________, and we know what happens with
subjective decision making, which is that we are often wrong. What we need in this ______________
are strong data and analytics.
What I decided to look for was a strong data and ______________ risk assessment tool, something that
would let judges actually understand with a scientific and ______________ way what the risk was that
was ______________ by someone in front of them. I looked all over the country, and I
______________ that between five and 10 percent of all U.S. jurisdictions actually use any
______________ of risk assessment tool, and when I looked at these tools, I quickly realized why. They
were unbelievably expensive to administer, they were ______________, they were limited to the local
jurisdiction in which they'd been created. So basically, they couldn't be scaled or ______________ to
other places.
So I went out and built a ______________ team of data scientists and researchers and statisticians to
build a ______________ risk assessment tool, so that every single judge in the United States of America
can have an objective, scientific ______________ of risk. In the tool that we've built, what we did was
we ______________ 1.5 million cases from all around the United States, from cities, from counties,
from every ______________ state in the country, the federal districts. And with those 1.5 million cases,
which is the ______________ data set on pretrial in the United States today, we were able to basically
find that there were 900-plus risk ______________ that we could look at to try to figure out what
mattered most. And we found that there were nine ______________ things that mattered all across the
country and that were the most highly ______________ of risk. And so we built a universal risk
assessment tool. And it looks like this. As you'll see, we put some ______________ in, but most of it
is incredibly simple, it's easy to use, it focuses on things like the defendant's ______________
convictions, whether they've been sentenced to incarceration, whether they've engaged in violence
before, whether they've even failed to ______________ to court. And with this tool, we can predict
three things. First, whether or not someone will commit a ______________ crime if they're released.
Second, for the first time, and I think this is incredibly ______________, we can predict whether
someone will commit an ______________ of violence if they're released. And that's the single most
important thing that judges ______________ when you talk to them. And third, we can predict whether
someone will come back to ______________. And every single judge in the United States of America
can ______________ it, because it's been created on a universal data ______________.
What judges see if they ______________ the risk assessment tool is this -- it's a dashboard. At the top,
you see the New Criminal Activity Score, six of course being the ______________, and then in the
middle you see, "Elevated risk of violence." What that says is that this person is someone who has an
______________ risk of violence that the judge should look ______________ at. And then, towards
the bottom, you see the Failure to Appear Score, which again is the ______________ that someone will
come back to court.
Now I want to say something really important. It's not that I think we should be ______________ the
judge's instinct and experience from this ______________. I don't. I actually believe the problem that
we see and the reason that we have these ______________ system errors, where we're incarcerating
low-level, nonviolent people and we're ______________ high-risk, dangerous people, is that we don't
192
have an objective measure of risk. But what I believe should ______________ is that we should take
that data-driven risk assessment and ______________ that with the judge's instinct and experience to
lead us to better decision ______________. The tool went statewide in Kentucky on July 1, and we're
about to ______________ in a number of other U.S. jurisdictions. Our ______________, quite simply,
is that every single judge in the United States will use a data-driven risk tool ______________ the next
five years. We're now ______________ risk tools for prosecutors and for police officers as well, to try
to take a system that runs today in America the same way it ______________ 50 years ago, based on
instinct and ______________, and make it into one that runs on data and analytics.
Now, the great news about all this, and we have a ______________ of work left to do, and we have a
lot of ______________ to change, but the great news about all of it is that we know it works. It's why
Google is Google, and it's why all these ______________ teams use moneyball to win games. The great
news for us as well is that it's the way that we can ______________ the American criminal justice
system. It's how we can make our streets safer, we can reduce our prison ______________, and we can
make our system much ______________ and more just. Some people call it data science. I call it
moneyballing ______________ justice.
Thank you.
(Applause)
193
Key
https://www.ted.com/talks/anne_milgram_why_smart_statistics_are_the_key_to_fighting_crime
In 2007, I became the attorney general of the state of New Jersey. Before that, I'd been a criminal
prosecutor, first in the Manhattan district attorney's office, and then at the United States Department of
Justice.
But when I became the attorney general, two things happened that changed the way I see criminal
justice. The first is that I asked what I thought were really basic questions. I wanted to understand who
we were arresting, who we were charging, and who we were putting in our nation's jails and prisons. I
also wanted to understand if we were making decisions in a way that made us safer. And I couldn't get
this information out. It turned out that most big criminal justice agencies like my own didn't track the
things that matter. So after about a month of being incredibly frustrated, I walked down into a
conference room that was filled with detectives and stacks and stacks of case files, and the detectives
were sitting there with yellow legal pads taking notes. They were trying to get the information I was
looking for by going through case by case for the past five years. And as you can imagine, when we
finally got the results, they weren't good. It turned out that we were doing a lot of low-level drug cases
on the streets just around the corner from our office in Trenton.
The second thing that happened is that I spent the day in the Camden, New Jersey police department.
Now, at that time, Camden, New Jersey, was the most dangerous city in America. I ran the Camden
Police Department because of that. I spent the day in the police department, and I was taken into a room
with senior police officials, all of whom were working hard and trying very hard to reduce crime in
Camden. And what I saw in that room, as we talked about how to reduce crime, were a series of officers
with a lot of little yellow sticky notes. And they would take a yellow sticky and they would write
something on it and they would put it up on a board. And one of them said, "We had a robbery two
weeks ago. We have no suspects." And another said, "We had a shooting in this neighborhood last
week. We have no suspects." We weren't using data-driven policing. We were essentially trying to fight
crime with yellow Post-it notes.
Now, both of these things made me realize fundamentally that we were failing. We didn't even know
who was in our criminal justice system, we didn't have any data about the things that mattered, and we
didn't share data or use analytics or tools to help us make better decisions and to reduce crime. And for
the first time, I started to think about how we made decisions. When I was an assistant D.A., and when
I was a federal prosecutor, I looked at the cases in front of me, and I generally made decisions based on
my instinct and my experience. When I became attorney general, I could look at the system as a whole,
and what surprised me is that I found that that was exactly how we were doing it across the entire system
-- in police departments, in prosecutors's offices, in courts and in jails. And what I learned very quickly
is that we weren't doing a good job. So I wanted to do things differently. I wanted to introduce data and
analytics and rigorous statistical analysis into our work. In short, I wanted to moneyball criminal
justice.
Now, moneyball, as many of you know, is what the Oakland A's did, where they used smart data and
statistics to figure out how to pick players that would help them win games, and they went from a system
that was based on baseball scouts who used to go out and watch players and use their instinct and
experience, the scouts' instincts and experience, to pick players, from one to use smart data and rigorous
statistical analysis to figure out how to pick players that would help them win games.
It worked for the Oakland A's, and it worked in the state of New Jersey. We took Camden off the top
of the list as the most dangerous city in America. We reduced murders there by 41 percent, which
194
actually means 37 lives were saved. And we reduced all crime in the city by 26 percent. We also changed
the way we did criminal prosecutions. So we went from doing low-level drug crimes that were outside
our building to doing cases of statewide importance, on things like reducing violence with the most
violent offenders, prosecuting street gangs, gun and drug trafficking, and political corruption.
And all of this matters greatly, because public safety to me is the most important function of
government. If we're not safe, we can't be educated, we can't be healthy, we can't do any of the other
things we want to do in our lives. And we live in a country today where we face serious criminal justice
problems. We have 12 million arrests every single year. The vast majority of those arrests are for lowlevel crimes, like misdemeanors, 70 to 80 percent. Less than five percent of all arrests are for violent
crime. Yet we spend 75 billion, that's b for billion, dollars a year on state and local corrections costs.
Right now, today, we have 2.3 million people in our jails and prisons. And we face unbelievable public
safety challenges because we have a situation in which two thirds of the people in our jails are there
waiting for trial. They haven't yet been convicted of a crime. They're just waiting for their day in court.
And 67 percent of people come back. Our recidivism rate is amongst the highest in the world. Almost
seven in 10 people who are released from prison will be rearrested in a constant cycle of crime and
incarceration.
So when I started my job at the Arnold Foundation, I came back to looking at a lot of these questions,
and I came back to thinking about how we had used data and analytics to transform the way we did
criminal justice in New Jersey. And when I look at the criminal justice system in the United States
today, I feel the exact same way that I did about the state of New Jersey when I started there, which is
that we absolutely have to do better, and I know that we can do better.
So I decided to focus on using data and analytics to help make the most critical decision in public safety,
and that decision is the determination of whether, when someone has been arrested, whether they pose
a risk to public safety and should be detained, or whether they don't pose a risk to public safety and
should be released. Everything that happens in criminal cases comes out of this one decision. It impacts
everything. It impacts sentencing. It impacts whether someone gets drug treatment. It impacts crime
and violence. And when I talk to judges around the United States, which I do all the time now, they all
say the same thing, which is that we put dangerous people in jail, and we let non-dangerous, nonviolent
people out. They mean it and they believe it. But when you start to look at the data, which, by the way,
the judges don't have, when we start to look at the data, what we find time and time again, is that this
isn't the case. We find low-risk offenders, which makes up 50 percent of our entire criminal justice
population, we find that they're in jail. Take Leslie Chew, who was a Texas man who stole four blankets
on a cold winter night. He was arrested, and he was kept in jail on 3,500 dollars bail, an amount that he
could not afford to pay. And he stayed in jail for eight months until his case came up for trial, at a cost
to taxpayers of more than 9,000 dollars. And at the other end of the spectrum, we're doing an equally
terrible job. The people who we find are the highest-risk offenders, the people who we think have the
highest likelihood of committing a new crime if they're released, we see nationally that 50 percent of
those people are being released.
The reason for this is the way we make decisions. Judges have the best intentions when they make these
decisions about risk, but they're making them subjectively. They're like the baseball scouts 20 years ago
who were using their instinct and their experience to try to decide what risk someone poses. They're
being subjective, and we know what happens with subjective decision making, which is that we are
often wrong. What we need in this space are strong data and analytics.
What I decided to look for was a strong data and analytic risk assessment tool, something that would
let judges actually understand with a scientific and objective way what the risk was that was posed by
195
someone in front of them. I looked all over the country, and I found that between five and 10 percent
of all U.S. jurisdictions actually use any type of risk assessment tool, and when I looked at these tools,
I quickly realized why. They were unbelievably expensive to administer, they were time-consuming,
they were limited to the local jurisdiction in which they'd been created. So basically, they couldn't be
scaled or transferred to other places.
So I went out and built a phenomenal team of data scientists and researchers and statisticians to build a
universal risk assessment tool, so that every single judge in the United States of America can have an
objective, scientific measure of risk. In the tool that we've built, what we did was we collected 1.5
million cases from all around the United States, from cities, from counties, from every single state in
the country, the federal districts. And with those 1.5 million cases, which is the largest data set on
pretrial in the United States today, we were able to basically find that there were 900-plus risk factors
that we could look at to try to figure out what mattered most. And we found that there were nine specific
things that mattered all across the country and that were the most highly predictive of risk. And so we
built a universal risk assessment tool. And it looks like this. As you'll see, we put some information in,
but most of it is incredibly simple, it's easy to use, it focuses on things like the defendant's prior
convictions, whether they've been sentenced to incarceration, whether they've engaged in violence
before, whether they've even failed to come back to court. And with this tool, we can predict three
things. First, whether or not someone will commit a new crime if they're released. Second, for the first
time, and I think this is incredibly important, we can predict whether someone will commit an act of
violence if they're released. And that's the single most important thing that judges say when you talk to
them. And third, we can predict whether someone will come back to court. And every single judge in
the United States of America can use it, because it's been created on a universal data set.
What judges see if they run the risk assessment tool is this -- it's a dashboard. At the top, you see the
New Criminal Activity Score, six of course being the highest, and then in the middle you see, "Elevated
risk of violence." What that says is that this person is someone who has an elevated risk of violence that
the judge should look twice at. And then, towards the bottom, you see the Failure to Appear Score,
which again is the likelihood that someone will come back to court.
Now I want to say something really important. It's not that I think we should be eliminating the judge's
instinct and experience from this process. I don't. I actually believe the problem that we see and the
reason that we have these incredible system errors, where we're incarcerating low-level, nonviolent
people and we're releasing high-risk, dangerous people, is that we don't have an objective measure of
risk. But what I believe should happen is that we should take that data-driven risk assessment and
combine that with the judge's instinct and experience to lead us to better decision making. The tool went
statewide in Kentucky on July 1, and we're about to go up in a number of other U.S. jurisdictions. Our
goal, quite simply, is that every single judge in the United States will use a data-driven risk tool within
the next five years. We're now working on risk tools for prosecutors and for police officers as well, to
try to take a system that runs today in America the same way it did 50 years ago, based on instinct and
experience, and make it into one that runs on data and analytics.
Now, the great news about all this, and we have a ton of work left to do, and we have a lot of culture to
change, but the great news about all of it is that we know it works. It's why Google is Google, and it's
why all these baseball teams use moneyball to win games. The great news for us as well is that it's the
way that we can transform the American criminal justice system. It's how we can make our streets safer,
we can reduce our prison costs, and we can make our system much fairer and more just. Some people
call it data science. I call it moneyballing criminal justice.
Thank you.
196
(Applause)
197
22. Julie Lythcott Haims - HOW TO RAISE SUCCESSFUL KIDS WITHOUT
OVER PARENTING
Fill in the blanks
https://www.ted.com/talks/julie_lythcott_haims_how_to_raise_successful_kids_without_over_p
arenting
You know, I didn't set out to be a ______________ expert. In fact, I'm not very interested in parenting,
per Se. It's just that there's a certain ______________ of parenting these days that is kind of
______________ kids, impeding their chances to develop into theirselves. There's a certain style of
parenting these days that's getting ______________ the way.
I guess what I'm saying is, we spend a lot of time being very ______________ about parents who aren't
involved enough in the lives of their kids and their education or their ______________, and rightly so.
But at the other end of the spectrum, there's a lot of ______________ going on there as well, where
parents ______________ a kid can't be successful unless the parent is protecting and preventing at every
______________ and hovering over every happening, and micromanaging every moment, and
______________ their kid towards some small subset of colleges and careers.
When we ______________ kids this way, and I'll say we, because Lord knows, in raising my two
teenagers, I've had these ______________ myself, our kids end up leading a kind of ______________
childhood.
And here's what the checklisted childhood looks like. We keep them safe and ______________ and fed
and watered, and then we want to be sure they go to the ______________ schools, that they're in the
right classes at the right schools, and that they get the right ______________ in the right classes in the
right schools. But not just the grades, the ______________, and not just the grades and scores, but the
accolades and the ______________ and the sports, the activities, the ______________. We tell our
kids, don't just join a club, ______________ a club, because colleges want to see that. And check the
box for ______________ service. I mean, show the colleges you care about others.
(Laughter)
And all of this is done to some hoped-for ______________ of perfection. We expect our kids to
______________ at a level of perfection we were never asked to perform at ______________, and so
because so much is required, we think, well then, of course we parents have to argue with every teacher
and ______________ and coach and referee and act like our kid's concierge and personal handler and
______________.
And then with our kids, our ______________ kids, we spend so much time nudging, cajoling,
______________, helping, haggling, nagging as the case may be, to be sure they're not
______________ up, not closing doors, not ruining their future, some hoped-for admission to a tiny
______________ of colleges that deny almost every ______________.
And here's what it feels like to be a kid in this checklisted ______________. First of all, there's no time
for free play. There's no room in the afternoons, because everything has to be ______________, we
think. It's as if every piece of homework, every ______________, every activity is a make-or-break
moment for this future we have in ______________ for them, and we absolve them of helping out
around the house, and we even absolve them of getting enough sleep as long as they're ______________
off the items on their checklist. And in the checklisted childhood, we say we just want them to be happy,
but when they come home from school, what we ask about all too ______________ first is their
198
homework and their grades. And they see in our faces that our ______________, that our love, that
their very worth, comes from A's. And then we walk ______________ them and offer clucking praise
like a trainer at the Westminster Dog Show -(Laughter)
coaxing them to just jump a little higher and ______________ a little farther, day after day after day.
And when they get to high school, they don't say, "Well, what might I be interested in studying or doing
as an ______________?" They go to counselors and they say, "What do I need to do to get into the right
college?" And then, when the grades start to ______________ in in high school, and they're getting
some B's, or God ______________ some C's, they frantically text their friends and say, "Has anyone
ever gotten into the right college with these grades?"
And our kids, regardless of where they end up at the end of high school, they're ______________.
They're brittle. They're a little ______________. They're a little old before their time, wishing the
grown-ups in their lives had said, "What you've done is enough, this ______________ you've put forth
in childhood is enough." And they're withering now under high ______________ of anxiety and
depression and some of them are wondering, will this life ever turn out to have been ______________
it?
Well, we parents, we parents are pretty sure it's all worth it. We seem to ______________ -- it's like we
literally think they will have no future if they don't get into one of these tiny set of colleges or careers
we have in mind for them.
Or maybe, maybe, we're just afraid they won't have a future we can ______________ about to our
friends and with stickers on the backs of our cars. Yeah.
(Applause)
But if you look at what we've done, if you have the ______________ to really look at it, you'll see that
not only do our kids think their worth comes from grades and scores, but that when we live right up
______________ their precious developing minds all the time, like our very own ______________ of
the movie "Being John Malkovich," we send our children the message: "Hey kid, I don't think you can
actually ______________ any of this without me." And so with our overhelp, our overprotection and
______________ and hand-holding, we deprive our kids of the chance to build self-efficacy, which is
a really ______________ tenet of the human psyche, far more important than that ______________
they get every time we applaud. Self-efficacy is built when one sees that one's own actions lead to
______________, not -- There you go.
(Applause)
Not one's parents' actions on one's ______________, but when one's own actions lead to outcomes. So
simply ______________, if our children are to develop self-efficacy, and they must, then they have to
do a ______________ lot more of the thinking, planning, deciding, doing, hoping, ______________,
trial and error, dreaming and experiencing of life for themselves.
Now, am I saying every kid is hard-working and ______________ and doesn't need a parent's
involvement or interest in their lives, and we should just ______________ and let go? Hell no.
(Laughter)
That is not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, when we ______________ grades and scores and
accolades and awards as the purpose of childhood, all in furtherance of some hoped-for
199
______________ to a tiny number of colleges or entrance to a small number of careers, that that's too
______________ a definition of success for our kids. And even though we might help them achieve
some ______________ wins by overhelping -- like they get a better grade if we help them do their
homework, they might end up with a longer childhood ______________ when we help -- what I'm
saying is that all of this comes at a long-term cost to their sense of ______________. What I'm saying
is, we should be less concerned with the specific ______________ of colleges they might be able to
______________ to or might get into and far more concerned that they have the habits, the
______________, the skill set, the wellness, to be successful wherever they go. What I'm saying is, our
kids need us to be a little less ______________ with grades and scores and a whole lot more interested
in childhood providing a ______________ for their success built on things like love and
______________.
(Laughter)
(Applause)
Did I just say chores? Did I just say chores? I really did. But really, here's why. The longest longitudinal
study of humans ever ______________ is called the Harvard Grant Study. It found that professional
success in life, which is what we want for our kids, that professional ______________ in life comes
from having done chores as a kid, and the earlier you started, the ______________, that a roll-up-yoursleeves- and-pitch-in mindset, a mindset that says, there's some ______________ work, someone's got
to do it, it might as well be me, a mindset that says, I will contribute my effort to the ______________
of the whole, that that's what gets you ______________ in the workplace. Now, we all know this. You
know this.
(Applause)
We all know this, and yet, in the checklisted childhood, we absolve our kids of doing the work of chores
around the house, and then they end up as young ______________ in the workplace still waiting for a
______________, but it doesn't exist, and more importantly, lacking the impulse, the instinct to roll up
their ______________ and pitch in and look around and wonder, how can I be useful to my
______________? How can I anticipate a few steps ahead to what my boss might ______________?
A second very important ______________ from the Harvard Grant Study said that happiness in life
comes from love, not love of work, love of humans: our spouse, our ______________, our friends, our
family. So ______________ needs to teach our kids how to love, and they can't love others if they don't
first love themselves, and they won't love themselves if we can't offer them ______________ love.
(Applause)
Right. And so, instead of being obsessed with grades and scores when our precious ______________
come home from school, or we come home from work, we need to close our ______________, put
away our phones, and look them in the ______________ and let them see the ______________ that
fills our faces when we see our child for the first time in a few hours. And then we have to say, "How
was your day? What did you like about today?" And when your ______________ daughter says,
"Lunch," like ______________ did, and I want to hear about the math test, not lunch, you have to still
take an interest in lunch. You gotta say, "What was great about lunch today?" They need to know they
matter to us as ______________, not because of their GPA.
All right, so you're thinking, chores and love, that sounds all well and good, but give me a
______________. The colleges want to see top scores and grades and accolades and awards, and I'm
going to tell you, ______________ of. The very biggest brand-name schools are asking that of our
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______________ adults, but here's the good news. Contrary to what the college ______________ racket
would have us believe -(Applause)
you don't have to go to one of the biggest ______________ name schools to be happy and successful
in life. Happy and successful people went to ______________ school, went to a small college no one
has heard ______________, went to community college, went to a college over here and flunked out.
(Applause)
The ______________ is in this room, is in our communities, that this is the truth. And if we could
______________ our blinders and be willing to look at a few more colleges, maybe remove our own
______________ from the equation, we could accept and embrace this truth and then realize, it is hardly
the end of the ______________ if our kids don't go to one of those big brand-name schools. And more
importantly, if their childhood has not been lived ______________ to a tyrannical checklist then when
they get to ______________, whichever one it is, well, they'll have gone there on their own volition,
fueled by their own desire, capable and ready to ______________ there.
I have to admit something to you. I've got two kids I mentioned, Sawyer and Avery. They're teenagers.
And once ______________ a time, I think I was treating my Sawyer and Avery like little bonsai trees
-(Laughter)
that I was going to carefully clip and prune and ______________ into some perfect ______________
of a human that might just be perfect enough to warrant them admission to one of the most highly
______________ colleges. But I've come to realize, after working with thousands of other people's kids
-(Laughter)
and raising two kids of my own, my kids aren't bonsai trees. They're ______________ of an unknown
genus and species -(Laughter)
and it's my job to provide a ______________ environment, to strengthen them through chores and to
love them so they can love others and receive love and the college, the ______________, the career,
that's up to them. My job is not to make them become what I would have them become, but to support
them in becoming their ______________ selves.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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Key
https://www.ted.com/talks/julie_lythcott_haims_how_to_raise_successful_kids_without_over_p
arenting
You know, I didn't set out to be a parenting expert. In fact, I'm not very interested in parenting, per Se.
It's just that there's a certain style of parenting these days that is kind of messing up kids, impeding their
chances to develop into theirselves. There's a certain style of parenting these days that's getting in the
way.
I guess what I'm saying is, we spend a lot of time being very concerned about parents who aren't
involved enough in the lives of their kids and their education or their upbringing, and rightly so. But at
the other end of the spectrum, there's a lot of harm going on there as well, where parents feel a kid can't
be successful unless the parent is protecting and preventing at every turn and hovering over every
happening, and micromanaging every moment, and steering their kid towards some small subset of
colleges and careers.
When we raise kids this way, and I'll say we, because Lord knows, in raising my two teenagers, I've
had these tendencies myself, our kids end up leading a kind of checklisted childhood.
And here's what the checklisted childhood looks like. We keep them safe and sound and fed and
watered, and then we want to be sure they go to the right schools, that they're in the right classes at the
right schools, and that they get the right grades in the right classes in the right schools. But not just the
grades, the scores, and not just the grades and scores, but the accolades and the awards and the sports,
the activities, the leadership. We tell our kids, don't just join a club, start a club, because colleges want
to see that. And check the box for community service. I mean, show the colleges you care about others.
(Laughter)
And all of this is done to some hoped-for degree of perfection. We expect our kids to perform at a level
of perfection we were never asked to perform at ourselves, and so because so much is required, we
think, well then, of course we parents have to argue with every teacher and principal and coach and
referee and act like our kid's concierge and personal handler and secretary.
And then with our kids, our precious kids, we spend so much time nudging, cajoling, hinting, helping,
haggling, nagging as the case may be, to be sure they're not screwing up, not closing doors, not ruining
their future, some hoped-for admission to a tiny handful of colleges that deny almost every applicant.
And here's what it feels like to be a kid in this checklisted childhood. First of all, there's no time for free
play. There's no room in the afternoons, because everything has to be enriching, we think. It's as if every
piece of homework, every quiz, every activity is a make-or-break moment for this future we have in
mind for them, and we absolve them of helping out around the house, and we even absolve them of
getting enough sleep as long as they're checking off the items on their checklist. And in the checklisted
childhood, we say we just want them to be happy, but when they come home from school, what we ask
about all too often first is their homework and their grades. And they see in our faces that our approval,
that our love, that their very worth, comes from A's. And then we walk alongside them and offer
clucking praise like a trainer at the Westminster Dog Show -(Laughter)
coaxing them to just jump a little higher and soar a little farther, day after day after day. And when they
get to high school, they don't say, "Well, what might I be interested in studying or doing as an activity?"
They go to counselors and they say, "What do I need to do to get into the right college?" And then,
202
when the grades start to roll in in high school, and they're getting some B's, or God forbid some C's,
they frantically text their friends and say, "Has anyone ever gotten into the right college with these
grades?"
And our kids, regardless of where they end up at the end of high school, they're breathless. They're
brittle. They're a little burned out. They're a little old before their time, wishing the grown-ups in their
lives had said, "What you've done is enough, this effort you've put forth in childhood is enough." And
they're withering now under high rates of anxiety and depression and some of them are wondering, will
this life ever turn out to have been worth it?
Well, we parents, we parents are pretty sure it's all worth it. We seem to behave -- it's like we literally
think they will have no future if they don't get into one of these tiny set of colleges or careers we have
in mind for them.
Or maybe, maybe, we're just afraid they won't have a future we can brag about to our friends and with
stickers on the backs of our cars. Yeah.
(Applause)
But if you look at what we've done, if you have the courage to really look at it, you'll see that not only
do our kids think their worth comes from grades and scores, but that when we live right up inside their
precious developing minds all the time, like our very own version of the movie "Being John
Malkovich," we send our children the message: "Hey kid, I don't think you can actually achieve any of
this without me." And so with our overhelp, our overprotection and overdirection and hand-holding, we
deprive our kids of the chance to build self-efficacy, which is a really fundamental tenet of the human
psyche, far more important than that self-esteem they get every time we applaud. Self-efficacy is built
when one sees that one's own actions lead to outcomes, not -- There you go.
(Applause)
Not one's parents' actions on one's behalf, but when one's own actions lead to outcomes. So simply put,
if our children are to develop self-efficacy, and they must, then they have to do a whole lot more of the
thinking, planning, deciding, doing, hoping, coping, trial and error, dreaming and experiencing of life
for themselves.
Now, am I saying every kid is hard-working and motivated and doesn't need a parent's involvement or
interest in their lives, and we should just back off and let go? Hell no.
(Laughter)
That is not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, when we treat grades and scores and accolades and
awards as the purpose of childhood, all in furtherance of some hoped-for admission to a tiny number of
colleges or entrance to a small number of careers, that that's too narrow a definition of success for our
kids. And even though we might help them achieve some short-term wins by overhelping -- like they
get a better grade if we help them do their homework, they might end up with a longer childhood résumé
when we help -- what I'm saying is that all of this comes at a long-term cost to their sense of self. What
I'm saying is, we should be less concerned with the specific set of colleges they might be able to apply
to or might get into and far more concerned that they have the habits, the mindset, the skill set, the
wellness, to be successful wherever they go. What I'm saying is, our kids need us to be a little less
obsessed with grades and scores and a whole lot more interested in childhood providing a foundation
for their success built on things like love and chores.
(Laughter)
203
(Applause)
Did I just say chores? Did I just say chores? I really did. But really, here's why. The longest longitudinal
study of humans ever conducted is called the Harvard Grant Study. It found that professional success
in life, which is what we want for our kids, that professional success in life comes from having done
chores as a kid, and the earlier you started, the better, that a roll-up-your-sleeves- and-pitch-in mindset,
a mindset that says, there's some unpleasant work, someone's got to do it, it might as well be me, a
mindset that says, I will contribute my effort to the betterment of the whole, that that's what gets you
ahead in the workplace. Now, we all know this. You know this.
(Applause)
We all know this, and yet, in the checklisted childhood, we absolve our kids of doing the work of chores
around the house, and then they end up as young adults in the workplace still waiting for a checklist,
but it doesn't exist, and more importantly, lacking the impulse, the instinct to roll up their sleeves and
pitch in and look around and wonder, how can I be useful to my colleagues? How can I anticipate a few
steps ahead to what my boss might need?
A second very important finding from the Harvard Grant Study said that happiness in life comes from
love, not love of work, love of humans: our spouse, our partner, our friends, our family. So childhood
needs to teach our kids how to love, and they can't love others if they don't first love themselves, and
they won't love themselves if we can't offer them unconditional love.
(Applause)
Right. And so, instead of being obsessed with grades and scores when our precious offspring come
home from school, or we come home from work, we need to close our technology, put away our phones,
and look them in the eye and let them see the joy that fills our faces when we see our child for the first
time in a few hours. And then we have to say, "How was your day? What did you like about today?"
And when your teenage daughter says, "Lunch," like mine did, and I want to hear about the math test,
not lunch, you have to still take an interest in lunch. You gotta say, "What was great about lunch today?"
They need to know they matter to us as humans, not because of their GPA.
All right, so you're thinking, chores and love, that sounds all well and good, but give me a break. The
colleges want to see top scores and grades and accolades and awards, and I'm going to tell you, sort of.
The very biggest brand-name schools are asking that of our young adults, but here's the good news.
Contrary to what the college rankings racket would have us believe -(Applause)
you don't have to go to one of the biggest brand name schools to be happy and successful in life. Happy
and successful people went to state school, went to a small college no one has heard of, went to
community college, went to a college over here and flunked out.
(Applause)
The evidence is in this room, is in our communities, that this is the truth. And if we could widen our
blinders and be willing to look at a few more colleges, maybe remove our own egos from the equation,
we could accept and embrace this truth and then realize, it is hardly the end of the world if our kids
don't go to one of those big brand-name schools. And more importantly, if their childhood has not been
lived according to a tyrannical checklist then when they get to college, whichever one it is, well, they'll
have gone there on their own volition, fueled by their own desire, capable and ready to thrive there.
204
I have to admit something to you. I've got two kids I mentioned, Sawyer and Avery. They're teenagers.
And once upon a time, I think I was treating my Sawyer and Avery like little bonsai trees -(Laughter)
that I was going to carefully clip and prune and shape into some perfect form of a human that might just
be perfect enough to warrant them admission to one of the most highly selective colleges. But I've come
to realize, after working with thousands of other people's kids -(Laughter)
and raising two kids of my own, my kids aren't bonsai trees. They're wildflowers of an unknown genus
and species -(Laughter)
and it's my job to provide a nourishing environment, to strengthen them through chores and to love
them so they can love others and receive love and the college, the major, the career, that's up to them.
My job is not to make them become what I would have them become, but to support them in becoming
their glorious selves.
Thank you.
(Applause)
205
23. Naomi Oreskes - WHY WE SHOULD BELIEVE IN SCIENCE
Fill in the blanks
https://www.ted.com/talks/naomi_oreskes_why_we_should_believe_in_science
Every day we face issues like ______________ change or the safety of vaccines where we have to
answer questions whose answers ______________ heavily on scientific information. ______________
tell us that the world is warming. Scientists tell us that vaccines are ______________. But how do we
know if they are right? Why should be believe the science? The fact is, many of us actually don't
______________ the science. Public opinion polls consistently show that significant ______________
of the American people don't believe the climate is warming due to human activities, don't think that
there is ______________ by natural selection, and aren't persuaded by the ______________ of
vaccines.
So why should we believe the science? Well, scientists don't like talking about science as a
______________ of belief. In fact, they would contrast science with ______________, and they would
say belief is the domain of faith. And faith is a separate thing ______________ and distinct from
science. Indeed they would say ______________ is based on faith or maybe the calculus of Pascal's
wager. Blaise Pascal was a 17th-century ______________ who tried to bring scientific reasoning to the
question of whether or not he should believe in God, and his wager went like this: Well, if God doesn't
______________ but I decide to believe in him nothing much is really lost. Maybe a few hours on
Sunday. (Laughter) But if he does exist and I don't believe in him, then I'm in ______________ trouble.
And so Pascal said, we'd better believe in God. Or as one of my college ______________ said, "He
clutched for the handrail of faith." He made that ______________ of faith leaving science and
rationalism behind.
Now the fact is though, for most of us, most scientific ______________ are a leap of faith. We can't
really judge scientific claims for ourselves in most cases. And ______________ this is actually true for
most scientists as well outside of their own ______________. So if you think about it, a geologist can't
tell you whether a vaccine is safe. Most chemists are not experts in evolutionary ______________. A
physicist cannot tell you, despite the claims of some of them, whether or not tobacco ______________
cancer. So, if even scientists themselves have to make a leap of faith outside their own
______________, then why do they ______________ the claims of other scientists? Why do they
believe each other's claims? And should we believe those claims?
So what I'd like to argue is yes, we should, but not for the ______________ that most of us think. Most
of us were taught in school that the reason we should believe in science is because of the scientific
______________. We were taught that scientists follow a method and that this method
______________ the truth of their claims. The method that most of us were taught in school, we can
call it the ______________ method, is the hypothetical deductive method. According to the
______________ model, the textbook model, scientists develop hypotheses, they deduce the
______________ of those hypotheses, and then they go out into the world and they say, "Okay, well
are those consequences true?" Can we ______________ them taking place in the natural world? And if
they are true, then the scientists say, "Great, we know the hypothesis is correct."
So there are many famous examples in the history of science of scientists doing ______________ this.
One of the most famous examples______________from the work of Albert Einstein. When Einstein
developed the theory of general ______________, one of the consequences of his theory was that spacetime wasn't just an ______________ void but that it actually had a fabric. And that that fabric was bent
in the presence of ______________ objects like the sun. So if this theory were true then it meant that
206
______________ as it passed the sun should actually be bent around it. That was a pretty
______________ prediction and it took a few years before scientists were able to ______________ it
but they did test it in 1919, and lo and behold it turned out to be true. ______________ actually does
bend as it travels around the sun. This was a huge ______________ of the theory. It was considered
proof of the truth of this radical new ______________, and it was written up in many newspapers
around the ______________.
Now, sometimes this theory or this model is ______________ to as the deductive-nomological model,
mainly because ______________like to make things complicated. But also because in the
______________ case, it's about laws. So nomological means having to do with laws. And in the ideal
case, the hypothesis isn't just an idea: ideally, it is a ______________ of nature. Why does it matter that
it is a law of nature? Because if it is a law, it can't be ______________. If it's a law then it will always
be true in all times and all places no matter what the ______________ are. And all of you know of at
least one example of a famous law: Einstein's famous equation, E=MC2, which tells us what the
relationship is between ______________ and mass. And that relationship is true no matter what.
Now, it turns out, though, that there are several problems with this ______________. The main problem
is that it's wrong. It's just not true. (Laughter) And I'm going to talk about three reasons why it's wrong.
So the first reason is a ______________ reason. It's the problem of the fallacy of affirming the
consequent. So that's another ______________, academic way of saying that false theories can make
true predictions. So just because the prediction comes true doesn't actually logically
______________that the theory is correct. And I have a good example of that too, again from the
______________of science. This is a picture of the Ptolemaic ______________with the Earth at the
center of the universe and the sun and the ______________going around it. The Ptolemaic model was
believed by many very smart people for many ______________. Well, why? Well the answer is because
it made lots of predictions that came true. The Ptolemaic system ______________astronomers to make
accurate predictions of the motions of the planet, in fact more ______________predictions at first than
the Copernican theory which we now would say is true. So that's one problem with the textbook model.
A second problem is a ______________problem, and it's the problem of auxiliary hypotheses. Auxiliary
hypotheses are assumptions that scientists are making that they may or may not even be
______________that they're making. So an important example of this comes from the Copernican
model, which ultimately ______________the Ptolemaic system. So when Nicolaus Copernicus said,
actually the Earth is not the ______________of the universe, the sun is the center of the solar system,
the Earth moves around the sun. Scientists said, well okay, Nicolaus, if that's true we ought to be able
to ______________the motion of the Earth around the sun. And so this slide here illustrates a
______________known as stellar parallax. And astronomers said, if the Earth is moving and we look
at a prominent ______________, let's say, Sirius -- well I know I'm in Manhattan so you guys can't see
the stars, but ______________you're out in the country, imagine you chose that ______________life
— and we look at a star in December, we see that star against the backdrop of ______________stars.
If we now make the same observation six months later when the Earth has moved to this
______________in June, we look at that same star and we see it against a different backdrop. That
difference, that angular ______________, is the stellar parallax. So this is a prediction that the
Copernican model ______________. Astronomers looked for the stellar parallax and they found
______________, nothing at all. And many people argued that this proved that the Copernican model
was ______________.
So what happened? Well, in hindsight we can say that astronomers were making two auxiliary
207
hypotheses, both of which we would now say were ______________. The first was an assumption about
the ______________of the Earth's orbit. Astronomers were assuming that the Earth's orbit was large
______________to the distance to the stars. Today we would ______________the picture more like
this, this comes from NASA, and you see the Earth's ______________is actually quite small. In fact,
it's actually much ______________even than shown here. The stellar parallax therefore, is very small
and actually very ______________to detect.
And that leads to the second reason why the prediction didn't work, because scientists were also
______________that the telescopes they had were sensitive enough to detect the parallax. And that
______________not to be true. It wasn't until the 19th century that scientists were able to detect the
stellar parallax.
So, there's a third problem as well. The third problem is simply a ______________problem, that a lot
of science doesn't ______________the textbook model. A lot of science isn't deductive at all, it's
actually inductive. And by that we mean that scientists don't necessarily start with ______________and
hypotheses, often they just start with observations of ______________going on in the world. And the
most famous example of that is one of the most famous scientists who ever ______________, Charles
Darwin. When Darwin went out as a young man on the ______________of the Beagle, he didn't have
a hypothesis, he didn't have a theory. He just knew that he wanted to have a ______________as a
scientist and he started to collect data. Mainly he knew that he hated ______________because the sight
of blood made him sick so he had to have an ______________career path. So he started collecting data.
And he collected many things, including his famous finches. When he collected these finches, he
______________them in a bag and he had no idea what they meant. Many years later back in London,
Darwin looked at his ______________again and began to develop an explanation, and that explanation
was the theory of natural ______________.
Besides inductive science, scientists also often participate in ______________. One of the things
scientists want to do in life is to explain the causes of things. And how do we do that? Well, one way
you can do it is to ______________a model that tests an idea.
So this is a picture of Henry Cadell, who was a Scottish ______________in the 19th century. You can
tell he's Scottish because he's wearing a deerstalker cap and Wellington ______________. (Laughter)
And Cadell wanted to answer the question, how are mountains ______________? And one of the things
he had observed is that if you look at mountains like the Appalachians, you often find that the
______________in them are ______________, and they're folded in a particular way, which suggested
to him that they were actually being ______________from the side. And this idea would later play a
major role in discussions of ______________drift. So he built this model, this crazy contraption with
levers and ______________, and here's his wheelbarrow, buckets, a big sledgehammer. I don't know
why he's got the Wellington boots. Maybe it's going to ______________. And he created this physical
model in order to demonstrate that you could, in fact, create ______________ in rocks, or at least, in
this case, in ______________, that looked a lot like mountains if you compressed them from the side.
So it was an argument about the ______________of mountains.
Nowadays, most scientists prefer to work ______________, so they don't build physical models so
much as to make computer simulations. But a ______________simulation is a kind of a model. It's a
model that's made with ______________, and like the physical models of the 19th century, it's very
important for ______________about causes. So one of the big questions to do with climate change, we
have ______________amounts of evidence that the Earth is warming up. This slide here, the black line
shows the ______________that scientists have taken for the last 150 years showing that the Earth's
temperature has steadily increased, and you can see in ______________that in the last 50 years there's
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been this ______________increase of nearly one degree centigrade, or almost two degrees Fahrenheit.
So what, though, is driving that change? How can we know what's causing the observed
______________? Well, scientists can model it using a computer simulation. So this
______________illustrates a computer simulation that has looked at all the different factors that we
know can ______________ the Earth's climate, so sulfate particles from air pollution, volcanic dust
from volcanic ______________, changes in solar radiation, and, of course, greenhouse gases. And they
asked the question, what set of variables put into a model will ______________what we actually see in
real life? So here is the real life in ______________. Here's the model in this light ______________,
and the answer is a model that includes, it's the answer E on that SAT, all of the ______________. The
only way you can reproduce the observed temperature measurements is with all of these things put
______________, including greenhouse gases, and in particular you can see that the increase in
greenhouse gases ______________this very dramatic increase in temperature over the last 50 years.
And so this is why climate ______________say it's not just that we know that climate change is
______________, we know that greenhouse gases are a major ______________of the reason why.
So now because there all these ______________things that scientists do, the philosopher Paul
Feyerabend famously said, "The only principle in science that doesn't inhibit ______________is:
anything goes." Now this quotation has often been taken out of ______________, because Feyerabend
was not actually saying that in science anything goes. What he was saying was, actually the full
______________is, "If you press me to say what is the method of science, I would have to say: anything
goes." What he was trying to say is that scientists do a lot of different things. Scientists are creative.
But then this ______________the question back: If scientists don't use a single method, then how do
they decide what's right and what's ______________? And who judges? And the answer is, scientists
judge, and they judge by judging ______________. Scientists collect evidence in many different ways,
but however they collect it, they have to ______________it to scrutiny. And this led the sociologist
Robert Merton to ______________on this question of how scientists scrutinize data and evidence, and
he said they do it in a way he called "______________skepticism." And by that he meant it's organized
because they do it collectively, they ______________it as a group, and skepticism, because they do it
from a position of ______________. That is to say, the burden of proof is on the person with a novel
claim. And in this sense, science is intrinsically ______________. It's quite hard to persuade the
scientific community to say, "Yes, we know something, this is true." So despite the ______________of
the concept of paradigm shifts, what we find is that actually, really major changes in scientific
______________are relatively rare in the history of science.
So finally that brings us to one more idea: If scientists judge evidence collectively, this has led
______________to focus on the question of consensus, and to say that at the end of the day, what
science is, what scientific ______________is, is the consensus of the scientific experts who
______________this process of organized scrutiny, ______________scrutiny, have judged the
evidence and come to a conclusion about it, either yea or nay.
So we can think of scientific knowledge as a ______________of experts. We can also think of science
as being a kind of a ______________, except it's a very special kind of jury. It's not a jury of your peers,
it's a jury of ______________. It's a jury of men and women with Ph.D.s, and unlike a
______________jury, which has only two choices, guilty or not guilty, the scientific jury actually has
a number of choices. Scientists can say yes, something's ______________. Scientists can say no, it's
false. Or, they can say, well it might be true but we need to _____________more and collect more
evidence. Or, they can say it might be true, but we don't know how to ______________the question
and we're going to put it ______________and maybe we'll come back to it later. That's what scientists
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call "intractable."
But this leads us to one ______________problem: If science is what scientists say it is, then isn't that
just an appeal to ______________? And weren't we all taught in school that the ______________to
authority is a logical fallacy? Well, here's the paradox of modern science, the paradox of the conclusion
I think historians and philosophers and sociologists have ______________, that actually science is the
appeal to authority, but it's not the authority of the ______________, no matter how smart that
individual is, like Plato or Socrates or Einstein. It's the authority of the collective ______________.
You can think of it is a kind of wisdom of the ______________, but a very special kind of crowd.
Science does appeal to authority, but it's not ______________on any individual, no matter how smart
that individual may be. It's based on the collective ______________, the collective knowledge, the
collective work, of all of the scientists who have worked on a particular ______________. Scientists
have a kind of culture of collective distrust, this "show me" culture, ______________by this nice
woman here showing her colleagues her evidence. Of course, these people don't really look like
scientists, because they're much too ______________. (Laughter)
Okay, so that brings me to my final point. Most of us get up in the morning. Most of us trust our
______________. Well, see, now I'm thinking, I'm in Manhattan, this is a bad analogy, but most
Americans who don't live in Manhattan get up in the morning and get in their cars and turn on that
______________, and their cars work, and they work incredibly well. The modern
______________hardly ever breaks down.
So why is that? Why do cars work so well? It's not because of the ______________of Henry Ford or
Karl Benz or even Elon Musk. It's because the modern automobile is the ______________of more than
100 years of work by hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of people. The
______________automobile is the product of the collected work and wisdom and experience of every
man and woman who has ever worked on a car, and the ______________ of the technology is the result
of that accumulated ______________. We benefit not just from the genius of Benz and Ford and Musk
but from the collective ______________and hard work of all of the people who have worked on the
modern car. And the ______________is true of science, only science is even older. Our
______________for trust in science is actually the same as our basis in trust in technology, and the
same as our basis for trust in anything, ______________, experience.
But it shouldn't be ______________trust any more than we would have blind trust in anything. Our
trust in science, like science ______________, should be based on evidence, and that means that
scientists have to become better ______________. They have to explain to us not just what they know
but how they know it, and it means that we have to become better ______________.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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Key
https://www.ted.com/talks/naomi_oreskes_why_we_should_believe_in_science
Every day we face issues like climate change or the safety of vaccines where we have to answer
questions whose answers rely heavily on scientific information. Scientists tell us that the world is
warming. Scientists tell us that vaccines are safe. But how do we know if they are right? Why should
be believe the science? The fact is, many of us actually don't believe the science. Public opinion polls
consistently show that significant proportions of the American people don't believe the climate is
warming due to human activities, don't think that there is evolution by natural selection, and aren't
persuaded by the safety of vaccines.
So why should we believe the science? Well, scientists don't like talking about science as a matter of
belief. In fact, they would contrast science with faith, and they would say belief is the domain of faith.
And faith is a separate thing apart and distinct from science. Indeed they would say religion is based on
faith or maybe the calculus of Pascal's wager. Blaise Pascal was a 17th-century mathematician who
tried to bring scientific reasoning to the question of whether or not he should believe in God, and his
wager went like this: Well, if God doesn't exist but I decide to believe in him nothing much is really
lost. Maybe a few hours on Sunday. (Laughter) But if he does exist and I don't believe in him, then I'm
in deep trouble. And so Pascal said, we'd better believe in God. Or as one of my college professors said,
"He clutched for the handrail of faith." He made that leap of faith leaving science and rationalism
behind.
Now the fact is though, for most of us, most scientific claims are a leap of faith. We can't really judge
scientific claims for ourselves in most cases. And indeed this is actually true for most scientists as well
outside of their own specialties. So if you think about it, a geologist can't tell you whether a vaccine is
safe. Most chemists are not experts in evolutionary theory. A physicist cannot tell you, despite the
claims of some of them, whether or not tobacco causes cancer. So, if even scientists themselves have to
make a leap of faith outside their own fields, then why do they accept the claims of other scientists?
Why do they believe each other's claims? And should we believe those claims?
So what I'd like to argue is yes, we should, but not for the reason that most of us think. Most of us were
taught in school that the reason we should believe in science is because of the scientific method. We
were taught that scientists follow a method and that this method guarantees the truth of their claims.
The method that most of us were taught in school, we can call it the textbook method, is the hypothetical
deductive method. According to the standard model, the textbook model, scientists develop hypotheses,
they deduce the consequences of those hypotheses, and then they go out into the world and they say,
"Okay, well are those consequences true?" Can we observe them taking place in the natural world? And
if they are true, then the scientists say, "Great, we know the hypothesis is correct."
So there are many famous examples in the history of science of scientists doing exactly this. One of the
most famous examples comes from the work of Albert Einstein. When Einstein developed the theory
of general relativity, one of the consequences of his theory was that space-time wasn't just an empty
void but that it actually had a fabric. And that that fabric was bent in the presence of massive objects
like the sun. So if this theory were true then it meant that light as it passed the sun should actually be
bent around it. That was a pretty startling prediction and it took a few years before scientists were able
to test it but they did test it in 1919, and lo and behold it turned out to be true. Starlight actually does
bend as it travels around the sun. This was a huge confirmation of the theory. It was considered proof
of the truth of this radical new idea, and it was written up in many newspapers around the globe.
Now, sometimes this theory or this model is referred to as the deductive-nomological model, mainly
because academics like to make things complicated. But also because in the ideal case, it's about laws.
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So nomological means having to do with laws. And in the ideal case, the hypothesis isn't just an idea:
ideally, it is a law of nature. Why does it matter that it is a law of nature? Because if it is a law, it can't
be broken. If it's a law then it will always be true in all times and all places no matter what the
circumstances are. And all of you know of at least one example of a famous law: Einstein's famous
equation, E=MC2, which tells us what the relationship is between energy and mass. And that
relationship is true no matter what.
Now, it turns out, though, that there are several problems with this model. The main problem is that it's
wrong. It's just not true. (Laughter) And I'm going to talk about three reasons why it's wrong. So the
first reason is a logical reason. It's the problem of the fallacy of affirming the consequent. So that's
another fancy, academic way of saying that false theories can make true predictions. So just because
the prediction comes true doesn't actually logically prove that the theory is correct. And I have a good
example of that too, again from the history of science. This is a picture of the Ptolemaic universe with
the Earth at the center of the universe and the sun and the planets going around it. The Ptolemaic model
was believed by many very smart people for many centuries. Well, why? Well the answer is because it
made lots of predictions that came true. The Ptolemaic system enabled astronomers to make accurate
predictions of the motions of the planet, in fact more accurate predictions at first than the Copernican
theory which we now would say is true. So that's one problem with the textbook model. A second
problem is a practical problem, and it's the problem of auxiliary hypotheses. Auxiliary hypotheses are
assumptions that scientists are making that they may or may not even be aware that they're making. So
an important example of this comes from the Copernican model, which ultimately replaced the
Ptolemaic system. So when Nicolaus Copernicus said, actually the Earth is not the center of the
universe, the sun is the center of the solar system, the Earth moves around the sun. Scientists said, well
okay, Nicolaus, if that's true we ought to be able to detect the motion of the Earth around the sun. And
so this slide here illustrates a concept known as stellar parallax. And astronomers said, if the Earth is
moving and we look at a prominent star, let's say, Sirius -- well I know I'm in Manhattan so you guys
can't see the stars, but imagine you're out in the country, imagine you chose that rural life — and we
look at a star in December, we see that star against the backdrop of distant stars. If we now make the
same observation six months later when the Earth has moved to this position in June, we look at that
same star and we see it against a different backdrop. That difference, that angular difference, is the
stellar parallax. So this is a prediction that the Copernican model makes. Astronomers looked for the
stellar parallax and they found nothing, nothing at all. And many people argued that this proved that the
Copernican model was false.
So what happened? Well, in hindsight we can say that astronomers were making two auxiliary
hypotheses, both of which we would now say were incorrect. The first was an assumption about the
size of the Earth's orbit. Astronomers were assuming that the Earth's orbit was large relative to the
distance to the stars. Today we would draw the picture more like this, this comes from NASA, and you
see the Earth's orbit is actually quite small. In fact, it's actually much smaller even than shown here.
The stellar parallax therefore, is very small and actually very hard to detect.
And that leads to the second reason why the prediction didn't work, because scientists were also
assuming that the telescopes they had were sensitive enough to detect the parallax. And that turned out
not to be true. It wasn't until the 19th century that scientists were able to detect the stellar parallax.
So, there's a third problem as well. The third problem is simply a factual problem, that a lot of science
doesn't fit the textbook model. A lot of science isn't deductive at all, it's actually inductive. And by that
we mean that scientists don't necessarily start with theories and hypotheses, often they just start with
observations of stuff going on in the world. And the most famous example of that is one of the most
famous scientists who ever lived, Charles Darwin. When Darwin went out as a young man on the voyage
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of the Beagle, he didn't have a hypothesis, he didn't have a theory. He just knew that he wanted to have
a career as a scientist and he started to collect data. Mainly he knew that he hated medicine because the
sight of blood made him sick so he had to have an alternative career path. So he started collecting data.
And he collected many things, including his famous finches. When he collected these finches, he threw
them in a bag and he had no idea what they meant. Many years later back in London, Darwin looked at
his data again and began to develop an explanation, and that explanation was the theory of natural
selection.
Besides inductive science, scientists also often participate in modeling. One of the things scientists want
to do in life is to explain the causes of things. And how do we do that? Well, one way you can do it is
to build a model that tests an idea.
So this is a picture of Henry Cadell, who was a Scottish geologist in the 19th century. You can tell he's
Scottish because he's wearing a deerstalker cap and Wellington boots. (Laughter) And Cadell wanted
to answer the question, how are mountains formed? And one of the things he had observed is that if you
look at mountains like the Appalachians, you often find that the rocks in them are folded, and they're
folded in a particular way, which suggested to him that they were actually being compressed from the
side. And this idea would later play a major role in discussions of continental drift. So he built this
model, this crazy contraption with levers and wood, and here's his wheelbarrow, buckets, a big
sledgehammer. I don't know why he's got the Wellington boots. Maybe it's going to rain. And he created
this physical model in order to demonstrate that you could, in fact, create patterns in rocks, or at least,
in this case, in mud, that looked a lot like mountains if you compressed them from the side. So it was
an argument about the cause of mountains.
Nowadays, most scientists prefer to work inside, so they don't build physical models so much as to
make computer simulations. But a computer simulation is a kind of a model. It's a model that's made
with mathematics, and like the physical models of the 19th century, it's very important for thinking
about causes. So one of the big questions to do with climate change, we have tremendous amounts of
evidence that the Earth is warming up. This slide here, the black line shows the measurements that
scientists have taken for the last 150 years showing that the Earth's temperature has steadily increased,
and you can see in particular that in the last 50 years there's been this dramatic increase of nearly one
degree centigrade, or almost two degrees Fahrenheit.
So what, though, is driving that change? How can we know what's causing the observed warming?
Well, scientists can model it using a computer simulation. So this diagram illustrates a computer
simulation that has looked at all the different factors that we know can influence the Earth's climate, so
sulfate particles from air pollution, volcanic dust from volcanic eruptions, changes in solar radiation,
and, of course, greenhouse gases. And they asked the question, what set of variables put into a model
will reproduce what we actually see in real life? So here is the real life in black. Here's the model in this
light gray, and the answer is a model that includes, it's the answer E on that SAT, all of the above. The
only way you can reproduce the observed temperature measurements is with all of these things put
together, including greenhouse gases, and in particular you can see that the increase in greenhouse gases
tracks this very dramatic increase in temperature over the last 50 years. And so this is why climate
scientists say it's not just that we know that climate change is happening, we know that greenhouse
gases are a major part of the reason why.
So now because there all these different things that scientists do, the philosopher Paul Feyerabend
famously said, "The only principle in science that doesn't inhibit progress is: anything goes." Now this
quotation has often been taken out of context, because Feyerabend was not actually saying that in
science anything goes. What he was saying was, actually the full quotation is, "If you press me to say
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what is the method of science, I would have to say: anything goes." What he was trying to say is that
scientists do a lot of different things. Scientists are creative.
But then this pushes the question back: If scientists don't use a single method, then how do they decide
what's right and what's wrong? And who judges? And the answer is, scientists judge, and they judge by
judging evidence. Scientists collect evidence in many different ways, but however they collect it, they
have to subject it to scrutiny. And this led the sociologist Robert Merton to focus on this question of
how scientists scrutinize data and evidence, and he said they do it in a way he called "organized
skepticism." And by that he meant it's organized because they do it collectively, they do it as a group,
and skepticism, because they do it from a position of distrust. That is to say, the burden of proof is on
the person with a novel claim. And in this sense, science is intrinsically conservative. It's quite hard to
persuade the scientific community to say, "Yes, we know something, this is true." So despite the
popularity of the concept of paradigm shifts, what we find is that actually, really major changes in
scientific thinking are relatively rare in the history of science.
So finally that brings us to one more idea: If scientists judge evidence collectively, this has led historians
to focus on the question of consensus, and to say that at the end of the day, what science is, what
scientific knowledge is, is the consensus of the scientific experts who through this process of organized
scrutiny, collective scrutiny, have judged the evidence and come to a conclusion about it, either yea or
nay.
So we can think of scientific knowledge as a consensus of experts. We can also think of science as being
a kind of a jury, except it's a very special kind of jury. It's not a jury of your peers, it's a jury of geeks.
It's a jury of men and women with Ph.D.s, and unlike a conventional jury, which has only two choices,
guilty or not guilty, the scientific jury actually has a number of choices. Scientists can say yes,
something's true. Scientists can say no, it's false. Or, they can say, well it might be true but we need to
work more and collect more evidence. Or, they can say it might be true, but we don't know how to
answer the question and we're going to put it aside and maybe we'll come back to it later. That's what
scientists call "intractable."
But this leads us to one final problem: If science is what scientists say it is, then isn't that just an appeal
to authority? And weren't we all taught in school that the appeal to authority is a logical fallacy? Well,
here's the paradox of modern science, the paradox of the conclusion I think historians and philosophers
and sociologists have come to, that actually science is the appeal to authority, but it's not the authority
of the individual, no matter how smart that individual is, like Plato or Socrates or Einstein. It's the
authority of the collective community. You can think of it is a kind of wisdom of the crowd, but a very
special kind of crowd. Science does appeal to authority, but it's not based on any individual, no matter
how smart that individual may be. It's based on the collective wisdom, the collective knowledge, the
collective work, of all of the scientists who have worked on a particular problem. Scientists have a kind
of culture of collective distrust, this "show me" culture, illustrated by this nice woman here showing
her colleagues her evidence. Of course, these people don't really look like scientists, because they're
much too happy. (Laughter)
Okay, so that brings me to my final point. Most of us get up in the morning. Most of us trust our cars.
Well, see, now I'm thinking, I'm in Manhattan, this is a bad analogy, but most Americans who don't live
in Manhattan get up in the morning and get in their cars and turn on that ignition, and their cars work,
and they work incredibly well. The modern automobile hardly ever breaks down.
So why is that? Why do cars work so well? It's not because of the genius of Henry Ford or Karl Benz
or even Elon Musk. It's because the modern automobile is the product of more than 100 years of work
by hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands of people. The modern automobile is the product of
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the collected work and wisdom and experience of every man and woman who has ever worked on a car,
and the reliability of the technology is the result of that accumulated effort. We benefit not just from
the genius of Benz and Ford and Musk but from the collective intelligence and hard work of all of the
people who have worked on the modern car. And the same is true of science, only science is even older.
Our basis for trust in science is actually the same as our basis in trust in technology, and the same as
our basis for trust in anything, namely, experience.
But it shouldn't be blind trust any more than we would have blind trust in anything. Our trust in science,
like science itself, should be based on evidence, and that means that scientists have to become better
communicators. They have to explain to us not just what they know but how they know it, and it means
that we have to become better listeners.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
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24. Simon Anholt - WHICH COUNTRY DOES THE MOST GOOD FOR THE
WORLD
Fill in the blanks
https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_anholt_which_country_does_the_most_good_for_the_world#
t-1103
I've been thinking a lot about the world recently and how it's changed over the ______________ 20, 30,
40 years. Twenty or 30 years ago, if a chicken caught a cold and ______________and died in a remote
village in East Asia, it would have been a ______________for the chicken and its closest relatives, but
I don't think there was much possibility of us ______________a global pandemic and the deaths of
millions. Twenty or 30 years ago, if a ______________in North America lent too much money to some
people who couldn't afford to pay it back and the bank went ______________, that was bad for the
lender and bad for the ______________, but we didn't imagine it would bring the global economic
system to its ______________for nearly a decade.
This is globalization. This is the ______________that has enabled us to transship our bodies and our
minds and our words and our pictures and our ideas and our ______________and our learning around
the planet ever faster and ever ______________. It's brought a lot of bad stuff, like the stuff that I just
______________, but it's also brought a lot of good stuff. A lot of us are not aware of the
______________successes of the Millennium Development Goals, several of which have achieved their
______________long before the due date. That proves that this species of humanity is capable of
achieving extraordinary progress if it really ______________together and it really tries hard. But if I
had to put it in a ______________these days, I sort of feel that globalization has taken us by
______________, and we've been slow to respond to it. If you look at the downside of globalization, it
really does seem to be sometimes ______________. All of the grand challenges that we face today,
like climate change and human rights and demographics and ______________and pandemics and
narco-trafficking and human slavery and species ______________, I could go on, we're not making an
awful lot of progress against an awful lot of those challenges.
So in a nutshell, that's the challenge that we all ______________today at this interesting point in
history. That's clearly what we've got to do ______________. We've somehow got to get our act
together and we've got to figure out how to globalize the solutions better so that we don't simply become
a species which is the ______________of the globalization of problems.
Why are we so slow at achieving these ______________? What's the reason for it? Well, there are, of
course, a number of reasons, but perhaps the ______________reason is because we're still organized
as a species in the same way that we were organized 200 or 300 years ago. There's one
______________left on the planet and that is the seven billion people, the seven billion of us who cause
all these problems, the same seven billion, by the way, who will ______________them all. But how
are those seven billion ______________? They're still organized in 200 or so nation-states, and the
nations have governments that make ______________and cause us to behave in certain ways. And
that's a pretty ______________system, but the problem is that the way that those laws are made and
the way those governments think is ______________wrong for the solution of global problems,
because it all looks ______________. The politicians that we elect and the politicians we don't
______________, on the whole, have minds that microscope. They don't have minds that telescope.
They look ______________. They pretend, they behave, as if they believed that every country was an
island that existed quite happily, independently of all the others on its own little planet in its own little
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______________system. This is the problem: countries competing ______________each other,
countries fighting against each other. This week, as any week you ______________to look at, you'll
find people actually trying to kill each other from country to country, but even when that's not going
on, there's competition between countries, each one trying to ______________the next.
This is clearly not a good ______________. We clearly need to change it. We clearly need to find ways
of encouraging countries to start working ______________a little bit better. And why won't they do
that? Why is it that our leaders still ______________in looking inwards?
Well, the first and most obvious reason is because that's what we ask them to do. That's what we tell
them to do. When we elect governments or when we ______________unelected governments, we're
effectively telling them that what we want is for them to ______________us in our country a
______________number of things. We want them to deliver
______________, growth,
competitiveness, transparency, justice and all of those things. So unless we start asking our governments
to think ______________a little bit, to consider the global problems that will finish us all if we don't
start considering them, then we can hardly ______________them if what they carry on doing is looking
inwards, if they still have minds that microscope rather than minds that telescope. That's the first reason
why things ______________not to change.
The second reason is that these governments, just like all the rest of us, are
______________psychopaths. I don't mean to be rude, but you know what a psychopath is. A
psychopath is a person who, unfortunately for him or her, ______________the ability to really
empathize with other human beings. When they look around, they don't see other human beings with
______________, rich, three-dimensional personal lives and aims and ______________. What they
see is ______________cutouts, and it's very sad and it's very ______________, and it's very rare,
fortunately.
But actually, aren't most of us not really so very good at ______________? Oh sure, we're very good
at empathy when it's a question of dealing with people who kind of look like us and kind of walk and
talk and eat and ______________and wear like us, but when it comes to people who don't do that, who
don't ______________dress like us and don't quite pray like us and don't quite talk like us, do we not
also have a ______________to see them ever so slightly as cardboard cutouts too? And this is a
question we need to ask ourselves. I think constantly we have to ______________it. Are we and our
politicians to a degree cultural psychopaths?
The third reason is hardly worth mentioning because it's so silly, but there's a belief amongst
governments that the ______________agenda and the international agenda are incompatible and
always will be. This is just ______________. In my day job, I'm a policy adviser. I've spent the last 15
years or so advising governments around the world, and in all of that time I have never once seen a
single domestic ______________issue that could not be more imaginatively, effectively and rapidly
resolved than by treating it as an ______________problem, looking at the international context,
comparing what others have done, bringing ______________others, working externally instead of
working internally.
And so you may say, well, given all of that, why then doesn't it work? Why can we not make our
______________change? Why can't we demand them? Well I, like a lot of us, spend a lot of time
complaining about how ______________it is to make people change, and I don't think we should
______________about it. I think we should just accept that we are an inherently ______________
species. We don't like to change. It exists for very sensible evolutionary reasons. We probably wouldn't
still be here today if we weren't so ______________to change. It's very simple: Many thousands of
years ago, we discovered that if we ______________on doing the same things, we wouldn't die,
217
because the things that we've done before by ______________didn't kill us, and therefore as long as
we carry on doing them, we'll be okay, and it's very ______________not to do anything new, because
it might kill you. But of course, there are ______________to that. Otherwise, we'd never get anywhere.
And one of the exceptions, the ______________exception, is when you can show to people that there
might be some self-interest in them ______________that leap of faith and changing a little bit.
So I've spent a lot of the last 10 or 15 years trying to find out what could be that self-interest that would
______________not just politicians but also businesses and ______________populations, all of us, to
start to think a little more outwardly, to think in a bigger ______________, not always to look
______________, sometimes to look outwards. And this is where I discovered something quite
important. In 2005, I ______________ a study called the Nation Brands Index. What it is, it's a very
large-scale study that polls a very ______________sample of the world's population, a sample that
______________about 70 percent of the planet's population, and I started asking them a series of
questions about how they ______________other countries. And the Nation Brands Index over the years
has grown to be a very, very large ______________. It's about 200 billion data points tracking what
______________people think about other countries and why. Why did I do this? Well, because the
governments that I advise are very, very keen on knowing how they are ______________. They've
known, partly because I've encouraged them to realize it, that countries depend enormously on their
______________in order to survive and prosper in the world. If a country has a great, positive
______________, like Germany has or Sweden or Switzerland, everything is easy and everything is
cheap. You get more tourists. You get more ______________. You sell your products more
expensively. If, on the other hand, you have a country with a very weak or a very negative image,
everything is ______________and everything is expensive. So governments care desperately about the
image of their country, because it makes a ______________difference to how much money they can
make, and that's what they've ______________their populations they're going to deliver.
So a couple of years ago, I thought I would take some time ______________and speak to that
______________database and ask it, why do some people prefer one country more than another? And
the ______________that the database gave me completely staggered me. It was 6.8. I haven't got time
to explain in ______________. Basically what it told me was — (Laughter) (Applause) — the kinds
of countries we prefer are good countries. We don't ______________countries primarily because
they're rich, because they're powerful, because they're successful, because they're modern, because
they're technologically ______________. We primarily admire countries that are ______________.
What do we mean by good? We mean countries that seem to contribute something to the world in
______________we live, countries that actually make the world safer or better or richer or
______________. Those are the countries we like. This is a discovery of significant
______________— you see where I'm going — because it ______________the circle. I can now say,
and often do, to any government, in order to do well, you need to do good. If you want to sell more
products, if you want to get more ______________, if you want to become more competitive, then you
need to start behaving, because that's why people will respect you and ______________business with
you, and therefore, the more you collaborate, the more competitive you ______________.
This is quite an important discovery, and as soon as I discovered this, I felt another
______________coming on. I swear that as I get older, my ideas become simpler and more and more
______________. This one is called the Good Country Index, and it does exactly what it says on the
______________. It measures, or at least it tries to measure, exactly how much each country on Earth
contributes not to its own population but to the rest of ______________. Bizarrely, nobody had ever
thought of measuring this before. So my colleague Dr. Robert Govers and I have spent the best part of
the last two years, with the
______________of a large number of very serious and
______________people, cramming together all the ______________data in the world we could find
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about what countries give to the world.
And you're waiting for me to tell you which one comes ______________. And I'm going to tell you,
but first of all I want to tell you precisely what I mean when I say a good country. I do not mean
______________good. When I say that Country X is the goodest country on Earth, and I mean goodest,
I don't mean ______________. Best is something different. When you're talking about a good country,
you can be good, gooder and goodest. It's not the same thing as good, better and best. This is a country
which simply gives more ______________humanity than any other country. I don't talk about how
they behave at home because that's measured ______________. And the ______________is Ireland.
(Applause) According to the data here, no country on Earth, per head of population, per dollar of GDP,
contributes more to the world that we live in than Ireland. What does this mean? This means that as we
go to sleep at night, all of us in the last 15 seconds before we ______________off to sleep, our final
thought should be, godammit, I'm glad that Ireland exists. (Laughter) And that — (Applause) — In the
depths of a very ______________economic recession, I think that there's a really important lesson
there, that if you can remember your international ______________whilst you are trying to rebuild
your own economy, that's really something. Finland ______________pretty much the same. The only
reason why it's below Ireland is because its lowest score is ______________than Ireland's lowest
score.
Now the other thing you'll notice about the top 10 there is, of course, they're all, ______________from
New Zealand, Western European nations. They're also all rich. This ______________me, because one
of the things that I did not want to ______________with this index is that it's purely the
______________of rich countries to help poor countries. This is not what it's all about. And indeed, if
you look further down the list, I don't have the ______________here, you will see something that made
me very happy indeed, that Kenya is in the top 30, and that demonstrates one very, very important thing.
This is not about money. This is about ______________. This is about culture. This is about a
government and a people that care about the ______________of the world and have the imagination
and the courage to think ______________instead of only thinking selfishly.
I'm going to ______________through the other slides just so you can see some of the lower-lying
countries. There's Germany at 13th, the U.S. comes 21st, Mexico comes 66th, and then we have some
of the big ______________countries, like Russia at 95th, China at 107th. Countries like China and
Russia and India, which is ______________in the same part of the index, well, in some ways, it's not
surprising. They've spent a great ______________of time over the last decades building their own
______________, building their own society and their own polity, but it is to be hoped that the second
______________of their growth will be somewhat more outward-looking than the first phase has been
so ______________.
And then you can ______________each country in terms of the actual datasets that build into it. I'll
______________you to do that. From midnight tonight it's going to be on goodcountry.org, and you
can look at the country. You can look right down to the ______________of the individual datasets.
Now that's the Good Country Index. What's it ______________for? Well, it's there really because I
want to try to introduce this word, or ______________this word, into the discourse. I've had enough
______________about competitive countries. I've had enough hearing about prosperous, wealthy, fastgrowing countries. I've even had enough hearing about happy countries because in the end that's still
______________. That's still about us, and if we carry on thinking about us, we are in deep, deep
______________. I think we all know what it is that we want to hear about. We want to hear about
good countries, and so I want to ask you all a ______________. I'm not asking a lot. It's something that
you might find ______________to do and you might even find ______________and even helpful to
219
do, and that's simply to start using the word "good" in this ______________. When you think about
your own country, when you think about other people's countries, when you think about
______________, when you talk about the world that we live in today, start using that word in the
______________that I've talked about this evening. Not good, the ______________of bad, because
that's an argument that never finishes. Good, the opposite of selfish, good ______________a country
that thinks about all of us. That's what I would like you to do, and I'd like you to use it as a stick with
which to ______________your politicians. When you elect them, when you ______________them,
when you vote for them, when you listen to what they're offering you, use that word, "good," and ask
yourself, "Is that what a good country would do?" And if the answer is no, be very ______________.
Ask yourself, is that the behavior of my country? Do I want to come from a country where the
government, in my ______________, is doing things like that? Or do I, on the other hand, prefer the
idea of walking around the world with my head ______________high thinking, "Yeah, I'm proud to
come from a good country"? And everybody will ______________you. And everybody in the last 15
seconds before they drift off to sleep at night will say, "Gosh, I'm ______________that person's country
exists."
Ultimately, that, I think, is what will make the change. That word, "good," and the number 6.8 and the
discovery that's ______________it have changed my life. I think they can change your life, and I think
we can ______________it to change the way that our politicians and our companies ______________,
and in doing so, we can change the world. I've started thinking very differently about my own country
since I've been thinking about these things. I used to think that I wanted to live in a rich country, and
then I started thinking I wanted to live in a ______________country, but I began to realize, it's not
______________. I don't want to live in a rich country. I don't want to live in a fast-growing or
______________country. I want to live in a good country, and I so, so hope that you do too.
Thank you.
(Applause)
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Key
https://www.ted.com/talks/simon_anholt_which_country_does_the_most_good_for_the_world#
t-1103
I've been thinking a lot about the world recently and how it's changed over the last 20, 30, 40 years.
Twenty or 30 years ago, if a chicken caught a cold and sneezed and died in a remote village in East
Asia, it would have been a tragedy for the chicken and its closest relatives, but I don't think there was
much possibility of us fearing a global pandemic and the deaths of millions. Twenty or 30 years ago, if
a bank in North America lent too much money to some people who couldn't afford to pay it back and
the bank went bust, that was bad for the lender and bad for the borrower, but we didn't imagine it would
bring the global economic system to its knees for nearly a decade.
This is globalization. This is the miracle that has enabled us to transship our bodies and our minds and
our words and our pictures and our ideas and our teaching and our learning around the planet ever faster
and ever cheaper. It's brought a lot of bad stuff, like the stuff that I just described, but it's also brought
a lot of good stuff. A lot of us are not aware of the extraordinary successes of the Millennium
Development Goals, several of which have achieved their targets long before the due date. That proves
that this species of humanity is capable of achieving extraordinary progress if it really acts together and
it really tries hard. But if I had to put it in a nutshell these days, I sort of feel that globalization has taken
us by surprise, and we've been slow to respond to it. If you look at the downside of globalization, it
really does seem to be sometimes overwhelming. All of the grand challenges that we face today, like
climate change and human rights and demographics and terrorism and pandemics and narco-trafficking
and human slavery and species loss, I could go on, we're not making an awful lot of progress against an
awful lot of those challenges.
So in a nutshell, that's the challenge that we all face today at this interesting point in history. That's
clearly what we've got to do next. We've somehow got to get our act together and we've got to figure
out how to globalize the solutions better so that we don't simply become a species which is the victim
of the globalization of problems.
Why are we so slow at achieving these advances? What's the reason for it? Well, there are, of course, a
number of reasons, but perhaps the primary reason is because we're still organized as a species in the
same way that we were organized 200 or 300 years ago. There's one superpower left on the planet and
that is the seven billion people, the seven billion of us who cause all these problems, the same seven
billion, by the way, who will resolve them all. But how are those seven billion organized? They're still
organized in 200 or so nation-states, and the nations have governments that make rules and cause us to
behave in certain ways. And that's a pretty efficient system, but the problem is that the way that those
laws are made and the way those governments think is absolutely wrong for the solution of global
problems, because it all looks inwards. The politicians that we elect and the politicians we don't elect,
on the whole, have minds that microscope. They don't have minds that telescope. They look in. They
pretend, they behave, as if they believed that every country was an island that existed quite happily,
independently of all the others on its own little planet in its own little solar system. This is the problem:
countries competing against each other, countries fighting against each other. This week, as any week
you care to look at, you'll find people actually trying to kill each other from country to country, but even
when that's not going on, there's competition between countries, each one trying to shaft the next.
This is clearly not a good arrangement. We clearly need to change it. We clearly need to find ways of
encouraging countries to start working together a little bit better. And why won't they do that? Why is
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it that our leaders still persist in looking inwards?
Well, the first and most obvious reason is because that's what we ask them to do. That's what we tell
them to do. When we elect governments or when we tolerate unelected governments, we're effectively
telling them that what we want is for them to deliver us in our country a certain number of things. We
want them to deliver prosperity, growth, competitiveness, transparency, justice and all of those things.
So unless we start asking our governments to think outside a little bit, to consider the global problems
that will finish us all if we don't start considering them, then we can hardly blame them if what they
carry on doing is looking inwards, if they still have minds that microscope rather than minds that
telescope. That's the first reason why things tend not to change.
The second reason is that these governments, just like all the rest of us, are cultural psychopaths. I don't
mean to be rude, but you know what a psychopath is. A psychopath is a person who, unfortunately for
him or her, lacks the ability to really empathize with other human beings. When they look around, they
don't see other human beings with deep, rich, three-dimensional personal lives and aims and ambitions.
What they see is cardboard cutouts, and it's very sad and it's very lonely, and it's very rare, fortunately.
But actually, aren't most of us not really so very good at empathy? Oh sure, we're very good at empathy
when it's a question of dealing with people who kind of look like us and kind of walk and talk and eat
and pray and wear like us, but when it comes to people who don't do that, who don't quite dress like us
and don't quite pray like us and don't quite talk like us, do we not also have a tendency to see them ever
so slightly as cardboard cutouts too? And this is a question we need to ask ourselves. I think constantly
we have to monitor it. Are we and our politicians to a degree cultural psychopaths?
The third reason is hardly worth mentioning because it's so silly, but there's a belief amongst
governments that the domestic agenda and the international agenda are incompatible and always will
be. This is just nonsense. In my day job, I'm a policy adviser. I've spent the last 15 years or so advising
governments around the world, and in all of that time I have never once seen a single domestic policy
issue that could not be more imaginatively, effectively and rapidly resolved than by treating it as an
international problem, looking at the international context, comparing what others have done, bringing
in others, working externally instead of working internally.
And so you may say, well, given all of that, why then doesn't it work? Why can we not make our
politicians change? Why can't we demand them? Well I, like a lot of us, spend a lot of time complaining
about how hard it is to make people change, and I don't think we should fuss about it. I think we should
just accept that we are an inherently conservative species. We don't like to change. It exists for very
sensible evolutionary reasons. We probably wouldn't still be here today if we weren't so resistant to
change. It's very simple: Many thousands of years ago, we discovered that if we carried on doing the
same things, we wouldn't die, because the things that we've done before by definition didn't kill us, and
therefore as long as we carry on doing them, we'll be okay, and it's very sensible not to do anything
new, because it might kill you. But of course, there are exceptions to that. Otherwise, we'd never get
anywhere. And one of the exceptions, the interesting exception, is when you can show to people that
there might be some self-interest in them making that leap of faith and changing a little bit.
So I've spent a lot of the last 10 or 15 years trying to find out what could be that self-interest that would
encourage not just politicians but also businesses and general populations, all of us, to start to think a
little more outwardly, to think in a bigger picture, not always to look inwards, sometimes to look
outwards. And this is where I discovered something quite important. In 2005, I launched a study called
the Nation Brands Index. What it is, it's a very large-scale study that polls a very large sample of the
world's population, a sample that represents about 70 percent of the planet's population, and I started
asking them a series of questions about how they perceive other countries. And the Nation Brands Index
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over the years has grown to be a very, very large database. It's about 200 billion data points tracking
what ordinary people think about other countries and why. Why did I do this? Well, because the
governments that I advise are very, very keen on knowing how they are regarded. They've known, partly
because I've encouraged them to realize it, that countries depend enormously on their reputations in
order to survive and prosper in the world. If a country has a great, positive image, like Germany has or
Sweden or Switzerland, everything is easy and everything is cheap. You get more tourists. You get
more investors. You sell your products more expensively. If, on the other hand, you have a country with
a very weak or a very negative image, everything is difficult and everything is expensive. So
governments care desperately about the image of their country, because it makes a direct difference to
how much money they can make, and that's what they've promised their populations they're going to
deliver.
So a couple of years ago, I thought I would take some time out and speak to that gigantic database and
ask it, why do some people prefer one country more than another? And the answer that the database
gave me completely staggered me. It was 6.8. I haven't got time to explain in detail. Basically what it
told me was — (Laughter) (Applause) — the kinds of countries we prefer are good countries. We don't
admire countries primarily because they're rich, because they're powerful, because they're successful,
because they're modern, because they're technologically advanced. We primarily admire countries that
are good. What do we mean by good? We mean countries that seem to contribute something to the
world in which we live, countries that actually make the world safer or better or richer or fairer. Those
are the countries we like. This is a discovery of significant importance — you see where I'm going —
because it squares the circle. I can now say, and often do, to any government, in order to do well, you
need to do good. If you want to sell more products, if you want to get more investment, if you want to
become more competitive, then you need to start behaving, because that's why people will respect you
and do business with you, and therefore, the more you collaborate, the more competitive you become.
This is quite an important discovery, and as soon as I discovered this, I felt another index coming on. I
swear that as I get older, my ideas become simpler and more and more childish. This one is called the
Good Country Index, and it does exactly what it says on the tin. It measures, or at least it tries to
measure, exactly how much each country on Earth contributes not to its own population but to the rest
of humanity. Bizarrely, nobody had ever thought of measuring this before. So my colleague Dr. Robert
Govers and I have spent the best part of the last two years, with the help of a large number of very
serious and clever people, cramming together all the reliable data in the world we could find about what
countries give to the world.
And you're waiting for me to tell you which one comes top. And I'm going to tell you, but first of all I
want to tell you precisely what I mean when I say a good country. I do not mean morally good. When
I say that Country X is the goodest country on Earth, and I mean goodest, I don't mean best. Best is
something different. When you're talking about a good country, you can be good, gooder and goodest.
It's not the same thing as good, better and best. This is a country which simply gives more to humanity
than any other country. I don't talk about how they behave at home because that's measured elsewhere.
And the winner is Ireland. (Applause) According to the data here, no country on Earth, per head of
population, per dollar of GDP, contributes more to the world that we live in than Ireland. What does
this mean? This means that as we go to sleep at night, all of us in the last 15 seconds before we drift off
to sleep, our final thought should be, godammit, I'm glad that Ireland exists. (Laughter) And that —
(Applause) — In the depths of a very severe economic recession, I think that there's a really important
lesson there, that if you can remember your international obligations whilst you are trying to rebuild
your own economy, that's really something. Finland ranks pretty much the same. The only reason why
it's below Ireland is because its lowest score is lower than Ireland's lowest score.
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Now the other thing you'll notice about the top 10 there is, of course, they're all, apart from New
Zealand, Western European nations. They're also all rich. This depressed me, because one of the things
that I did not want to discover with this index is that it's purely the province of rich countries to help
poor countries. This is not what it's all about. And indeed, if you look further down the list, I don't have
the slide here, you will see something that made me very happy indeed, that Kenya is in the top 30, and
that demonstrates one very, very important thing. This is not about money. This is about attitude. This
is about culture. This is about a government and a people that care about the rest of the world and have
the imagination and the courage to think outwards instead of only thinking selfishly.
I'm going to whip through the other slides just so you can see some of the lower-lying countries. There's
Germany at 13th, the U.S. comes 21st, Mexico comes 66th, and then we have some of the big
developing countries, like Russia at 95th, China at 107th. Countries like China and Russia and India,
which is down in the same part of the index, well, in some ways, it's not surprising. They've spent a
great deal of time over the last decades building their own economy, building their own society and
their own polity, but it is to be hoped that the second phase of their growth will be somewhat more
outward-looking than the first phase has been so far.
And then you can break down each country in terms of the actual datasets that build into it. I'll allow
you to do that. From midnight tonight it's going to be on goodcountry.org, and you can look at the
country. You can look right down to the level of the individual datasets.
Now that's the Good Country Index. What's it there for? Well, it's there really because I want to try to
introduce this word, or reintroduce this word, into the discourse. I've had enough hearing about
competitive countries. I've had enough hearing about prosperous, wealthy, fast-growing countries. I've
even had enough hearing about happy countries because in the end that's still selfish. That's still about
us, and if we carry on thinking about us, we are in deep, deep trouble. I think we all know what it is that
we want to hear about. We want to hear about good countries, and so I want to ask you all a favor. I'm
not asking a lot. It's something that you might find easy to do and you might even find enjoyable and
even helpful to do, and that's simply to start using the word "good" in this context. When you think
about your own country, when you think about other people's countries, when you think about
companies, when you talk about the world that we live in today, start using that word in the way that
I've talked about this evening. Not good, the opposite of bad, because that's an argument that never
finishes. Good, the opposite of selfish, good being a country that thinks about all of us. That's what I
would like you to do, and I'd like you to use it as a stick with which to beat your politicians. When you
elect them, when you reelect them, when you vote for them, when you listen to what they're offering
you, use that word, "good," and ask yourself, "Is that what a good country would do?" And if the answer
is no, be very suspicious. Ask yourself, is that the behavior of my country? Do I want to come from a
country where the government, in my name, is doing things like that? Or do I, on the other hand, prefer
the idea of walking around the world with my head held high thinking, "Yeah, I'm proud to come from
a good country"? And everybody will welcome you. And everybody in the last 15 seconds before they
drift off to sleep at night will say, "Gosh, I'm glad that person's country exists."
Ultimately, that, I think, is what will make the change. That word, "good," and the number 6.8 and the
discovery that's behind it have changed my life. I think they can change your life, and I think we can
use it to change the way that our politicians and our companies behave, and in doing so, we can change
the world. I've started thinking very differently about my own country since I've been thinking about
these things. I used to think that I wanted to live in a rich country, and then I started thinking I wanted
to live in a happy country, but I began to realize, it's not enough. I don't want to live in a rich country. I
don't want to live in a fast-growing or competitive country. I want to live in a good country, and I so,
so hope that you do too.
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Thank you.
(Applause)
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