Andrew Youn: 3 reasons why we can win the fight against poverty

I've been living in rural East Africa for about 10 years, and I want to share a field perspective with you on global poverty. I
believe that the greatest failure of the human race is the fact that we've left more than one billion of our members
behind. Hungry, extreme poverty: these often seem like gigantic, insurmountable problems, too big to solve. But as a field
practitioner, I believe these are actually very solvable problems if we just take the right strategies.
Archimedes was an ancient Greek thinker, and he taught us that if we lean on the right levers, we can move the world. In
the fight against extreme poverty, I believe there are three powerful levers that we can lean on. This talk is all about those
levers, and why they make poverty a winnable fight in our lifetimes.
What is extreme poverty? When I first moved to rural East Africa, I stayed overnight with a farm family. They were
wonderful people. They invited me into their home. We sang songs together and ate a simple dinner. They gave me a
blanket to sleep on the floor. In the morning, however, there was nothing to eat.And then at lunchtime, I watched with an
increasingly sick feeling as the eldest girl in the family cooked porridge as a substitute for lunch. For that meal, every child
drank one cup to survive. And I cannot tell you how ashamed I felt when they handed one of those cups to me, and I knew
I had to accept their hospitality.
Children need food not only to survive but also to grow physically and mentally. Every day they fail to eat, they lose a little
bit of their future. Amongst the extreme poor, one in three children are permanently stunted from a lifetime of not eating
enough. When that's combined with poor access to health care, one in 10 extremely poor children die before they reach
age five. And only one quarter of children complete high school because they lack school fees. Hunger and extreme
poverty curb human potential in every possible way. We see ourselves as a thinking, feeling and moral human race, but
until we solve these problems for all of our members, we fail that standard, because every person on this planet
matters. This child matters. These children matter. This girl matters.
You know, we see things like this, and we're upset by them, but they seem like such big problems. We don't know how to
take effective action. But remember our friend Archimedes. Global poverty has powerful levers. It's a problem like any
other. I live and work in the field, and as a practitioner, I believe these are very solvable problems. So for the next 10
minutes, let's not be sad about the state of the world. Let's engage our brains. Let's engage our collective passion for
problem-solving and figure out what those levers are.
Lever number one: most of the world's poor are farmers. Think about how extraordinary this is. If this picture represents
the world's poor, then more than half engage in farming as a major source of income. This gets me really excited. All of
these people, one profession. Think how powerful this is. When farmers become more productive, then more than half the
world's poor earn more money and climb out of poverty. And it gets better. The product of farming is, of course, food. So
when farmers become more productive, they earn more food, and they don't just help themselves, but they help to feed
healthy communities and thriving economies. And when farmers become more productive, they reduce environmental
pressure. We only have two ways we can feed the world: we can either make our existing farmland a lot more
productive, or we can clear cut forest and savannah to make more farmland, which would be environmentally
disastrous. Farmers are basically a really important leverage point. When farmers become more productive, they earn
more income, they climb out of poverty, they feed their communities and they reduce environmental land
pressure. Farmers stand at the center of the world.

And not a farmer like this one, but rather this lady. Most of the farmers I know are actually women. Look at the strength
and the will radiating from this woman. She is physically strong, mentally tough, and she will do whatever it takes to earn a
better life for her children. If we're going to put the future of humanity in one person's hands, then I'm really glad it's her.
There's just one problem: many smallholder farmers lack access to basic tools and knowledge. Currently, they take a little
bit of saved food grain from the prior year, they plant it in the ground and they till it with a manual hand hoe. These are
tools and techniques that date to the Bronze Age, and it's why many farmers are still very poor.
But good news, again. Lever number two: humanity actually solved the problem of agricultural poverty a century ago. Let
me walk you through the three most basic factors in farming. First, hybrid seed is created when you cross two seeds
together. If you naturally pollinate a high-yielding variety together with a drought-resistant variety, you get a hybrid that
inherits positive traits from both of its parents. Next, conventional fertilizer, if used responsibly, is environmentally
sustainable. If you micro-dose just a pinch of fertilizer to a plant that's taller than I am, you unlock enormous yield
gain. These are known as farm inputs. Farm inputs need to be combined with good practice. When you space your seeds
and plant with massive amounts of compost, farmers multiply their harvests. These proven tools and practices have more
than tripled agricultural productivity in every major region of the world, moving mass numbers of people out of poverty. We
just haven't finished delivering these things to everybody just yet, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa.
So overall, this is amazing news. Humanity actually solved agricultural poverty a century ago, in theory.We just haven't
delivered these things to everybody just yet. In this century, the reason that people remain poor is because maybe they
live in remote places. They lack access to these things. Therefore, ending poverty is simply a matter of delivering proven
goods and services to people. We don't need more genius types right now. The humble delivery guy is going to end global
poverty in our lifetime.
So these are the three levers, and the most powerful lever is simply delivery. Wherever the world's companies,
governments and nonprofits set up delivery networks for life-improving goods, we eliminate poverty.
6:51OK, so that sounds really nice in theory, but what about in practice? What do these delivery networks look like? I
want to share the concrete example that I know best, my organization, One Acre Fund. We only serve the farmer, and our
job is to provide her with the tools that she needs to succeed. We start off by delivering farm inputs to really rural
places. Now, this may appear initially very challenging, but it's pretty possible. Let me show you. We buy farm inputs with
the combined power of our farmer network, and store it in 20 warehouses like this. Then, during input delivery, we rent
hundreds of 10-ton trucks and send them out to where farmers are waiting in the field. They then get their individual orders
and walk it home to their farms. It's kind of like Amazon for rural farmers. Importantly, realistic delivery also includes
finance, a way to pay. Farmers pay us little by little over time, covering most of our expenses. And then we surround all
that with training. Our rural field officers deliver practical, hands-on training to farmers in the field every two weeks.
Wherever we deliver our services, farmers use these tools to climb out of poverty. This is a farmer in our program,
Consolata. Look at the pride on her face. She has achieved a modest prosperity that I believe is the human right of every
hardworking person on the planet. Today, I'm proud to say that we're serving about 400,000 farmers like Consolata.
The key to doing this is scalable delivery. In any given area, we hire a rural field officer who delivers our services to 200
farmers, on average, with more than 1,000 people living in those families. Today, we have 2,000 of these rural field
officers growing very quickly. This is our delivery army, and we're just one organization. There are many companies,
governments and nonprofits that have delivery armies just like this. And I believe we stand at a moment in time where
collectively, we are capable of delivering farm services to all farmers.

Let me show you how possible this is. This is a map of Sub-Saharan Africa, with a map of the United States for scale. I
chose Sub-Saharan Africa because this is a huge delivery territory. It's very challenging. But we analyzed every 50-mile by
50-mile block on the continent, and we found that half of farmers live in just these shaded regions. That's a remarkably
small area overall. If you were to lay these boxes next to each other within a map of the United States, they would only
cover the Eastern United States. You can order pizza anywhere in this territory and it'll arrive to your house hot, fresh and
delicious. If America can deliver pizza to an area of this size, then Africa's companies, governments and non-profits can
deliver farm services to all of her farmers. This is possible.
I'm going to wrap up by generalizing beyond just farming. In every field of human development, humanity has already
invented effective tools to end poverty. We just need to deliver them. So again, in every area of human
development, super-smart people a long time ago invented inexpensive, highly effective tools.Humanity is armed to the
teeth with simple, effective solutions to poverty. We just need to deliver these to a pretty small area. Again using the map
of Sub-Saharan Africa as an example, remember that rural poverty is concentrated in these blue shaded areas. Urban
poverty is even more concentrated, in these green little dots. Again, using a map of the United States for scale, this is
what I would call a highly achievable delivery zone. In fact, for the first time in human history, we have a vast amount of
delivery infrastructure available to us. The world's companies, governments and non-profits have delivery armies that are
fully capable of covering this relatively small area. We just lack the will.
If we are willing, every one of us has a role to play. We first need more people to pursue careers in human
development, especially if you live in a developing nation. We need more front line health workers, teachers, farmer
trainers, sales agents for life-improving goods. These are the delivery people that dedicate their careers to improving the
lives of others. But we also need a lot of support roles. These are roles available at just my organization alone, and we're
just one out of many. This may surprise you, but no matter what your technical specialty, there is a role for you in this
fight. And no matter how logistically possible it is to end poverty, we need a lot more resources. This is our number one
constraint. For private investors, we need a big expansion of venture capital, private equity, working capital, available in
emerging markets. But there are also limits to what private business can accomplish. Private businesses often struggle to
profitably serve the extreme poor, so philanthropy still has a major role to play. Anybody can give, but we need more
leadership. We need more visionary philanthropists and global leaders who will take problems in human development and
lead humanity to wipe them off the face of the planet. If you're interested in these ideas, check out this website.
We need more leaders. Humanity has put people on the moon. We've invented supercomputers that fit into our
pockets and connect us with anybody on the planet. We've run marathons at a five-minute mile pace. We are an
exceptional people. But we've left more than one billion of our members behind. Until every girl like this one has an
opportunity to earn her full human potential, we have failed to become a truly moral and just human race. Logistically
speaking, it's incredibly possible to end extreme poverty. We just need to deliver proven goods and services to
everybody. If we have the will, every one of us has a role to play. Let's deploy our time, our careers, our collective
wealth. Let us deliver an end to extreme poverty in this lifetime.

Jamie Oliver: Teach every child about food

Sadly, in the next 18 minutes when I do our chat, four Americans that are alive will be dead through the
food that they eat.

My name's Jamie Oliver. I'm 34 years old. I'm from Essex in England and for the last seven years I've
worked fairly tirelessly to save lives in my own way. I'm not a doctor; I'm a chef, I don't have expensive
equipment or medicine. I use information, education.
I profoundly believe that the power of food has a primal place in our homes that binds us to the best bits of
life. We have an awful, awful reality right now. America, you're at the top of your game. This is one of the
most unhealthy countries in the world.
Can I please just see a raise of hands for how many of you have children in this room today? Put your
hands up. You can continue to put your hands up, aunties and uncles as well. Most of you. OK. We, the
adults of the last four generations, have blessed our children with the destiny of a shorter lifespan than
their own parents. Your child will live a life ten years younger than you because of the landscape of food
that we've built around them. Two-thirds of this room, today, in America, are statistically overweight or
obese. You lot, you're all right, but we'll get you eventually, don't worry.
The statistics of bad health are clear, very clear. We spend our lives being paranoid about death, murder,
homicide, you name it; it's on the front page of every paper, CNN. Look at homicide at the bottom, for
God's sake. Right?
Every single one of those in the red is a diet-related disease. Any doctor, any specialist will tell you that.
Fact: diet-related disease is the biggest killer in the United States, right now, here today. This is a global
problem. It's a catastrophe. It's sweeping the world. England is right behind you, as usual.
I know they were close, but not that close. We need a revolution. Mexico, Australia, Germany, India, China,
all have massive problems of obesity and bad health. Think about smoking. It costs way less than obesity
now. Obesity costs you Americans 10 percent of your health-care bills, 150 billion dollars a year. In 10
years, it's set to double: 300 billion dollars a year. Let's be honest, guys, you haven't got that cash.
I came here to start a food revolution that I so profoundly believe in. We need it. The time is now. We're in
a tipping-point moment. I've been doing this for seven years. I've been trying in America for seven years.
Now is the time when it's ripe -- ripe for the picking. I went to the eye of the storm. I went to West Virginia,
the most unhealthy state in America. Or it was last year. We've got a new one this year, but we'll work on
that next season.
Huntington, West Virginia. Beautiful town. I wanted to put heart and soul and people, your public, around
the statistics that we've become so used to. I want to introduce you to some of the people that I care
about: your public, your children. I want to show a picture of my friend Brittany. She's 16 years old. She's
got six years to live because of the food that she's eaten. She's the third generation of Americans that
hasn't grown up within a food environment where they've been taught to cook at home or in school, or her
mom, or her mom's mom. She has six years to live. She's eating her liver to death.
Stacy, the Edwards family. This is a normal family, guys. Stacy does her best, but she's third-generation as
well; she was never taught to cook at home or at school. The family's obese. Justin here, 12 years old, he's
350 pounds. He gets bullied, for God's sake. The daughter there, Katie, she's four years old. She's obese
before she even gets to primary school. Marissa, she's all right, she's one of your lot. But you know what?
Her father, who was obese, died in her arms, And then the second most important man in her life, her
uncle, died of obesity, and now her step-dad is obese. You see, the thing is, obesity and diet-related
disease doesn't just hurt the people that have it; it's all of their friends, families, brothers, sisters.
Pastor Steve: an inspirational man, one of my early allies in Huntington, West Virginia. He's at the sharp
knife-edge of this problem. He has to bury the people, OK? And he's fed up with it. He's fed up with burying
his friends, his family, his community. Come winter, three times as many people die. He's sick of it. This is
preventable disease. Waste of life. By the way, this is what they get buried in. We're not geared up to do
this. Can't even get them out the door, and I'm being serious. Can't even get them there. Forklift.

OK, I see it as a triangle, OK? This is our landscape of food. I need you to understand it. You've probably
heard all this before. Over the last 30 years, what's happened that's ripped the heart out of this country?
Let's be frank and honest. Well, modern-day life.
Let's start with the Main Street. Fast food has taken over the whole country; we know that. The big brands
are some of the most important powers, powerful powers, in this country.
Supermarkets as well. Big companies. Big companies. Thirty years ago, most of the food was largely local
and largely fresh. Now it's largely processed and full of all sorts of additives, extra ingredients, and you
know the rest of the story. Portion size is obviously a massive, massive problem. Labeling is a massive
problem. The labeling in this country is a disgrace. The industry wants to self-police themselves. What, in
this kind of climate? They don't deserve it. How can you say something is low-fat when it's full of so much
sugar?
Home. The biggest problem with the home is that used to be the heart of passing on food culture, what
made our society. That is not happening anymore. And you know, as we go to work and as life changes,
and as life always evolves, we kind of have to look at it holistically -- step back for a moment, and readdress the balance. It hasn't happened for 30 years, OK? I want to show you a situation that is very
normal right now; the Edwards family.
(Video) Jamie Oliver: Let's have a talk. This stuff goes through you and your family's body every week. And
I need you to know that this is going to kill your children early. How are you feeling?
Stacy: Just feeling really sad and depressed right now. But, you know, I want my kids to succeed in life and
this isn't going to get them there. But I'm killing them.
JO: Yes you are. You are. But we can stop that. Normal. Let's get on schools, something that I'm fairly much
a specialist in. OK, school. What is school? Who invented it? What's the purpose of school? School was
always invented to arm us with the tools to make us creative, do wonderful things, make us earn a living,
etc., etc. You know, it's been kind of in this sort of tight box for a long, long time, OK? But we haven't really
evolved it to deal with the health catastrophes of America, OK? School food is something that most kids -31 million a day, actually -- have twice a day, more than often, breakfast and lunch, 180 days of the year.
So you could say that school food is quite important, really, judging the circumstances.
Before I crack into my rant, which I'm sure you're waiting for -I need to say one thing, and it's so important in, hopefully, the magic that happens and unfolds in the next
three months. The lunch ladies, the lunch cooks of America -- I offer myself as their ambassador. I'm not
slagging them off. They're doing the best they can do. They're doing their best. But they're doing what
they're told, and what they're being told to do is wrong. The system is highly run by accountants; there's
not enough, or any, food-knowledgeable people in the business. There's a problem: If you're not a food
expert, and you've got tight budgets and it's getting tighter, then you can't be creative, you can't duck and
dive and write different things around things. If you're an accountant, and a box-ticker, the only thing you
can do in these circumstances is buy cheaper shit.
Now, the reality is, the food that your kids get every day is fast food, it's highly processed, there's not
enough fresh food in there at all. You know, the amount of additives, E numbers, ingredients you wouldn't
believe -- there's not enough veggies at all. French fries are considered a vegetable. Pizza for breakfast.
They don't even get crockery. Knives and forks? No, they're too dangerous. They have scissors in the
classroom, but knives and forks? No. And the way I look at it is: If you don't have knives and forks in your
school, you're purely endorsing, from a state level, fast food, because it's handheld. And yes, by the way, it
is fast food: It's sloppy Joes, it's burgers, it's wieners, it's pizzas, it's all of that stuff.
Ten percent of what we spend on health care, as I said earlier, is on obesity, and it's going to double. We're
not teaching our kids. There's no statutory right to teach kids about food, elementary or secondary school,

OK? We don't teach kids about food, right? And this is a little clip from an elementary school, which is very
common in England.

(Video) Who knows what this is?

Child: Potatoes.
Jamie Oliver: Potato? So, you think these are potatoes? Do you know what that is? Do you know what that
is?
Child: Broccoli?
JO: What about this? Our good old friend.
Child: Celery.
JO: No. What do you think this is?
Child: Onion. JO: Onion? No.
JO: Immediately you get a really clear sense of "Do the kids know anything about where food comes from?"
Who knows what that is? Child: Uh, pear?
JO: What do you think this is? Child: I don't know.
JO: If the kids don't know what stuff is, then they will never eat it.
JO: Normal. England and America, England and America. Guess what fixed that. Two one-hour sessions.
We've got to start teaching our kids about food in schools, period.
I want to tell you about something that kind of epitomizes the trouble that we're in, guys, OK? I want to
talk about something so basic as milk. Every kid has the right to milk at school. Your kids will be having
milk at school, breakfast and lunch, right? They'll be having two bottles, OK? And most kids do. But milk
ain't good enough anymore. Don't get me wrong, I support milk -- but someone at the milk board probably
paid a lot of money for some geezer to work out that if you put loads of flavorings, colorings and sugar in
milk, more kids will drink it. Yeah.

Obviously now that's going to catch on the apple board is going to work out that if they make toffee apples
they'll eat more as well. Do you know what I mean? For me, there isn't any need to flavor the milk. Okay?
There's sugar in everything. I know the ins and outs of those ingredients. It's in everything. Even the milk
hasn't escaped the kind of modern-day problems. There's our milk. There's our carton. In that is nearly as
much sugar as one of your favorite cans of fizzy pop, and they are having two a day. So, let me just show
you. We've got one kid, here -- having, you know, eight tablespoons of sugar a day. You know, there's your
week. There's your month. And I've taken the liberty of putting in just the five years of elementary school
sugar, just from milk. Now, I don't know about you guys, but judging the circumstances, right, any judge in
the whole world, would look at the statistics and the evidence, and they would find any government of old
guilty of child abuse. That's my belief.
Now, if I came up here, and I wish I could come up here today and hang a cure for AIDS or cancer, you'd be
fighting and scrambling to get to me. This, all this bad news, is preventable. That's the good news. It's
very, very preventable. So, let's just think about, we got a problem here, we need to reboot. Okay so, in my
world, what do we need to do? Here is the thing, right, it cannot just come from one source. To reboot and
make real tangible change, real change, so that I could look you in the white of the eyes and say, "In 10

years' time, the history of your children's lives, happiness -- and let's not forget, you're clever if you eat
well, you know you're going to live longer -- all of that stuff, it will look different. OK?"
So, supermarkets. Where else do you shop so religiously? Week in, week out. How much money do you
spend, in your life, in a supermarket? Love them. They just sell us what we want. All right. They owe us to
put a food ambassador in every major supermarket. They need to help us shop. They need to show us how
to cook quick, tasty, seasonal meals for people that are busy. This is not expensive. It is done in some, and
it needs to be done across the board in America soon, and quick. The big brands, you know, the food
brands, need to put food education at the heart of their businesses. I know, easier said than done. It's the
future. It's the only way.
Fast food. With the fast-food industry you know, it's very competitive. I've had loads of secret papers and
dealings with fast food restaurants. I know how they do it. I mean, basically they've weaned us on to these
hits of sugar, salt and fat, and x, y, and z, and everyone loves them, right? So, these guys are going to be
part of the solution. But we need to get the government to work with all of the fast food purveyors and the
restaurant industry, and over a five, six, seven year period wean of us off the extreme amounts of fat,
sugar and all the other non-food ingredients.
Now, also, back to the sort of big brands: labeling, I said earlier, is an absolute farce and has got to be
sorted. OK, school. Obviously, in schools, we owe it to them to make sure those 180 days of the year, from
that little precious age of four, until 18, 20, 24, whatever, they need to be cooked proper, fresh food from
local growers on site, OK? There needs to be a new standard of fresh, proper food for your children, yeah?
Under the circumstances, it's profoundly important that every single American child leaves school knowing
how to cook 10 recipes that will save their life. Life skills.
That means that they can be students, young parents, and be able to sort of duck and dive around the
basics of cooking, no matter what recession hits them next time. If you can cook, recession money doesn't
matter. If you can cook, time doesn't matter. The workplace, we haven't really talked about it. You know,
it's now time for corporate responsibility to really look at what they feed or make available to their staff.
The staff are the moms and dads of America's children. Marissa, her father died in her hand, I think she'd
be quite happy if corporate America could start feeding their staff properly. Definitely they shouldn't be left
out. Let's go back to the home.
Now, look, if we do all this stuff, and we can, it's so achievable. You can care and be commercial.
Absolutely. But the home needs to start passing on cooking again, for sure. For sure, pass it on as a
philosophy. And for me, it's quite romantic, but it's about if one person teaches three people how to cook
something, and they teach three of their mates, that only has to repeat itself 25 times, and that's the
whole population of America. Romantic, yes, but most importantly, it's about trying to get people to realize
that every one of your individual efforts makes a difference. We've got to put back what's been lost.
Huntington's Kitchen. Huntington, where I made this program, we've got this prime-time program that
hopefully will inspire people to really get on this change. I truly believe that change will happen.
Huntington's Kitchen. I work with a community. I worked in the schools. I found local sustainable funding to
get every single school in the area from the junk, onto the fresh food: six-and-a-half grand per school.
That's all it takes, six-and-a-half grand per school. The Kitchen is 25 grand a month. Okay? This can do
5,000 people a year, which is 10 percent of their population, and it's people on people. You know, it's local
cooks teaching local people. It's free cooking lessons, guys, in the Main Street. This is real, tangible
change, real, tangible change. Around America, if we just look back now, there is plenty of wonderful
things going on. There is plenty of beautiful things going on. There are angels around America doing great
things in schools -- farm-to-school set-ups, garden set-ups, education -- there are amazing people doing
this already. The problem is they all want to roll out what they're doing to the next school, but there's no
cash. We need to recognize the experts and the angels quickly, identify them, and allow them to easily find
the resource to keep rolling out what they're already doing, and doing well. Businesses of America need to
support Mrs. Obama to do the things that she wants to do.

And look, I know it's weird having an English person standing here before you talking about all this. All I
can say is: I care. I'm a father, and I love this country. And I believe truly, actually, that if change can be
made in this country, beautiful things will happen around the world. If America does it, other people will
follow. It's incredibly important.
When I was in Huntington, trying to get a few things to work when they weren't, I thought "If I had a magic
wand, what would I do?" And I thought, "You know what? I'd just love to be put in front of some of the most
amazing movers and shakers in America." And a month later, TED phoned me up and gave me this award.
I'm here. So, my wish. Dyslexic, so I'm a bit slow. My wish is for you to help a strong, sustainable
movement to educate every child about food, to inspire families to cook again, and to empower people
everywhere to fight obesity.

May El-Khalil: Making peace is a marathon

I come from Lebanon, and I believe that running can change the world. I know what I have just said is
simply not obvious.
You know, Lebanon as a country has been once destroyed by a long and bloody civil war. Honestly, I don't
know why they call it civil war when there is nothing civil about it. With Syria to the north, Israel and
Palestine to the south, and our government even up till this moment is still fragmented and unstable. For
years, the country has been divided between politics and religion. However, for one day a year, we truly
stand united, and that's when the marathon takes place.
I used to be a marathon runner. Long distance running was not only good for my well-being but it helped
me meditate and dream big. So the longer distances I ran, the bigger my dreams became. Until one fateful
morning, and while training, I was hit by a bus. I nearly died, was in a coma, stayed at the hospital for two
years, and underwent 36 surgeries to be able to walk again.
As soon as I came out of my coma, I realized that I was no longer the same runner I used to be, so I
decided, if I couldn't run myself, I wanted to make sure that others could. So out of my hospital bed, I
asked my husband to start taking notes, and a few months later, the marathon was born.
Organizing a marathon as a reaction to an accident may sound strange, but at that time, even during my
most vulnerable condition, I needed to dream big. I needed something to take me out of my pain, an
objective to look forward to. I didn't want to pity myself, nor to be pitied, and I thought by organizing such
a marathon, I'll be able to pay back to my community, build bridges with the outside world, and invite
runners to come to Lebanon and run under the umbrella of peace.
Organizing a marathon in Lebanon is definitely not like organizing one in New York. How do you introduce
the concept of running to a nation that is constantly at the brink of war? How do you ask those who were
once fighting and killing each other to come together and run next to each other? More than that, how do
you convince people to run a distance of 26.2 miles at a time they were not even familiar with the word
"marathon"? So we had to start from scratch.
For almost two years, we went all over the country and even visited remote villages. I personally met with
people from all walks of life -- mayors, NGOs, schoolchildren, politicians, militiamen, people from mosques,
churches, the president of the country, even housewives. I learned one thing: When you walk the talk,
people believe you. Many were touched by my personal story, and they shared their stories in return. It
was honesty and transparency that brought us together. We spoke one common language to each other,
and that was from one human to another. Once that trust was built, everybody wanted to be part of the
marathon to show the world the true colors of Lebanon and the Lebanese and their desire to live in peace
and harmony.
In October 2003, over 6,000 runners from 49 different nationalities came to the start line, all determined,
and when the gunfire went off, this time it was a signal to run in harmony, for a change.

The marathon grew. So did our political problems. But for every disaster we had, the marathon found ways
to bring people together. In 2005, our prime minister was assassinated, and the country came to a
complete standstill, so we organized a five-kilometer United We Run campaign. Over 60,000 people came
to the start line, all wearing white T-shirts with no political slogans. That was a turning point for the
marathon, where people started looking at it as a platform for peace and unity.
Between 2006 up to 2009, our country, Lebanon, went through unstable years, invasions, and more
assassinations that brought us close to a civil war. The country was divided again, so much that our
parliament resigned, we had no president for a year, and no prime minister. But we did have a marathon.
So through the marathon, we learned that political problems can be overcome. When the opposition party
decided to shut down part of the city center, we negotiated alternative routes. Government protesters
became sideline cheerleaders. They even hosted juice stations.
You know, the marathon has really become one of its kind. It gained credibility from both the Lebanese and
the international community. Last November 2012, over 33,000 runners from 85 different nationalities
came to the start line, but this time, they challenged a very stormy and rainy weather. The streets were
flooded, but people didn't want to miss out on the opportunity of being part of such a national day.
BMA has expanded. We include everyone: the young, the elderly, the disabled, the mentally challenged,
the blind, the elite, the amateur runners, even moms with their babies. Themes have included runs for the
environment, breast cancer, for the love of Lebanon, for peace, or just simply to run.
The first annual all-women-and-girls race for empowerment, which is one of its kind in the region, has just
taken place only a few weeks ago, with 4,512 women, including the first lady, and this is only the
beginning.
BMA has supported charities and volunteers who have helped reshape Lebanon, raising funds for their
causes and encouraging others to give. The culture of giving and doing good has become contagious.
Stereotypes have been broken. Change-makers and future leaders have been created. I believe these are
the building blocks for future peace.
BMA has become such a respected event in the region that government officials in the region, like Iraq,
Egypt and Syria, have asked the organization to help them structure a similar sporting event. We are now
one of the largest running events in the Middle East, but most importantly, it is a platform for hope and
cooperation in an ever-fragile and unstable part of the world. From Boston to Beirut, we stand as one.
After 10 years in Lebanon, from national marathons or from national events to smaller regional races,
we've seen that people want to run for a better future. After all, peacemaking is not a sprint. It is more of a
marathon.

BJ Miller: What really matters at the end of life

Well, we all need a reason to wake up. For me, it just took 11,000 volts.
I know you're too polite to ask, so I will tell you.
One night, sophomore year of college, just back from Thanksgiving holiday, a few of my friends and I were
horsing around, and we decided to climb atop a parked commuter train. It was just sitting there, with the
wires that run overhead. Somehow, that seemed like a great idea at the time. We'd certainly done stupider
things. I scurried up the ladder on the back, and when I stood up, the electrical current entered my arm,
blew down and out my feet, and that was that. Would you believe that watch still works? Takes a licking!
My father wears it now in solidarity.

That night began my formal relationship with death -- my death -- and it also began my long run as a
patient. It's a good word. It means one who suffers. So I guess we're all patients.
Now, the American health care system has more than its fair share of dysfunction -- to match its brilliance,
to be sure. I'm a physician now, a hospice and palliative medicine doc, so I've seen care from both sides.
And believe me: almost everyone who goes into healthcare really means well -- I mean, truly. But we who
work in it are also unwitting agents for a system that too often does not serve.
Why? Well, there's actually a pretty easy answer to that question, and it explains a lot: because healthcare
was designed with diseases, not people, at its center. Which is to say, of course, it was badly designed.
And nowhere are the effects of bad design more heartbreaking or the opportunity for good design more
compelling than at the end of life, where things are so distilled and concentrated. There are no do-overs.
My purpose today is to reach out across disciplines and invite design thinking into this big conversation.
That is, to bring intention and creativity to the experience of dying. We have a monumental opportunity in
front of us, before one of the few universal issues as individuals as well as a civil society: to rethink and
redesign how it is we die.
So let's begin at the end. For most people, the scariest thing about death isn't being dead, it's dying,
suffering. It's a key distinction. To get underneath this, it can be very helpful to tease out suffering which is
necessary as it is, from suffering we can change. The former is a natural, essential part of life, part of the
deal, and to this we are called to make space, adjust, grow. It can be really good to realize forces larger
than ourselves. They bring proportionality, like a cosmic right-sizing. After my limbs were gone, that loss,
for example, became fact, fixed -- necessarily part of my life, and I learned that I could no more reject this
fact than reject myself. It took me a while, but I learned it eventually. Now, another great thing about
necessary suffering is that it is the very thing that unites caregiver and care receiver -- human beings.
This, we are finally realizing, is where healing happens. Yes, compassion -- literally, as we learned
yesterday -- suffering together.
Now, on the systems side, on the other hand, so much of the suffering is unnecessary, invented. It serves
no good purpose. But the good news is, since this brand of suffering is made up, well, we can change it.
How we die is indeed something we can affect. Making the system sensitive to this fundamental distinction
between necessary and unnecessary suffering gives us our first of three design cues for the day. After all,
our role as caregivers, as people who care, is to relieve suffering -- not add to the pile.
True to the tenets of palliative care, I function as something of a reflective advocate, as much as
prescribing physician. Quick aside: palliative care -- a very important field but poorly understood -- while it
includes, it is not limited to end of life care. It is not limited to hospice. It's simply about comfort and living
well at any stage. So please know that you don't have to be dying anytime soon to benefit from palliative
care.
Now, let me introduce you to Frank. Sort of makes this point. I've been seeing Frank now for years. He's
living with advancing prostate cancer on top of long-standing HIV. We work on his bone pain and his
fatigue, but most of the time we spend thinking out loud together about his life -- really, about our lives. In
this way, Frank grieves. In this way, he keeps up with his losses as they roll in, so that he's ready to take in
the next moment. Loss is one thing, but regret, quite another. Frank has always been an adventurer -- he
looks like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting -- and no fan of regret. So it wasn't surprising when
he came into clinic one day, saying he wanted to raft down the Colorado River. Was this a good idea? With
all the risks to his safety and his health, some would say no. Many did, but he went for it, while he still
could. It was a glorious, marvelous trip: freezing water, blistering dry heat, scorpions, snakes, wildlife
howling off the flaming walls of the Grand Canyon -- all the glorious side of the world beyond our control.
Frank's decision, while maybe dramatic, is exactly the kind so many of us would make, if we only had the
support to figure out what is best for ourselves over time.
So much of what we're talking about today is a shift in perspective. After my accident, when I went back to
college, I changed my major to art history. Studying visual art, I figured I'd learn something about how to

see -- a really potent lesson for a kid who couldn't change so much of what he was seeing. Perspective,
that kind of alchemy we humans get to play with, turning anguish into a flower.
Flash forward: now I work at an amazing place in San Francisco called the Zen Hospice Project, where we
have a little ritual that helps with this shift in perspective. When one of our residents dies, the mortuary
men come, and as we're wheeling the body out through the garden, heading for the gate, we pause.
Anyone who wants -- fellow residents, family, nurses, volunteers, the hearse drivers too, now -- shares a
story or a song or silence, as we sprinkle the body with flower petals. It takes a few minutes; it's a sweet,
simple parting image to usher in grief with warmth, rather than repugnance. Contrast that with the typical
experience in the hospital setting, much like this -- floodlit room lined with tubes and beeping machines
and blinking lights that don't stop even when the patient's life has. Cleaning crew swoops in, the body's
whisked away, and it all feels as though that person had never really existed. Well-intended, of course, in
the name of sterility, but hospitals tend to assault our senses, and the most we might hope for within those
walls is numbness -- anesthetic, literally the opposite of aesthetic. I revere hospitals for what they can do; I
am alive because of them. But we ask too much of our hospitals. They are places for acute trauma and
treatable illness. They are no place to live and die; that's not what they were designed for.
Now mind you -- I am not giving up on the notion that our institutions can become more humane. Beauty
can be found anywhere. I spent a few months in a burn unit at St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston, New
Jersey, where I got really great care at every turn, including good palliative care for my pain. And one
night, it began to snow outside. I remember my nurses complaining about driving through it. And there
was no window in my room, but it was great to just imagine it coming down all sticky. Next day, one of my
nurses smuggled in a snowball for me. She brought it in to the unit. I cannot tell you the rapture I felt
holding that in my hand, and the coldness dripping onto my burning skin; the miracle of it all, the
fascination as I watched it melt and turn into water. In that moment, just being any part of this planet in
this universe mattered more to me than whether I lived or died. That little snowball packed all the
inspiration I needed to both try to live and be OK if I did not. In a hospital, that's a stolen moment.
In my work over the years, I've known many people who were ready to go, ready to die. Not because they
had found some final peace or transcendence, but because they were so repulsed by what their lives had
become -- in a word, cut off, or ugly. There are already record numbers of us living with chronic and
terminal illness, and into ever older age. And we are nowhere near ready or prepared for this silver
tsunami. We need an infrastructure dynamic enough to handle these seismic shifts in our population. Now
is the time to create something new, something vital. I know we can because we have to. The alternative is
just unacceptable. And the key ingredients are known: policy, education and training, systems, bricks and
mortar. We have tons of input for designers of all stripes to work with.
We know, for example, from research what's most important to people who are closer to death: comfort;
feeling unburdened and unburdening to those they love; existential peace; and a sense of wonderment
and spirituality.
Over Zen Hospice's nearly 30 years, we've learned much more from our residents in subtle detail. Little
things aren't so little. Take Janette. She finds it harder to breathe one day to the next due to ALS. Well,
guess what? She wants to start smoking again -- and French cigarettes, if you please. Not out of some selfdestructive bent, but to feel her lungs filled while she has them. Priorities change. Or Kate -- she just wants
to know her dog Austin is lying at the foot of her bed, his cold muzzle against her dry skin, instead of more
chemotherapy coursing through her veins -- she's done that. Sensuous, aesthetic gratification, where in a
moment, in an instant, we are rewarded for just being. So much of it comes down to loving our time by
way of the senses, by way of the body -- the very thing doing the living and the dying.
Probably the most poignant room in the Zen Hospice guest house is our kitchen, which is a little strange
when you realize that so many of our residents can eat very little, if anything at all. But we realize we are
providing sustenance on several levels: smell, a symbolic plane. Seriously, with all the heavy-duty stuff
happening under our roof, one of the most tried and true interventions we know of, is to bake cookies. As
long as we have our senses -- even just one -- we have at least the possibility of accessing what makes us

feel human, connected. Imagine the ripples of this notion for the millions of people living and dying with
dementia. Primal sensorial delights that say the things we don't have words for, impulses that make us
stay present -- no need for a past or a future.
So, if teasing unnecessary suffering out of the system was our first design cue, then tending to dignity by
way of the senses, by way of the body -- the aesthetic realm -- is design cue number two. Now this gets us
quickly to the third and final bit for today; namely, we need to lift our sights, to set our sights on wellbeing, so that life and health and healthcare can become about making life more wonderful, rather than
just less horrible. Beneficence.
Here, this gets right at the distinction between a disease-centered and a patient- or human-centered
model of care, and here is where caring becomes a creative, generative, even playful act. "Play" may
sound like a funny word here. But it is also one of our highest forms of adaptation. Consider every major
compulsory effort it takes to be human. The need for food has birthed cuisine. The need for shelter has
given rise to architecture. The need for cover, fashion. And for being subjected to the clock, well, we
invented music. So, since dying is a necessary part of life, what might we create with this fact? By "play" I
am in no way suggesting we take a light approach to dying or that we mandate any particular way of
dying. There are mountains of sorrow that cannot move, and one way or another, we will all kneel there.
Rather, I am asking that we make space -- physical, psychic room, to allow life to play itself all the way out
-- so that rather than just getting out of the way, aging and dying can become a process of crescendo
through to the end. We can't solve for death. I know some of you are working on this.
Meanwhile, we can -We can design towards it. Parts of me died early on, and that's something we can all say one way or
another. I got to redesign my life around this fact, and I tell you it has been a liberation to realize you can
always find a shock of beauty or meaning in what life you have left, like that snowball lasting for a perfect
moment, all the while melting away. If we love such moments ferociously, then maybe we can learn to live
well -- not in spite of death, but because of it. Let death be what takes us, not lack of imagination.

Leslie Morgan Steiner: Why domestic violence victims don't leave

I'm here today to talk about a disturbing question, which has an equally disturbing answer. My topic is the
secrets of domestic violence, and the question I'm going to tackle is the one question everyone always
asks: Why does she stay? Why would anyone stay with a man who beats her? I'm not a psychiatrist, a
social worker or an expert in domestic violence. I'm just one woman with a story to tell.
I was 22. I had just graduated from Harvard College. I had moved to New York City for my first job as a
writer and editor at Seventeen magazine. I had my first apartment, my first little green American Express
card, and I had a very big secret. My secret was that I had this gun loaded with hollow-point bullets pointed
at my head by the man who I thought was my soulmate, many, many times. The man who I loved more
than anybody on Earth held a gun to my head and threatened to kill me more times than I can even
remember. I'm here to tell you the story of crazy love, a psychological trap disguised as love, one that
millions of women and even a few men fall into every year. It may even be your story.
I don't look like a typical domestic violence survivor. I have a B.A. in English from Harvard College, an MBA
in marketing from Wharton Business School. I've spent most of my career working for Fortune 500
companies including Johnson & Johnson, Leo Burnett and The Washington Post. I've been married for
almost 20 years to my second husband and we have three kids together. My dog is a black lab, and I drive
a Honda Odyssey minivan. (Laughter)
So my first message for you is that domestic violence happens to everyone -- all races, all religions, all
income and education levels. It's everywhere. And my second message is that everyone thinks domestic
violence happens to women, that it's a women's issue. Not exactly. Over 85 percent of abusers are men,
and domestic abuse happens only in intimate, interdependent, long-term relationships, in other words, in

families, the last place we would want or expect to find violence, which is one reason domestic abuse is so
confusing.
I would have told you myself that I was the last person on Earth who would stay with a man who beats me,
but in fact I was a very typical victim because of my age. I was 22, and in the United States, women ages
16 to 24 are three times as likely to be domestic violence victims as women of other ages, and over 500
women and girls this age are killed every year by abusive partners, boyfriends, and husbands in the United
States.
I was also a very typical victim because I knew nothing about domestic violence, its warning signs or its
patterns.
I met Conor on a cold, rainy January night. He sat next to me on the New York City subway, and he started
chatting me up. He told me two things. One was that he, too, had just graduated from an Ivy League
school, and that he worked at a very impressive Wall Street bank. But what made the biggest impression
on me that first meeting was that he was smart and funny and he looked like a farm boy. He had these big
cheeks, these big apple cheeks and this wheat-blond hair, and he seemed so sweet.
One of the smartest things Conor did, from the very beginning, was to create the illusion that I was the
dominant partner in the relationship. He did this especially at the beginning by idolizing me. We started
dating, and he loved everything about me, that I was smart, that I'd gone to Harvard, that I was passionate
about helping teenage girls, and my job. He wanted to know everything about my family and my childhood
and my hopes and dreams. Conor believed in me, as a writer and a woman, in a way that no one else ever
had. And he also created a magical atmosphere of trust between us by confessing his secret, which was
that, as a very young boy starting at age four, he had been savagely and repeatedly physically abused by
his stepfather, and the abuse had gotten so bad that he had had to drop out of school in eighth grade,
even though he was very smart, and he'd spent almost 20 years rebuilding his life. Which is why that Ivy
League degree and the Wall Street job and his bright shiny future meant so much to him. If you had told
me that this smart, funny, sensitive man who adored me would one day dictate whether or not I wore
makeup, how short my skirts were, where I lived, what jobs I took, who my friends were and where I spent
Christmas, I would have laughed at you, because there was not a hint of violence or control or anger in
Conor at the beginning. I didn't know that the first stage in any domestic violence relationship is to seduce
and charm the victim.
I also didn't know that the second step is to isolate the victim. Now, Conor did not come home one day and
announce, "You know, hey, all this Romeo and Juliet stuff has been great, but I need to move into the next
phase where I isolate you and I abuse you" (Laughter) "so I need to get you out of this apartment
where the neighbors can hear you scream and out of this city where you have friends and family and
coworkers who can see the bruises." Instead, Conor came home one Friday evening and he told me that he
had quit his job that day, his dream job, and he said that he had quit his job because of me, because I had
made him feel so safe and loved that he didn't need to prove himself on Wall Street anymore, and he just
wanted to get out of the city and away from his abusive, dysfunctional family, and move to a tiny town in
New England where he could start his life over with me by his side. Now, the last thing I wanted to do was
leave New York, and my dream job, but I thought you made sacrifices for your soulmate, so I agreed, and I
quit my job, and Conor and I left Manhattan together. I had no idea I was falling into crazy love, that I was
walking headfirst into a carefully laid physical, financial and psychological trap.
The next step in the domestic violence pattern is to introduce the threat of violence and see how she
reacts. And here's where those guns come in. As soon as we moved to New England -- you know, that
place where Connor was supposed to feel so safe -- he bought three guns. He kept one in the glove
compartment of our car. He kept one under the pillows on our bed, and the third one he kept in his pocket
at all times. And he said that he needed those guns because of the trauma he'd experienced as a young
boy. He needed them to feel protected. But those guns were really a message for me, and even though he
hadn't raised a hand to me, my life was already in grave danger every minute of every day.

Conor first physically attacked me five days before our wedding. It was 7 a.m. I still had on my nightgown. I
was working on my computer trying to finish a freelance writing assignment, and I got frustrated, and
Conor used my anger as an excuse to put both of his hands around my neck and to squeeze so tightly that
I could not breathe or scream, and he used the chokehold to hit my head repeatedly against the wall. Five
days later, the ten bruises on my neck had just faded, and I put on my mother's wedding dress, and I
married him.
Despite what had happened, I was sure we were going to live happily ever after, because I loved him, and
he loved me so much. And he was very, very sorry. He had just been really stressed out by the wedding
and by becoming a family with me. It was an isolated incident, and he was never going to hurt me again.
It happened twice more on the honeymoon. The first time, I was driving to find a secret beach and I got
lost, and he punched me in the side of my head so hard that the other side of my head repeatedly hit the
driver's side window. And then a few days later, driving home from our honeymoon, he got frustrated by
traffic, and he threw a cold Big Mac in my face. Conor proceeded to beat me once or twice a week for the
next two and a half years of our marriage.
I was mistaken in thinking that I was unique and alone in this situation. One in three American women
experiences domestic violence or stalking at some point in her life, and the CDC reports that 15 million
children are abused every year, 15 million. So actually, I was in very good company.
Back to my question: Why did I stay? The answer is easy. I didn't know he was abusing me. Even though he
held those loaded guns to my head, pushed me down stairs, threatened to kill our dog, pulled the key out
of the car ignition as I drove down the highway, poured coffee grinds on my head as I dressed for a job
interview, I never once thought of myself as a battered wife. Instead, I was a very strong woman in love
with a deeply troubled man, and I was the only person on Earth who could help Conor face his demons.
The other question everybody asks is, why doesn't she just leave? Why didn't I walk out? I could have left
any time. To me, this is the saddest and most painful question that people ask, because we victims know
something you usually don't: It's incredibly dangerous to leave an abuser. Because the final step in the
domestic violence pattern is kill her. Over 70 percent of domestic violence murders happen after the victim
has ended the relationship, after she's gotten out, because then the abuser has nothing left to lose. Other
outcomes include long-term stalking, even after the abuser remarries; denial of financial resources; and
manipulation of the family court system to terrify the victim and her children, who are regularly forced by
family court judges to spend unsupervised time with the man who beat their mother. And still we ask, why
doesn't she just leave?
I was able to leave, because of one final, sadistic beating that broke through my denial. I realized that the
man who I loved so much was going to kill me if I let him. So I broke the silence. I told everyone: the police,
my neighbors, my friends and family, total strangers, and I'm here today because you all helped me.
We tend to stereotype victims as grisly headlines, self-destructive women, damaged goods. The question,
"Why does she stay?" is code for some people for, "It's her fault for staying," as if victims intentionally
choose to fall in love with men intent upon destroying us.
But since publishing "Crazy Love," I have heard hundreds of stories from men and women who also got
out, who learned an invaluable life lesson from what happened, and who rebuilt lives -- joyous, happy lives
-- as employees, wives and mothers, lives completely free of violence, like me. Because it turns out that
I'm actually a very typical domestic violence victim and a typical domestic violence survivor. I remarried a
kind and gentle man, and we have those three kids. I have that black lab, and I have that minivan. What I
will never have again, ever, is a loaded gun held to my head by someone who says that he loves me.
Right now, maybe you're thinking, "Wow, this is fascinating," or, "Wow, how stupid was she," but this whole
time, I've actually been talking about you. I promise you there are several people listening to me right now
who are currently being abused or who were abused as children or who are abusers themselves. Abuse
could be affecting your daughter, your sister, your best friend right now.

I was able to end my own crazy love story by breaking the silence. I'm still breaking the silence today. It's
my way of helping other victims, and it's my final request of you. Talk about what you heard here. Abuse
thrives only in silence. You have the power to end domestic violence simply by shining a spotlight on it. We
victims need everyone. We need every one of you to understand the secrets of domestic violence. Show
abuse the light of day by talking about it with your children, your coworkers, your friends and family.
Recast survivors as wonderful, lovable people with full futures. Recognize the early signs of violence and
conscientiously intervene, deescalate it, show victims a safe way out. Together we can make our beds, our
dinner tables and our families the safe and peaceful oases they should be.

Bryan Stevenson: We need to talk about an injustice

Well this is a really extraordinary honor for me. I spend most of my time in jails, in prisons, on death row. I
spend most of my time in very low-income communities in the projects and places where there's a great
deal of hopelessness. And being here at TED and seeing the stimulation, hearing it, has been very, very
energizing to me. And one of the things that's emerged in my short time here is that TED has an identity.
And you can actually say things here that have impacts around the world. And sometimes when it comes
through TED, it has meaning and power that it doesn't have when it doesn't.
And I mention that because I think identity is really important. And we've had some fantastic
presentations. And I think what we've learned is that, if you're a teacher your words can be meaningful,
but if you're a compassionate teacher, they can be especially meaningful. If you're a doctor you can do
some good things, but if you're a caring doctor you can do some other things. And so I want to talk about
the power of identity. And I didn't learn about this actually practicing law and doing the work that I do. I
actually learned about this from my grandmother.
I grew up in a house that was the traditional African-American home that was dominated by a matriarch,
and that matriarch was my grandmother. She was tough, she was strong, she was powerful. She was the
end of every argument in our family. She was the beginning of a lot of arguments in our family. She was
the daughter of people who were actually enslaved. Her parents were born in slavery in Virginia in the
1840's. She was born in the 1880's and the experience of slavery very much shaped the way she saw the
world.
And my grandmother was tough, but she was also loving. When I would see her as a little boy, she'd come
up to me and she'd give me these hugs. And she'd squeeze me so tight I could barely breathe and then
she'd let me go. And an hour or two later, if I saw her, she'd come over to me and she'd say, "Bryan, do
you still feel me hugging you?" And if I said, "No," she'd assault me again, and if I said, "Yes," she'd leave
me alone. And she just had this quality that you always wanted to be near her. And the only challenge was
that she had 10 children. My mom was the youngest of her 10 kids. And sometimes when I would go and
spend time with her, it would be difficult to get her time and attention. My cousins would be running
around everywhere.
And I remember, when I was about eight or nine years old, waking up one morning, going into the living
room, and all of my cousins were running around. And my grandmother was sitting across the room staring
at me. And at first I thought we were playing a game. And I would look at her and I'd smile, but she was
very serious. And after about 15 or 20 minutes of this, she got up and she came across the room and she
took me by the hand and she said, "Come on, Bryan. You and I are going to have a talk." And I remember
this just like it happened yesterday. I never will forget it.
She took me out back and she said, "Bryan, I'm going to tell you something, but you don't tell anybody
what I tell you." I said, "Okay, Mama." She said, "Now you make sure you don't do that." I said, "Sure."
Then she sat me down and she looked at me and she said, "I want you to know I've been watching you."
And she said, "I think you're special." She said, "I think you can do anything you want to do." I will never
forget it.

And then she said, "I just need you to promise me three things, Bryan." I said, "Okay, Mama." She said,
"The first thing I want you to promise me is that you'll always love your mom." She said, "That's my baby
girl, and you have to promise me now you'll always take care of her." Well I adored my mom, so I said,
"Yes, Mama. I'll do that." Then she said, "The second thing I want you to promise me is that you'll always
do the right thing even when the right thing is the hard thing." And I thought about it and I said, "Yes,
Mama. I'll do that." Then finally she said, "The third thing I want you to promise me is that you'll never
drink alcohol." (Laughter) Well I was nine years old, so I said, "Yes, Mama. I'll do that."
I grew up in the country in the rural South, and I have a brother a year older than me and a sister a year
younger. When I was about 14 or 15, one day my brother came home and he had this six-pack of beer -- I
don't know where he got it -- and he grabbed me and my sister and we went out in the woods. And we
were kind of just out there doing the stuff we crazily did. And he had a sip of this beer and he gave some to
my sister and she had some, and they offered it to me. I said, "No, no, no. That's okay. You all go ahead.
I'm not going to have any beer." My brother said, "Come on. We're doing this today; you always do what
we do. I had some, your sister had some. Have some beer." I said, "No, I don't feel right about that. Y'all go
ahead. Y'all go ahead." And then my brother started staring at me. He said, "What's wrong with you? Have
some beer." Then he looked at me real hard and he said, "Oh, I hope you're not still hung up on that
conversation Mama had with you." (Laughter) I said, "Well, what are you talking about?" He said, "Oh,
Mama tells all the grandkids that they're special." (Laughter) I was devastated.
And I'm going to admit something to you. I'm going to tell you something I probably shouldn't. I know this
might be broadcast broadly. But I'm 52 years old, and I'm going to admit to you that I've never had a drop
of alcohol. (Applause) I don't say that because I think that's virtuous; I say that because there is power in
identity. When we create the right kind of identity, we can say things to the world around us that they don't
actually believe makes sense. We can get them to do things that they don't think they can do. When I
thought about my grandmother, of course she would think all her grandkids were special. My grandfather
was in prison during prohibition. My male uncles died of alcohol-related diseases. And these were the
things she thought we needed to commit to.
Well I've been trying to say something about our criminal justice system. This country is very different
today than it was 40 years ago. In 1972, there were 300,000 people in jails and prisons. Today, there are
2.3 million. The United States now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. We have seven million
people on probation and parole. And mass incarceration, in my judgment, has fundamentally changed our
world. In poor communities, in communities of color there is this despair, there is this hopelessness, that is
being shaped by these outcomes. One out of three black men between the ages of 18 and 30 is in jail, in
prison, on probation or parole. In urban communities across this country -- Los Angeles, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, Washington -- 50 to 60 percent of all young men of color are in jail or prison or on probation or
parole.
Our system isn't just being shaped in these ways that seem to be distorting around race, they're also
distorted by poverty. We have a system of justice in this country that treats you much better if you're rich
and guilty than if you're poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes. And yet, we seem to
be very comfortable. The politics of fear and anger have made us believe that these are problems that are
not our problems. We've been disconnected.
It's interesting to me. We're looking at some very interesting developments in our work. My state of
Alabama, like a number of states, actually permanently disenfranchises you if you have a criminal
conviction. Right now in Alabama 34 percent of the black male population has permanently lost the right to
vote. We're actually projecting in another 10 years the level of disenfranchisement will be as high as it's
been since prior to the passage of the Voting Rights Act. And there is this stunning silence.
I represent children. A lot of my clients are very young. The United States is the only country in the world
where we sentence 13-year-old children to die in prison. We have life imprisonment without parole for kids
in this country. And we're actually doing some litigation. The only country in the world.

I represent people on death row. It's interesting, this question of the death penalty. In many ways, we've
been taught to think that the real question is, do people deserve to die for the crimes they've committed?
And that's a very sensible question. But there's another way of thinking about where we are in our identity.
The other way of thinking about it is not, do people deserve to die for the crimes they commit, but do we
deserve to kill? I mean, it's fascinating.
Death penalty in America is defined by error. For every nine people who have been executed, we've
actually identified one innocent person who's been exonerated and released from death row. A kind of
astonishing error rate -- one out of nine people innocent. I mean, it's fascinating. In aviation, we would
never let people fly on airplanes if for every nine planes that took off one would crash. But somehow we
can insulate ourselves from this problem. It's not our problem. It's not our burden. It's not our struggle.
I talk a lot about these issues. I talk about race and this question of whether we deserve to kill. And it's
interesting, when I teach my students about African-American history, I tell them about slavery. I tell them
about terrorism, the era that began at the end of reconstruction that went on to World War II. We don't
really know very much about it. But for African-Americans in this country, that was an era defined by terror.
In many communities, people had to worry about being lynched. They had to worry about being bombed. It
was the threat of terror that shaped their lives. And these older people come up to me now and they say,
"Mr. Stevenson, you give talks, you make speeches, you tell people to stop saying we're dealing with
terrorism for the first time in our nation's history after 9/11." They tell me to say, "No, tell them that we
grew up with that." And that era of terrorism, of course, was followed by segregation and decades of racial
subordination and apartheid.
And yet, we have in this country this dynamic where we really don't like to talk about our problems. We
don't like to talk about our history. And because of that, we really haven't understood what it's meant to do
the things we've done historically. We're constantly running into each other. We're constantly creating
tensions and conflicts. We have a hard time talking about race, and I believe it's because we are unwilling
to commit ourselves to a process of truth and reconciliation. In South Africa, people understood that we
couldn't overcome apartheid without a commitment to truth and reconciliation. In Rwanda, even after the
genocide, there was this commitment, but in this country we haven't done that.
I was giving some lectures in Germany about the death penalty. It was fascinating because one of the
scholars stood up after the presentation and said, "Well you know it's deeply troubling to hear what you're
talking about." He said, "We don't have the death penalty in Germany. And of course, we can never have
the death penalty in Germany." And the room got very quiet, and this woman said, "There's no way, with
our history, we could ever engage in the systematic killing of human beings. It would be unconscionable
for us to, in an intentional and deliberate way, set about executing people." And I thought about that. What
would it feel like to be living in a world where the nation state of Germany was executing people, especially
if they were disproportionately Jewish? I couldn't bear it. It would be unconscionable.
And yet, in this country, in the states of the Old South, we execute people -- where you're 11 times more
likely to get the death penalty if the victim is white than if the victim is black, 22 times more likely to get it
if the defendant is black and the victim is white -- in the very states where there are buried in the ground
the bodies of people who were lynched. And yet, there is this disconnect.
Well I believe that our identity is at risk. That when we actually don't care about these difficult things, the
positive and wonderful things are nonetheless implicated. We love innovation. We love technology. We love
creativity. We love entertainment. But ultimately, those realities are shadowed by suffering, abuse,
degradation, marginalization. And for me, it becomes necessary to integrate the two. Because ultimately
we are talking about a need to be more hopeful, more committed, more dedicated to the basic challenges
of living in a complex world. And for me that means spending time thinking and talking about the poor, the
disadvantaged, those who will never get to TED. But thinking about them in a way that is integrated in our
own lives.

You know ultimately, we all have to believe things we haven't seen. We do. As rational as we are, as
committed to intellect as we are. Innovation, creativity, development comes not from the ideas in our mind
alone. They come from the ideas in our mind that are also fueled by some conviction in our heart. And it's
that mind-heart connection that I believe compels us to not just be attentive to all the bright and dazzly
things, but also the dark and difficult things. Vaclav Havel, the great Czech leader, talked about this. He
said, "When we were in Eastern Europe and dealing with oppression, we wanted all kinds of things, but
mostly what we needed was hope, an orientation of the spirit, a willingness to sometimes be in hopeless
places and be a witness."
Well that orientation of the spirit is very much at the core of what I believe even TED communities have to
be engaged in. There is no disconnect around technology and design that will allow us to be fully human
until we pay attention to suffering, to poverty, to exclusion, to unfairness, to injustice. Now I will warn you
that this kind of identity is a much more challenging identity than ones that don't pay attention to this. It
will get to you.
I had the great privilege, when I was a young lawyer, of meeting Rosa Parks. And Ms. Parks used to come
back to Montgomery every now and then, and she would get together with two of her dearest friends,
these older women, Johnnie Carr who was the organizer of the Montgomery bus boycott -- amazing AfricanAmerican woman -- and Virginia Durr, a white woman, whose husband, Clifford Durr, represented Dr. King.
And these women would get together and just talk.
And every now and then Ms. Carr would call me, and she'd say, "Bryan, Ms. Parks is coming to town. We're
going to get together and talk. Do you want to come over and listen?" And I'd say, "Yes, Ma'am, I do." And
she'd say, "Well what are you going to do when you get here?" I said, "I'm going to listen." And I'd go over
there and I would, I would just listen. It would be so energizing and so empowering.
And one time I was over there listening to these women talk, and after a couple of hours Ms. Parks turned
to me and she said, "Now Bryan, tell me what the Equal Justice Initiative is. Tell me what you're trying to
do." And I began giving her my rap. I said, "Well we're trying to challenge injustice. We're trying to help
people who have been wrongly convicted. We're trying to confront bias and discrimination in the
administration of criminal justice. We're trying to end life without parole sentences for children. We're
trying to do something about the death penalty. We're trying to reduce the prison population. We're trying
to end mass incarceration."
I gave her my whole rap, and when I finished she looked at me and she said, "Mmm mmm mmm." She
said, "That's going to make you tired, tired, tired." (Laughter) And that's when Ms. Carr leaned forward, she
put her finger in my face, she said, "That's why you've got to be brave, brave, brave."
And I actually believe that the TED community needs to be more courageous. We need to find ways to
embrace these challenges, these problems, the suffering. Because ultimately, our humanity depends on
everyone's humanity. I've learned very simple things doing the work that I do. It's just taught me very
simple things. I've come to understand and to believe that each of us is more than the worst thing we've
ever done. I believe that for every person on the planet. I think if somebody tells a lie, they're not just a
liar. I think if somebody takes something that doesn't belong to them, they're not just a thief. I think even if
you kill someone, you're not just a killer. And because of that there's this basic human dignity that must be
respected by law. I also believe that in many parts of this country, and certainly in many parts of this
globe, that the opposite of poverty is not wealth. I don't believe that. I actually think, in too many places,
the opposite of poverty is justice.
And finally, I believe that, despite the fact that it is so dramatic and so beautiful and so inspiring and so
stimulating, we will ultimately not be judged by our technology, we won't be judged by our design, we
won't be judged by our intellect and reason. Ultimately, you judge the character of a society, not by how
they treat their rich and the powerful and the privileged, but by how they treat the poor, the condemned,
the incarcerated. Because it's in that nexus that we actually begin to understand truly profound things
about who we are.

I sometimes get out of balance. I'll end with this story. I sometimes push too hard. I do get tired, as we all
do. Sometimes those ideas get ahead of our thinking in ways that are important. And I've been
representing these kids who have been sentenced to do these very harsh sentences. And I go to the jail
and I see my client who's 13 and 14, and he's been certified to stand trial as an adult. I start thinking, well,
how did that happen? How can a judge turn you into something that you're not? And the judge has
certified him as an adult, but I see this kid.
And I was up too late one night and I starting thinking, well gosh, if the judge can turn you into something
that you're not, the judge must have magic power. Yeah, Bryan, the judge has some magic power. You
should ask for some of that. And because I was up too late, wasn't thinking real straight, I started working
on a motion. And I had a client who was 14 years old, a young, poor black kid. And I started working on this
motion, and the head of the motion was: "Motion to try my poor, 14-year-old black male client like a
privileged, white 75-year-old corporate executive."
And I put in my motion that there was prosecutorial misconduct and police misconduct and judicial
misconduct. There was a crazy line in there about how there's no conduct in this county, it's all
misconduct. And the next morning, I woke up and I thought, now did I dream that crazy motion, or did I
actually write it? And to my horror, not only had I written it, but I had sent it to court.
A couple months went by, and I had just forgotten all about it. And I finally decided, oh gosh, I've got to go
to the court and do this crazy case. And I got into my car and I was feeling really overwhelmed -overwhelmed. And I got in my car and I went to this courthouse. And I was thinking, this is going to be so
difficult, so painful. And I finally got out of the car and I started walking up to the courthouse.
And as I was walking up the steps of this courthouse, there was an older black man who was the janitor in
this courthouse. When this man saw me, he came over to me and he said, "Who are you?" I said, "I'm a
lawyer." He said, "You're a lawyer?" I said, "Yes, sir." And this man came over to me and he hugged me.
And he whispered in my ear. He said, "I'm so proud of you." And I have to tell you, it was energizing. It
connected deeply with something in me about identity, about the capacity of every person to contribute to
a community, to a perspective that is hopeful.
Well I went into the courtroom. And as soon as I walked inside, the judge saw me coming in. He said, "Mr.
Stevenson, did you write this crazy motion?" I said, "Yes, sir. I did." And we started arguing. And people
started coming in because they were just outraged. I had written these crazy things. And police officers
were coming in and assistant prosecutors and clerk workers. And before I knew it, the courtroom was filled
with people angry that we were talking about race, that we were talking about poverty, that we were
talking about inequality.
And out of the corner of my eye, I could see this janitor pacing back and forth. And he kept looking through
the window, and he could hear all of this holler. He kept pacing back and forth. And finally, this older black
man with this very worried look on his face came into the courtroom and sat down behind me, almost at
counsel table. About 10 minutes later the judge said we would take a break. And during the break there
was a deputy sheriff who was offended that the janitor had come into court. And this deputy jumped up
and he ran over to this older black man. He said, "Jimmy, what are you doing in this courtroom?" And this
older black man stood up and he looked at that deputy and he looked at me and he said, "I came into this
courtroom to tell this young man, keep your eyes on the prize, hold on."
I've come to TED because I believe that many of you understand that the moral arc of the universe is long,
but it bends toward justice. That we cannot be full evolved human beings until we care about human rights
and basic dignity. That all of our survival is tied to the survival of everyone. That our visions of technology
and design and entertainment and creativity have to be married with visions of humanity, compassion and
justice. And more than anything, for those of you who share that, I've simply come to tell you to keep your
eyes on the prize, hold on.
Chris Anderson: So you heard and saw an obvious desire by this audience, this community, to help you on
your way and to do something on this issue. Other than writing a check, what could we do?

BS: Well there are opportunities all around us. If you live in the state of California, for example, there's a
referendum coming up this spring where actually there's going to be an effort to redirect some of the
money we spend on the politics of punishment. For example, here in California we're going to spend one
billion dollars on the death penalty in the next five years -- one billion dollars. And yet, 46 percent of all
homicide cases don't result in arrest. 56 percent of all rape cases don't result. So there's an opportunity to
change that. And this referendum would propose having those dollars go to law enforcement and safety.
And I think that opportunity exists all around us.
CA: There's been this huge decline in crime in America over the last three decades. And part of the
narrative of that is sometimes that it's about increased incarceration rates. What would you say to
someone who believed that?
BS: Well actually the violent crime rate has remained relatively stable. The great increase in mass
incarceration in this country wasn't really in violent crime categories. It was this misguided war on drugs.
That's where the dramatic increases have come in our prison population. And we got carried away with the
rhetoric of punishment. And so we have three strikes laws that put people in prison forever for stealing a
bicycle, for low-level property crimes, rather than making them give those resources back to the people
who they victimized. I believe we need to do more to help people who are victimized by crime, not do less.
And I think our current punishment philosophy does nothing for no one. And I think that's the orientation
that we have to change.

Al Gore: Averting the climate crisis

Thank you so much, Chris. And it's truly a great honor to have the opportunity to come to this stage twice;
I'm extremely grateful. I have been blown away by this conference, and I want to thank all of you for the
many nice comments about what I had to say the other night. And I say that sincerely, partly because
(Mock sob) I need that.
Put yourselves in my position.
I flew on Air Force Two for eight years.
Now I have to take off my shoes or boots to get on an airplane!
I'll tell you one quick story to illustrate what that's been like for me.
It's a true story -- every bit of this is true.
Soon after Tipper and I left the -- (Mock sob) White House -we were driving from our home in Nashville to a little farm we have 50 miles east of Nashville. Driving
ourselves.
I know it sounds like a little thing to you, but -I looked in the rear-view mirror and all of a sudden it just hit me. There was no motorcade back there.
You've heard of phantom limb pain?
This was a rented Ford Taurus.
It was dinnertime, and we started looking for a place to eat. We were on I-40. We got to Exit 238, Lebanon,
Tennessee. We got off the exit, we found a Shoney's restaurant. Low-cost family restaurant chain, for those
of you who don't know it. We went in and sat down at the booth, and the waitress came over, made a big
commotion over Tipper.

She took our order, and then went to the couple in the booth next to us, and she lowered her voice so
much, I had to really strain to hear what she was saying. And she said "Yes, that's former Vice President Al
Gore and his wife, Tipper." And the man said, "He's come down a long way, hasn't he?"
There's been kind of a series of epiphanies.
The very next day, continuing the totally true story, I got on a G-V to fly to Africa to make a speech in
Nigeria, in the city of Lagos, on the topic of energy. And I began the speech by telling them the story of
what had just happened the day before in Nashville. And I told it pretty much the same way I've just
shared it with you: Tipper and I were driving ourselves, Shoney's, low-cost family restaurant chain, what
the man said -- they laughed. I gave my speech, then went back out to the airport to fly back home. I fell
asleep on the plane until, during the middle of the night, we landed on the Azores Islands for refueling. I
woke up, they opened the door, I went out to get some fresh air, and I looked, and there was a man
running across the runway. And he was waving a piece of paper, and he was yelling, "Call Washington! Call
Washington!" And I thought to myself, in the middle of the night, in the middle of the Atlantic, what in the
world could be wrong in Washington? Then I remembered it could be a bunch of things.
But what it turned out to be, was that my staff was extremely upset because one of the wire services in
Nigeria had already written a story about my speech, and it had already been printed in cities all across
the United States of America. It was printed in Monterey, I checked.
And the story began, "Former Vice President Al Gore announced in Nigeria yesterday," quote: 'My wife
Tipper and I have opened a low-cost family restaurant'" -"'named Shoney's, and we are running it ourselves.'"
Before I could get back to U.S. soil, David Letterman and Jay Leno had already started in on -- one of them
had me in a big white chef's hat, Tipper was saying, "One more burger with fries!"
Three days later, I got a nice, long, handwritten letter from my friend and partner and colleague Bill
Clinton, saying, "Congratulations on the new restaurant, Al!"
We like to celebrate each other's successes in life.
I was going to talk about information ecology. But I was thinking that, since I plan to make a lifelong habit
of coming back to TED, that maybe I could talk about that another time.
Chris Anderson: It's a deal!
Al Gore: I want to focus on what many of you have said you would like me to elaborate on: What can you
do about the climate crisis? I want to start with a couple of -- I'm going to show some new images, and I'm
going to recapitulate just four or five. Now, the slide show. I update the slide show every time I give it. I
add new images, because I learn more about it every time I give it. It's like beach-combing, you know?
Every time the tide comes in and out, you find some more shells. Just in the last two days, we got the new
temperature records in January. This is just for the United States of America. Historical average for Januarys
is 31 degrees; last month was 39.5 degrees.
Now, I know that you wanted some more bad news about the environment -- I'm kidding. But these are the
recapitulation slides, and then I'm going to go into new material about what you can do. But I wanted to
elaborate on a couple of these. First of all, this is where we're projected to go with the U.S. contribution to
global warming, under business as usual. Efficiency in end-use electricity and end-use of all energy is the
low-hanging fruit. Efficiency and conservation -- it's not a cost; it's a profit. The sign is wrong. It's not
negative; it's positive. These are investments that pay for themselves. But they are also very effective in
deflecting our path.
Cars and trucks -- I talked about that in the slideshow, but I want you to put it in perspective. It's an easy,
visible target of concern -- and it should be -- but there is more global warming pollution that comes from

buildings than from cars and trucks. Cars and trucks are very significant, and we have the lowest
standards in the world. And so we should address that. But it's part of the puzzle. Other transportation
efficiency is as important as cars and trucks. Renewables at the current levels of technological efficiency
can make this much difference. And with what Vinod, and John Doerr and others, many of you here -- there
are a lot of people directly involved in this -- this wedge is going to grow much more rapidly than the
current projection shows it. Carbon Capture and Sequestration -- that's what CCS stands for -- is likely to
become the killer app that will enable us to continue to use fossil fuels in a way that is safe. Not quite
there yet. OK. Now, what can you do?
Reduce emissions in your home. Most of these expenditures are also profitable. Insulation, better design.
Buy green electricity where you can. I mentioned automobiles -- buy a hybrid. Use light rail. Figure out
some of the other options that are much better. It's important.
Be a green consumer. You have choices with everything you buy, between things that have a harsh effect,
or a much less harsh effect on the global climate crisis. Consider this: Make a decision to live a carbonneutral life. Those of you who are good at branding, I'd love to get your advice and help on how to say this
in a way that connects with the most people. It is easier than you think. It really is. A lot of us in here have
made that decision, and it is really pretty easy. It means reduce your carbon dioxide emissions with the full
range of choices that you make, and then purchase or acquire offsets for the remainder that you have not
completely reduced. And what it means is elaborated at climatecrisis.net.
There is a carbon calculator. Participant Productions convened -- with my active involvement -- the leading
software writers in the world, on this arcane science of carbon calculation, to construct a consumer-friendly
carbon calculator. You can very precisely calculate what your CO2 emissions are, and then you will be
given options to reduce. And by the time the movie comes out in May, this will be updated to 2.0, and we
will have click-through purchases of offsets.
Next, consider making your business carbon-neutral. Again, some of us have done that, and it's not as
hard as you think. Integrate climate solutions into all of your innovations, whether you are from the
technology, or entertainment, or design and architecture community. Invest sustainably. Majora mentioned
this. Listen, if you have invested money with managers who you compensate on the basis of their annual
performance, don't ever again complain about quarterly report CEO management. Over time, people do
what you pay them to do. And if they judge how much they're going to get paid on your capital that
they've invested, based on the short-term returns, you're going to get short-term decisions. A lot more to
be said about that.
Become a catalyst of change. Teach others, learn about it, talk about it. The movie is a movie version of
the slideshow I gave two nights ago, except it's a lot more entertaining. And it comes out in May. Many of
you here have the opportunity to ensure that a lot of people see it. Consider sending somebody to
Nashville. Pick well. And I am personally going to train people to give this slideshow -- re-purposed, with
some of the personal stories obviously replaced with a generic approach, and it's not just the slides, it's
what they mean. And it's how they link together. And so I'm going to be conducting a course this summer
for a group of people that are nominated by different folks to come and then give it en masse, in
communities all across the country, and we're going to update the slideshow for all of them every single
week, to keep it right on the cutting edge. Working with Larry Lessig, it will be, somewhere in that process,
posted with tools and limited-use copyrights, so that young people can remix it and do it in their own way.
Where did anybody get the idea that you ought to stay arm's length from politics? It doesn't mean that if
you're a Republican, that I'm trying to convince you to be a Democrat. We need Republicans as well. This
used to be a bipartisan issue, and I know that in this group it really is. Become politically active. Make our
democracy work the way it's supposed to work. Support the idea of capping carbon dioxide emissions -global warming pollution -- and trading it. Here's why: as long as the United States is out of the world
system, it's not a closed system. Once it becomes a closed system, with U.S. participation, then everybody
who's on a board of directors -- how many people here serve on the board of directors of a corporation?
Once it's a closed system, you will have legal liability if you do not urge your CEO to get the maximum

income from reducing and trading the carbon emissions that can be avoided. The market will work to solve
this problem -- if we can accomplish this. Help with the mass persuasion campaign that will start this
spring. We have to change the minds of the American people. Because presently, the politicians do not
have permission to do what needs to be done.
And in our modern country, the role of logic and reason no longer includes mediating between wealth and
power the way it once did. It's now repetition of short, hot-button, 30-second, 28-second television ads. We
have to buy a lot of those ads. Let's re-brand global warming, as many of you have suggested. I like
"climate crisis" instead of "climate collapse," but again, those of you who are good at branding, I need your
help on this. Somebody said the test we're facing now, a scientist told me, is whether the combination of
an opposable thumb and a neocortex is a viable combination.
That's really true.
I said the other night, and I'll repeat now: this is not a political issue. Again, the Republicans here -- this
shouldn't be partisan. You have more influence than some of us who are Democrats do. This is an
opportunity. Not just this, but connected to the ideas that are here, to bring more coherence to them. We
are one.
Thank you very much, I appreciate it.

Dianna Cohen: Tough truths about plastic pollution

I'm a visual artist, and I'm also one of the co-founders of the Plastic Pollution Coalition. I've been working
with plastic bags, which I cut up and sew back together as my primary material for my artwork for the last
20 years. I turn them into two and three-dimensional pieces and sculptures and installations. Upon working
with the plastic, after about the first eight years, some of my work started to fissure and break down into
smaller little bits of plastic. And I thought, "Great. It's ephemeral just like us."
Upon educating myself a little further about plastics, I actually realized this was a bad thing. It's a bad
thing that plastic breaks down into smaller little bits, because it's always still plastic. And what we're
finding is that a lot of it is in the marine environment. I then, in the last few years, learned about the Pacific
garbage patch and the gyre. And my initial reaction -- and I think this is a lot of people's first reaction to
learning about it -- is, "Oh my God! We've got to go out there and clean this thing up." So I actually
developed a proposal to go out with a cargo ship and two decommissioned fishing trawlers, a crane, a
chipping machine and a cold-molding machine. And my intention was to go out to the gyre, raise
awareness about this issue and begin to pick up the plastic, chip it into little bits and cold mold it into
bricks that could potentially be used as building materials in underdeveloped communities.
I began talking with people who actually had been out to the gyre and were studying the plastic problem in
the marine environment and upon doing so, I realized actually that cleaning it up would be a very small
drop in the bucket relative to how much is being generated every day around the world, and that actually I
needed to back up and look at the bigger picture. And the bigger picture is: we need to find a way to turn
off the faucet. We need to cut the spigot of single-use and disposable plastics, which are entering the
marine environment every day on a global scale.
So in looking at that, I also realized that I was really angry. I wasn't just concerned about plastic that you're
trying to imagine out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean -- of which I have learned there are now 11 gyres,
potentially, of plastic in five major oceans in the world. It's not just that gyre of plastic that I'm concerned
about -- it's the gyre of plastic in the supermarket. I'd go to the supermarket and all of my food is packaged
in plastic. All of my beverages are packaged in plastic, even at the health food market. I'm also concerned
about the plastic in the refrigerator, and I'm concerned about the plastic and the toxins that leach from
plastic into us and into our bodies.

So I came together with a group of other people who were all looking at this issue, and we created the
Plastic Pollution Coalition. We have many initiatives that we're working on, but some of them are very
basic. One is: if 80 to 90 percent of what we're finding in the ocean -- of the marine debris that we're
finding in the ocean -- is plastic, then why don't we call it what it is. It's plastic pollution. Recycling -everybody kind of ends their books about being sustainable and greening with the idea of recycling. You
put something in a bin and you don't have to think about it again. What is the reality of that? In the United
States, less than seven percent of our plastics are recycled. And if you really look into it, particularly when
it comes to plastic bottles, most of it is only down-cycled, or incinerated, or shipped to China. It is downcycled and turned into lesser things, while a glass bottle can be a glass bottle again or can be used again -a plastic bottle can never be a plastic bottle again.
So this is a big issue for us. Another thing that we're looking at and asking people to think about is we've
added a fourth R onto the front of the "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle," three R's, and that is refuse. Whenever
possible, refuse single-use and disposable plastics. Alternatives exist; some of them are very old-school. I
myself am now collecting these cool Pyrex containers and using those instead of Glad and Tupperware
containers to store food in. And I know that I am doing a service to myself and my family. It's very easy to
pick up a stainless-steel bottle or a glass bottle, if you're traveling and you've forgotten to bring your
stainless-steel bottle and fill that up with water or filtered water, versus purchasing plastic bottled water.
I guess what I want to say to everybody here -- and I know that you guys know a lot about this issue -- is
that this is a huge problem in the oceans, but this is a problem that we've created as consumers and we
can solve. We can solve this by raising awareness of the issue and teaching people to choose alternatives.
So whenever possible, to choose alternatives to single-use plastics. We can cut the stem -- tide the stem of
this into our oceans and in doing so, save our oceans, save our planet, save ourselves.

Suheir Hammad: Poems of war, peace, women, power

"What I Will"
0:14
I will not dance to your war drum. I will not lend my soul nor my bones to your war drum. I will not dance to
that beating. I know that beat. It is lifeless. I know intimately that skin you are hitting. It was alive once,
hunted, stolen, stretched. I will not dance to your drummed-up war. I will not pop, spin, break for you. I will
not hate for you or even hate you. I will not kill for you. Especially I will not die for you. I will not mourn the
dead with murder nor suicide. I will not side with you or dance to bombs because everyone is dancing.
Everyone can be wrong. Life is a right, not collateral or casual. I will not forget where I come from. I will
craft my own drum. Gather my beloved near, and our chanting will be dancing. Our humming will be
drumming. I will not be played. I will not lend my name nor my rhythm to your beat. I will dance and resist
and dance and persist and dance. This heartbeat is louder than death. Your war drum ain't louder than this
breath. Haaa.
What's up TED people? Let me hear you make some noise.
A bunch of pacifists. Confused, aspiring pacifists. I understand.
I've been wrong a lot lately. Like a lot. So I couldn't figure out what to read today. I mean, I've been saying
I've been prepping. What that means is prepping my outfit, (Laughter) prepping options, trying to figure
out what I'm coming behind and going in front of. Poetry does that. It preps you. It aims you.
So I am going to read a poem that was chosen just now. But I'm going to need you to just sit for like 10
minutes and hold a woman who is not here. Hold her now with you. You don't need to say her name out
loud, you can just hold her. Are you holding her?
This is "Break Clustered."

All holy history banned. Unwritten books predicted the future, projected the past. But my head unwraps
around what appears limitless, man's creative violence. Whose son shall it be? Which male child will perish
a new day? Our boys' deaths galvanize. We cherish corpses. We mourn women, complicated. Bitches get
beat daily. Profits made, prophets ignored. War and tooth, enameled salted lemon childhoods. All colors
run, none of us solid. Don't look for shadow behind me. I carry it within. I live cycles of light and darkness.
Rhythm is half silence. I see now, I never was one and not the other. Sickness, health, tender violence. I
think now I never was pure. Before form I was storm, blind, ign'ant -- still am. Human contracted itself
blind, malignant. I never was pure. Girl spoiled before ripened. Language can't math me. I experience
exponentially. Everything is everything. One woman loses 15, maybe 20, members of her family. One
woman loses six. One woman loses her head. One woman searches rubble. One woman feeds on trash.
One woman shoots her face. One woman shoots her husband. One woman straps herself. One woman
gives birth to a baby. One woman gives birth to borders. One woman no longer believes love will ever find
her. One woman never did. Where do refugee hearts go? Broken, dissed, placed where they're not from,
don't want to be missed. Faced with absence. We mourn each one or we mean nothing at all. My spine
curves spiral. Precipice running to and running from human beings. Cluster bombs left behind. De facto
landmines. A smoldering grief. Harvest contaminated tobacco. Harvest bombs. Harvest baby teeth.
Harvest palms, smoke. Harvest witness, smoke. Resolutions, smoke. Salvation, smoke. Redemption,
smoke. Breathe. Do not fear what has blown up. If you must, fear the unexploded.

Alisa Miller: How the news distorts our worldview

How does the news shape the way we see the world? Here's the world based on the way it looks -- based
on landmass. And here's how news shapes what Americans see. This map -- (Applause) -- this map shows
the number of seconds that American network and cable news organizations dedicated to news stories, by
country, in February of 2007 -- just one year ago. Now, this was a month when North Korea agreed to
dismantle its nuclear facilities. There was massive flooding in Indonesia. And in Paris, the IPCC released its
study confirming man's impact on global warming. The U.S. accounted for 79 percent of total news
coverage. And when we take out the U.S. and look at the remaining 21 percent, we see a lot of Iraq -that's that big green thing there -- and little else. The combined coverage of Russia, China and India, for
example, reached just one percent.
When we analyzed all the news stories and removed just one story, here's how the world looked. What was
that story? The death of Anna Nicole Smith. This story eclipsed every country except Iraq, and received 10
times the coverage of the IPCC report. And the cycle continues; as we all know, Britney has loomed pretty
large lately.
So, why don't we hear more about the world? One reason is that news networks have reduced the number
of their foreign bureaus by half. Aside from one-person ABC mini-bureaus in Nairobi, New Delhi and
Mumbai, there are no network news bureaus in all of Africa, India or South America -- places that are home
to more than two billion people.
The reality is that covering Britney is cheaper. And this lack of global coverage is all the more disturbing
when we see where people go for news. Local TV news looms large, and unfortunately only dedicates 12
percent of its coverage to international news.
And what about the web? The most popular news sites don't do much better. Last year, Pew and the
Colombia J-School analyzed the 14,000 stories that appeared on Google News' front page. And they, in
fact, covered the same 24 news events. Similarly, a study in e-content showed that much of global news
from U.S. news creators is recycled stories from the AP wire services and Reuters, and don't put things into
a context that people can understand their connection to it.
So, if you put it all together, this could help explain why today's college graduates, as well as less
educated Americans, know less about the world than their counterparts did 20 years ago. And if you think

it's simply because we are not interested, you would be wrong. In recent years, Americans who say they
closely follow global news most of the time grew to over 50 percent.
The real question: is this distorted worldview what we want for Americans in our increasingly
interconnected world? I know we can do better. And can we afford not to? Thank you.