And I know that vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it's also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love.
Work in my lab is focused on the first critical period in development, and that is the period in which babies try to master which sounds are used in their language.
And I know that there are -- if I could put a little plug here -- there are people in this audience easily capable of financing a massive research survey to settle the question, and I put the suggestion up, for what it's worth.
And the religious police imposes the supposed Islamic way of life on every citizen, by force -- like, women are forced to cover their heads -- wear the hijab, the Islamic head cover.
And if you look at a guy called Dennis, when he decides what to become -- is it a lawyer, or does he want to become a doctor or a teacher? -- best chance is that he wants to become a dentist.
Now rather than just argue about this number, a copyright mathematician will analyze it and he'll soon discover that this money could stretch from this auditorium all the way across Ocean Boulevard to the Westin, and then to Mars...
And if we can quiet it down and walk in and say, "I'm going to do this, " we look up and the critic that we see pointing and laughing, 99 percent of the time is who?
Now he's really pretty sick. He needs help eating, he needs help getting dressed, he doesn't really know where he is or when it is, and it's been really, really hard.
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.
Which comes to tell you one more thing, which is, much like our builders, when they look at the creature of their creation, we don't see that other people don't see things our way.
But we want to share what was the key learning, the key learning that Mario drove to us, and it is to consider what you have as a gift and not only what you miss, and to consider what you miss just as an opportunity.
Now, if that estimate is correct, that would make believing stress is bad for you the 15th largest cause of death in the United States last year, killing more people than skin cancer, HIV/AIDS and homicide.
(Laughter) And if you repeat that one, it's actually restricting your ability to communicate through prosody, which I think is a shame, so let's try and break that habit.
All sorts of people: your family, your friends, your business partners, they all have opinions on which path you should take: "And let me tell you, go through this pipe."
The more we saturate our culture with public shaming, the more accepted it is, the more we will see behavior like cyberbullying, trolling, some forms of hacking and online harassment.
But over and over, over these 75 years, our study has shown that the people who fared the best were the people who leaned in to relationships, with family, with friends, with community.
The fun you have in the Dark Playground isn't actually fun, because it's completely unearned, and the air is filled with guilt, dread, anxiety, self-hatred -- all of those good procrastinator feelings.
Well, turns out the procrastinator has a guardian angel, someone who's always looking down on him and watching over him in his darkest moments -- someone called the Panic Monster.
We've found that tumor growth in vitro was inhibited 70 percent in the group that made these changes, whereas only nine percent in the comparison group.
Let's face it, it's the language of the internet, it's the language of finance, it's the language of air traffic control, of popular music, diplomacy -- English is everywhere.
And as I was listening to these polyglots telling me about their methods, it suddenly dawned on me: the one thing we all have in common is that we simply found ways to enjoy the language-learning process.
Alain De Botton: Yes, I think it's merely the randomness of the winning and losing process that I want to stress, because the emphasis nowadays is so much on the justice of everything, and politicians always talk about justice.
AB: The nightmare thought is that frightening people is the best way to get work out of them, and that somehow the crueler the environment, the more people will rise to the challenge.
Like our economic and political worlds, stories too are defined by the principle of nkali: How they are told, who tells them, when they're told, how many stories are told, are really dependent on power.
And if, but only if, we invest in the right green technology -- so that we can avoid severe climate change, and energy can still be relatively cheap -- then they will move all the way up here.
Because with 50 funds to choose from, it's so damn hard to decide which fund to choose, that you'll just put it off till tomorrow, and then tomorrow and then tomorrow and tomorrow, and, of course, tomorrow never comes.
And I know that vulnerability is the core of shame and fear and our struggle for worthiness, but it appears that it's also the birthplace of joy, of creativity, of belonging, of love. 