Just go up to someone who's from a different culture, a different country, a different ethnicity -- some difference -- and engage them in a conversation.
So now my wish is: (mock drum roll) (Laughter) I wish for you to stand up for what you care about by participating in a global art project, and together we'll turn the world inside out.
And I started putting the first YouTube videos up, really just as a kind of nice-to-have, just kind of a supplement for my cousins, something that might give them a refresher or something.
But then, as the viewership kept growing and kept growing, I started getting letters from people, and it was starting to become clear that it was more than just a nice-to-have.
I tell people it involves creating poetry that doesn't just want to sit on paper, that something about it demands it be heard out loud or witnessed in person.
I spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to tell this story, and I wondered if the best way was going to be a PowerPoint, a short film -- And where exactly was the beginning, the middle or the end?
But with synthetic biology, we can actually imagine engineering this bacterium to produce something that gives us the quality, quantity and shape of material that we desire.
Before buttons, clothes were bigger -- they were more kind of amorphous, and people, like, wriggled into them or just kind of wrapped themselves in things.
This is the equivalent to the entire American corn crop failing along with all of our fruit crops, as well as wheat, tobacco, rice, sorghum -- whatever sorghum is -- losing sorghum.
So I emailed him back and I said, "Please share with me an image, something, that I can share with the whole PostSecret community and let everyone know your fairy tale ending."
It's also the very first letter of the word shayun, which means "something" just like the the English word "something" -- some undefined, unknown thing.
I live near this house, and I thought about how I could make it a nicer space for my neighborhood, and I also thought about something that changed my life forever.
You know, we're interested in, like, you know — (Laughter) — an awkward interaction, or a smile, or a contemptuous glance, or maybe a very awkward wink, or maybe even something like a handshake.
For me, photography is not just about exposing film, it's about exposing the viewer to something new, a place they haven't gone before, but most importantly, to people that they might be afraid of.
And so, when I see my partner on his own or her own, doing something in which they are enveloped, I look at this person and I momentarily get a shift in perception, and I stay open to the mysteries that are living right next to me.
But if you understood how important meaning is, then you would figure out that it's actually important to spend some time, energy and effort in getting people to care more about what they're doing.
How would that extend to advice, like, if someone is making a lifestyle choice between, say, a stressful job and a non-stressful job, does it matter which way they go?
Have you ever thought that working on an issue between you was futile because it should just be easier than this, or this is supposed to happen just naturally?
So this year, instead of giving something up, I will live every day as if there were a microphone tucked under my tongue, a stage on the underside of my inhibition.
Now, that might be gambling, that might be pornography, that might be cocaine, that might be cannabis, but you will bond and connect with something because that's our nature.
When I met the imam for the first time, and I told him what I wanted to do, he was like, "Thank God you finally came, " and he told me that for years he was waiting for somebody to do something on it.
There was a recent survey of millennials asking them what their most important life goals were, and over 80 percent said that a major life goal for them was to get rich.
All right, I want to see a show of hands: how many of you have unfriended someone on Facebook because they said something offensive about politics or religion, childcare, food?
Look at a classic study of over 50 product categories, comparing the first movers who created the market with the improvers who introduced something different and better.
But there is one thing that all great TED Talks have in common, and I would like to share that thing with you, because over the past 12 years, I've had a ringside seat, listening to many hundreds of amazing TED speakers, like these.
And it's this: Your number one task as a speaker is to transfer into your listeners' minds an extraordinary gift -- a strange and beautiful object that we call an idea.
He was able to connect his understanding of electromagnetic radiation with his knowledge of cooking in order to invent -- any guesses? -- the microwave oven.
By 2050, there’ll be about 32 million people in the United States over the age of 80, and unless we do something about it, half of them will have Alzheimer’s disease and three million more will have Parkinson’s disease.
So the question that we had is: How can bacteria, these primitive organisms, tell the difference from times when they're alone and times when they're in a community, and then all do something together?
Most other societies have had, right at their center, the worship of something transcendent: a god, a spirit, a natural force, the universe, whatever it is -- something else that is being worshiped.
I think there is one particular meaning to which we might restrict it, but by and large, this is something that we'll have to give up and we'll have to adopt the more complicated view of what well-being is.
Every time we make irrational demands, exhibit irresponsible behavior, or display any other signs of being normal American citizens, we are called childish.
And what happened a month ago was that the Chinese company, Geely, they acquired the Volvo company, and then finally the Swedes understood that something big had happened in the world.
The lesson I want to leave you with, from these data, is that our longings and our worries are both to some degree overblown, because we have within us the capacity to manufacture the very commodity we are constantly chasing when we choose experience.
5.6634740829468s
Download our Word Games app for free!
Connect letters, discover words, and challenge your mind at every new level. Ready for the adventure?
Just go up to someone who's from a different culture, a different country, a different ethnicity -- some difference -- and engage them in a conversation. 