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.
I gave this talk at Facebook not so long ago to about 100 employees, and a couple hours later, there was a young woman who works there sitting outside my little desk, and she wanted to talk to me.
Where we started: my colleagues Mike Petner, Shawn Vashaw, myself, we started by trying to look at the teachers' attitudes and find out how do they really feel about gaming, what do they say about it.
So I did and stood amazed every week when these brilliant, grown-up poets laughed with me and groaned their sympathy and clapped and told me, "Hey, I really felt that too."
I'm telling you this story because Archie Cochrane, all his life, fought against a terrible affliction, and he realized it was debilitating to individuals and it was corrosive to societies.
I'm talking about your language, of course, because it allows you to implant a thought from your mind directly into someone else's mind, and they can attempt to do the same to you, without either of you having to perform surgery.
And even away from the podium, when you called him to say hello, he would often end the conversation prematurely for fear that he was taking up too much of your time.
So when I tell people about this, that our bodies change our minds and our minds can change our behavior, and our behavior can change our outcomes, they say to me, "It feels fake." Right?
I shut up, and listen to them." (Laughter) So — (Applause) — So the government says, "Do it again." (Laughter) We've done it in 300 communities around the world.
If there's a takeaway to this talk, I hope it's that we all feel more comfortable acknowledging the power of image in our perceived successes and our perceived failures.
So one year ago, I was just a boy in the savanna grassland herding my father's cows, and I used to see planes flying over, and I told myself that one day, I'll be there inside.
Though in all seriousness, this position that you just saw me in, looking down at my phone, that's one of the reasons behind this project, Project Glass.
In addition to potentially socially isolating yourself when you're out and about looking at your phone, it's kind of, is this what you're meant to do with your body?
I spoke with Jason's parents that evening, and I suppose that, when I was speaking with them, that I didn't sound as if I was doing very well, because that very next day, their family rabbi called to check on me.
It's been my experience that when people take the time to interact with one another, it doesn't take long to realize that for the most part, we all want the same things out of life.
One day, I had a conversation with my mother about how my worldview was starting to change, and she said something to me that I will hold dear to my heart for as long as I live.
So these equations predict how the wife or husband is going to respond in their next turn of the conversation, how positive or negative they're going to be.
Frustrated by this myopic view, my friend and I had this crazy idea: Let's break our fast at a different mosque in a different state each night of Ramadan and share those stories on a blog.
その日の午前中 部屋を歩き回り 兄の電話を待ちました 待っても 待っても ベルは鳴りません
(Laughter) I spent the morning pacing around my room, waiting for him to call -- and waiting...
Eventually, the whole number gets dialed and I'm listening to the phone, and my colleague picks up the phone and he says to me, "Woo woo woo woo." (Laughter) (Laughter) And I think to myself, "Oh my gosh, he sounds like a Golden Retriever!"
But what I've learned through speaking with people and writing about these ideas on my website, is that there are some tremendous strengths to being this way.
(Laughter) You know, it used to be that in order to have a polite conversation, we just had to follow the advice of Henry Higgins in "My Fair Lady": Stick to the weather and your health.
So I have 10 basic rules. I'm going to walk you through all of them, but honestly, if you just choose one of them and master it, you'll already enjoy better conversations.
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.
Long before anybody knew Edward Snowden's name, Risen wrote a book in which he famously exposed that the NSA was illegally wiretapping the phone calls of Americans.
(Laughter) And soon he would start typing himself, because he had so many of these conversations that he figured out how the Russian conversation usually starts.
Then he started to look for his way of learning languages, which was speaking to native speakers and getting feedback from them, and today Benny can easily have a conversation in 10 languages.
And my mother, the most important role model in my life, who lives with us at the White House and helps to care for our two little daughters, Malia and Sasha.
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.
The Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti writes that if you want to dispossess a people, the simplest way to do it is to tell their story and to start with, "secondly."
(Applause) (Applause ends) 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.
And in this way, time is actually the critical variable that distinguishes a remembering self from an experiencing self; time has very little impact on the story.
(Laughter) (Applause) Whereas, if you wanted to talk about your project involving oxygen, girls, aircraft -- actually, I would like to hear that talk, (Laughter) but statistics say it's not so good.
そして なんとまぁ 25万人が集まったのです その日 その時に 彼の話を聴くために
And lo and behold, 250, 000 people showed up on the right day at the right time to hear him speak.
This is one of the themes I'm talking about: We can empower ourselves to do the things that doctors can't do for us, which is to use knowledge and take action.
But if, and only if, [the poorest] get out of poverty, they get education, they get improved child survival, they can buy a bicycle and a cell phone and come [to live] here, then population growth will stop in 2050.
(Laughter) [You'll do] (Applause) (Laughter) I want to say -- just a little autobiographical moment -- that I actually am married to a wife, and she's really quite wonderful.
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