AEIS 102 Summer 2015
TED Talk Directory

You will listen to one of the following talks. Look at the talk titles and descriptions. Go the survey site and select on that has not been chose. Then go to
|# |Title |Description |
|1 |Could your language affect your |What can economists learn from linguists? Behavioral economist Keith Chen introduces a fascinating pattern |
| |ability to save money? |from his research: that languages without a concept for the future -- "It rain tomorrow," instead of "It will|
| | |rain tomorrow" -- correlate strongly with high savings rates. |
|2 |A mini robot – powered by your phone |Your smartphone may feel like a friend -- but a true friend would give you a smile once in a while. Keller |
| | |Rinaudo demonstrates Romo, the smartphone-powered mini robot who can motor along with you on a walk, slide |
| | |you a cup of coffee across the table, and react to you with programmable expressions. |
|3 |The emergence of “4D printing” |3D printing has grown in sophistication since the late 1970s; TED Fellow Skylar Tibbits is shaping the next |
| | |development, which he calls 4D printing, where the fourth dimension is time. This emerging technology will |
| | |allow us to print objects that then reshape themselves or self-assemble over time. Think: a printed cube that|
| | |folds before your eyes, or a printed pipe able to sense the need to expand or contract. |
|4 |Prepare for a good end of life |Thinking about death is frightening, but planning ahead is practical and leaves more room for peace of mind |
| | |in our final days. In a solemn, thoughtful talk, Judy MacDonald Johnston shares 5 practices for planning for |
| | |a good end of life. |
|5 |One very dry demo – nanotechnology |Mark Shaw demos Ultra-Ever Dry, a liquid-repellent coating that acts as an astonishingly powerful shield |
| |water proofing |against water and water-based materials. At the nano level, the spray covers a surface with an umbrella of |
| | |air so that water bounces right off. Watch for an exciting two-minute kicker. |
|6 |We’re covered in germs. Let’s design|Our bodies and homes are covered in microbes -- some good for us, some bad for us. As we learn more about the|
| |for that. |germs and microbes who share our living spaces, TED Fellow Jessica Green asks: Can we design buildings that |
| | |encourage happy, healthy microbial environments? |
|7 |Play with smart materials |Ink that conducts electricity; a window that turns from clear to opaque at the flip of a switch; a jelly that|
| | |makes music. All this stuff exists, and Catarina Mota says: It's time to play with it. Mota leads us on a |
| | |tour of surprising and cool new materials, and suggests that the way we'll figure out what they're good for |
| | |is to experiment, tinker and have fun. |
|8 |How we found the giant squid |Humankind has been looking for the giant squid (Architeuthis) since we first started taking pictures |
| | |underwater. But the elusive deep-sea predator could never be caught on film. Oceanographer and inventor Edith|
| | |Widder shares the key insight -- and the teamwork -- that helped to capture the squid on film for the first |
| | |time. |

|9 |Gorgeous photos of a backyard |Ethnographer Wade Davis explores hidden places in the wider world -- but in this powerful short talk he urges|
| |wilderness worth saving |us to save a paradise in his backyard, Northern Canada. The Sacred Headwaters, remote and pristine, are under|
| | |threat because they hide rich tar sands. With stunning photos, Davis asks a tough question: How can we |
| | |balance society's need for fuels with the urge to protect such glorious wilderness? |
|10 |Dare to educate Afghan girls |Imagine a country where girls must sneak out to go to school, with deadly consequences if they get caught |
| | |learning. This was Afghanistan under the Taliban, and traces of that danger remain today. 22-year-old Shabana|
| | |Basij-Rasikh runs a school for girls in Afghanistan. She celebrates the power of a family's decision to |
| | |believe in their daughters -- and tells the story of one brave father who stood up to local threats. |
|11 |One second every day |There are so many tiny, beautiful, funny, tragic moments in your life -- how are you going to remember them |
| | |all? Director Cesar Kuriyama shoots one second of video every day as part of an ongoing project to collect |
| | |all the special bits of his life. |
|12 | A country with no water |Imagine a country with abundant power -- oil and gas, sunshine, wind (and money) -- but missing one key |
| | |essential for life: water. Infrastructure engineer Fahad Al-Attiya talks about the unexpected ways that the |
| | |small Middle Eastern nation of Qatar creates its water supply. |
|13 |Looks aren’t everything. Believe me, |Cameron Russell admits she won “a genetic lottery”: she's tall, pretty and an underwear model. But don't |
| |I’m a model. |judge her by her looks. In this fearless talk, she takes a wry look at the industry that had her looking |
| | |highly seductive at barely 16-years-old. |
|14 |How movies teach manhood |When Colin Stokes’ 3-year-old son caught a glimpse of Star Wars, he was instantly obsessed. But what messages|
| | |did he absorb from the sci-fi classic? Stokes asks for more movies that send positive messages to boys: that |
| | |cooperation is heroic, and respecting women is as manly as defeating the villain. |
|15 |All it takes is 10 mindful minutes |When is the last time you did absolutely nothing for 10 whole minutes? Not texting, talking or even thinking?|
| | |Mindfulness expert Andy Puddicombe describes the transformative power of doing just that: Refreshing your |
| | |mind for 10 minutes a day, simply by being mindful and experiencing the present moment. (No need for incense |
| | |or sitting in uncomfortable positions.) |
|16 |Deep sea diving …in a wheel chair |When Sue Austin got a power chair 16 years ago, she felt a tremendous sense of freedom -- yet others looked |
| | |at her as though she had lost something. In her art, she aims to convey the spirit of wonder she feels |
| | |wheeling through the world. Includes thrilling footage of an underwater wheelchair that lets her explore |
| | |ocean beds, drifting through schools of fish, floating free in 360 degrees. |

|17 |What fear can teach us |Imagine you're a shipwrecked sailor adrift in the enormous Pacific. You can choose one of three directions |
| | |and save yourself and your shipmates -- but each choice comes with a fearful consequence too. How do you |
| | |choose? In telling the story of the whaling ship Essex, novelist Karen Thompson Walker shows how fear propels|
| | |imagination, as it forces us to imagine the possible futures and how to cope with them. |
|18 |Why bother leaving the house? |Explorer Ben Saunders wants you to go outside! Not because it’s always pleasant and happy, but because that’s|
| | |where the meat of life is, “the juice that we can suck out of our hours and days.” Saunders’ next outdoor |
| | |excursion? To try to be the first in the world to walk from the coast of Antarctica to the South Pole and |
| | |back again. |
|19 |Why I love vultures |As natural garbage collectors, vultures are vital to our ecosystem -- so why all the bad press? Why are so |
| | |many in danger of extinction? Raptor biologist Munir Virani says we need to pay more attention to these |
| | |unique and misunderstood creatures, to change our perception and save the vultures. |
|20 |Before I die I want to . . . |In her New Orleans neighborhood, artist and TED Fellow Candy Chang turned an abandoned house into a giant |
| | |chalkboard asking a fill-in-the-blank question: “Before I die I want to ___.” Her neighbors' answers -- |
| | |surprising, poignant, funny -- became an unexpected mirror for the community. (What's your answer?) |
|21 |How to solve traffic jams |It’s an unfortunate reality in nearly every major city—road congestion, especially during rush hours. Jonas |
| | |Eliasson reveals how subtly nudging just a small percentage of drivers to stay off major roads can make |
| | |traffic jams a thing of the past. |
|22 |Nature. Beauty. Gratitude |Nature’s beauty can be easily missed -- but not through Louie Schwartzberg’s lens. His stunning time-lapse |
| | |photography, accompanied by powerful words from Benedictine monk Brother David Steindl-Rast, serves as a |
| | |meditation on being grateful for every day. |
|23 |The cheap all-terrain wheelchair |How do you build a wheelchair ready to blaze through mud and sand, all for under $200? MIT engineer Amos |
| | |Winter guides us through the mechanics of an all-terrain wheelchair that’s cheap and easy to build -- for |
| | |true accessibility -- and gives us some lessons he learned along the road. |
|24 |The arts festival revolution |David Binder is a major Broadway producer, but last summer he found himself in a small Australian |
| | |neighborhood, watching locals dance and perform on their lawns -- and loving it. He shows us the new face of |
| | |arts festivals, which break the boundary between audience and performer and help cities express themselves. |
| | | |

|25 |The beautiful nano details of our |When photographed under a 3D microscope, grains of sand appear like colorful pieces of candy and the stamens |
| |world. |in a flower become like fantastical spires at an amusement park. Gary Greenberg reveals the thrilling details|
| | |of the micro world. |
|26 |Want to be happier? Stay in the |When are humans most happy? To gather data on this question, Matt Killingsworth built an app, Track Your |
| |moment. |Happiness, that let people report their feelings in real time. Among the surprising results: We're often |
| | |happiest when we're lost in the moment. And the flip side: The more our mind wanders, the less happy we can |
| | |be. |
|27 |Your on-life, permanent as a tattoo |What if Andy Warhol had it wrong, and instead of being famous for 15 minutes, we’re only anonymous for that |
| | |long? In this short talk, Juan Enriquez looks at the surprisingly permanent effects of digital sharing on our|
| | |personal privacy. He shares insight from the ancient Greeks to help us deal with our new “digital tattoos.” |
|28 |How books can open your mind |What happens when a dream you've held since childhood … doesn't come true? As Lisa Bu adjusted to a new life |
| | |in the United States, she turned to books to expand her mind and create a new path for herself. She shares |
| | |her unique approach to reading in this lovely, personal talk about the magic of books. |
|29 |The key to success? Grit |Leaving a high-flying job in consulting, Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in |
| | |a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn’t the only thing separating the successful |
| | |students from those who struggled. Here, she explains her theory of “grit” as a predictor of success. |
|30 |How a penny made me feel like a |As a young child, Tania Luna left her home in post-Chernobyl Ukraine to take asylum in the US. And one day, |
| |millionaire |on the floor of the New York homeless shelter where she and her family lived, she found a penny. She has |
| | |never again felt so rich. A meditation on the bittersweet joys of childhood -- and how to hold them in mind. |