Colin Grant
Author and historian, Colin Grant, talks about the father that abused and rejected him to the point where he felt moved to kill him. However, he explains about how this man’s choices effected his path in life and how he eventually came to find a heart of forgiveness or compassion.
Each generation builds up an edifice which they are reluctant or sometimes unable to disassemble, but in the writing, my version of the story began to change, and it was detached from me. I lost my hatred of my father. I did no longer want him to die or to murder him, and I felt free, much freer than I’d ever felt before. And I wonder whether that freedness could be transferred to him.
Jake Adelstein
Investigative Journalist and author Jake Adelstein shares insights about his experiences with both the Yakuza and the police while reporting on crime in Japan for the last nineteen years, including the Yakuza’s seven lessons for life.
1. Know the difference between hearing and listening, and learn to listen to people.
2. Repay the kindness bestowed upon you, keep your code, all is good.
3. There are no small promises. A man’s promise should weigh more than his life.
4. It’s okay to be betrayed, just don’t be the betrayer. Betray others and you betray yourself. You won’t be able to trust anyone.
5. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. You can tell more about a man by his enemies than you can by his friends. A man with no enemies is worthless.
6. In life we only encounter the injustices we are meant to correct.
7. If you want to live well you have to die once.
Julian Treasure
Treasure, chair of Sound Agency – a company that works with various businesses on how to use sound, presents on how to speak in such a way that others will be inclined to listen. He gives an example of habits that should be broken in our communication, provides various vocal exercises that can be used to make your speech more powerful and gives tips on how to speak with empathy.
Uri Alon
Alon, a systems biologist, gives a talk on his struggles as a scientist trying to find direct paths from a postulated question to a scientific answer. However, an evening out at improv theatre and the usage of the “yes, and” technique gives him a new way of looking at the scientific process which he now challenges all of his audience to consider.
And you can go through the cloud not alone but together with someone who is your source of support to say “Yes, and” to your ideas, to help you say “Yes, and” to your own ideas, to increase the chance that, through the wisps of the cloud, you’ll find that moment of calmness where you get your first glimpse of your unexpected discovery.
Stephen Burt
Burt, a literary critic, gives a talk on the importance of poetry and how it can help us handle and explore various emotions and issues in life. For example, having to deal with the fact that we will all someday die. He reads from various poets that have guided him along the way in his life.
Poems can help you say, help you show how you’re feeling, but they can also introduce you to feelings, ways of being in the world, people, very much unlike you, maybe even people from long, long ago.
Chris Domas
Domas, a cybersecurity researcher, gives a talk on the rising “cyber warfare”. In this lecture he reveals some of the methods that researchers are using to break apart binary code and receive a better understanding of the potential threats that await on the cyber field.
Jackie Savitz
Savitz, a marine biologist and ocean advocate, gives a talk on the most important ways that we can go about cleaning up and healing our oceans so that fisheries can begin to produce more heavily. In doing so she believes that we will not only help to preserve our oceans and its wildlife but will also be able to look towards fixing the hunger problems all across our world.
We know that we can manage our fisheries sustainably. We know that we can produce healthy meals for hundreds of millions of people that don’t use the land, that don’t use much water, have a low carbon footprint, and are cost-effective. We know that saving the oceans can feed the world, and we need to start now.
Nikolai Begg
Begg, a PhD candidate in mechanical engineering, gives a talk on his work updating commonly used medical devices. Using physics, he has taken the trocar and improved upon it to the lower the risk of surgeons puncturing any vital organs when placing an opening in the skin.
Paul Bloom
Bloom, a psychologist and professor at Yale, poses the question “Can prejudice ever be a good thing?” In his talk he states that prejudice is often natural, rational and even moral. He argues that it is only be acknowledging this and then taking control of it when our bias goes wrong that we can use it to work to our benefit.
A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.
Sebastian Junger
Junger speaks about the experiences he has had alongside of American soldiers in Restrepo and the observations that he has made when war creates a strong connection amongst them. The author poses that many soldiers end up missing war due to the isolation that they experience upon returning home.
Compared to that, war, psychologically, in some ways, is easy, compared to that kind of alienation. That’s why they miss it, and that’s what we have to understand and in some ways fix in our society.
Wes Moore
Moore, an Army paratrooper and captain, recounts the difficulties he experienced upon returning from Afghanistan to the United States. He talks to his audience about how to speak to veterans about their experiences abroad and encourages them to ask veterans for their stories and to take the time to listen to what they have to say.
We signed up because we love this country we represent. We signed up because we believe in the idea and we believe in the people to our left and to our right. And the only thing we then ask is that “thank you for your service” needs to be more than just a quote break, that “thank you for your service” means honestly digging in to the people who have stepped up simply because they were asked to.
Jamilia Lyiscott
Lysicott presents a smash-poetry style look at what it means to be “articulate” and the three differents languages that she speaks – at home, in the classroom and with her friends. In her speech she challenges her audience to look at those with broken English not as “ignorant” but as speaking with a tongue or their own and to consider the past that has shaped and brought that language into being.
Yes, I have decided to treat all three of my languages as equals because I’m “articulate”.
Uldus Bakhtiozina
Photographer and artist, Uldus Bakhtiozina, presents a lighthearted talk on her native home in Russia. Using photography, she pokes fun and shows the audience how we should never take ourselves too seriously.
I’m 27 years old. For Russian society, I’m an old maid and hopeless to ever get married. That’s why you see me in a Mexican fighter mask, in the wedding dress, all desperate in my garden. But remember, irony is the key, and this is actually to motivate girls to fight for goals, for dreams, and change stereotypes.
Zak Ebrahim
Zak Ebrahim, the son of one of the terrorists that planned the attack on the World Trade Centers, presents a talk on how a person that is brought up in a world of violence and dogma can choose another path. Despite being groomed for a life of hatred, he talks about how he chose another direction for his life and how others can do the same.
For the victims of terrorism, I will speak out against these senseless acts and condemn my father’s actions. And with that simple fact, I stand here as proof that violence isn’t inherent in one’s religion or race, and the son does not have to follow the ways of his father. I am not my father.
Shubhendu Sharma
Shubhendu Sharma, a reforestation expert, presents a lecture on a method that he has devised that has allowed for the process of the regrowth of forests to take place ten times faster than would be seen in the natural world. Because of this he says that he is hopeful that there might be hope for the destroyed forests to thrive once again.
This methodology, I believe, has a potential. By sharing, we can actually bring back our native forests.
Isabel Allende
Allende presents a challenge to her audience – that they live a life of passion, no matter what they’re age. Allende talks about some of the fears that she has faced herself as she’s aged and about the choice that she made to make sure that her life was lived fully and without regrets for what might have been.
And, on a final note, retirement in Spanish is jubilación. Jubilation. Celebration. We have paid our dues. We have contributed to society. Now it’s our time, and it’s a great time.Unless you are ill or very poor, you have choices. I have chosen to stay passionate,engaged with an open heart. I am working on it every day. Want to join me?
Jim Holt
Writer and philosopher, Jim Holt, talks about the origins of the question “Why does the universe exist?” and the path that has been taken by theorists to answer it.
So I’m going to talk about the mystery of existence, the puzzle of existence, where we are now in addressing it, and why you should care, and I hope you do care.
Shih Chieh Huang
Huang speaks on his various forms of art and his goal of giving people an experience to explore. In his talk he shows a helmet that records the movement of the eye, and then uses the blinks to turn on and off a nightlight. He also shows a large bioluminescent sculpture made from bottles, tupperware and garbage bags that moves and acts like a giant, bioluminescent sea creature.
The objects are dissected and disassembled as needed and reconstructed into experimental primitive organisms that reside on the fringes of evolutionary transformation: computer cooling fans are repurposed for locomotion. Tupperware serves as a skeletal framework; guitar tuner rewired to detect sound; and automatic night lights become a sensory input.
David Chalmers
Chalmers, explores the state of human consciousness and attempts to explain it as a movie that takes place in one’s mind. He states that he believes there is not a physical, scientific explanation for the human consciousness but rather argues that the mind is not confined to skin or skull, but plausibly may extend beyond them.
David Kwong
Kwong, a New York Times crossword puzzle creator and “illusion designer” specializing in film and television, presents a lecture on the human’s primal instinct to “solve”, discussing the relationship between puzzles and magic, the need to create order out of chaos.
I believe that magic and puzzles are the same thing, so I am trying to create this new breed of illusion and enigmas.
