TED Talk a Day - Conclusion

I really enjoyed this challenge.  We ingested a broad range of topics in 21 TED Talks over the past 3 weeks.  Which was your favorite?

Below is mine.  I chose this video because it's a viable option and really has the potential to transform underprivileged neighborhoods.  Living in Cleveland, and even growing up in Warren, let me witness the realities of poverty and its' negative effect.

Food is fuel.  We are what we eat.  Healthy, pesticide-free food -- available at low or no cost -- needs to be readily available for anybody that chooses to take it.  In this country, there is no reason that people need to go to bed hungry at night; or that the only option is fast food and gas stations.

What i like best about this video is that Ron Finley offers solutions.  Let's watch again.

TED Talk a Day - Day 21: I Got 99 Problems... Palsy is Just One by Maysoon Zayid

Here are my notes from Maysoon Zayid's I Got 99 Problems...

• My father’s mantra was, “You can do it, yes you can can!”
• Humans on the internet are scumbags
• People with disabilities are the largest minority in the world and we are the most underrepresented in entertainment

And here's the talk!

TED Talk a Day - Day 20: Perspective is Everything by Rory Sutherland

Notes from Rory Sutherland's Perspective is Everything:

• The power of reframing things cannot be overstated
• Things are not what they are; they are what we think they are
• Things are what we compare them to
• The circumstances of our lives may actually matter less to our happiness than the sense of control we feel over our lives
• Impressions have an insane effect on what we think and what we do
• There is an asymmetry in the way we treat creative, emotionally-driven, psychological ideas  versus the way we treat rational, numerical, spreadsheet-driven ideas
• The sweet spot lies where technology, economics, and psychology meet
• People believe that something that only does one thing is better at that thing than something that does that thing and something else
• Google is as much a psychological success as it is a technological one
• The likelihood that people will get to end is much greater when there is a milestone somewhere in the middle
• Where economists make the fundamental mistake is they think that money is money
• If your perception is much worse than your reality, what on earth are you doing trying to change the reality?
• Choose your frame of reference and the perceived value, and therefore, the actual value is completely transformed

Here's the talk:

TED Talk a Day - Day 19: A Guerilla Gardener in South Central LA by Ron Finley

Here's my notes from Ron Finley's A Guerilla Gardener in South Central LA:

• 26.5 Million Americans live in a Food Desert
• The drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys
• Obesity rate in my neighborhood is like 5 times higher than Beverly Hills, which is probably 8-10 miles away
• Food is the problem AND the solution
• The City of LA owns 26 square miles of vacant lots, the equivalent of 20 Central Parks, or enough room for 724,838,400 tomato plants
• Growing your own food is like printing your own money
• To change a community, you have to change the composition of the soil -- we are the soil
• Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do -- especially in the inner city
• If kids grow kale, kids eat kale
• I see kids of color and they’re on this track -- that’s designed for them -- that leads them to nowhere
• Gardening is a path to a sustainable life
• Free is not sustainable, the funny thing about sustainability...you have to sustain it
• Get gangsta with a shovel and let that be your weapon of choice
• Don’t call me if you want to have meetings and sit in cushy chairs and talk about doing shit.  If you want to meet with me, come to the garden with a shovel.
• PLANT SOME SHIT

Great information here. I'm looking forward to owning some property and growing a garden ASAP.

Here's the talk:

TED Talk a Day - Day 18: Inside the Secret Shipping Industry by Rose George

Here are my notes from Rose George's Inside the Secret Shipping Industry:

• At a given time, there were 544 seafarers being held hostage, on ships, often anchored off of the Somali coast in plain sight
• Shipping is as crucial to us as it’s ever been
• Shipping brings us 90% of world trade
• Shipping has quadrupled in size since 1970
• Shipping is the greenest method of transport
• The 15 largest ships pollute as much as all the cars in the world
• Shipping noise has contributed to damaging the acoustic habitats of ocean creatures

Watching this video made me realize how much we don't stop and think about things. If we were willing to look beyond "surface-level" the world would be a better place.

Here's the talk.

TED Talk a Day - Day 17: The Art of Bow-Making by Dong Woo Jang

Here are my notes from Dong Woo Jang's The Art of Bow-Making.

• “Our children spend over a month less in school than children in S. Korea every year” - Barack Obama
• The bow has helped drive human survival since prehistoric times
• Recurve tips can maximize the springiness when you draw and shoot the arrow
• Belly, withdrawn inward, (?) for higher draw weights which means more power
• Sinew used in the outer layer of the limb for maximum tension storage
• Horn used to store energy and compression
• I searched far and wide but never bothered to look close and near
• The grass is often greener on my [our] side of the fence, although we don’t realize it
• In order to make a good bow, a great amount of sensitivity is required. You need to console (?) and communicate with the wood material. Each fiber in the wood has it’s own reason and function for being.  And only through cooperation and harmony among them comes a great bow.
• My ideal world is a place where no one is left behind, where everyone is needed exactly where they are, like the fibers and the tendons in a bow.

Not sure why this one caught my eye. Upon reading the title i figured it was going to be taught from the perspective of an old sage, much like Jiro in Jiro Dreams of Sushi. However, it was cool to see such a young man able to spit some knowledge. Here's the talk.

TED Talk a Day - Day 16: What I Discovered in New York City Trash by Robin Nagle

The following are my notes from Robin Nagle's TED Talk, What I Discovered in New York City Trash:

• The campers who were too lazy to take out what they had brought in, who did they think would clean up after them?
• The Department of sanitation in New York City collects 11,000 tons of trash and 2,000 tons of recyclables each day
• Sanitation work is one of the ten most dangerous jobs in the country
• Sanitation workers are the most important labor force on the streets
• they are the first guardians of public health
• the economy needs them - if we can’t throw out the old stuff, we have no room for the new stuff
• the speed at which we are used to moving - we use items for the short-term and dispose of them
• Municipal waste (household garbage) accounts for [just] 3% of the nation’s waste-stream

And the talk...

TED Talk a Day - Day 15: Does Money Make You Mean? by Paul Piff

My notes from Paul Piff's TED talk, Does Money Make You Mean?

• How might the experience of being a privileged player in a rigged game change the way that you think about yourself and regard the other player?
• As the game went on, the rich players started to become ruder toward the other person, less and less sensitive to the plight of those poor, poor players and more and more demonstrative of their material success.
• At the end of the 15 minute (experiment) we asked the players to talk about their experience during the game.  And when the rich players talked about why’d they’d inevitably won, in this rigged game of Monopoly, they talked about what they’d done to buy those different properties and earn their success in the game.
• As a person’s levels of wealth increase, their feelings of compassion and empathy go down and their feelings of entitlement, of deservingness, and their ideology of self-interest increases
• Wealthy people are more likely to moralize greed being good and that the pursuit of self-interest is favorable and moral
• In one study, the poor participants (making less than $25k a year) gave 44% more of the money to a stranger than did the wealthy participants whose incomes exceeded $150k per year
• In another study, the wealthy people were more likely to cheat, sometimes by 3 or 4 times as much
• Participants who felt rich took twice as much candy that was supposed to be reserved for children
• As the expensiveness of a driver’s car increased, their tendency to break the law also increased
• Wealthier individuals are more likely to lie in negotiations and to endorse unethical behavior at work
• The wealthier you are, the more likely you are to pursue a vision of personal success, of achievement and accomplishment, to the detriment of others around you
• The top 20% of the population own 90% of the total wealth in this country
• The “American Dream” is becoming increasingly unattainable for an increasing majority of us

Here's the talk.

TED Talk a Day - Day 14: The Difference Between Winning and Succeeding

Notes from John Wooden's TED talk, The Difference Between Winning and Succeeding:

• You should never try to be better than someone else
• Never cease trying to be the best you can be, for that is under your control
• 3 rules
• never be late, be neat and clean
• not one word of profanity
• never criticize a teammate
• in whatever you're doing, you must be patient and have faith
• there is no progress without change

Here's the talk.

TED Talk a Day - Day 13: All It Takes is 10 Mindful Minutes by Andy Puddicombe

Here are my notes from Andy Puddicombe's TED talk, All It Takes is 10 Mindful Minutes:

• Our mind is our most valuable and precious resource, through which we experience every single moment of our life
• We are so distracted that we are no longer present in the world that we live
• Our minds are lost in thought 47% of the time
• Meditation is familiarizing ourselves with the present moment
• Meditation offers the opportunity, the potential, to step back and get a different perspective
• We can’t change every little thing that happens to us in life but we can change the way that we experience it

Here's the talk:

TED Talk a Day - Day 11: How to Use One Paper Towel by Joe Smith

I heard about this video from a friend of mine.  I'll admit that i haven't fully implemented the one towel rule.  However, after watching this talk i'm going to make a better attempt.  Here are my notes:

• 571,230,000 pounds of paper will be saved each year by Americans by adopting this 1 paper towel rule
• SHAKE -- FOLD
• Shake your hands 12 times, fold the paper towel in half, and dry your hands
• The fold is important because it allows interstitial suspension

And the talk:

TED Talk a Day - Day 10: Want to be happy? Be grateful by David Steindl-Rast

I'm noticing a "happiness" theme in many of the talks that i've been watching.  Don't know what that says about me...  Anyways, here are my notes:

• All of us want to be happy
• It is not happiness that makes us grateful, it's gratefulness that makes us happy
• Gratefulness comes from something that is valuable to us and given to us as a gift
• By experiencing, by becoming aware, that every moment is a given moment, It's a gift.  You haven't earned it, you haven't brought it about in any way, you have no way of assuring that there will be another moment given to you, and yet that's the most valuable thing that could ever be given to us.  This moment, will all the opportunity that it contains.  If we didn't have this present moment, we wouldn't have any opportunity to do or experience anything.  And this moment is a gift.
• Opportunity is the gift within every gift
• Most of the time what is given to us is opportunity to enjoy and we only miss it because we are rushing through life and we are not stopping to see the opportunity
• The road to peace is not a sprint, but it's more like a marathon
• Stop -- Look -- Go
• We have to build "stop signs" into our lives. (reminding us to slow down and enjoy the present moment)
• Nothing makes us more happy than when all of us are happy
• When we open our hearts to the opportunities, the opportunities invite us to DO something
• If you are grateful, you are not fearful.  If you're not fearful you're not violent.  If you are grateful, you act out of a sense of enough -- and not a sense of scarcity, and you're willing to share.  If you are grateful, you're enjoying the differences between people and you are respectful to everybody.  That changes this "power pyramid" under which we live.  It doesn't make for equality but it makes for equal respect and that is the important thing.  The future will be a network, not a pyramid.
• Grateful people are joyful people.

Enjoy the talk.

TED Talk a Day - Day 9: The World's Oldest Living Things by Rachel Sussman

I happened upon Rachel Sussman's The World's Oldest Living Things by Rachel Sussman and i'm glad i did.  Here are the things she mentioned:

• llareta - up to 3000 years old (yo)
• jomon sugi - 2180 - 7000 yo
• lichen r. geographicum - 3000 yo
• armillaria death rings - 2400 yo
• brain coral - 2000 yo
• clonal quaking aspen - 80,000 yo
• spruce gran picea - 9550 yo
• fortingall yew - 2 - 5000 yo
• sagole baobab - 2000 yo
• welwitschia mirabilis - 2000 yo
• underground forest - 13,000 yo
• clonal creosote bush - 12,000 yo
• clonal mojave yucca - 12,000+ yo
• siberian actinobacteria - 400,000 - 600,000 yo

Here's the video, enjoy!

TED Talk a Day - Day 8: Our Natural Sleep Cycle by Jessa Gamble

Stumbled upon this little gem by Jessa Gamble titled Our Natural Sleep Cycle.  Here are my notes:

• Life evolved under conditions of light and darkness
• The Body Clock
• When people are living without any sort of artificial light at all, they sleep twice every night.  They go to bed around 8pm until midnight and then again from about 2am until sunrise -- in between they have 2 hours of meditative quiet in bed.  During this time there is a surge of prolactin, the likes of which a modern day never sees.  The people in these studies report feeling so awake during the daytime that they realize they are experiencing true wakefulness for the first time in their lives.
• Our modern ways of doing things have their advantages, but we should understand the costs

For such a short video, i had plenty of notes.  Check it out for yourself.

TED Talk a Day - Day 7: Smash Fear, Learn Anything by Tim Ferriss

I'm a big fan of Tim Ferriss so i decide to watch his talk.  Here are my notes:

• The best results in life are often held back by false constraints and untested assumptions
• It is oftentimes what we do not how we do it that is the determining factor
• Parkinson's Law - the perceived complexion of a task will expand to fill the time you allot it
• Fear is an indicator.  Sometimes it shows you what you shouldn't do, more often than not it shows you what you should do.
• What is the worst thing that could happen?

Enjoy the talk.

TED Talk a Day - Day 6: Beats that Defy Boxes by Reggie Watts

No notes, just enjoy!

TED Talk a Day - Day 5: How to Separate Fact from Fiction Online by Markham Nolan

This one caught my eye; here are my notes:

• Journalists are relying on finding materials from credible online stories to be the first to break news
• How he verified the validity of the lightning strike, using free online tools:
• Spokeo to look up her name (which happened to be her YouTube username)
• Wolfram|Alpha to check the weather in her location that day
• White Pages to find her phone number and address
• Google Maps to get an aerial view of her house and to match it with clues in the video
• Called her to verify that the video was legit
• Truth is never binary.  Truth is a value.  Truth is emotional, it's fluid, and above all -- it's human.

Hope the notes were enough of a teaser to get you to check out the video!  Share your favorite parts in the comments.

TED Talk a Day - Day 4: The Habits of Happiness by Matthieu Ricard

Here are my notes from Matthieu Ricard's 2004 TED talk, The Habits of Happiness.

• We have a deep, profound desire for wellbeing/happiness
• Pleasure and happiness is not the same thing
• Wellbeing is a deep sense of serenity and fulfillment, a state that pervades all emotional states
• An act of unselfish generosity gives us a sense of adequation with our deep nature and we would like to be like that all the time
• Behind every single thought there is bare consciousness, pure awareness
• There is a possibility for change because all emotions are fleeting
• Mind training is based on the idea that two opposite mental factors cannot happen at the same time
• If you look at the thought of anger it will vanish like frost under the morning sun
• Brain plasticity
• Mind training matters.  It will determine the quality of every instance of our life
• We spend surprisingly little time taking care of what matters most.  The way our mind functions

Here's the talk.  Leave your favorite moments in the comments section below!

TED Talk a Day - Day 3: A Roadmap to End Aging by Aubrey de Grey

I saw Aubrey de Grey's name and recognized it so i decided to give his talk a watch.  Here are my notes:

• Who are we to impose our values on the future?
• The incremental advances add up to something that is not incremental anymore
• If you think I'm wrong you'd better damn well go find out about why you think I'm wrong.

There it is, short and sweet.  The speed of his delivery and his accent might've had something to do with that.  After watching the video below, i found this more recent talk he did at a TEDx event.  I'll save it for after the challenge.

Here's the talk.  Share your favorite quotes in the comments below!

TED Talk a Day - Day 2: The Surprising Science of Happiness by Dan Gilbert

Happiness is an aim of mine so when i stumbled upon Dan Gilbert's The Surprising Science of Happiness i knew i had to give it a watch.  Here are my notes:

• Prefrontal cortex - experience stimulators
• Impact bias is the tendency to over-estimate the hedonic impact of future events
• Synthetic happiness is what we make when we don't get what we want
• "A mall full of Zen monks is not going to be particularly profitable because they don't want stuff enough
• Free-choice paradigm
• We like to keep our options open when we'd be happier making a decision and sticking with it while leaving the other behind

Feel free to share your notes in the comments section below. Enjoy!