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If you’ve ever had a conversation with an impassioned educator, you know that they are overflowing with brilliant, resourceful, innovative, and – in all likelihood – extremely under-circulated ideas.

We celebrate and elevate educator ideas for the sake of improving the experience of students and educators around the world. Over the course of the past year, participating educators hone in on their most important idea in education and develop it into a TED-style talk.

Below, four educators share their big ideas, covering topics from simple apps that promote classroom equity to an impassioned plea for more teacher collaboration in the classroom.

STACEY ROSHAN

How to use simple tech apps to support ALL learners

When Stacey Roshan was in high school, she feared the moment she might be called on in class. A self-described introvert and perfectionist, she needed time to process and formulate a response before she was ready to share. Now, as a math teacher, Stacey leverages technology to create more equitable and empowering forums for discussion in the classroom—shifting away from a culture that praises the first person to raise their hand to one where every individual has a platform to make their ideas seen and heard.

LISA WINER (TED-Ed Innovative Educator)

How to create lessons that showcase students’ diverse cultures

For so long, the norm in teaching has been to assimilate students: instructing each individual in the same way, regardless of their cultural background. Culturally sustaining pedagogy challenges that narrative, arguing that preserving student backgrounds and embracing diversity causes students to feel more comfortable, relaxed, and willing to learn. In this talk, Lisa Winer shares several lessons she uses in her math classroom that combine the principles of culturally sustaining pedagogy with self-determination theory to engage and energize her diverse group of students.

TAKERU NAGAYOSHI

Why teachers are just like YouTubers

In a 2019 survey of US kids aged 8-12, one third cited being a blogger or YouTuber as their top dream job. In another survey of high school students, only 5% indicated that they wanted to become a teacher. But 2020 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year Takeru Nagayoshi believes that great teachers and great YouTubers are cut from the same cloth, and the more we treat educators with the same respect and prestige that we show to YouTubers, the better chance we have of attracting new talent to the profession.

KIM PRESHOFF (TED-Ed Innovative Educator)

How teacher collaboration strengthens the classroom

When COVID-19 hit schools, many parents and educators worried about the isolating effects of quarantine on students. But longtime educator Kim Preshoff notes that, for decades, teachers have been isolating themselves in their classrooms—often creating lessons, refining skills, and thinking in silos. In this talk, Kim draws on her background as an AP environmental teacher to make the case that the health of an ecosystem is its diversity—and that collaboration between educators in the classroom strengthens outcomes for teachers and students alike.

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Each educator featured here participated in TED Masterclass — a professional learning program that helps people identify, develop and share their ideas with each other … and the world.

Want to bring the TED Masterclass program to your school, district or organization? Learn more here: http://bit.ly/tedmasterclass

TED

The world is continuing to experiment with virtual events, and to recognize that we need ideas and dialogue that can connect us more than ever.

So in June 2020, we created the TED-Ed Building Together event to celebrate educators’ ideas in the TED-Ed community. District leaders, principals, teachers, organization leaders, program directors, and more joined from all over the United States and all over the world.

To put this event together, we first identified what was most important to our audience during this time and decided our format and platform. We then surfaced important ideas that were submitted by educators through the TED Masterclass course. Next, we came up with a run of show: we decided to highlight Talk clips from five amazing educators, interview the speakers after showing their Talk clips, and create two spaces for breakout discussions during the 90 minute event.

Here are the five incredible educators that presented at the TED-Ed Building Together event. Take a look at their ideas:

What we lose when we stop telling our stories – Harpreet Parhar

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion training is vital, but are we missing something when we prioritize standardized curricula over personal storytelling? Harpreet Parhar’s suggestion for finding our way back to the human side of education? Stories.

Impact students by investing in relationships – Quentin Lee

What do we teach our students through the relationships we build with them? Today, as a principal and school administrator, Quentin Lee sees firsthand the impact meaningful relationships can have on students.

4 paths for productive conversations about bias – Amber Cabral

Diversity and inclusion strategist Amber Cabral gives 4 tips to help you have healthy and productive conversations surrounding identity and bias.

When you’re an educator, ignorance is not an excuse – George Iannuzzi

The key to being an educator students can trust? Be proactive in your own learning. Educator George Iannuzzi learned from his own experiences not to wait for students to teach adults the difference between right and wrong.

The real test? Bouncing back from disaster – Lucio Padilla

Principal Lucio Padilla was determined to bring his school’s test scores up, but in the face of a natural disaster he learned what success really looks like.

Leading up to the event, we also collected reflections from community members from around the world to acknowledge and reflect on the difficulties that the year 2020 has presented to students, educators, and families everywhere. We turned these reflections into short videos on the resilience demonstrated by educators teaching during a pandemic and collected educators thoughts on how we can all grow and chart a path forward.

“Giving us a chance to get together on a platform like this can really allow educators to respond to what is happening in the world in real time (as opposed to a conference on a larger scale in which we may have to wait for months to learn or have conversations.) I had a vivid daydream yesterday at one point during the event of TED-Ed creating these kind of “pop-up” type experiences to allow educators to come together as necessary when new challenges arise in our world…I really believe that having different types of opportunities for us to share our ideas…matches up so well with a major concept that educators believe in: differentiation.” 

– George Iannuzi, District of the Chathams in Chatham, New Jersey

The Building Together event was a chance to honor educators, their ideas, and the hard work they do every single day. While different from our usual events, Building Together allowed us to continue sharing ideas to inspire discussion and reflection among our community. We can’t wait to see what your virtual events look like!

To also see how student ideas are being celebrated in the virtual space, check out this blogpost about our TED-Ed Student Talk community’s virtual events.

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We — Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson — are climate experts who focus on solutions, leadership and building community.

We are a natural and a social scientist, a Northerner and a Southerner. We’re also both lifelong inter-disciplinarians in love with words and the cofounders of The All We Can Save Project, in support of women climate leaders.

Our collaboration has led us to read widely and deeply about the climate crisis that’s facing humanity.

Here are 15 of our favorite writings on climate — this eclectic list contains books, essays, a newsletter, a scientific paper, even legislation— and they’re all ones we wholeheartedly recommend:

1. All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis coedited by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine Wilkinson

We had the honor of editing this collection of 41 essays, 17 poems, quotes and original illustrations — so naturally we love it! But you don’t have to take our word for it. As Rolling Stone said: “Taken together, the breadth of their voices forms a mosaic that honors the complexity of the climate crisis like few, if any, books on the topic have done yet. … The book is a feast of ideas and perspectives, setting a big table for the climate movement, declaring all are welcome.” All We Can Save nourished, educated and transformed us as we shaped its pages, and we can’t wait for it to do the same for you.

2. Ghost Fishing: An Eco-justice Poetry Anthology edited by Melissa Tuckey

We count ourselves among those who can’t make sense of the climate crisis without the aid of poets, who help us to see more clearly, feel our feelings, catch our breath, and know we’re not alone. This anthology is a magnificent quilt of poems that are made for this moment and all its intersections.

3. “We Don’t Have to Halt Climate Action to Fight Racism” by Mary Annaïse Heglar

“Climate People,” as she likes to call us, should be grateful that Mary Annaïse Heglar decided a few years back to pick up her pen once more as a writer. All of her essays are necessary reading, but this one is especially so, crafted from Mary’s perspective as a “Black Climate Person.” It’s a powerful articulation of the inextricability of a society that values Black lives and a livable planet for all.

4. Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change by Sherri Mitchell — Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset

Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset means “she who brings the light,” and Sherri Mitchell does exactly that in this incredible tapestry of a book, which begins with Penawahpskek Nation creation stories and concludes with guidance on what it means to live in a time of prophecy. It is rare that a book so generously shares wisdom, much less wisdom about how we got to where we are, what needs mending, and what a path forward that’s grounded in ancestral ways of knowing and being might look like.

5. Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds by adrienne maree brown

How lucky are we to be contemporaries of adrienne maree brown? Very. This is a book that we come back to time and time again to ground and enliven our work. We love this line from her about oak trees: “Under the earth, always, they reach for each other, they grow such that their roots are intertwined and create a system of strength that is as resilient on a sunny day as it is in a hurricane.” That’s the kind of community we’re trying to nurture.

6. “Circumstances Affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays” by Eunice Newton Foote

Eunice Newton Foote rarely gets the credit she’s due — and she deserves a lot of credit. In fact, we like to think of her as the first climate feminist. In 1856, she connected the dots between carbon dioxide and planetary warming, but science and history forgot (dismissed?) her until recently. This is her original paper, which was published in The American Journal of Science and Arts. Foote was also a signatory to the women’s rights manifesto created at Seneca Falls in 1848, alongside visionaries like Frederick Douglass.

7. The Drawdown Review by Project Drawdown

Full disclosure: Katharine is The Drawdown Review’s editor-in-chief and principal writer. But Ayana fully endorses this recommendation — it’s a valuable resource as we charge ahead toward climate solutions. We all need to know what tools are in the toolbox, and The Drawdown Review is the latest compendium of climate solutions that already exist. This publication is beautifully designed, grounded in research, and you can access it for free.

8. The Green New Deal Resolution by the 116th US Congress

It seems that almost everyone has an opinion about the Green New Deal, but few people have read the actual piece of legislation: House Resolution 109: Recognizing the Duty of the Federal Government to Create a Green New Deal, which was introduced by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey. The big secret is that it’s only 14 pages! It makes a clear, compelling and concise case for what comprehensive climate policy should look like in the US. We’d love for everyone to read it so we can all have a more grounded discussion about what we might agree and disagree with and chart a course forward.

9. “Think This Pandemic Is Bad? We Have Another Crisis Coming” by Rhiana Gunn-Wright

Speaking of policy … this op-ed, penned by Rhiana Gunn-Wright, who is one of the policy leads for the Green New Deal, makes the connections between climate, justice, COVID-19 and our recession as clear as day. She lays out an ironclad case for the the need to address these issues together, and why. As she writes, “We need to design the stimulus not only to help the US economy recover but to also become more resilient to the climate crisis, the next multitrillion-dollar crisis headed our way.”

10. “How Can We Plan for a Future in California?” by Leah Stokes

In the midst of raging fires and continuing pandemic, UC Santa Barbara Professor Leah Stokes, who’s based in Santa Barbara, lays it plain in her piece: “I don’t want to live in a world where we have to decide which mask to wear for which disaster, but this is the world we are making. And we’ve only started to alter the climate. Imagine what it will be like when we’ve doubled or tripled the warming, as we are on track to do.” As she and others have been pointing out, journalists have been failing to make the critical connection: “What’s happening in California has a name: climate change.”

11. HEATED by Emily Atkin

This is the reading rec that keeps on giving, literally — it’s a daily newsletter that brings climate accountability journalism right to your inbox. It’s chock full of smarts, spunk, truth-telling and super timely writing that isn’t hemmed in by media overlords. If you’re pissed off about the climate crisis, Emily Atkin made HEATED just for you.

12. The July 20 2020 Issue of TIME Magazine

This entire issue, titled “One Last Chance”, is dedicated to coverage of climate, and it includes wise words from so many luminaries from politician Stacey Abrams to soil scientist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe, with a lead piece by Time’s climate journalist Justin Worland. Ayana also has a piece in this issue called “We Can’t Solve the Climate Crisis Unless Black Lives Matter.” To see all of this collected in one place — insights on topics from oceans to agriculture to politics to activism — was heartening. We hope there’s much more of this to come, from many magazines.

13. “Wakanda Doesn’t Have Suburbs” by Kendra Pierre Louis

A pop-culture connoisseur and expert storyteller, Kendra Pierre Louis takes up the topic of climate stories in her essay — the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good, she explains, are all too rare, and that’s a big problem because stories are powerful. Black Panther may be our best story of living thoughtfully and well on this planet, not least thanks to an absence of carbon-spewing suburbs. It’s going to take much better narratives, and many more of them, if humans are to, as she puts it, “repair our relationship with the Earth and re-envision our societies in ways that are not just in keeping with our ecosystems but also make our lives better.” !

14. “We Need Courage, Not Hope, to Face Climate Change” by Kate Marvel PhD

This piece by NASA climate scientist Kate Marvel is, as the kids say, a whole mood. Hope is not enough, hope is often passive, and that won’t get us where we need to go. Pretty much everyone who works on climate is constantly being asked what gives us hope — how presumptuous to assume we have it! But what we do have is courage. In spades. As Marvel writes in this poetic piece: “We need courage, not hope. Grief, after all, is the cost of being alive. We are all fated to live lives shot through with sadness, and are not worth less for it. Courage is the resolve to do well without the assurance of a happy ending.”

15. Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis

Admittedly, this last recommendation isn’t something to read, but to watch and listen to. This playlist of TED Talks by women climate leaders (who were all contributors to our anthology All We Can Save — read about it above) will inspire you, deepen your understanding, connect the dots and help you find where you might fit into the heaps of climate work that needs doing. It includes poignant talks by Colette Pichon Battle and Christine Nieves Rodriguez, which are respectively about communities in Louisiana and Puerto Rico recovering from hurricanes and rebuilding resilience and which broke our hearts open. We were so moved we invited them to adapt their talks into essays for All We Can Save. Christine’s piece — “Community is Our Best Chance” — is the final essay in the book and the note we want to end on here. It’s not about what each of us can do as individuals to address the climate crisis; it’s about what we can do together. Building community around solutions is the most important thing.

Watch Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s TED Talk here: 

Watch Katharine Wilkinson’s TED Talk here: 

Learn more about the global Countdown initiative, explore the lineup of speakers, and watch the event live on October 10th.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson PhD is a marine biologist, policy expert and Brooklyn native. She is founder of the nonprofit think tank Urban Ocean Lab, founder and CEO of the consultancy Ocean Collectiv and cocreator and cohost of the Spotify/Gimlet podcast How to Save a Planet. She coedited the anthology All We Can Save and cofounded The All We Can Save Project in support of women climate leaders. Her mission is to build community around climate solutions. Find her @ayanaeliza.

Katharine Wilkinson PhD is an author, strategist, teacher and one of 15 “women who will save the world,” according to Time magazine. Her writings on climate include The Drawdown Review, the New York Times bestseller Drawdown and Between God & Green. She is coeditor of All We Can Save and co founder of The All We Can Save Project, in support of women climate leaders. Wilkinson is a former Rhodes Scholar. Find her @DrKWilkinson.

This piece was adapted for TED-Ed from this Ideas article.

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This year, school has become a unique hybrid of in-person and remote learning. How can we ensure teachers and parents have the tools to create a positive learning experience for students? TED-Ed has a host of free online resources available to help navigate this learning period.

Check them out here:

1. TED-Ed Lessons

At its heart, ed.ted.com is a library of 1,000+ educational videos called TED-Ed Lessons. It’s also a unique platform to create your own multiple choice and discussion questions for any YouTube video or existing TED-Ed lesson.

Each existing TED-Lesson comes with a quiz, a dig deeper section to further learning and curiosity, and open-ended discussion questions.

You can customize a TED-Ed Animation, TED Talk lesson, Best of the Web, or use the Lesson Creator tool to craft your own lesson using any video on YouTube.

Learn how to use the Lesson Creator here!

2. Student Talks program

The Student Talks program supports students as they discover, explore, and present their big ideas in the form of short, TED-style talks. Students work together to discuss and celebrate creative ideas, and since the pandemic began, many TED-Ed Clubs have been meeting virtually, and some have even hosted virtual events to present their finished talks.

Use TED-Ed’s flexible curriculum as a guide and help inspire tomorrow’s speakers and leaders. Learn how to get started here!

Watch some of the incredible and inspiring Talks on our Student Talks YouTube channel.

3. Newsletters!

Sign up for one or sign up for both!

The weekly newsletter delivers TED-Ed content to your inbox every weekend. It’s your one-stop shop for everything from the previous week including TED-Ed Animations, TED Talks Lessons, TED-Ed Best of Web and blog posts. Don’t have time to check ed.ted.com every day? This newsletter is a perfect solution.

Sign up for the weekly newsletter here

The daily newsletter sends our new lessons straight to your inbox 3 days a week as soon as they publish, and we’ll sprinkle in some hits from the archive in between!

Sign up for the daily newsletter here

4. Subject specific playlists

Looking to bolster your curriculum? TED-Ed Animations help bring history, science, nature, math (and more!) to life, and every short video is complete with its own customizable lesson to fit your students’ needs.

Check out a selection of these playlists below:

Earth School

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, an unprecedented coalition of over fifty environmental and education experts collaborated to launch a 30 day interactive adventure for students around the world to celebrate, explore, and connect with nature. Get started here!

And if you’re looking for a way to engage students in community cleanup efforts and reducing plastic waste, check out All_Together Cleanup, an initiative that helps us understand how plastic waste affects our natural world, and how you can take action to eliminate it. Join the challenge here!

Think Like A Coder

This is a 10-episode series that challenges viewers with programming puzzles as the main characters— a girl and her robot companion— attempt to save a world that has been plunged into turmoil. New and experienced coders welcome!

Can you solve this riddle?

This series is a head-scratching mix of classic riddles, logic puzzles, and mathematics-based challenges. Each riddle contains the rules, hints, and a place to pause to figure it out for yourself before the solution is revealed. Get your class going with these brain teasers!

Why should you read

Kurt Vonnegut. Sylvia Plath. Octavia Butler. Dickens. Haruki Murakami. And so on and so forth. This series exposes viewers to literature old and new; diving into both authors and their works.

There’s a Poem for That

Bereavement. Homesickness. A first kiss. Experiences like these transcend our rational understanding of the world. In such moments, we need poetry. This award-winning series features animated interpretations of poems both old and new that give language to some of life’s biggest feelings.

History Vs.

What if we could put history’s most controversial figures on trial? On what side of history do people like Cleopatra, Napoleon, and Che Guevara fall? It’s up to you to decide.

A day in the life…

What was life like for a teenager in ancient Rome? Or a young samurai in training? How did a doctor in ancient Egypt heal her patients? Explore the ancient world through the eyes of its inhabitants and witness a day in their life.

Myths from around the world

Discover mythology from cultures around the world. From the more familiar stories of Hercules and Thor, to the tragedy of Orpheus and transformation of the White Snake— there’s a story for everyone.

Try out TED Masterclass!

TED-Ed also has an app to help you create your own TED-style Talk! This highly rated app is TED’s official guide to public speaking. You can download and preview the app for free, and if you choose to purchase the course, you’ll be helping support TED-Ed’s nonprofit mission to bring free high quality educational materials to the world.

Alice Mollon

When we come thisclose to triumph, we gain potent energy that we can use to fuel later success, says business school professor Monica Wadhwa.

When we daydream about being at the Olympics or the Academy Awards, we usually picture ourselves as the winners — standing there tearfully while we’re given a gold medal or golden statuette — and not as one of the stoic, stunned also-rans.

But maybe we should imagine ourselves as a runner-up. That’s because, according to Monica Wadhwa, marketing professor at Temple University’s Fox School of Business in Philadelphia, “not winning is, in fact, more powerful than winning,”

She has spent nearly a decade researching this seemingly paradoxical idea, motivated by her childhood experiences. “When I was growing up in India, there was a time when I was addicted to lotteries,” says Wadhwa. What intrigued her were those moments in which she’d buy a ticket, get five out of six winning numbers, and find herself more fired up than ever to play again. She recalls, “I should have been giving up, but it was just the opposite.”

Well, the lottery-loving girl grew up to be a researcher, who was curious to see if this effect extended to others. Through a series of experiments, she has found that people who came close to winning gained greater motivation to succeed in their next efforts than either the winners or the clear losers.

In one experiment, participants played a cellphone game that had a grid of 16 tiles. Half of them covered diamonds; half, rocks. Clicking on a tile revealed a diamond or rock, and if they got eight diamonds without uncovering a rock, they’d win the game and receive a reward. After they played, participants were given a quick survey to evaluate how engaging the game was. They were told to bring their completed surveys to a booth down the corridor and that they’d get a thank-you gift (a chocolate bar) when they did. The researchers secretly recorded the speed of the subjects as they walked down the corridor to return the survey and receive the chocolate.

The near-winners — the people who got seven diamonds, just short of the needed eight — walked significantly faster than the winners and the clear losers. Wadhwa’s hypothesis for why this happened: “You have these non-winners [playing the game and] inching toward the reward. Their motivation is getting intensified, but then they miss it … So what happens to this motivation? It hooks on, gives you the energy for the next goal that you have.”

What about the winners? Wadhwa says, “The winners inch toward their goal, they achieve it, and their motivation is satisfied.” Which leaves them with no need for them to strive for anything else.

But Wadhwa warns, “You’ve got to use the fire in your belly wisely.” As she puts it, “You could use this motivation energy and apply it to that next big project you’re working on — or you could squander this away on another kind of reward, like a night out at a club.”

The results of another experiment by Wadhwa bear this out. She and researchers stationed themselves at a fashion-accessory store, where they gave shoppers scratch-off lottery tickets. If they scratched off six adjacent 8s, they’d get a $20 gift certificate. They were told to shop after they played; as they exited the store, they’d show their store receipt to the researchers and receive a small gift. The scratch cards were rigged so that participants ended up in one of three groups: losers (who got only three 8s), near-winners (five 8s) and winners (six 8s).

Their findings: The near-winners ended up shopping more — and spending more money — than the winners and losers. Wadhwa says, “Their activated energy moved on and hooked on to the shopping goal.”

So how can we harness this unique energy in our own lives? Wadhwa says, “When you’re setting goals for yourself, set goals that are slightly beyond your reach.”

Wadhwa, who’s worked with companies to employ these insights, urges managers to try this with their employees. Set targets just outside their grasp but “not so hard that they get demoralized and quit.” She cautions, “You need to understand the capacity of your team members” to figure out the appropriate objective.

Wadhwa has another suggestion for managers: Stop focusing so much on star performers. Instead, tap into the “motivational juice” of non-star performers. For example, with a sales team, she says, “Compare the [non-star] salesperson with the next best performer, so they know they were so close to them … This thought can get their motivation flying.”

Parents can even use this with their children, according to Wadhwa. When kids lose — whether in sports or in school — point out to them how close they came to winning.

If we can learn to tap into this energy, we’ll find, as Wadhaw puts it, that “winners really do not take it all.”

Watch her TEDxINSEAD talk here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daniella Balarezo is a Media Fellow at TEDx. She is also a writer and comedian based in NYC.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Priya Mistry

People and businesses routinely use five techniques to get us to do what they want, says presenter and broadcaster Alexis Conran. Here’s how to recognize them.

Most of us get fooled or conned on a regular basis. No, we’re probably not falling for Ponzi schemes or those “send us your password” phishing emails. But we set aside our better judgement all the time in less dramatic instances — we go for the “buy two, get one free” offer at the drugstore and walk away with more band-aids than we can use in 20 years; we order the chef’s daily special because it sounds, well, special but it’s really the restaurant’s way to off-load fish on the verge of going bad; or we get distracted from an alarming increase in crime in our community by a press conference from the mayor where she touts a promising rise in high-school test scores.

What’s fascinating about examples like these is that while they’re perpetrated by other people or entities, the real work of persuasion largely takes place in our heads, according to UK-based presenter and broadcaster Alexis Conran. “Magic and sales and scams and political beliefs all happen in the mind of the spectator,” Conran points out in a TEDxBerlin talk.

Conran’s career has taken him from actor to magician to the BBC show The Real Hustle where he and a team used confidence tricks to fool passersby and then explained how they worked. They deployed a particular set of superpowers — a set of tools used by many people and organizations in our everyday lives. “Their superpower is using the right words, asking the right questions, and putting people in the right situation to do exactly as they’re told,” he explains.

Because the process of being fooled takes place inside our minds, it’s up to us to realize when we’re being taken. How? By being alert — not overly jumpy, suspicious or cynical, just aware — to the methods deployed by businesses, politicians, and others that nudge us into doing or thinking what they’d like us to to do or think. “I’m not saying they’re all crooked, I’m not saying they’re all criminals, but they’re all trying to do the same thing — they’re trying to sell you on a story, to get you to buy into their narrative,” explains Conran.

Here are the five principles used to get us to buy into their stories:

Misdirection

Misdirection is an age-old tactic used by thieves of all kinds. It’s why pickpockets snatch wallets when they know we’re occupied by an outdoors concert or fireworks display or by reading our phones or books while we commute.

Misdirection can occur on a more subtle level, too. It’s why companies and governments often release bad news on Fridays or before major holidays — they’re obliged to announce a weak earnings report or the so-so unemployment rate but they’re hoping that the weekend or holiday distracts us from fixating on it.

In the run-up to the Brexit vote in 2016 — as journalist Carole Cadwalladr so memorably found and explained in a TED Talk — specially targeted Facebook ads led people to believe that Turkey would be joining the EU, which would cause Turkish migrants to flood into the UK. This was not true, but pro-Brexit forces used distractions like these to influence people to vote “yes.”

Time pressure and opportunity

Both of these are classic sales techniques, and they’re frequently combined for maximum impact. It’s why supermarkets have ongoing special offers. Because a “buy one, get one free” promotion (opportunity) on canned tuna lasts just one week (time pressure), we feel like we must stock up right now.

Similarly, time-specific sales like Black Friday and Cyber Monday also lead us to spend more than we typically would things — these made-up “days” create an artificial but extremely real feeling of urgency in us. “Putting people under pressure makes them make mistakes … it’s much easier to manipulate people when they’re acting under pressure than if you give them time to examine the facts,” says Conran.

Opportunity also assumes quieter forms. Think of all the “free” social-media accounts, online services and newsletters that you’re signed up for. In truth, no one is out there offering us something for nothing. Whether it’s our money, our data or our time, we’re always giving back something in return.

Social compliance and social proof

Social compliance refers to how “we respond to people in authority and to badges and uniforms,” according to Conran. While this is essential to the functioning of our society — it’s why the sight of a police car can make drivers immediately slow down — but it also leaves us vulnerable to people like Bernie Madoff who rely on the appearance of competence and expertise to disguise what they’re really doing or the abusers who depend on their profession — take the clergy, for example — to evade notice.

Social proof refers to how “we constantly look to others around us for clues as to how to behave,” says Conran. “That’s a very, very powerful thing because as a hustler, I know that all I have to do is manipulate your environment to get you to behave the way I want you to.”

You can see social proof in action at the airport. Even though it’s nowhere near a flight’s boarding time, most of us scan the people around us to know when to start queueing up. After a few passengers stand near the gate, more of us will get up to join them and the number quickly grows. Social proof also fuels much of the behavior on Facebook, Twitter and other platforms — similar to a snowball growing in size as it rolls downhill, a large number of “like”s will attract more “like”s as people click their approval upon glimpsing how many others in their network are doing so.

Now that you know these five tactics, you can use them to spot scams and to recognize when you’re being manipulated. This attitude doesn’t just apply to our interactions with other people. “Be careful when you read headlines and news,” says Conran. “Be careful when you feel emotionally moved by the headline, and be even more careful when you agree with the headline or when the headline makes you happy, because that’s when you need to watch out.”

Watch his TEDxBerlin talk here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alexis Conran is a presenter, broadcaster and writer based in the UK. Find out more about him at alexisconran.com

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Molly Mendoza

Many people want to help in the ongoing struggle for equality and equity, but they don’t know what to do.

Activist DeRay Mckesson explains how we can all show up and stand up:

1. Own your privilege.

“Acknowledge that there is a privilege you have [if you’re white], and use the privilege to disrupt that privilege itself. I’ve had people say to me, ‘Well, I didn’t benefit from white privilege.’ [You need to realize] every Band-Aid in this country looks like your skin and not mine, baby dolls look like you, and the color ‘nude’ is your skin color. That’s what the privilege of whiteness looks like — it’s not about what you’ve done; it’s about what society does when it treats white as normal. It’s about you saying, ‘I have privilege, I have power, and I will seek out how I can use that privilege and those resources. I’ll ask marginalized people, ‘What is the help you need?’ as opposed to just saying, ’I think this is what you should do’.”

2. Talk about what’s uncomfortable and what’s important.

“There’s no winning in silence. If we allow white supremacist ideology to spread without being challenged, people continue to replicate it. And the question is: what do you do? You need to talk about it — you can’t change what you don’t talk about. And while we’ve had a great conversation [in the last year] about the symbols and about Confederate monuments, there is still so much work to be done that we actually don’t talk about — like what to do about police violence, or bail, or rehabilitation for people who are coming out of prison, or the opioid crisis. You don’t always see the trauma — it doesn’t show up in the same way as a man running a car through a crowd of people — but the impact on people’s lives is as disastrous as anything else.”

3. Be strategic in what you say and how you say it.

“People don’t respond well to being shouted down at the dining room table. If your goal is to change somebody’s mind, that isn’t the most effective strategy; if your goal is to make a point, then that isn’t an effective strategy. Try to show people what you mean, as opposed to just saying, ‘I’m right.’ It’s a long-game solution. Rarely do people come out of one conversation and say, ‘You know, my whole worldview has changed.’ It’s about setting a foundation, so that people over time can change. This isn’t everybody’s work — some people are much better at having conversations than other people.”

4. Activism isn’t just about protests and marches — it means voting, too.

“Many of the things that will change people’s lives are structural, so it’s about voting where you are and pushing for or against legislation in your city and town. Use your institutional power to change structures and systems. Who shows up to the hearings about police violence? Who is working on welfare reform? Who is working on bail reform? Are you willing to come out for three weeks of hearings, sit, and say, ‘This is an issue that is important to me, too’? Even when it may not be convenient? That’s what it means to show up.”

5. Figure out where and how you can do the most good.

“I think there’s a role for everybody. The things I care about might not be the things you care about, and vice versa, which doesn’t mean they aren’t all important. For some people, their space is being on Twitter and on Facebook and pushing out messages. There are some people who are better in the street than I am, and some people who need to skip the street because they can just go to the governor’s mansion. If the governor is your friend and you can talk to him in his dining room, do that. We don’t all need to play the same role. The cacophony of all of us doing work together will actually lead to systemic change.”

6. Start where you are.

“Harriet Tubman knew that something could be done. She started where she was and started small, and it turned into the Underground Railroad. It can often start with you and another person, or you and two people, having a conversation about what the world can be and here are the steps you can take. You need to take concrete steps — small ones, like steps on a ladder — to get to systemic change. Ask people what they need, stand in concert with those who’ve been doing the work longer than you, listen, ask more questions than talk. Those are all the hallmarks of the people I’ve seen who are the most effective.”

7. Ask yourself: what do I want the future to look like?

“When we think about resistance, we focus almost exclusively on the absence of oppression. We think: How do we end mass incarceration? How do we stop the disparities with regard to police killings? How do we stop police killings altogether? But when we tear down these repressive, oppressive systems and structures, something has to replace them, something that’s better.

For example, we know there will always be rules, there will always be people who break the rules, and there will always need to be consequences. Do the people who enforce those consequences have to be the police? No. Does that enforcement have to mean prison? Absolutely not. We need to spend more time now talking about potential solutions. How do we help people imagine a conception of safety that doesn’t center on the police? How do we help them imagine a world where every adult can read? How do you help people dream in a big way that will actually change lives? It’s hard because we haven’t lived in that world before. But it doesn’t mean that world’s not possible.”

8. Feel the fear — and act anyway.

“Martin Luther King said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ It bends, because people bend it. There are so many people who understand the power they have. They’re standing up across the country when the odds look like they’re against them, and they’ve learned to make sure fear doesn’t overpower everything else even if fear is still present. There are just so many incredible people who are willing to put something on the line to make the world a different place. That gives me hope.”

These remarks were taken from a Facebook Live conversation conducted with DeRay Mckesson at TED headquarters in New York City. To learn more, watch the video.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Deray Mckesson is a civil rights activist, organizer and educator. He is also the host of the podcast “Pod Save the People.”

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Melissa McFeeters

Taking a moment to pause and really look at the other person can help us all avoid embarrassment and hurt feelings, says youth empowerment activist Quita Christison.

When was the last time you came to a quick conclusion about someone, only to find out that it was really wrong?

Maybe you were standing in line at the grocery store, asked a fellow shopper when she was due, and had her politely and icily inform you that she was not expecting. Or you thanked a “young man” who turned out not to be one, or shied away from a frightening dog that just wanted to lick every face in sight.

We’ve all made mistakes like these.

“When we act on these snap judgments, it’s uncomfortable for everyone,” youth empowerment activist Quita Christison explains in a TEDxPortsmouth Talk. “It’s not a good feeling, and it sticks with you. If you’re the one that has messed up, hopefully you learn. If you’re on the receiving end, it sticks with you as well — and you learn to put your guard up or live life a little less authentically.”

Christison has been on the receiving end of many unfair first impressions. “I’m a little person; I have pyknodysostosis, which results in a rare form of dwarfism,” she says. As a result, people take a glance at her and assume she’s a young girl, not an adult, and treat her as such until they realize — to their deep shame — that they were incorrect.

Our brains have evolved to make quick judgments about the people we meet in order to sort them into understandable categories. “It’s how our ancestors decided if something was safe, or if we were in danger,” says Christison. ”This instinct was completely valid in those dark alley moments, but in everyday encounters we aren’t in the prey-predator situation and yet our brain still has this innate need to categorize.” When someone isn’t easy for us to categorize, we stare at them. That’s how we give our brains more time to take in additional information about them, but it’s hurtful and alienating for the other person.

“We need a tool to create a bit of space, to become aware,” says Christison. “I want to take you from five seconds of unconscious judging to five seconds of conscious observation.”

Her tool consists of the acronym S.T.O.P., which stands for “See The Other Person.” This is not about taking five seconds to openly stare at someone, give them side-eye, or an up-and-down look, according to Christison.

Instead, she says, “It’s taking that first moment when seeing or meeting someone for the first time to ask yourself, ‘How do I want to think? How do I want to act? What is the other person showing me?’ In other words, take five seconds to really observe.”

When encountering someone for the first time, Christison invites us to imagine that we’re paused at a four-way intersection — the kind with stop signs at every corner. Before advancing, we need to observe other people. We have a choice in how we react; we just need to be open and aware as we do so.

If we did this, Christison says, “we could go from judging to using our judgment.” Today, too many of us approach others in an act-first-apologize-later manner. But, as she points out, “The world doesn’t need more apologies; it needs more respect.”

Watch her TEDxPortsmouth talk here:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Quita Christison is an outreach and engagement coordinator at Next Step in Cambridge, Massachusetts, an organization that empowers young people living with serious illness to create their brightest future through community, music and mentorship. At Next Step, Christison merges her two passions — theatre and healthcare education — and engages youth in expressive arts to help them take ownership of their narratives.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.

Patrick Blower

We thought it might be helpful to gather some of our resources that offer valuable insights on topics being circulated in the news in relation to the COVID-19 outbreak. For example, what defines a pandemic? How can viruses be transmitted from animals to humans? And exactly what is a virus?

How pandemics spread

Dig into the history of pandemics to learn how viruses and disease spreads and what we can do to stop future outbreaks.

In our increasingly globalized world, a single infected person can board a plane and spread a virus across continents. Mark Honigsbaum describes the history of pandemics and how that knowledge can help halt future outbreaks.

How do viruses jump from animals to humans

Discover the science of how viruses can jump from one species to another and the deadly epidemics that can result from these pathogens.

At a Maryland country fair in 2017, farmers reported feverish hogs with inflamed eyes and running snouts. While farmers worried about the pigs, the department of health was concerned about a group of sick fairgoers. Soon, 40 of these attendees would be diagnosed with swine flu. How can pathogens from one species infect another, and what makes this jump so dangerous? Ben Longdon explains.

 How vaccines work

Learn the science behind how vaccines trigger an immune response and teach our bodies to recognize dangerous pathogens.

The first ever vaccine was created when Edward Jenner, an English physician and scientist, successfully injected small amounts of a cowpox virus into a young boy to protect him from the related (and deadly) smallpox virus. But how does this seemingly counterintuitive process work? Kelwalin Dhanasarnsombut details the science behind vaccines.

How does your immune system work?

Explore how your immune system’s vast network of cells, tissues, and organs coordinate your body’s defenses against bacteria, viruses and toxins.

The immune system is a vast network of cells, tissues, and organs that coordinate your body’s defenses against any threats to your health. Without it, you’d be exposed to billions of bacteria, viruses, and toxins that could make something as minor as a paper cut or a seasonal cold fatal. So how does it work? Emma Bryce takes you inside the body to find out.

Cell vs. Virus: A battle for health

How does your body fight a virus? Take a look inside your cells to witness how they produce antibodies and fight to keep you healthy.

All living things are made of cells. In the human body, these highly efficient units are protected by layer upon layer of defense against icky invaders like the cold virus. Shannon Stiles takes a journey into the cell, introducing the microscopic arsenal of weapons and warriors that play a role in the battle for your health.

Learning from smallpox: How to eradicate a disease

Find out how smallpox became the first (and only) disease to be permanently eradicated through the use of vaccination and isolation to prevent transmission.

For most of human history, we have sought to treat and cure diseases. But only in recent decades did it become possible to ensure that a particular disease never threatens humanity again. Julie Garon and Walter A. Orenstein detail how the story of smallpox – the first and only disease to be permanently eliminated – shows how disease eradication can happen, and why it is so difficult to achieve.

The surprising reason you feel awful when you’re sick

What actually makes you feel sick? Discover how your immune system and proteins called cytokines respond to infections.

It starts with a tickle in your throat that becomes a cough. Your muscles begin to ache, you grow irritable, and you lose your appetite. It’s official: you’ve got the flu. It’s logical to assume that this miserable medley of symptoms is the result of the infection coursing through your body — but is that really the case? Marco A. Sotomayor explains what’s actually making you feel sick.

Melissa McFeeters

Instead of looking at a foreign language as an art to be mastered and perfected, think of it as a tool you can use to get a result, says communication skills trainer Marianna Pascal.

When we’re studying a new language, many of us approach it with fear and trepidation. If we make a mistake or say something wrong, we wince, freeze up, and judge ourselves harshly. But as it turns out, however, we’d benefit by shifting our focus and worry less about getting it right, according to communication skills trainer Marianna Pascal in a TEDxPenangRoad Talk.

Pascal has spent 20 years in Malaysia helping people speak better English. Over time, she’s discovered a surprising truth: How well somebody communicates in a new language has very little to do with their language level — and a lot more to do with their attitude.

As a teacher, she’d noticed that some students had a relatively low command of English but could still communicate very effectively. She recalls one specific student named Faisal, who was a factory supervisor. Despite not knowing much English, she says, “this guy could just sit and listen to anybody very calmly, clearly, and then he could respond [and] absolutely express his thoughts beautifully.” She’d also observed some students in the opposite situation — people who knew quite a bit of English but who struggled to make themselves understood.

Then Pascal had a realization. She recalls, “My daughter at that time was taking piano lessons, and I started to notice two really strong similarities between my daughter’s attitude or thinking towards playing the piano and a lot of Malaysians’ thinking or attitude towards English.”

The first similarity had to do with the fear of being wrong. Pascal says her daughter hated piano, hated the lessons, and hated practicing. As she puts it, “she was filled with this … dread because it was all about not screwing up, right? To both my daughter and her teacher, her success in piano was measured by how few mistakes she made.”

Pascal adds, “Now at the same time, I noticed that a lot of Malaysians went into English conversations with the same sort of feeling of dread– this … feeling that they were going to be judged by how many mistakes they were going to make and whether or not they were going to screw up.”

The second similarity had to do with self-image. Pascal says, “My daughter, she knew what good piano sounded like, right? Because we’ve all heard good piano, and she knew what her level was, and she knew how long she’d have to play for, to play like that.”

The same thing happens to English learners, Pascal realized: “A lot of Malaysians, I noticed, had this idea of what good, proper English is supposed to sound like … and what their English sounded like, and how far they’d have to go to get there.”

Still, that didn’t answer her question — while she now knew what made some people struggle, she didn’t quite know what made other people succeed.

Then she went to a cyber cafe. The person sitting next to her was playing a shoot-’em-up game while his friends watched, and he just wasn’t a very good player. But at the same time, she saw something remarkable: “Even though this guy was terrible, even though his friends were watching him, there was no embarrassment. There was no feeling of being judged. There was no shyness.” Instead, he was focused completely on the task at hand: shooting his opponents.

Pascal says, “I suddenly realized, this is it. This is the same attitude that people like Faisal have when they speak English.” Just like the lousy player, when Faisal enters an English conversation, she explains, “he doesn’t feel judged. He’s entirely focused on the person that he’s speaking to and the result he wants to get. He’s got no self-awareness, no thoughts about his own mistakes.”

There’s a significant difference between someone who speaks a new language like they’re playing piano and someone who speaks it like they are playing a video game. It has to do with where they’re putting their focus. On one hand, Pascal says, “We’ve got the one who’s got a high level — but totally focused on herself and getting it right and therefore very ineffective. We’ve got another one low-level, but totally focused on the person she’s talking to and getting a result — effective.”

Pascal believes that speaking a language is not like those exams that many of us had to take in grade school, where a tiny spelling or grammar mistake would result in a big red X from the teacher. In the real world, small errors don’t matter — what matters is whether we’re able to make ourselves understood. She says, “If you want to speak English like Faisal with that great confidence, here’s the one thing that you can do when you speak. Don’t focus on yourself; focus on the other person and the result you want to achieve.”

Pascal’s bottom line: “Language belongs to you. It’s not an art to be mastered. It’s just a tool to use to get a result.” And, she adds, “that tool belongs to you.”

Watch her TEDxPenangRoad Talk now:

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Daniella Balarezo is a Media Fellow at TEDx. She is also a writer and comedian based in NYC.

This post was originally published on TED Ideas. It’s part of the “How to Be a Better Human” series, each of which contains a piece of helpful advice from someone in the TED community; browse through all the posts here.