TEDGlobal is fast approaching, and so is the first live simulcast of the event in Poland, TEDxKrakówLive. So it’s about time we continued our series of TEDGlobal speakers (you can read part one here) with a look at the speakers of the day’s second session, Emerging Order.
The first speaker, at noon on 13 July, is author Matt Ridley, author of the book The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves. The book centres on the theory of “the mating of ideas”, or how it is through collective enterprise that humanity advances rather than through individual acts. For a preview of Ridley’s talk, you can watch his 2010 TEDTalk.
Next up is geneticist Svante Paabo, whose search for the Stuff of Life is quite literal: he analyses ancient DNA fragments to discover more about the genetic evolution of our species. The techniques Dr Paabo has developed with his team allows him to analyse DNA fragments from specimens that have been long extinct, in order to probe the origins of humanity. In fact, it was Dr Paabo who discovered that there’s literally a bit of Neanderthal in all of us (whether we’d like to admit it or not).
Continuing on the theme of evolution is evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel, though his specialty is a complete different aspect of human evolution – that of language. He uses the theory of evolution to look not for genetic developments, but rather developments in culture, studying patterns in different language groups to find out why it is that we’ve developed so many different languages within our single species.
Returning to biology, the next speaker, Elizabeth Murchison, is a cancer researcher specialising in probably the last animal you’d consider when pondering cancer research: the Tasmanian devil. Specifically, her work has focused on the spread of a rare contagious cancer that nearly wiped out the population of devils in Tasmania. Her work has shed significant light on the nature of cancer itself, and has shown that perhaps by saving the devils, we can save ourselves in the process.
The next speaker is biochemist and geneticist Cynthia Kenyon, who studies the links between aging and age-related diseases, in hopes of preventing them. How can we live forever? Not necessarily by stopping aging itself (though that would be nice), but stopping the things that kill us as a result of our age – cancers, heart failures, and so on. So far, her work has proven successful in our genetic cousins such as worms and rats, and Dr Kenyon is hopeful that humans will be next.
And now, for something completely different: artist Joe Castillo. Specifically, Castillo is a sand artists, and originator of a new form of storytelling, which he calls the SandStory. In this not to be missed TEDTalk, Castillo will be performing his SandStory live, with his sand art projected on the big screen. You can watch a preview of this on YouTube here.
To finish out the second session, economist Karol Boudreaux ties several of the topics discussed earlier in the session together with economics, studying how economies create order out of chaos as if they were genomes or living cells. Her work has focused on the economics of poverty in countries such as Rwanda and Namibia, and how policies of the government can hinder the economic activities of individuals.
Next week we’ll take a look at the third session, “The Dark Side”, so stay tuned!