#tedxuofm

[sluggoonthestreet]

If you've been wondering why I draw on sidewalks, what kind of garbage art* paid my rent for 20 years or what Mickey Mouse had to do with it, this might help: https://bit.ly/2T1XyKR 

*spoiler alert: it was drawings of literal garbage

[tedxuofm]

Last year, we collected book recommendations from team members, attendees, and speakers.  We sold the books that inspired the speakers to give their talks at last year’s conference but we haven’t explored mutual interests among TEDxUofM team members.  

Turns out a lot of us in TEDxUofM love reading.

So, we decided to start an informal book club.  

Throughout the year we’ll be picking out a few books, meeting up, and discussing them.  (Classic book club banter; you know the drill.)  Oh, and you’re invited.  This isn’t an official TEDxUofM event, but we thought if we met up with some wine, you’d want some, too. Check out our first ever book selection:  Let the Great World Spin by Colum McCann.

We’ll be meeting up after Thanksgiving break and email [email protected] if you’d like to know more ways you can get involved with TEDxUofM!  Stay tuned for more information about future books, meet ups, and the latest TEDxUofM bookworm updates.   We’re excited to meet you.

Photo source:  aestheticsofjoy.com (bottom) and Random House Publishing (top and middle)

[tedxuofm]

The Power of Words

By Will Horne

“Sticks and stones may break our bones, but words never hurt us.” The cornerstone quote of every parent after their elementary school kid got their feelings hurt. As kids we are taught that “words are just words” and they can’t hurt us. I mean they are just words, they cannot actually hurt us...right? Wrong. Words are powerful. And I don’t just mean in a metaphorical or spiritual sense. I don’t even mean in the emotional or mental sense, because these are already obvious. No, I want to take it one step further: words affect our physical health.

Penn State University researchers conducted a study on how the health of couples varied depending on the words they chose to use in arguments. They sat 42 couples down--in two separate settings weeks apart--and asked them to discuss fights they had previously had, their results were astonishing. The researchers discovered that couples who used words such as “think”, “because”, “reason” and “why” when arguing with each other had lower levels of the proinflammatory cytokines Interleukin-6 (Il-6) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha. An increase in these cytokines has been closely linked with cardiovascular disease, type-2 diabetes, arthritis and some cancers. Essentially, the better the couples could thoughtfully communicate with one another the healthier they were. Choosing the correct words to express themselves actually influenced their physical health.

Furthermore, positive words can be powerful in even more situations than just forming thoughtful arguments. Neuroscientist Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman published a book in 2012 titled Words Can Change Your Brain and in their book they discuss the tremendous power of positive words. Through extensive research they discovered that, “positive words can, if focused on for ten or twenty minutes per day, influence genetic expression in the brain” (Pg. 32). This work was also supported by Dr. Herbert Benson, who discovered that the repetition of personally meaningful words actually led to the activation of stress-reducing genes within the brain. Just hearing positive words was able to decrease stress and the negative effects associated with it.

Today, more than ever before, people are concerned about health and how they can eliminate health risks while improving their own health. We try to exercise more, eat healthier, and avoid genetic predispositions. But we overlook one of the simplest and most effective methods of increasing our physical health: word choice. By changing the words we use in a day and choosing to focus on saying positive words we can dramatically decrease our stress, the likelihood of heart disease, and even the chance of getting certain cancers. These results don’t just stop with the person who is saying them. When we say positive things to others they feel physically better too.

The most controversial, but fascinating, example of the way words can change the physical world is Dr. Emoto’s water experiment. Dr. Emoto placed the same water in different glasses and then expressed a series of different words to each. Glass 1 was told, “You make me sick, I will kill you”; while glass 2 was told it was, “loved and appreciated”. The test was repeated with a variety of different phrases and the words were even expressed in different ways. Dr. Emoto discovered that under microscopic investigation the water now had different crystalline structures. The words literally changed the water’s form. This is a contested idea and many argue it is faked, but if the findings are real, they are pretty powerful. We are made up of 70% water. Imagine what the study could mean for us.

Glass 1

Glass 2

Mother Teresa once said “Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless.” She understood the importance of powerful words even before science had proved it. She understood that it only takes one positive word to change someone’s day or even their life. And now we know that not only can a positive word change a person’s outlook on life, it can actually change their physical health. Just one positive word and you can help reduce someone’s stress and increase their well-being. We can change lives, so why not? Why not say hello to that person frowning in Mason Hall? Why not stop to say good luck to the kids on campus day? Why not love others? A positive word costs little, but can change everything. Words can create and they can destroy. Please choose yours wisely.

[tedxuofm]

About Staying In Your Lane

For so much of my life I’ve felt pressure to pick a single path and stick with it. I would spend countless days lying on my bed with my feet dangling off the edge, watching dust particles float in the midday sun, wondering.  Why must I decide on something so early in my life?  Why couldn’t I just dip my toes into a bunch of different areas and test the waters? Why couldn’t I swim in more than one ocean?  Why, once I decided to study psychology and economics, was I no longer expected to study art? And when I did, why did my professor skim over the underlying mathematics in Renaissance artwork like it was taboo for the two to mix?

When I got to college I found myself caught in a whirlwind of endless oceans to dip my toes into, but in the end I only had so many toes, so many hours in a day, and so many credits.  I thought there would be no way for me experience all of the things or meet all of the people that I wanted.  I felt defeated.  But it was then that my very lovely friend coaxed me into attending a TEDxUofM Conference in the final month of my freshman year.

In a sudden blast of teeming color, I watched as the oceans around me filled to their brims and flowed over, coalescing into one sublime body. I saw art mix with business, business mix with medicine, medicine mix with social justice, all before my eyes. All around me were people interested in exploring new territories, people reaching far beyond their academic scope – people dipping their toes. It was in that moment that I realized that TED isn’t just about a conference or a compelling talk, but about creating this space for perspectives, knowledge, and ideas to flow and integrate, a space for people to tread new waters.

There is so much to gain from entering spaces where these negotiations of knowledge take place. So much innovation has resulted from coming at a problem from a different angle or utilizing knowledge previously untapped. So many of the big issues facing our society today require the convergence of knowledge and perspectives, and sharing what we know and engaging each other is the only way to urge us toward breakthroughs and change. So many personal gains can be made in these spaces – constructive conversations about social justice might increase your faith in the future, and enough interactions with artists might motivate you to try to paint that portrait that you have been talking yourself out of for months.

For most of our lives we have been told to stick to one ocean, and to chart it really well. I would urge you to look beyond this mindset, to find the value in charting new waters. Dip your toes. Dive in if you wish. I promise the water is just fine.

[tedxuofm]

Does society define us or do we define ourselves?

By:  Zach Carlson

Humans are a combination of flesh, bones, muscles, and chemicals.  We make choices with our brain, but sometimes the brain makes choices for us.  An example?  We choose what type of food we eat, but our brain told us we were hungry.  Everyday we encounter situations, regardless of how benign, where we must make a decision.  All societies must satisfy certain biological needs, how they do that is where things get interesting.  We get hungry, so we decided to eat three meals a day.  We have large scale conflicts, did we decide to fight wars?  What else about us is a result of a collective choice made centuries or millennia ago rather than some DNA sequence inside us?

To begin to answer this question, we’ll take a journey to our genetic relatives, the monkeys.  In the 1980s, Robert Sapolsky, a neuroendocrinologist, witnessed a tribe of monkeys in Northern Africa experience a heartbreaking change: half of their male population died from tuberculosis after eating infected meat from a trash dump.  After this happened, for some reason, the tribe stopped fighting.  The monkeys didn’t just take a short recess from violence. They remained peaceful for decades.  

In the scientific community, monkeys are believed to be innately violent.  It’s a part of their culture; it’s what they do.  Sound familiar? Were the monkeys biologically inclined to change after all the deaths or did they choose to?  Still, the findings are controversial, and one study doesn’t make something a fundamental law.  But, regardless, this should spark something.  Humans.  We communicate.  We learn.  We thrive.  We question.  We fight?

Is peace possible?  How deeply is violence ingrained in us?  These questions have been discussed for years.  The main takeaway seems to always be “let’s rethink our take on war,” but the takeaway can be broader.  When thinking about this question, another looms in the back of my mind:  what else about the status quo is because somewhere along the road we made a choice rather than it being a part of human nature?  How much do we determine who we are and how much is determined for us?  Are humans a species that fight wars or are we a species that chose to fight wars?  Granted, human nature isn’t black and white.  Humans are complicated, and the psychological and sociological findings are equally so.  But when the relationship of society and human nature comes to mind, what will you think?

For more information on the monkey tribe and the concept of normalcy within the human race listen to the Radio Lab episode that inspired this post:  The New Normal

Photo source: PR Newswire, MSNBC.com

[tedxuofm]

Think about all of the colors that you have seen today. Now, try to imagine that each of those colors was reduced to a pixel, with the number of pixels of each color corresponding to the amount of that color that you saw. What would that look like?  Depending on what season it is, what part of the world you live in, and countless other factors, you would probably end up with some wild combination of greens and blues and grays and browns, undoubtedly with healthy amounts of other colors also represented. It may be difficult to find a pattern in this initial mix, but what happens when that balance of colors slowly starts to shift?

Think, for example, of a sky that transitions from overcast to clear blue. At first, you simply go about your business, never thinking twice about that particular day’s color palette. As the clouds start to clear, you may not notice overtly, but perhaps on some level you start to feel it affect your thought process, or your mood. Eventually the overwhelming purity of the blue demands your attention, and you wonder how you could have ever missed it in the first place.

A color is typically described based on three main components. Hue refers to the families of colors that we refer to with names like yellow and purple. Value is the lightness or darkness of a color, with black and white representing the extremes. Chroma is the intensity or purity of the color, and is what eventually grabs your attention on that beautifully sunny day as all of the diluting pixels fade from prominence. That’s what should be celebrated.  People are constantly surrounded by the fabulously interesting and the impossibly exquisite, but we sometimes forget to notice. And it’s worth noticing. By embracing environments in which the interesting and exquisite can thrive in their purest form, we can all remember to notice just a little more often.

[tedxuofm]

First Ever TEDxUofM Viewing Party

By Katrina Soyangco

Photo credit: Zoe Black

Popcorn, a comfy seat, conversation, and TED talks. This is how I spent my Thursday night. Yesterday, October 15, I attended TEDxUofM’s very first event of the year, a viewing party where students could watch past talks projected on the walls of a large room. The theme was happiness. With the first midterms ending and people getting ready for fall break, it seemed appropriate to focus on happiness while we could be a little bit more light-hearted.

Whenever someone gives me the advice “do what makes you happy,” I’m grateful and yet feel like I’m left in the dust. But then I remember that everyone experiences this lost feeling, wandering around looking for happiness under rocks and other seemingly unexpected places. What is our happiness and where do we even begin to find it?

Quote from Dan Gilbert

After leaving the event, I began to think that maybe I asking the wrong questions. We often think of happiness as something that can be found, a limited resource. On the contrary, we can “grow” our happiness, as Chip Conley said in one of the night’s talks. But then that begs another question: How do we grow it? I don’t think that is something that I can answer for everyone, on account of happiness comes in many manifestations.

At the end of the day, I think what we all could take away from these talks is that we don’t always get to choose things to make us happy. Rather, we get to choose whether or not to be happy for the things we have. We strive for this permanent happiness, but even the most careful tending of the garden isn’t guaranteed a good day everyday. So rather than aiming to obtain something that can be lost, we can take even the smallest things of our lives and cultivate a happiness, even though it may seem synthetic, to drive us on to discover the ways in which we can become our better selves.

In case you weren’t able to make it, here are the talks shown last night:

Derek Sivers: Weird or just different Dan Gilbert: The surprising science of happiness Chip Conley: Measuring what makes life worthwhile Hannah Brencher: Love letters to strangers

[umstampsschool]

The Poster Project is a partnership between TEDxUofM and the Stamps School of Art & Design. Since two things TED greatly values are collaboration and design (that's what the "D" stands for!), they seek out Stamps students to illustrate posters for the conference each year. Their only creative restriction is a limited color palette! Otherwise, students are given free reign to interpret how to represent the wide variety of interests and people in the TED community.

This year, they chose ten designs by Bekah Malover, Grace Ludmer, Hayley Tanasijevich, Sophia Kaplan, Joshua Kochis, Allison Bell, Laura Maier, Caili Dalian, Kara Argue and Madelyn Etzcorn

Check out past years’ works here.