John Fetterman : The Invested Mayor

John Fetterman is the hulking, tattooed and impassioned mayor of Braddock, PA, a tiny town ten miles from downtown Pittsburgh. Braddock was built around the steel industry: vintage pictures show a thriving downtown area boasting 30 tailors, 5 banks, 51 barbers in their community. Over the last few decades, the town has imploded and now none a single one of those businesses remain.

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Reuben Margolin : The Surface and Structure of Art

Sculptor Reuben Margolin works in the medium of motion. As a child, he started playing with stilts and was enamored with math. After going in a few different directions in school, he set out with a typewriter strapped to the back of a motorcycle to write poetry as he traveled across the country.

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Assaf Biderman : SENSEable City Laboratory

Assaf Biderman, who runs the SENSEable City Laboratory at MIT, opened with reminding us that people used to think virtual connectivity was going to reduce urban density. This proved not to be true: the Internet did not introduce the death of the city. Cities are instead a concentrated focal point of looking at new ways to be sustainable.

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Laura Kurgan : Spacial Information Lab

Laura Kurgan heads up the Spatial Information Design Lab, which is they call a Think and Action Tank. Kurgan states that there are no neutral maps and no neutral data. She introduced the PopTech audience to their project “Architecture and Justice” and explained how they are looking at a city’s infrastructure. This, she says, includes prisons, which are generally not discussed when talking about cities. 

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Dan Ariely: Predictably Irrational

Updated on Monday, June 7, 2010 at 9:08AM by Alphachimp

Updated on Tuesday, June 8, 2010 at 10:15AM by Alphachimp

Dan Ariely, the author of Predictably Irrational, referenced the foolishness of certain actions (e.g. texting while driving), what he calls “small irrationalities” that we do every day. These can lead up to big problems. With our current model of labor, for instance, we reward people with rest. This doesn’t really capture what it is that engages people, what causes them to want to work.

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Peter Whybrow on American Mania: When More Is Not Enough

Leading neuropsychiatrist Peter Whybrow recently authored "American Mania: When More Is Not Enough," a neurobiological look at the instinctual and social behaviors that balance a market economy. Pay attention as he explains how America's reward-driven culture is pushing the physiological limits of our evolutionary inheritance - making us sick in body and mind.

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Mark Lynas - High Tide

Environmental journalist Mark Lynas reports from his global tour of climate change hotspots - documenting the dramatic effects that even one degree of global warming may have around the world.

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The Yes Men

Practicing “identity correction” – the Yes Men target large corporations that put profits ahead of everything else. Getting inside the system, and impersonating business leaders, they smuggle stories out to the world to expose big business wrong-doing.

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Janine Benyus - Biomimicry

Champion of the Earth honoree and biomimicry pioneer Janine Benyus has transformed the way we think about innovation and design. Benyus challenges us to study nature’s best ideas, then imitate its designs and processes to solve some of our greatest human challenges.

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Frans deWaal: Reconciliation in the World of Chimp Politics

Renowned primatologist, psychologist and ethologist Frans de Waal wants to convince us we’re all basically apes, saying we’d be much happier if we paid attention to some of the basic principals of cooperative social behavior that even primates are sensitive to. Watching monkeys engage in peace-making, power relationships and reciprocity is a potent reminder of just how alike we are.

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Juan Enriquez: The Stars & Stripes Forever?

The stars and stripes forever? Futurist and author Juan Enriquez isn’t sure of that. He cites a long history of borders, countries and flags that have changed, and warns the United States isn’t immune. 

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Kelly Dobson: Machine Therapy

An eminent roboticist and Ph.D. at MIT's Media Lab, Kelly Dobson is exploring "machine therapy" - a personal, societal and psychoanalytical study of machine design and its effects on peoples' everyday lives. Watch as she exhibits Screambody, Blendie and Omo, three fascinating robots that respond to - and influence - their users in provocative ways. See Pop!Cast video

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Benjamin Zander: How fascinating!

The only conductor to ever lead the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, Zander is a prophet of human potential and an unrivaled champion of joie de vivre.  Watch as he helps unlock the boundless potential of a 15 year old cellist and teaches the entire Pop!Tech audience what it means to live in a world of possibility.  

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Project Masiluleke

A signature program of the Pop!Tech Accelerator, Project Masiluleke, harnesses the power of mobile devices to help reverse South Africa’s crippling HIV/AIDS and TB crises.  Partners from frog design, iTeach and the Praekelt Foundation discuss the program’s breakthrough approach, which endeavors to connect millions to testing and care.

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Erin McKean on Wordnik

Self-proclaimed word geek Erin McKean, editor-in-chief of U.S. Dictionaries for Oxford University Press, is on a mission to debunk common misconceptions and elevate the use—and cool factor—of dictionaries. And what’s this about dictionaries being “the vodka of literature”?

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Doug Rushkoff on Renaissance Prospects

Douglas Rushkoff analyzes, writes and speaks about the way people, cultures, and institutions create, share, and influence each other's values. He sees "media" as the landscape where this interaction takes place, and "literacy" as the ability to participate consciously in it.

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Robert Neuwirth: Squatter Cities

Having spent two years living in squatter communities across four continents, urban ethnographer Robert Neuwirth finds people living lives of complexity, challenge, and surprising resiliency.

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Suketu Mehta: Mumbai

Writer Suketu Mehta glimpses our possible urban future through the lens of the vastly contrasting lifestyles in Mumbai, the biggest, fastest, richest city in India, and with a population of 21 million, larger and more crowded than many nation states.

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Laurie Garrett: Examining China's response to SARS

Updated on Thursday, May 7, 2009 at 7:18PM by Alphachimp

Renowned global health expert Laurie Garrett gave a powerful and frightening talk at PopTech 2008 on how countries deal - both effectively and ineffectively - with pandemics. Examining China's response to SARS, she asked: what if this happened here?

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Laura Waters: Rwanda, genocide and forgiveness

Filmmaker Laura Waters Hinson went to Rwanda with a chilling question: is it possible to forgive the person who killed your family? Hear the stories of reconciliation she found while making “As We Forgive,” which documents how confessed murderers and genocide survivors are partnering to rebuild Rwanda.

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