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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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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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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Gary Slutkin: Is it possible to end violence?

After spending years in Africa fighting AIDS, TB and cholera with the W.H.O., Gary Slutkin returned to Chicago and had an epiphany: the violence plaguing his hometown exhibited all the signs of an infectious disease. Learn how he’s applied epidemiological principles to reduce shootings and violent crime in inner-city Chicago neighborhoods by as much as 75%.

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Jay Parkinson: Healthcare 2.0

Dr. Parkinson is re-imagining the doctor/patient relationship, marrying a 21st century toolkit - think social networking, IM, video chat, SMS and PayPal - with old-fashioned, doctor-in-your-neighborhood, quality care. Pay a virtual visit to his Web 2.0 primary care practice, Hello Health, which offers a new way of keeping people well.

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John Priscu: Life below the ice of Antarctic

Join polar scientist John Priscu – and his autonomous robots - as he takes us miles below the Antarctic ice to search for living organisms that may have been cut off from the rest of the planet’s ecosystem for millions of years.

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K. David Harrison: The rapid erosion of languages

There are 7,000 languages spoken in the world. This, argues linguist K. David Harrison, represents the greatest repository of human knowledge ever assembled - but it’s rapidly eroding, and this will be terrible. We’re not only losing information, but we’re losing ways of understanding the world.

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Frank Warren: PostSecret

Four years ago, Frank Warren walked the streets of DC at night, handing out self-addressed postcards to strangers, soliciting their secrets. Watch as the creator of the wildly popular blog PostSecret reveals some of the hundreds of thousands of secrets shared by people from around the world in those four years…including a few of his own.

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Chris Anderson

What happens when material things become free? Long Tail author and Wired magazine editor Chris Anderson examines new models of wealth distribution and claims we’re moving from economies of scarcity to an age of abundance.

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Clay Shirky: Encouraging generosity and participation

Internet guru Clay Shirky has a unique ability to present the chaos of the Web in stunningly clear terms, as he does here, documenting what a "spontaneously, self-assembling, online philanthropic venture" tells us about the nature of human motivation.

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DJ Matt Mason

Journalist, author and former pirate radio DJ Matt Mason argues that if you can’t stop the pirates – and you can’t – you should figure out how to out-compete them (like Apple did).  

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