Didier Sornette: Predicting risk

Didier Sornette is a professor of entrepreneurial risks in Zurich. He explores data patterns to help predict crises and extreme events in complex systems, like global financial crises. “Most crises are endogenous. They are not coming out of the blue, like a black swan. They are knowable. They can be diagnosed in advance.”

JUDITH RODIN: WHY RESILIENCE

Judith Rodin, president of the Rockefeller Foundation, explores how resiliency can empower even the most destitute and vulnerable communities. “When the World Bank was planning to invest $100 million dollars in upgrading the slums in Nairobi, these slum-dweller leaders were represented at the table.”

Steve Lansing: Bali’s water temples

Steve Lansing, a senior fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, discusses the Byzantine system for the distribution of water from a volcanic lake in Bali to over two hundred farming villages. It’s worked since the 12th century, it’s egalitarian and it’s still-sustainable. “It’s one of the few functioning, ancient democratic institutions that we know about. It’s kind of beautiful.”

Silja Ómarsdóttir: Iceland’s Constitution Co-author

Silja Ómarsdóttir was one of 25 people tapped to rewrite Iceland’s constitution after the country’s financial meltdown in 2008. Ómarsdóttir explains the constitution creation process and what it meant to overhaul the constitution, with considerable public input, in four months.

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