policy

Policy advisor Simon Anholt presents the Good Country Index, a measure of how much each nation contributes to the world beyond its own borders. In a funny TED talk he argues governments should think globally, and reveals which countries rank surprisingly.

Dan Geer's Black Hat 2014 keynote argues that cybersecurity is a matter of power and policy rather than wishful thinking. He covers surveillance, the vulnerability market, software liability and privacy as the capacity to misrepresent yourself.

Johann Hari's TED talk arguing that addiction is driven largely by disconnection and environment rather than chemical hooks alone. He draws on his personal experience with addicted relatives and on research and policy examples from around the world.

George Friedman of Stratfor speaks at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs about flashpoints in Europe that he expects to erupt again, including borderlands and cultural fault lines.

Bill Gurley's talk at the All-In Summit 2023, titled 2,851 Miles after the distance between Washington and San Francisco. He describes how incumbents use lobbying and regulation to entrench themselves, followed by a conversation with the hosts.

Susan Crawford talks at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center about her book Captive Audience. She argues that deregulation and consolidation left a few telecom companies in control of American internet access, so people pay too much for slow service.

Vaclav Smil's talk on historic energy transitions and what they imply for climate investment. He argues that transitions are slow, technology improves gradually, and only absolute cuts in energy use would truly work.

Allan Savory's TED talk arguing that desertification of grasslands can be reversed with holistic managed grazing, which he says would also help reverse climate change. TED notes that other scientists have challenged his claims.

Shashi Tharoor's Oxford Union speech arguing that Britain owes reparations to its former colonies, focused on the effects of British rule in India. It lists economic and political damage done by colonialism.

A 38C3 talk on how advanced chips are made, centered on EUV lithography and the global supply chain behind it. It covers technical challenges from raw materials to finished chips and the geopolitical weight of semiconductors.

Bill Gates at Stanford's Global Energy Forum argues that cheaper solar, wind and storage are not nearly enough to stop climate change. He discusses natural gas, a carbon tax, nuclear, battery costs and the responsibilities of developing versus developed economies.

David MacKay's TEDxWarwick talk uses basic arithmetic to show how much land and energy renewables would need to power a country like the UK. It explains the limits of sustainable options and why they should still be pursued.

David MacKay, scientific advisor to the UK energy department, gives a Harvard talk on sustainable energy at macro and micro scale, drawn from his book Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air. It stresses the land area renewables require.

Jean-Marc Jancovici gives an MIT Media Lab talk on whether technology can save us from climate change. He argues from a physical view of energy that economic growth, energy use and climate impact are tightly linked.

Journalist Matthew Cole's Black Hat 2013 talk on the CIA's operational security failures in the 2003 Milan kidnapping. Phone and location metadata exposed the team and led to arrest warrants.

Economist Martin Jacques offers three building blocks for understanding China's rise, including seeing China as a civilization-state rather than a nation-state. He also covers how Chinese people view the state.

Peter Zeihan speaks at Iowa Swine Day 2022 on geopolitics, the end of globalization and agriculture. He argues that supply chains, energy and farm inputs are all about to be disrupted.

A DEF CON 24 talk on how a cyber mercenary group could forge identities and create the conditions for overthrowing a government. It is entertainingly outlandish and includes a drone-mounted saw for cutting power lines.

Freeman Dyson's 2005 Boston University talk on heretical views about science and society. He questions prevailing dogmas, including his argument that climate and CO2 are a land management issue.

In an 11-minute TED talk, Ralph Langner explains how his team reverse-engineered the Stuxnet worm and worked out that it targeted industrial control systems, with a covert state origin. It is a compact look at cyber-forensics.

Farmer Joel Salatin gives a TEDx talk on how well-managed grass and rotational grazing support sustainable farming and affect the climate. He draws on his work at Polyface Farm in Virginia.

Tom Chi gives the opening talk of a Foresight Institute competition on clean energy and clean air, framing excess CO2 as a carbon debt to repay and discussing large-scale tree planting, including by drone.

Elon Musk gives students at the Sorbonne a short, simple explanation of climate change and carbon emissions shortly before the 2015 COP21 conference in Paris. He covers why CO2 accumulation matters and argues for a carbon tax.

Mark Blyth's Talks at Google presentation based on his book on austerity. He argues that government debt came largely from bailing out banks, and that budget cuts are a misguided response to the financial crisis.

A speech by comedian Konstantin Kisin at an Oxford Union debate on whether woke culture has gone too far. He argues the case in a short segment of the debate.

A UCTV panel with endocrinologist Robert Lustig, dentist Cristen Kearns and health policy expert Laura Schmidt on how the US food system and sugar industry influence diet and health, including industry efforts to shape the science.

Barack Obama, then a presidential candidate, presents his innovation agenda at Google and takes questions from Eric Schmidt and employees in November 2007.

Justice Antonin Scalia's opening statement at a 2011 Senate Judiciary hearing on the role of judges. He argues that the Constitution's separation of powers is what protects liberty, and that gridlock is by design.

MIT's Prof. Dennis Whyte explains the ARC/SPARC compact tokamak approach, in which new high-temperature superconducting magnets allow smaller and cheaper fusion reactors. He covers fusion physics, performance trends and the engineering path to net energy.

Michael Steil and Christian Hessmann's 34C3 talk explaining the Apollo Guidance Computer end to end: hardware design, operating system, and mission software.

Destin Sandlin of Smarter Every Day gives a talk to an aerospace audience, comparing how Apollo was engineered and managed with NASA's Artemis program. He raises concerns about unresolved details, the number of launches and in-orbit fuel transfer needed to reach the Moon, and the loss of institutional knowledge.

Hans Rosling and his son Ola run an audience quiz with global population, health and income data to show how wrong most people are about the world. Ola then gives four ways to get less ignorant.

Adam Conover's talk at a millennial marketing conference argues that generations are an unscientific, condescending idea and that millennials do not exist as a real category. The description notes that researcher Jean Twenge later said he misrepresented some of her work.

Hans Rosling uses the Gapminder animated-data tool to debunk myths about world development, with sportscaster-like energy. It shows trends in health, income and child survival across countries.

A short clip of Dr. Robert Zubrin, author of The Case for Mars, answering why humanity should go to Mars. He argues that societies grow by challenging themselves and that exploration inspires young people.

Sociologist and comedian Harald Eia argues in a TEDxOslo talk that Nordic social democracies produce more rich people per capita than the US or UK. He credits high taxes, welfare and strong unions for creating a safety net that enables risk taking.

Harvard law professor Lawrence Lessig argues that US democracy is corrupted by money, since a tiny fraction of the population effectively funds who gets elected. He says fixing this must come before addressing issues like climate change or student debt.

SpaceX engineers present at NVIDIA's GPU Technology Conference on a multi-physics code that simulates the full-scale Raptor methane engine. It covers GPU-based turbulent combustion modeling with adaptive grids and wavelet compression.

Black musician Daryl Davis tells how a chance encounter led him to befriend Ku Klux Klan members and seek the source of racial hate. He argues that sitting down and talking with people can change them.

In this TEDxBerlin talk, environmental activist Michael Shellenberger explains why he changed from opposing nuclear power to advocating it, after looking at the evidence on Chernobyl, Fukushima and air pollution.