Eben Upton: Raspberry Pi

Eben Upton founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, shows how he is hooking a new generation of kids on computer programming. “I remember sitting down with my wife for dinner…and we had this sudden, appalling realization that we had promised 600,000 people that we would build them a $25 dollar computer.”

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.”

Pieter Hoff grows trees with very little water

Dutch bulb grower, Pieter Hoff has an idea about how to make deserts bloom: capture the humidity in the air, store it in a box, and use that condensation to water plants. He calls this box the Groasis waterboxx and he thinks it can change how we feed the world and reduce greenhouse gases.

Click to read more ...

How not to save the world according to Kevin Starr

Kevin Starr, Mulago Foundation director, looks for the best solutions to the biggest problems in the poorest countries. He thinks all projects need to answer four questions: Is it needed? Does it work? Will it get to those who need it? Will they use it correctly when they get it? Too many bad ideas are using up our limited resources and that needs to change.

Click to read more ...

Lorrie Vogel: Pioneering Designs

Lorrie Vogel works for Nike’s Considered team. As General Manager, she’s leading Nike’s research in sustainable product design.  We are moving to a new economy, a “green economy”, which has no roadmap. So how does a big company like Nike do it?

Click to read more ...

Will Allen : Growing Power in the Urban Food Desert

Will Allen is co-founder and director of Growing Power, Inc., an organization that is transforming the production and delivery of healthy foods to underserved, urban populations. Growing Power operates as an urban farm and education center in Milwaukee, WI, and more recently, Chicago, teaching urban youth how to produce low-cost healthy foods for their communities.

Click to read more ...

Michael Pollan : The Gospel of Sustainable Food

Author and activist Michael Pollan is a passionate advocate for sustainable food. In his compelling talk at PopTech, he explores how our industrial food system is keeping us overly dependent on fossil fuels, destroying our environment, and making us sick. Breaking this cycle requires fundamentally changing our relationship to food - and eating more meals together.

Click to read more ...

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.

Click to read more ...

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.

Click to read more ...

Richard Alley: Global Warming Optimism

Get inspired by Richard Alley’s optimistic view on global warming.This world-renowned paleoclimatologist does have some bad news about climate change, although he’ll convince you that we not only have the tools to solve the problem, but we can make money doing it too.

Click to read more ...

Cary Fowler: A global backup of the world’s agricultural biodiversity

Agricultural impresario Cary Fowler is kind of a latter-day Superman: his mission is to protect life on Earth, and he even operates out of an arctic fortress. While Dr. Fowler can’t fly or leap tall buildings, his work has captured the world’s imagination, and he’s safeguarding mankind’s future with a practical solution: seeds.

Click to read more ...