logo
episode-header-image
Oct 2019
22m 29s

The revolutionary power of diverse thoug...

TED
About this episode

"From populist demagogues, we will learn the indispensability of democracy," says novelist Elif Shafak. "From isolationists, we will learn the need for global solidarity. And from tribalists, we will learn the beauty of cosmopolitanism." A native of Turkey, Shafak has experienced firsthand the devastation that a loss of diversity can bring -- and she knows the revolutionary power of plurality in response to authoritarianism. In this passionate, personal talk, she reminds us that there are no binaries, in politics, emotions and our identities. "One should never, ever remain silent for fear of complexity," Shafak says.

Learn more about our flagship conference happening this April at attend.ted.com/podcast


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Up next
Today
I taught rats to drive. They taught me to enjoy the ride | Kelly Lambert
What can happy rats teach us about human joy? Behavioral neuroscientist Kelly Lambert describes how her team trained rats to drive tiny cars to earn treats — and noticed something surprising about how effort and anticipation affect the brain. The experiment opens new questions ab ... Show More
16m 25s
Yesterday
Is luck random — or can you cultivate it? | Christian Busch
When the 2025 Los Angeles wildfires destroyed his home and neighborhood, scientist Christian Busch encountered the opposite of serendipity: "zemblanity," or bad luck by design. Drawing on more than a decade of scientific research, he explores how people can navigate unpredictabil ... Show More
15m 3s
Mar 16
How to make transportation quieter, cleaner and cheaper | Doreen Orishaba
When Doreen Orishaba helped build Africa’s first electric car in 2011, skeptics dismissed it as a “toy for the Western world.” Now she’s running dozens of electric buses across Kenya and Rwanda, moving thousands of passengers to work every day on zero-exhaust vehicles powered by ... Show More
12m 40s
Recommended Episodes
May 2023
The Tech We Need for 21st Century Democracy with Divya Siddarth
Democracy in action has looked the same for generations. Constituents might go to a library or school every one or two years and cast their vote for people who don't actually represent everything that they care about. Our technology is rapidly increasing in sophistication, yet ou ... Show More
38m 39s
May 2021
Farabi Fakih, "Authoritarian Modernization in Indonesia's Early Independence Period" (Brill, 2020)
There has been a resurgent global interest in the origins and formation of authoritarian regimes as many states around the world drift away from liberal democracy. Indonesia’s experiences with such an authoritarian turn in the 1950s and 1960s offers many lessons from history. In ... Show More
50m 37s
Jun 2020
[BONUS] White Women’s Toxic Tears, with Lisa Sharon Harper
In light of the uprisings of the past weeks, it is not enough to perform wokeness. We need true solidarity. True solidarity requires an understanding of the historical and cultural roots and current-day patterns of white women’s betrayals of people of color. It will also require ... Show More
1h 9m
Dec 2023
Yascha Mounk: Why Society Crumbles When We Obsess Over Identity
<p>Yascha Mounk is a political scientist and author focused on the challenges facing liberal democracies and the rise of populism. As a Johns Hopkins University professor and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, he critically examines identity politics in modern soc ... Show More
1h 16m
Feb 2024
Lisa Herzog, "Citizen Knowledge: Markets, Experts, and the Infrastructure of Democracy" (Oxford UP, 2023)
For better or worse, democracy and epistemology are intertwined. For one thing, politics is partly a matter of gathering, assessing, and applying information. And this can be done responsibly or incompetently. At least since Plato, a leading critique of democracy has focused on t ... Show More
1h 7m
Dec 2023
1. The Future of Democracy
This year's BBC Reith Lecturer is Ben Ansell, Professor of Comparative Democratic Institutions at Nuffield College, Oxford University. He will deliver four lectures called “Our Democratic Future,” asking how we can build a politics that works for all of us with systems which are ... Show More
58m 8s
Jan 2024
Mass Protests and the Missing Revolution - a conversation with author Vincent Bevins
<p>&quot;From 2010 to 2020, more people participated in protests than at any other point in human history. &quot; Yet we are not living in more just and democratic societies as a result...How did so many mass protests lead to the opposite of what they asked for?&quot;<br/><br/>Ta ... Show More
1h 15m
Dec 2023
Devrim Adam Yavuz, "Democracy and Capitalism in Turkey: The State, Power, and Big Business" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
While a positive correlation between capitalism and democracy has existed in Western Europe and North America, the example of late-industrializing nations such as Turkey has demonstrated that the two need not always go hand in hand, and sometimes the interests of business coincid ... Show More
1h 1m