WEBVTT 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If you told me five years ago 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that today's I'd be delivering a talk 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 about our individual power to make a difference, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I would have cringed. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It was my job to study huge global systems. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I was a researcher at NASA using satellite data to study the big picture. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You can see a lot of things from space, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 like every ecosystem on earth being threatened 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 from pretty much every angle, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and global inequality in air and water safety. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And these kinds of things would keep me up at night. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And then outside of work I'd use this bird's-eye view 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 while thinking about our huge social structures 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 like education and media and health care, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and it looked to me like they were all really struggling too. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So I felt like the world was just trapped in this huge self-amplifying system 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that was just spiraling towards destruction. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And of course I wanted to do something about this, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and I felt so small and utterly powerless. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But I started to feel a little differently as my perspective shifted 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 from the macro towards the micro. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It began with bumblebees. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I was using satellite imagery and field research 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to study these amazing ?? pollinators 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to see how they were doing in the midst of their own environmental crisis 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in Southern California. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And from the macro view, I saw 22-lane freeways, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 endless suburban sprawl, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and water being diverted from parched rivers 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to grow lawns in the desert. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It was pretty grim. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But on the ground, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 there were actually some small opportunities for optimism, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 these tiny patches of resources 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 known as habitat fragments. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 If the right kinds of plants for growing along the edges of a Costco parking lot, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and if in the neighborhoods nearby 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 there were native plants in people's gardens, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and in the canyons that were too steep for people to put their suburbs in, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 there were native plants instead of grasses, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 then all of these in between spaces 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 would actually add up to create a network of habitat fragments. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And this network meant that the bees could traverse through the concrete desert 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 feeding from and pollinating the native plants. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And these plants that the bees depend on and that the bees sustain are essential. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They stabilize our steep hillsides. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They provide food and homes to thousands of amazing species of animals, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and, critically, they are helping to curb our devastating cycle of wildfires 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 by preventing the growth of those invasive grasses 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that fuel the vicious flames that we're all too familiar with. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's a really vital and interconnected system, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and some people could see how they were a part of it, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and so they acted 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 as habitat fragment gardeners. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 They planted native plants in their yards, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and they even were tending to the land in corporate parks 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and in public canyons. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 In my research, I could actually see the impact 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that even one passionate gardener could make. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And then, repeated across the region, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 their habitat fragments were adding up to make a more resilient ecosystem, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 not a perfect system, not by a long shot, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but at least a system that was less likely to totally collapse 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 under impending pressures like further development and drought. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So I was looking at the world through this lens 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 when I found myself in the waiting room of a public hospital in Brooklyn 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with my partner Charles, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and we were sitting across from a group of teenagers 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 who were slumped in their chairs 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and bored out of their minds 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and just refreshing their phones over and over again, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and in a neighborhood 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with some of the lowest high school graduation rates in the city, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 this waiting room felt like a social habitat fragment 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 just waiting to happen. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, we did some research to see what kinds of resources could we add 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to spaces like this one 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that would make an impact. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And we settled on museums. NOTE Paragraph 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Museums are the most trusted source of public information, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 more than the media and more than the government, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but they also cluster in wealthier neighborhoods. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 New York has 85 museums in Manhattan 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and the Bronx has eight, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 even though these two boroughs have almost the same size population. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And then expensive tickets mean that a lot of people can't go to museums 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 even if they live nearby. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And these little injustices, they just go on and on 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and they add up to create sweeping inequalities 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 in knowledge and empowerment. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Across the US, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 almost 90 percent of visitors to art museums are white, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and even at the Smithsonian's network of free museums, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 almost half of their adult visitors have graduate degrees, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 which 10 percent of the broader population has. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So it became clear to us that even though museums 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 are these amazing educational and social resources, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 they're not reaching everyone, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and a lot of museums are aware of this, and they're trying to change it, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but there's all these structural hurdles that are slowing them down. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So we set out to create a distributed network 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 of museum habitat fragments. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Working from a donated shipping container 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with the volunteer help of our friends 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and dozens of very generous scientists 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 from all across the globe, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we built our first prototype, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 the Smallest Mollusk Museum. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Mollusks are these tentacled, slimy shape-shifters 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 like oysters and octopuses and the giant squid, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and if you've ever seen an alien in a movie, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 then I'll bet you it was inspired by a mollusk. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Their slimy sci-fi vibes 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 make them really fun tour guides for a biology museum, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and they can teach us about the systems that we all share, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with a wake-up call. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Of all the animal extinctions documented since the 1500s, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 more than 40 percent have been our friends, the mollusks. NOTE Paragraph 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So we tested this museum across the city 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to see if it resonated with all kinds of visitors, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and it did. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 People really liked learning from it. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So we built a fleet of tiny science museums, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 each one small enough to fit into preexisting locations 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with information dense enough that they could still pack a punch, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and they're modular, so they can be distributed 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 at a scale that can reach everyone. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And then we partnered with libraries 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and community centers and transit hubs 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and the public hospitals 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so that we could transform their in-between spaces 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 into habitat fragments for social learning. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And, fittingly, we named our fleet of museums "Micro." 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Even though each habitat fragment is small, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it provides the essentials. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It draws people in so that they can explore 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and learn together in a social way, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and then distributed across the landscape we're able to invite people everywhere 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 into conversations around science. NOTE Paragraph 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 When we partnered with a public hospital in the South Bronx, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we became the Bronx's first and only science museum. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Yeah, that's really weird. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And really quickly, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 families started coming by with their kids 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and schools started arranging field trips, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 all to this tiny museum in the front lobby of the public hospital. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 (Laughter) 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And the museum became so popular 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that we started hiring local students to be museum docents 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so they could lead tours and activities for all the talented kids. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And every spark of curiosity that we're able to fuel 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and each new fact learned 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and every new friend made at the museum 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and every kid who can have a meaningful and important after-school job, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 it all contributes to a stronger system. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So today I try to keep the micro view in mind. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 I'm always examining how small actions can add up 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 to create shifts 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 at the macro scale of systems. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And honestly, I'm seeing a lot of really good things. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 There are habitats everywhere, nurtured by talented, passionate, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 strategic individuals in groups of all sizes 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 who are building towards systems with more equal access to food 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and employment, health care, housing, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 political empowerment, education and healthy environments. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 One by one, together, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 we're filling gaps, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 strengthening the systems that we're all a part of. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 We have to work on the big institutions too, of course. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's just that they're so slow, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and we're living in the midst of rapid change. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's a defining feature of our time. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So maybe in some cases our small actions 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 can be band-aids until the big guys catch up. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 But without us, what are they going to be catching up to? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Am I still scared about the world? 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Yes. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 That's why I'm talking to you. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 The world needs so many more habitat fragments. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 So, if you've been feeling overwhelmed or powerless lately, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 then I'm asking you to please try this very small strategy on for size, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and let's see how it goes. NOTE Paragraph 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Step one: zoom in. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 It's not one huge system 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that's just barreling unstoppably towards destruction. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 What we have are many overlapping systems, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and the ways that the interact determine everything. NOTE Paragraph 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Step two: look for the resource gaps, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because that's where you can make the biggest difference. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And do some research to understand how your ideas are going to interact 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 with the systems that are already on the ground. NOTE Paragraph 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Step three: find the other habitat fragments. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Find out how they can support you and how you can support them, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 because we're building a network together. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 And, step four: transform your fragment. 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 You might not have the leverage to change multiple systems at once, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 but there are so many small, meaningful, and strategic things 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 that each of us can do, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 and there are a lot of us, 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 so it will add up. NOTE Paragraph 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 Thank you. NOTE Paragraph 99:59:59.999 --> 99:59:59.999 (Applause)