Years ago, I used to head an international school in Bangalore. One day, the teachers decided to take the kindergarten children out on a field trip. While on the bus, one of the teachers spotted a BMTC bus ahead of them, short form for Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation, BMTC, written on it.At school, the children had been taught to decode alphabets using phonics so that reading becomes easier. For example, a n blended together becomes ant. So the teacher thought it was an excellent opportunity fo ...

[music] [applause] What do you have to do now. Besides the involuntary stuff like blimping, sweating, sneezing, nobody has control of that. What do you have to do.I want you to think about this long after today. Kind of like that song Phenomena from the Muppets. You're welcome.But what are your have to. I think all too often women feel an overwhelming amount of have to. Many times women feel as if we're living everyone else's life except our own.We go to work, pay the bills, run the errands, buy and cook th ...

Do you know what dying people really want while you and I are out here hustling and running on fumes. They just want to wake up tomorrow to taste food again to be with their loved ones. Nothing fancy.So maybe we don't need to wait until death to start appreciating simpler moments in life. To do that, we can ask ourselves, "What if this is the last time I get to do or experience something?" Asking myself that question turned a normal hug with my parents into a core memory because I never wanted to let go. So ...

Before Lagos became the fashion capital of Nigeria, before African designs walked the runways of Paris and Milan, there was Fagi, a small historic community in Cano State, Northern Nigeria. A place travelers once stopped by to rest during trade journeys. In house feed by centuries ago, people didn't just stop there.They stayed, they traded, they created, and they built something timeless. I was born and raised in In my house there is a tellering shop that has existed for more than 30 years even before I was ...

You see on trips to school in Otter, I had always noticed different kinds of activities extending from homes. These extensions spilled onto the streets and so the streets had become this sort of urban marketplace but also an urban living room. But this is how I had known the city to operate.It had simply become the backdrop of my everyday life. So I had never really thought to ask why was every street now a marketplace. Why was every street now an urban living room.And why were people not at marketplaces. A ...

I remember on one Tuesday I spoke my local dialect tree. I was severely beaten and warned not to speak tree in the school again. In religious and moral education class, we taught features of a witch. Mr.. Safoj said, "A witch is a dark woman who likes red meat. " That was what I studied in school. Pictures like this was not in my textbook or my English books. My books, reading books and textbooks were pictures and stories of other people not like me. In many institutions today and many of our education syst ...

Before man could speak, we moved. Movement is the oldest form of communication >> and communication is the root of creation and innovation. >> So let's play a game together.>> I will make a move and you tell me what you think I am saying. I didn't have to utter a word before I could communicate not just what you understood but the emotions that they carried. So it is important to note that the power of communication it's what helps us evolve. It is what help us move from one dynamic to the other two and a h ...

32 years ago, I sat in this theater with my dad and my mom. We were here to watch a play titled The King Must Dance Naked. It was a story about citizens holding their leaders accountable. And that story marked me. I remember leaving the hall with the excitement of the drama, a new mental model about the sacredness of the vote and the voice of a citizen and an unforgettable chant. The king must dance naked. The king must dance naked. I remember it like yesterday. every time I waited till I was 18. And when I ...

Throughout my childhood, I had always dreamt of the day that I'll finally be called a teenager. But only eight days after I turned 13, this girl standing here was kidnapped. I know that their prescription for physical pain, but every day after that incident, I prayed for a prescription that would take away the pain that I felt.And because I wasn't able to speak up, I was an introvert. I began writing. I wrote so much that my hands began to hurt.But I didn't stop. Unknown to me, I was slowly giving myself he ...

I've always asked myself that childhood in humans last up to 18 to 22 years, but in our closest relative, the chimpanzee, childhood lasts just 8 years. And so you wonder why that is. Well, you can blame it on this.This is a brain cell. It is called a neuron. This is not a brain cell.This is me when I was 3 months old. Yes, I wasn't thinking that I was going to give a TED talk anytime soon, but I had a lot on my mind. At least I had a lot of neurons on my mind about 90 billion of them.And we're going to come ...