"The Taliban are gone!" my father shouted.
It was cozy in winter but extremely hot in summer.
Do they know where we live?
We were scared, but still, school was where we wanted to be.
And my father -- that's him -- he was the first ever in his family to receive an education.
To him, there was greater risk in not educating his children.
Your money can be stolen. You can be forced to leave your home during a war.
So do you still not want to continue?"
He not only brags about my college degree, but also that I was the first woman, and that I am the first woman to drive him through the streets of Kabul.
That's why I am a global ambassador for 10x10, a global campaign to educate women.
Like Ahmed. That's not his real name, and I cannot show you his face, but Ahmed is the father of one of my students.
What I've come to realize about Afghanistan, and this is something that is often dismissed in the West, that behind most of us who succeed is a father who recognizes the value in his daughter and who sees that her success is his success.
It's not to say that our mothers aren't key in our success.
Under the Taliban, girls who went to school numbered in the hundreds -- remember, it was illegal.
But when I am back in Afghanistan, when I see the students in my school and their parents who advocate for them, who encourage them, I see a promising future and lasting change.
I worked for an Italian NGO, and every single project that we set up in Africa failed.
And we could not believe, and we were telling the Zambians, "Look how easy agriculture is."
And the Zambians said, "Yes, that's why we have no agriculture here."
We Western donor countries have given the African continent two trillion American dollars in the last 50 years.
You never arrive in a community with any ideas, and you sit with the local people.
We meet at the cafe. We meet at the pub.
We have zero infrastructure.
The most important thing is passion.
You can give somebody an idea.
If that person doesn't want to do it, what are you going to do?
The passion that that man has for his own personal growth is the most important thing.
There is a problem with community meetings.
I shut up, and listen to them."
There is a new generation of entrepreneurs who are dying of solitude.
Planning is the kiss of death of entrepreneurship.
In a community of 10,000 people, we get 200 clients.
So what I'm saying is that entrepreneurship is where it's at.
The technologies do not exist to do that.
Who is going to invent the technology for the green revolution? Universities? Forget about it!
There was a group of experts who were invited to discuss the future of the city of New York in 1860.
And in 1860, this group of people came together, and they all speculated about what would happen to the city of New York in 100 years, and the conclusion was unanimous: The city of New York would not exist in 100 years.
Then you have to offer them absolute, dedicated, passionate service to them.
There's only one thing that all the successful companies in the world have in common, only one: None were started by one person.
Okay, can you sell it? Can you look after the money?"
And I was scared.
And I believe the key to opening that door is great communication.
We desperately need great communication from our scientists and engineers in order to change the world.
But these great conversations can't occur if our scientists and engineers don't invite us in to see their wonderland.
Jargon is a barrier to our understanding of your ideas.
What do bullets do? Bullets kill, and they will kill your presentation.
So I think these are just a few keys that can help the rest of us to open that door and see the wonderland that is science and engineering.
And because the engineers that I've worked with have taught me to become really in touch with my inner nerd, I want to summarize with an equation.
I mean, some people wanted him to be called Chief Magistrate Washington, and other people, His Highness George Washington, and other people, Protector of the Liberties of the People of the United States of America Washington.
Barack Obama, President Obama, is there on borrowed time, just waiting for the Senate to spring into action.
And so the Senate won in the end.
They got their title of respectability.
So I arrived by truck with about 50 rebels to the battle for Jalalabad as a 19-year-old vegetarian surfer from Jacksonville, Florida.
And this was my first time in Afghanistan.
I want to look at how, in my opinion, the conflict in Afghanistan has become conflict chic.
These heels are very uncomfortable, so good thing I wasn't going to wear them.
The worst part is putting this sweater over my head, because that's when you'll all laugh at me, so don't do anything while it's over my head.
I just totally transformed what you thought of me in six seconds.
The next question people always ask me is, "Can I be a model when I grow up?"
But the second answer, and what I really want to say to these little girls is, "Why?
Saying that you want to be a model when you grow up is akin to saying that you want to win the Powerball when you grow up.
It will look something like this.
Hopefully less awkward than that one in the middle.
I know we're getting personal, but I was a young girl.
And I'm insecure because I have to think about what I look like every day.
And if you ever are wondering, "If I have thinner thighs and shinier hair, will I be happier?"
So when I was writing this talk, I found it very difficult to strike an honest balance, because on the one hand, I felt very uncomfortable to come out here and say, "Look I've received all these benefits from a deck stacked in my favor," and it also felt really uncomfortable to follow that up with, "and it doesn't always make me happy."
Remi is 22, tall and very handsome.
Now if I take a laser pointer and turn it on and off in one trillionth of a second -- which is several femtoseconds -- I'll create a packet of photons barely a millimeter wide, and that packet of photons, that bullet, will travel at the speed of light, and, again, a million times faster than an ordinary bullet.
Now, if you take that bullet and take this packet of photons and fire into this bottle, how will those photons shatter into this bottle?
Meanwhile, the ripples are traveling on the table, and because of the reflections at the top, you see at the back of the bottle, after several frames, the reflections are focused.
And it's not science fiction. We have actually built it.
It has very good time resolution, and it can look at the world at the speed of light.
The order at which events take place in the world appear in the camera with sometimes reversed order, so by applying the corresponding space and time warp, we can correct for this distortion.
This is one of the cows which was killed at night, and I just woke up in the morning and I found it dead, and I felt so bad, because it was the only bull we had.
It's one of the six lions which were killed in Nairobi.
Since I was a small boy, I used to work in my room for the whole day, and I even took apart my mom's new radio, and that day she almost killed me, but I learned a lot about electronics.
The lights flash and trick the lions into thinking I was walking around the cowshed, but I was sleeping in my bed.
And my neighboring homes heard about this idea.
Because of this invention, I was lucky to get a scholarship in one of the best schools in Kenya, Brookhouse International School, and I'm really excited about this.
My new school now is coming in and helping by fundraising and creating an awareness.
You have no idea how exciting it is to hear a story like yours.
My next invention is, I want to make an electric fence. Electric fence?
But I know electric fences are already invented, but I want to make mine.
I got tired of seeing this happening.
And I was wondering, how would you feel if you had no access to healthy food, if every time you walk out your door you see the ill effects that the present food system has on your neighborhood?
So I figured that the problem is the solution.
Plus I got tired of driving 45 minutes round trip to get an apple that wasn't impregnated with pesticides.
Thing is, it's owned by the city.
So me and my group, L.A. Green Grounds, we got together and we started planting my food forest, fruit trees, you know, the whole nine, vegetables.
We had a victory on our hands.
I mean, come on, why wouldn't they?
L.A. leads the United States in vacant lots that the city actually owns.
They own 26 square miles of vacant lots.
Just like a graffiti artist, where they beautify walls, me, I beautiful lawns, parkways.
You'd be surprised what the soil could do if you let it be your canvas.
To change the community, you have to change the composition of the soil.
It made me feel ashamed to see people that were this close to me that were hungry, and this only reinforced why I do this, and people asked me, "Fin, aren't you afraid people are going to steal your food?"
That's the whole idea.
I want them to take it, but at the same time, I want them to take back their health."
We've had, like, 50 people come to our dig-ins and participate, and it's all volunteers.
The funny thing about sustainability, you have to sustain it.
What I'm talking about is putting people to work, and getting kids off the street, and letting them know the joy, the pride and the honor in growing your own food, opening farmer's markets.
So what I want to do here, we gotta make this sexy.
If you ain't a gardener, you ain't gangsta.
If you want to meet with me, come to the garden with your shovel so we can plant some shit.
Peace. Thank you.
We're pale, gray creatures.
This happened to also be a place in the town where the evacuation center was collecting the photos.
This is where people were handing them in, and I was honored that day that they actually trusted me to help them start hand-cleaning them.
So we started retouching photos.
Over time, more photos came in, thankfully, and more retouchers were needed, and so I reached out again on Facebook and LinkedIn, and within five days, 80 people wanted to help from 12 different countries.
Within Japan, by July, we'd branched out to the neighboring town of Rikuzentakata, further north to a town called Yamada.
The kimono in this shot pretty much had to be hand-drawn, or pieced together, picking out the remaining parts of color and detail that the water hadn't damaged.
When she collected the photos from us, she shared a bit of her story with us.
Over five hundred volunteers around the globe helped us get 90 families hundreds of photographs back, fully restored and retouched.
A photo is a reminder of someone or something, a place, a relationship, a loved one.
"As I worked, I couldn't help but think about the individuals and the stories represented in the images.
Across the globe, throughout the ages, our basic needs are just the same, aren't they?"
My secret was that I had this gun loaded with hollow-point bullets pointed at my head by the man who I thought was my soulmate, many, many times.
The man who I loved more than anybody on Earth held a gun to my head and threatened to kill me more times than I can even remember.
My dog is a black lab, and I drive a Honda Odyssey minivan.
He told me two things.
One of the smartest things Conor did, from the very beginning, was to create the illusion that I was the dominant partner in the relationship.
It was an isolated incident, and he was never going to hurt me again.
One in three American women experiences domestic violence or stalking at some point in her life, and the CDC reports that 15 million children are abused every year, 15 million.
The other question everybody asks is, why doesn't she just leave?
I was able to leave, because of one final, sadistic beating that broke through my denial.
I remarried a kind and gentle man, and we have those three kids.
Right now, maybe you're thinking, "Wow, this is fascinating," or, "Wow, how stupid was she," but this whole time, I've actually been talking about you.
We victims need everyone.
Recognize the early signs of violence and conscientiously intervene, deescalate it, show victims a safe way out.
It read, "When you read this, all five family members will not exist in this world, because we haven't eaten for the past two weeks.
But nobody helped them, because they were so focused on taking care of themselves and their families.
I had no idea what life was going to be like as a North Korean refugee, but I soon learned it's not only extremely difficult, it's also very dangerous, since North Korean refugees are considered in China as illegal migrants.
Some North Koreans in China seek asylum in foreign embassies, but many can be caught by the Chinese police and repatriated.
Even though I was really fortunate to get out, many other North Koreans have not been so lucky.
Even after learning a new language and getting a job, their whole world can be turned upside down in an instant.
I went back and forth between the immigration office and the police station, desperately trying to get my family out, but I didn't have enough money to pay a bribe or fine anymore.
In my broken English, and with a dictionary, I explained the situation, and without hesitating, the man went to the ATM and he paid the rest of the money for my family and two other North Koreans to get out of jail.
Then you can have a lot of splash water in the asphalt.
What is raveling? You see that in this road that the stones at the surface come off.
Ha. He's ready.
Potholes, of course, that can become a problem, but we have a solution.
Due to weathering, due to U.V. light, due to oxidation, this binder, this bitumen, the glue between the aggregates is going to shrink, and if it shrinks, it gets micro-cracks, and it delaminates from the aggregates.
First of all, why do they have such a bad press?
They've also be associated with Disney — — personified as goofy, dumb, stupid characters.
They have been associated in ancient Egyptian culture.
In Hindu mythology, Jatayu was the vulture god, and he risked his life in order to save the goddess Sita from the 10-headed demon Ravana.
So what is the problem with vultures?
We have eight species of vultures that occur in Kenya, of which six are highly threatened with extinction.
They are bird-blending machines.
So what's being done? Well, we're conducting research on these birds. We're putting transmitters on them.
Thank you very much.
How can we share more of our memories of our abandoned buildings, and gain a better understanding of our landscape?
Now, I live in New Orleans, and I am in love with New Orleans.
I feel like it's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day, and forget what really matters to you.
And I'd like to share a few things that people wrote on this wall.
"Before I die, I want to be tried for piracy."
"Before I die, I want to sing for millions."
"Before I die, I want to hold her one more time."
In our age of increasing distractions, it's more important than ever to find ways to maintain perspective and remember that life is brief and tender.
When my hand slips, I suddenly remember a miner I had met days before who had lost his grip and fell countless feet down that shaft.
But this time, I would see the skeletons hidden in the closet.
Astonishingly, slavery generates profits of more than $13 billion worldwide each year.
Many have been tricked by false promises of a good education, a better job, only to find that they're forced to work without pay under the threat of violence, and they cannot walk away.
Slavery exists everywhere, nearly, in the world, and yet it is illegal everywhere in the world.
In India and Nepal, I was introduced to the brick kilns.
Enveloped in temperatures of 130 degrees, men, women, children, entire families in fact, were cloaked in a heavy blanket of dust, while mechanically stacking bricks on their head, up to 18 at a time, and carrying them from the scorching kilns to trucks hundreds of yards away.
Deadened by monotony and exhaustion, they work silently, doing this task over and over for 16 or 17 hours a day.
Every 20 minutes, I'd have to run back to our cruiser to clean out my gear and run it under an air conditioner to revive it, and as I sat there, I thought, my camera is getting far better treatment than these people.
The big sheets of slate were heavier than the children carrying them, and the kids hoisted them from their heads using these handmade harnesses of sticks and rope and torn cloth.
I had only one way out: the stairs from where I'd come in.
"We hope still, though, that we could leave this house someday and go someplace else where we actually get paid for our dyeing."
He was trembling when our boat approached, frightened it would run over his tiny canoe.
in the cold, windy night.
Kofi is the embodiment of possibility.
As we started down the path, we pushed aside the vines blocking the way, and after about an hour of walking in, found that the trail had become flooded by recent rains, so I hoisted the photo gear above my head as we descended into these waters up to my chest.
The shafts are up to 300 feet deep, and they carry out heavy bags of stone that later will be transported to another area, where the stone will be pounded so that they can extract the gold.
I want to shine a light on slavery.
I truly believe, if we can see one another as fellow human beings, then it becomes very difficult to tolerate atrocities like slavery.
So, well, I do applied math, and this is a peculiar problem for anyone who does applied math, is that we are like management consultants.
No one knows what the hell we do.
So, dancing is one of the most human of activities.
So great progress and treatment has been made over the years.
We need to be able to measure progression objectively, and ultimately, the only way we're going to know when we actually have a cure is when we have an objective measure that can answer that for sure.
So these vocal effects can actually be quite subtle, in some cases, but with any digital microphone, and using precision voice analysis software in combination with the latest in machine learning, which is very advanced by now, we can now quantify exactly where somebody lies on a continuum between health and disease using voice signals alone.
We have the opportunity to start to search for the early biomarkers of the disease before it's too late.
So Max, by taking all these samples of, let's say, 10,000 people, you'll be able to tell who's healthy and who's not?
Ninety-nine. Well, that's an improvement.
Thanks so much. Max Little, everybody.
This very focused time we get to spend together is something we cherish and anticipate the entire year.
And now what she's looking at in New York are colleges, because she's determined to go to school in New York.
