PopTech Videos: PopCasts

Jay Rogers is revolutionizing the automobile industry. The former U.S. Marine and co-founder of Local Motors has created the world’s first crowdsourced car. Rogers believes that making car production local – and personal – holds the key to fostering a sustainable car culture that also tackles our dependence on oil.

What makes species go extinct? Evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro explores the influences of climate and humans in determining species extinction. By analyzing the genes of ancient plants and animals, she traces the complex relationship between environment and the extinction and evolution of species.

Computational neuroscientist H. Sebastian Seung conducts pioneering research on the wiring of the brain, and what it reveals about genetics, personality, and memory. Seung suggests that complex maps of neural connective structures, or connectomes, will reveal that our experiences literally shape our brains.

Violist Christen Lien combines her classical training with experimental acoustic and electronic sounds and a looping machine. What results is mesmerizing, layers of music that one fan called “a bridge to the divine.” Entitled “Unabi,” or Zulu for “flash of light,” this song appears on Lien’s debut album Vol I: Battle Cry.

Violist Christen Lien combines her classical training with experimental acoustic and electronic sounds and a looping machine. What results is mesmerizing, layers of music that one fan called “a bridge to the divine.” This song, “Unconditional,” appears on Lien’s debut album Vol I: Battle Cry.

Justin Gallivan is an Emory University chemist who explores the boundaries of biology by engineering bacteria to behave in predictable ways. Gallivan’s research on reprogrammable bacteria has important implications for complex challenges such as the need to track and clean up environmental pollutants.

Yasser Ansari, self-described bio geek-turned-telecom nerd, wants to help boost eco-literacy. To do so, he has created Noah, an online platform and mobile application that allows “curious naturalists” to contribute to ongoing scientific research through data collection and documentation efforts.

Massoud Amin wants to make our energy infrastructure more sustainable and secure. The complex systems researcher from the University of Minnesota believes this requires networking energy into a “smart” grid that incorporates alternative energy. This will provide national as well as environmental and financial security.

MIT professor Dan Ariely believes that the starting point for making better decisions, particularly with financial matters, requires understanding the impulse to act irrationally. At PopTech 2009, Ariely discussed an excerpt from his new book, The Upside of Irrationality, about the role of emotions in the workplace.

At the PopTech Chicago 2010 Salon event, Laura Kurgan, director of the Spatial Information Design Lab, presents data illustrating the relationship between incarceration rates, financial expenditures, and neighborhoods— block by block. This new perspective provides shocking insight into how to re-envision community investment.

Rinku Sen, president and executive director of the Applied Research Center, is devoted to creating a more inclusive America. If we’re willing to be explicit about the ways racism works around us, Sen says, we can create the society we all want to live in. Sen also publishes the ColorLines, a magazine on race and politics. (www.arc.org)

Kyna Leski is a designer and architecture professor at RISD, where she explores the craft of architecture as a design form. Artistic sensibility, she suggests, comes from the actual process of gathering, seeing, and grasping — allowing us to “know” the world. She is also Principal at 3six0 Architecture. (www.3six0.com)

Photographer Chris Jordan specializes in large-scale works that depict the magnitude of our consumerism and its impact on our environment. In one of the most emotional presentations at PopTech 2009, Jordan shares heart-wrenching images of birds killed by ingesting plastics that increasingly pollute our oceans.

Assaf Biderman is the Associate Director of the SENSEable City Laboratory, an MIT university research group that explores the “real-time city” by studying how distributed technologies can be used to improve our understanding of cities and create a more sustainable ways of interacting in urban environments.

Reihan Salam, a New America Foundation fellow, writes on politics, culture, and technology. At PopTech 2009, Salam argues that America’s growing diversity, divided by massive inequalities, will lead the country to increasing social conservatism. Salam also co-authored Grand New Party: How Conservatives Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream.