PopTech Audio: PopCasts

Pop sociologist and best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell has honed in on a profound new question: what separates extraordinary and average people? Discussing findings from his much-anticipated book “Outliers,” Gladwell details how we’re squandering human potential everywhere from the football field to the classroom – and what we can do to change it.

Zainab Salbi, co-founder and president of Women for Women International, gives a voice to what she calls the “backline” of war—the often unheard and ignored experiences of women and their efforts to survive the terrifying consequences of the frontline.

Through a series of chemical reactions and a re-imagining of intellectual property practices, Jay Keasling and his partners at One World Health expect to have effective, affordable malaria pills in the hands of African children in a few years. Inspired? There’s more. Watch as Keasling describes the boundless possibilities of metabolic engineering and non-profit biotechnology.

Bill Shannon dances — on four legs. Born with a bilateral hip deformity, this ingenious performance artist’s work will challenge your notions of disability.

Who says we should only dance on our feet and not on our shoulders, hands or backs? Why dance on the ground but not in the sky? Take a look as self-described ‘action inventor’ Elizabeth Streb dreams up new ways to set the human body in motion.

A decade of e-mailing, IM’ing and social networking is beginning to undo forty million years of touching as a primary human modality. Acclaimed primatologist and evolutionary biologist, Nina Jablonski explores this change, man’s role as the only “self-decorating ape,” and how our underappreciated skin holds the key to our humanity.

Watch pioneering marine ecologist and Scripps Institution professor Enric Sala build a time machine to the 16th century – exposing a pristine coral reef few human eyes have ever glimpsed. He also explains how 99.9% of the world’s coral reef research has been flawed and posits tourism as a way to save these endangered, natural wonders.

Agricultural impresario Cary Fowler is kind of a latter-day Superman: his mission is to protect life on Earth, and he even operates out of an arctic fortress. While Dr. Fowler can’t fly or leap tall buildings, his work has captured the world’s imagination, and he’s safeguarding mankind’s future with a practical solution: seeds.

Robert Freling has set his sights on the ambitious goal of providing clean, sustainable solar energy to the world’s two billion people who currently go without. As the executive director of the Solar Electric Light Fund (SELF), he works toward his goal with projects that range from powering schools and health clinics to providing access to clean water through solar-powered pumps.

Ecologist and leading biodiversity conservationist Dr. Sarah Otterstrom illustrates the power of collaboration to combat climate change. Through partnerships, employment generation and environmental education in Nicaragua, Otterstrom finds ways to rebuild native forest, benefiting wildlife and people alike.

Renewable bamboo, coconut waste and sawdust aren’t usually used as fuels for factories, but in the northeast Brazilian Atlantic rainforest, ecological expert Stefano Merlin is pushing local factories to do just that. Leading a major fuel-switching initiative that blends social and environmental responsibilities with emission reductions, Merlin hopes that his most recent work will create what he calls in this address “a long-term biomass supply for the future.”

With roots in folk and country-blues, Kelly Joe Phelps serves up music the Washington Post says is brimming with “poignancy, passion and spirituality.” Live on the PopTech stage, the distinctive singer-songwriter coaxes satin-smooth melodies from his guitar, while his raw, honest voice delivers heartfelt lyrics.

Five-time Grammy award-winner John Legend will move you and motivate you. He weaves stories from his Show Me Campaign—a movement he launched to help eradicate extreme global poverty—in between each soulful song.

In a stirring performance, slam poet and visual artist Vanessa German imagines the things she could accomplish if her hands were two shooting stars or a raucous jazz quintet.

Canadian-born cellist Zoë Keating layers the sounds of her cello with live electronic sampling, as if she were an entire string ensemble condensed into one woman. Watch and listen to her infuse the Camden Opera House with wave after wave of beautiful and diverse rhythms.