For four years, artist Naomi Natale’s social art practice, the One Million Bones project, has used education, hands-on artmaking and public art installation to raise awareness of ongoing genocide and mass atrocities. On June 8, Naomi and the One Million Bones team will be joined by thousands of volunteers to lay down the one million human “bones,” which participants have made by hand, on the National Mall in Washington, DC — creating a striking visual representation of conflicts we cannot continue to ignore.

Here, we chat with Natale about where the idea for this fascinating demonstration came from.

You’ve been working on the One Million Bones Project for a long time, and it has grown from an idea into massive, global art project. How did you get here?

My background is in art and photography, and I’m especially interested in the intersection of art and activism — particularly the ways art can be used to bring issues that are physically far away close to home on an emotional level. I am deeply committed to the issue of genocide and mass atrocities, and One Million Bones is my way of addressing that.

One Million Bones called for individuals all over the world to create an artistic representation of a human bone, which would then be installed on the National Mall as a visible petition and symbolic mass grave. The installation will be happening June 8 through the 10, 2013.

There have been years of activity leading up to this moment. Tell us about the grass-roots education effort involved.

One of the biggest elements of the project has been the educational component, because so many young people and adults simply don’t know what genocide is — let alone that it is happening today. My concern is, “How will we ever know or look for solutions to an issue if we don’t know what it is and that it is happening?”

We designed curriculum from preschool all the way up to high school so that educators can bring the material into their classrooms in an age-appropriate manner. At the younger age levels, we talk about issues like values, ethics and respect. We talk about virtues and how our bones are like our virtues: they make us who we are though we can’t see them.

For older age groups, we talk directly about genocide and how we can take responsibility as consumers and voters — that our voices matter. The bones they make becomes a symbol of our voices. We then direct students to other organizations that are working on these issues on a deeper level in hopes that this sparks an interest in future activism.

This is a really difficult issue to bring into a classroom. We’ve heard this time and time again, with all the schools that we’ve been working in. But the fact that there’s an activity at the end really opens a space where students can learn about the issues, process them, and then put the intention for change into a direct action. The action piece is really important with an issue this difficult, because otherwise people can be paralyzed by that information, feel completely overwhelmed and want to turn away.

Through the project, thousands of students were able to learn about these issues and connect to their peers abroad. One Million Bones had the amazing opportunity to partner with Students Rebuild to launch a challenge in which each bone made generated a $1 donation, up to $500,000, from the Bezos Family Foundation towards CARE’s work on the ground in Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

In April 2012, 50,000 bones were laid in Congo Square in New Orleans. Photo: One Million Bones

What is the project’s reach?

We have had over 100,000 participants in schools in all 50 states and 30 countries. It’s been a completely grassroots effort. We laid our first 50,000 bones down in New Mexico in August of 2010. That was a critical moment for us, because it was the first time we could ever see the bones laid out, and we were able to capture a lot of reflections of how people responded. As a result of that event, we launched The Road to Washington ten months later. Thirty-five installations were laid out in 35 state capitals, all on the same day, all community-driven and organized. It was a way for volunteers who were really moved and stirred by the project to galvanize their own communities to lay down bones.

We laid 50,000 bones down in Congo Square in New Orleans in April 2012 as well. In that city, we drew a natural connection between genocide and mass atrocities and the local violence experienced there — a lot of the discussions from the students drew from their personal experience. When they learned about the violence on the scale it is in Sudan and Congo, I think there was this very deep connection and empathy. Students in New Orleans continued to make thousands of bones and have done installations and educational programming since then, often seeing the bones as a way to find their individual voices. It can really be an empowering experience to realize you can do something, can contribute to a larger cause.

Is there always an exhibit of some kind when teachers use the curriculum?

Not always. Sometimes students just make bones and send them in. Sometimes the school or an arts center will host an installation. And sometimes an individual champions the project and decides they’re going to put an installation somewhere public and get a lot of other people involved. We help them from our end virtually, and do what we can to support that process.

In September 2012, with our partners Students Rebuild, we were able to bring on 40 state coordinators, each brining the project into their local communities. Our Colorado state coordinator, Marianne Beard, got over 60 schools in Colorado to work on the project and to make bones. And they produced an installation. That’s just one example of how the project has grown.

How did you become interested in genocide as a topic for art and activism?

The journey began with a book I read in 2003: We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families by Philip Gourevitch, which was about the Rwandan genocide. I didn’t learn about the Rwandan genocide until long after it happened and, when I did, I couldn’t believe that I had never heard of it.

It’s hard to wrap your head around how 800,000 people were killed in 90 days predominantly by machetes. You think about the intimacy of killing somebody through a method that takes a lot of power and human energy. The international community absolutely knew what was happening, and we didn’t do anything. There were things that we could have done that wouldn’t have even required us to go in, and we failed to do even that. But it was reading about what happened in Rwanda, plus knowing there was genocide happening in Sudan as well as a conflict ongoing in Congo for years made me want to make Philip’s words come to life and bring it into my part of the world so that others could see it.

The One Million Bones project focuses on Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burma and Somalia. These conflicts have been going on for such a long time. Little attention has been paid to them. Next to no action has been taken.

Participant carrying bones for a bone laying installation. Photo: Joanne Teasdale

It was 10 years ago last month that the government of Sudan began a genocidal campaign against its civilians in Darfur. Over 300,000 people have died, and over two-and-a-half million people are displaced. It’s pretty inconceivable that President Omar al-Bashir has been indicted by the International Criminal Court with crimes of genocide, crimes against humanity, and yet his regime still stands. In 2004, for the first time ever, the US government recognized a genocide in Sudan while it was happening, and we still failed to take any effective action to intervene.

I think that set an incredibly dangerous precedent because before, we wouldn’t call it genocide and we didn’t take action. But to actually call it a genocide and not take action — I don’t know how we can carry on and say “never again.” When we talk to students about this, it becomes something they want to learn more about, and they want to be more active and aware. So it’s so important to be able to have an opportunity to connect with our youth about these issues, as well as everyone else.

What are the bones made of?

Some are made out of clay. Some are made out of plaster gauze, which is really beautiful to do because it’s like bandaging bones. Some of them are made out of wood. Some of them are glass, metal, paper, and tape — all different materials.

I have to say, when they’re all together, when they’re all laid out, they’re quite striking and really, really beautiful. The main parameter is we ask that they are created in neutral colors. Some people have inscribed their names or prayers or thoughts on their bones as well.

And why a bone?

The bone was chosen as a symbol to attest to the gravity of these issues. But more significantly, it was chosen as a symbol and as a reminder that we belong to each other and that we’re responsible to one another. And that’s important: we’ve gotten a lot of pushback because it’s ultimately pretty out there to have kids making bones to address such an intense issue. But when we were able to explain the project to educators, walk them through it, and talk them through how these bones are ultimately about why we should take care of each other, they were able to embrace it. It’s very provocative, having a lot of children ultimately creating a mass grave on the National Mall. But it sends a message that’s much higher than that.

Bones made in Tallahassee, Florida. Photo: Jane McPherson

Are the bones in Washington DC all those that have been created through the program?

Yes, and they’ve been stored in hubs around the country. A lot of them were sent to our base in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Now for the last haul, they’re sending them to DC.

What will happen in DC?

On June 8, we will lay all the bones out on the National Mall, an action performed as a ceremony, starting at 3rd Street, which is the closest street to the Capitol. We ask people to come dressed in white. And we will lay the bones out right on the Mall. Our goal is to have 4,000 people to lay the bones out that day. That’s an incredible amount of people to organize in a city you haven’t had much time in. But we’ve done a lot of community outreach in the DC area, and we know people are coming in from all over. There’s a class of 20 kids from Tennessee who are making the trek for the entire weekend. We have a group of 60 people from the Great Lakes region who are coming out, from Tallahassee, from Boston — from everywhere. But it’s a call to everyone — so we want as many people there as possible to participate and witness. Anyone can just turn up, but we highly recommend that you register.

You were an inaugural Fellow from the TEDGlobal class of 2009. How has the fellowship had an impact on your work?

It’s been incredible. Hands down, this project would not have been able to evolve or carry on without the support and encouragement the TED community gave. It was such an out-there idea from the beginning, and the fact that the TED Fellows team really believed in it and in me was really huge and important. So I definitely feel that, as the project culminates, they’re all there for certain in their support. The people that I’ve met — the other fellows who are some of my dearest friends — have been extraordinary and so inspirational. And some of OMB partners have been made through the Fellows community, and that’s been extraordinary.

After the event at the National Mall, what’s next?

In the process of this project, our project manager Susan McAllister and I co-founded an organization called the Art of Revolution that is dedicated to creating works at the intersection of art and activism. Our hope is to continue to do these types of projects. We have no ideas confirmed, but we know that we really love working in this space and we want to continue to do that. And so we have a website called TheArtofRevolution.org, and we’ll just continue from here.

Will the One Million Bones website continue?

We’ve heard from a lot of different groups who work on these issues that they’d like to continue use the curriculum and educational tools. So it’s very possible that people will continue to make bones in the process of learning about these issues. We will keep the website up and see where that goes organically. In terms of where the bones are going afterwards, our goal is to create a permanent installation. We’ll wait to see how the event goes in DC and to see if we’re able to do that afterwards.

Having lived with the issue for so long, what have you learned about genocide and what it says about human nature?

Its definitely something very daunting to consider. We’ve known it to happen over and over again. I think about Raphael Lemkin who is the man who coined the phrase. He gave his entire life so that we would have a word that would describe this crime. Without it, we couldn’t create the Geneva Convention or an international response of law. Unfortunately, the real causes of genocide are very complex. Each country, each issue, each place is very different. Those are things that I don’t feel I have the capacity to change. What I have to offer is questioning how we as a world allow it to happen without our attention or concern.

Above: Watch a video made for the One Million Bones Albuquerque event on August 28th, 2011.

TEDGlobal 2013 guest curators Nassim Assefi and Gabriella Gomez-Mont share how they created the session, “The World on Its Head,” which will make you rethink the global order.

Session 6 of TEDGlobal 2013 has a captivating title: “The World on its Head.” Guest curated by Nassim Assefi and Gabriella Gómez-Mont — both from the inaugural class of TEDGlobal 2009 Fellows — the session will be a chance to turn our conceptions of the Middle East and Latin America upside down, and to rethink staid assumptions about politics, religion, art, architecture, peacemaking and more. 

Here, the TED Blog asks Assefi and Gómez-Mont to share what inspired the session and how they went about picking speakers.

Where did the theme “The World on Its Head” come from?

Nassim Assefi: Gabriella and I brainstormed, trying to tie together our two regions. What is the zeigeist in each of our regions? The undercurrents? What do they have in common? How have they been underestimated? Misunderstood? What is their hidden potential? We settled on “The World On Its Head” after viewing a wonderful map of the world with the South facing upward. That visual became a metaphor for rethinking deeply held assumptions and views of the world and sitting with the discomfort of a new idea until the brain adjusts.

Gabriella Gómez-Mont: For me, the idea of “The World on Its Head” rings strongly and intimately with moments in life when I had to truly rethink important things so deeply that the former map no longer works, no longer matches the new reality. That moment, pause, gap, chaos of no longer understanding anything because one fundamental part of understanding crumbles — it’s one of the most enigmatic and profoundly human moments one can go through.

It is both so strangely beautiful and tremendously brutal to rethink once unshakable truths. No wonder all of us, collectively and individually, try to make the world sit still and force maps to remain the same for centuries even when they no longer work. But in the end, that moment of confusion is a fundamental part of every transformation, adventure, and reconstitution — a pure turbulent threshold between paradigms. And then many new possibilities surface after finding one’s footing again in an upside-down world.

How did the guest curation come about?

Assefi: I had been pitching speaker ideas to [TEDGlobal curator] Bruno Giussani since the moment I met him, and many of those suggestions have made it to the TED stage. I play that role at TEDMED, too. In August 2012, we received a marvelous email invitation out of the blue from Bruno to guest curate/host a session at TEDGlobal. There are more than 300 TED Fellows from around the world, each doing amazing work, and no TED Fellow had ever guest curated a session at TED, so this is an incredible honor.

Gabriella and I were chosen in part because we work in, and come from, distinct regions of the world — I represent the Middle East/Central Asia, and Gabriella Latin America. I’m an internist and global women’s health specialist (most recently tackling maternal mortality in Afghanistan). I also write novels, work on civic peace-oriented projects in the Middle East, defend human rights from a medical angle, and am a feminist activist, a single mom, and a diehard TEDhead. Gabriella is an artist, a documentary filmmaker, a curator for the arts in Latin America, and now head of a civic think tank/laboratory for Mexico City.

I represent the sciences/health, literature, and global politics; she is the arts expert, the design/architecture person, a cultural force. We have different styles of working, but in reality, we overlap quite a bit. I speak Spanish and have worked in Central America. She has traveled in the Middle East. We’re both polyglots, crazy dancers, and global citizens, though we have strong predilections for our regions of origin.

The map that inspired the session, “The World on its Head.”

What’s the thrust of the session?

Assefi: It’s about discarding assumptions about the Middle East, Latin America, and the way you think the world works in exchange for groundbreaking ideas that will hopefully inspire you to rethink politics, religion, art, peacemaking, the role of sports, underestimated economies and architecture, and even toxic environments.

Gómez-Mont: Exactly, that is a great description. I was interested in reformulating and rethinking certain gray areas we take for granted, and I wanted to focus on Latin America, on certain places and subjects that could be explored more thoroughly. We sought to make our speakers complement each other, understand how we could weave certain threads among individual narratives, regions and diverse disciplines. And diversity — of age, country of origin, religion, and so on — was important to us.

Can you describe your speakers?

Assefi: All are global citizens/multicultural. Each of them has taken on courageous work. The lineup include: architect and urbanist Teddy Cruz; explorer, writer and filmmaker Holly Morris; economic policy innovator Juan Pardinas; historian/political scientist Trita Parsi; performance artist Tania Bruguera; accidental theologist Lesley Hazleton; and founder of the Beirut Marathon, May El-Khalil.

We found our musician through two other TEDFellows, Meklit Hadero and Esra’a al Shafei. Dina el Wedidi is one of Meklit’s Nile Music artists and is featured in Esra’a’s MidEastTunes app. Through the Rolex Mentor and Protegee Arts Program, Dina has been paired with the famous Brazilian musician, Gilberto Gil. Dina seemed like a poetic fit for our session — the TED Fellow-link to discovering this brazen, beautiful, young woman singer-songwriter from the Middle East, who found her audience during the Arab Spring and is being influenced and mentored by a legendary Latin American musical force.

But we don’t want to give away our speakers’ topics. It’s more fun if you are surprised by our session. At a TED conference, one generally doesn’t know what each speaker’s idea worth spreading will be until show time!

Which speakers do you think are going to knock our socks off? Why?

Assefi: That’s a cruel question, like asking a mother to choose the favorite between her children! The truth is, if curated well, different speakers will wow different people. It depends on what’s happening in your life, what you’ve been thinking about lately, and how open you are to certain ideas. Of the four I’ve chosen, I can imagine each one of them blowing you away. I predict Gabriella feels the same.

Gómez-Mont: I feel the same. And one never knows until that fateful day when the crowd goes silent and the curtain goes up what will happen in that space between those words on paper and the voice on stage — between the careful planning and the happily reckless, often serendipitous, many times shifting, sometimes accomplice or sometimes trickster — reality.

TED Global, themed “Think Again,” kicks off on June 10 in Edinburgh, Scotland. See the full list of speakers, and get lots more information about attending at the conference website. And stay tuned to the TED Blog where we will be bringing you live coverage of the conference.

Peter Singer explains the “effective altruism” movement at TED2013. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Every day, most of us do something morally indefensible — we go about our lives without sending help to the 6.9 million children under the age of 5 who will die this year from poverty-related disease. In today’s talk, philosopher Peter Singer makes the case that ignoring these kids is as inhumane as ignoring a child who’s been hit by a car on the street in front of you.

Peter Singer: The why and how of effective altruism “Does it really matter that they’re far away?” asks Singer. “I don’t think it does make a morally relevant difference — the fact that they’re not right in front of us, or the fact that they’re of a different nationality or race.”

But he’s not saying this to make us feel bad and helpless. Today’s talk actually delivers good news: that through what Singer calls “effective altruism,” we all have the ability to make a difference. Effective altruism begins with reason – the realization that all lives are of equal value — and looking for charities that affect the most lives, the most effectively.

To hear how a single person — and one who is nowhere close to a billionaire – can make a big impact for good in the world, watch this talk. And below, some resources to get you thinking about giving more effectively.

Peter Singer’s top 10 recommended charities:

1. Against Malaria Foundation. Of those 6.9 million children who die every year of poverty-related illness, 1 million succumb to malaria. AMF provides insecticide-treated bed nets, which only cost $5 apiece.
2. Schistosomiasis Control Initiative. Protecting a child from worm-based disease for a full year costs around 50 cents. This organization works with governments to make sure it happens.
3. The Humane League. Invests time, money and energy to reduce animal cruelty and save the lives of animals, focusing on farmed animals.
4. GiveDirectly. This nonprofit transfers money to poor individuals in Kenya, letting them spend it for food and other basic needs, or on high-return investments.
5. Oxfam International. This mega aid organization works in a wide range of areas, including disaster relief, education, sanitation and women’s rights.
6. Proven Impact Fund. Dedicated to data and results, this fund from Innovations for Poverty Action supports interventions with strong evidence of success.
7. The Fistula Foundation. Fistula is a ghastly injury during childbirth, and it afflicts women living in the poorest areas of the world. This organization provides needed surgery.
8. The Hunger Project. Encouraging men and women to end their own hunger, this organization assists poor villages for five years, relying on the local workforce to build skills and take over before they leave.
9. Vegan Outreach. A nonprofit that seeks to expose and end cruelty to animals.
10. Population Services International. A global health organization that focuses on family planning, a simple service that can improve the health of women and their children.
    

Resources for finding other charities to support:

• GiveWell. This nonprofit does in-depth research on charities and highlights a small number that do a remarkable amount of good per dollar they receive. (Singer recommends this site.)
• Effective Animal Activism. One of the causes nearest to Singer’s heart is animal liberation, and he is impressed with this charity evaluator that focuses on animal suffering.
• Charity Navigator. The largest charity evaluator in the U.S., Charity Navigator has data and ratings for nearly 6,000 charities.
• Great Nonprofits. A site dedicated to informing would-be donors through reviews from board members, volunteers, experts and regular folks who’ve interfaced with a charity.

Resources Singer recommends for connecting with other people interested in doing good:

• Giving What We Can. The members of this international society make a bold pledge: to donate 10% of their income to eliminating poverty in the developing world. A good place to connect with others, and to find high-quality organizations to support.
• The Life You Can Save. At this site, you can pledge to donate any percentage of your income to those in need. In addition to directing you to great charities to support, it’s also a log for local volunteer opportunities.
• Effective Altruism. A blog from Peter Singer and William MacAskill dedicated to the tenets of effective altruism.
• The High Impact Network. This group has a great acronym – THINK. Members meet up to ponder effective giving — both strategically and creatively.

A resource for finding the career that does the greatest good:

• 80,000 Hours. Named after the number of hours most people will work over their lifetime, this career advice site has a twist – it gives advice on how different careers can have an impact on poverty. As Singer mentions in his talk, the site doesn’t shy away from unusual answers; it suggests that working in finance and donating a percentage of your income could fund multiple aid workers.

And further reading in effective altruism:

• The Life You Can Save: How to Do Your Part to End World Poverty. Peter Singer’s book about how each person can be a part of the solution to poverty, it calls for a cultural change to consider poverty eradication a natural part of a moral life.
• The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution and Moral Progress. Peter Singer’s classic study of ethics, which examines the question: Where does our desire for altruism come from? He shows how it might come down to the biological drive to protect or kin — but that it is also a matter of reason.
• The Ethics of What We Eat: Why Our Food Choices Matter. A bold look from Peter Singer and Jim Mason on how our individual food choices affect animals, the environment and our fellow human beings.

Want more advice on how to parse the world of nonprofits and giving? Check out Dan Pallotta’s tips for picking a charity that’s right for you »

Ready for a Sunday binge of talks that will make your head spin? In this new playlist, twelve speakers take on our biggest issues: shifting global powers, the value of democracy, climate change, the nature of time, the future evolution of the human race. Some of these talks bring good news and some bring potential bad news — and all of them bring to mind new questions as they supply answers to old ones.

Watch the TED playlist, “The Big Picture,” which includes talks by Misha Glenny on global crime networks, Rory Stewart on why democracy matters, Stewart Brand on why we should think ten thousand years in the future and Juan Enriquez on how the next generation may be a different species »

TED playlists are collections of talks around a topic, built to illuminate ideas in context. A new playlist is added every week. We hope you enjoy this installment.

Julian Treasure takes the stage at TEDGlobal 2009, sharing the shocking fact that — when you can hear others talking in an open office — productivity dips by 66%.

Julian Treasure cares very deeply for your ears. That’s why he’s given TED talks like “The 4 ways sound affects us” and “Why architects need to use their ears.” Treasure is on a mission to make policymakers, engineers, architects and, well, Julian Treasure: Shh! Sound health in 8 stepseveryone think more about what they hear around them — because the way things sound have a tangible, measurable effect on how we feel, how we heal, how we work and how we live.

To this end, Treasure’s The Sound Agency has teamed up with Biamp Systems to create a whitepaper called “Building in Sound,” a look at the data linking sound and well-being.

“This paper is based on exhaustive review of academic papers, and reports from national governments and multinational bodies, going back some 40 years,” it begins. “The research examines the causes and impacts of sound on our health, recovery from illness or surgery, our ability to absorb information and learn, our productivity, and general sense of wellbeing.”

Read the paper in full, or check out some of the most fascinating facts below.

1. The estimated cost of noise pollution is $30.8 billion a year — and that’s just in Europe.  The World Health Organization Europe’s 2011 report, “Burden of disease from environmental noise,” analyzes the relationship between environmental noise and health. In this study, they calculate the financial cost of lost work days, healthcare treatment, impaired learning and decreased productivity due to noise. The total they came up with is staggering, considering they’re looking at just one continent.
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2. Each year, noise pollution takes a day off the life of every adult and child in Europe. This same study also looked at the cost of noise pollution in terms of lost life expectancy. Shockingly, they determined that every 365 days, one million years are taken off European’s collective life expectancy — averaging to a day per person.
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3. If you can hear someone talking while you’re reading or writing, your productivity dips by up to 66%.  Open floor-plan offices distract workers without them even noticing it. In a classic study published in the British Journal of Psychology in 1998, researchers found that employers were highly distracted when they could hear conversation around them, and less able to perform their duties. Another classic study found that noise in the office also correlated to increased stress hormone levels and a lower willingness to engage with others. According to Sound Agency case study, when sound masking technology was used in an office, there was a 46% improvement in employees’ ability to concentrate and their short term memory accuracy increased 10 percent.
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4. The average noise level in many classrooms is not just associated with impaired learning — but with permanent hearing loss. Noise can deeply affect learning too. The WHO recommends a noise level in classrooms akin to that you’d find in a library — 35 decibels. However, a study in Germany found that the actual average noise volume in classrooms is 65 decibels — a level associated with permanent hearing loss. As Treasure outlines in this talk, for a student sitting in the fourth row of a traditional classroom, speech intelligibility is just 50 percent — meaning that they only hear half of what their teacher says.
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5. A 20 decibel increase in aircraft noise is enough to delay a student’s reading level by up to 8 months. A study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 2006 looked at 2000 students between the ages of 9 and 10 in schools in The Netherlands, Spain and the U.K. — many in schools near airports. They found that aircraft noise was associated with impaired reading comprehension.
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6. 50% of teachers have experienced damage to their voice from talking over classroom noise. A study of teachers published in the Journal of Speech, Language and Hearing Research in 2004, noted another side-effect of noise pollution in classrooms — 50% of teachers have suffered irreversible damage to their voices. Why? Because as the environment gets noisier, we speak more loudly.
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7. The average noise level in some hospital wards not only impedes healing — but could legally require hearing protection. The WHO recommends noise levels in hospital wards to stay around 35 decibels. But a study in the US found the average noise level in hospital wards is actually closer to 95 decibels — just 10 decibels beyond the noise level at which U.S. federal law requires ear protection for prolonged exposure. Sleep is crucial for patient recovery, and yet with the constant beeps, tones and shuffling, the body feels that it is under threat. Not to mention that staff errors increase the greater the level of distracting noise.
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8. 3% of cardiac arrest cases in Germany have been explicitly linked to traffic noise. Treasure found this alarming fact in a 2009 press release from the Environmental Protection UK.
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9. Noise pollution may possibly even contribute to crime. When the city of Lancaster, California, installed a sound system featuring birdsong along a half-mile stretch of a main road, there was a 15 percent reduction in reported crime, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal. Similarly, when the London Underground started playing classical music at a crime-heavy station, robberies fell by 33% while assaults on staff dropped 25%, says The Independent.

Below, an infographic further outlining the problem.

Some Play-doh at TEDxDesMoines. Photo: Holly Baumgartel

The paradox of finding peace in a war zone, and a way to make aid more effective — by decentralizing it and thus speeding it up. Each week, TEDx chooses four of our favorite talks, highlighting just a few of the enlightening speakers from the TEDx community and its diverse constellation of ideas worth spreading. Below, this week’s talks, which reflect on the complicated dynamics of our always changing world.

Aid doesn’t work when it’s too slow: Rob Williams at TEDxWarwick
Rob Williams wants us to decentralize aid management. Despite improvements in recent years, a United Nations’ controlled foreign aid system is still too slow to help many, he says. Citing harrowing experiences of needy children in conflict and disaster zones, he proposes a plan for decentralizing aid to meet a two-day response goal for disaster relief. (Filmed at TEDxWarwick.)

Finding peace in a war zone: Hesna Al Ghaoui at TEDxDanubia
As a war correspondent, Hesna Al Ghaoui is always asked: “How are you not afraid?” In this talk from TEDxDanubia, she shares harrowing stories from war zones all over the world and what her experiences tell us about the nature of fear itself. (Filmed at TEDxDanubia.)

The moral questions of new warfare: Yves Daccord at TEDxHelvetia
We know what cybercrime looks like, but what about cyber war? At TEDxHelvetia, Yves Daccord gives us a glimpse into a future where citizens are unaware of the actions of governments, where war is possible without soldiers, and where humanity has an entirely different set of moral questions to ponder. (Filmed at TEDxHelvetia.)

When should we negotiate with terrorists?: Mitchell Reiss at TEDxColumbiaSIPA
It’s an old movie cliché: “Don’t negotiate with terrorists.” But in the real world, are there times when negotiation might actually be the best course of action? If you do it right, says Mitchell Reiss, it might be possible to save lives by sitting down to talk with terrorist leaders. (Filmed at TEDxColumbiaSIPA.)

And here, some of the week’s highlights from the TEDx Blog this week:

• Can preschool save the US economy?
• Photographing whales from 10 feet away
• Getting kids to read — one video at a time
• The super-cool trailer for TEDxThessaloniki
• New treatments for epilepsy from TEDxUWollongong

Chelsea Clinton has some advice for those with the greatest potential to become change-makers — the young. At TEDxTeen, held in New York City on March 16, Clinton delivered this bold talk, saying that despite negative assumptions, today’s youth are in a unique position to do good. Teens today have big advantages over those who are older, says Clinton: they are more likely to take risks, they lack deeply engrained biases and they are digital natives. As a result, millennials – those coming of age in the 21^st century — are more likely to be confident, connected and open to change. This makes for vast potential.

So how can teens harness it? Clinton says that it’s a matter of finding what you’re passionate about and then not being afraid to try it — because you never know how great your impact could be. Clinton challenges young people to “dare greatly and act boldly,” because “the worst thing that happens in life,” as they say in the Clinton family, “is that you get caught trying.”

Clinton’s talk is especially salient, as she hosted the Clinton Global Initiative University last weekend. At CGI U, a thousand college students with a desire to serve others gathered to innovate solutions for problems on both the global and local scale — and to make commitments to act upon them.

Clinton tells Parade Magazine that she was inspired to host the event by her grandmother, Dorothy Rodham. “She would always say life is not about what happens;” says Clinton, “it’s about what you do with what happens to you.” Rodham challenged her granddaughter to strive to live with a greater consciousness for helping others, even though Clinton naturally shies away from the spotlight. “[My grandma] thought I wasn’t doing enough with the opportunity I’d been given to be Chelsea Clinton,” she tells the magazine.

TED playlists are collections of talks around a topic, built for you in a thoughtful sequence to illuminate ideas in context. This weekend, a new playlist is available: Everything you thought … was wrong.

You think you know how to tie your shoes, but you’re wrong. You think you understand how non-profits should work, but you’re wrong. You think more choices are better, but you’re wrong. This week’s new playlist looks at 8 problems and offers unconventional, counter-intuitive solutions that’ll flip your thinking.

Watch this playlist, which includes talks by Dan Pallotta, Allan Savory, Barry Schwartz and more »

And here’s more motivation to watch. Below, just a few of the great talks that have been given at TEDxChanges past:

• Melinda Gates: Let’s put birth control back on the agenda
• Hans Rosling: The good news of the decade?
• Melinda Gates: What nonprofits can learn from Coca-Cola
• Mechai Viravaidya: How Mr. Condom made Thailand a better place

Watch the webcast »

We sat down with Van Ort to learn more about the global crisis of land mines and what we can all do about it.

What first got you interested in the land mine crisis?          

It was a slow progression. It started with my interest in modern man’s impact on the topography of the physical landscape. In 2009, I wanted to find landscapes that still harbored fear and limited movement much the way forests, mountains and rivers inhibited development many centuries ago. After some thought, the idea of minefields and how they restrict movement came to me.  To get at the core of that, I decided to photograph the actual fields where the devices were embedded.  From there, I learned much more about the topic. As a result, I usually include information in my talks about what we can do to stop creating and using these devices.

What are the impacts land mines have on a country after a war is over?

Obviously, land mines kill and maim. But land mines also restrict movement, discourage agricultural and economic development, and break down the necessary social interaction between neighboring communities. They also affect families — an entire family unit must learn to care for the survivor and aid in chores while he/she is seeking constant medical attention.

Of all the countries affected by land mines, why were you drawn to Bosnia and Herzegovina?

After the war ended in 1995, Bosnia had the highest proliferation of mines in the earth. There were 152 mines per square mile, according to Human Rights Watch in 1996. Today, about 2.8% of the land area is considered a minefield.

Also, I felt the audience needed to have a connection to the landscape.  Afghanistan, Angola, Egypt and Iraq, with their desert locals, and Cambodia, Colombia and Laos, with their jungles and rice patties, seem distant and foreign to majority of Americans and Europeans. Westerners can relate to the Bosnian landscape.  The Dinaric Alps resemble the Sierra Nevada. With lush, coniferous canopies, these areas closely resemble the places we walk with our dog or family in the early evening during summer.

Did you feel in danger when you were walking around these mine fields?

Yes.  The width of the safe space is delineated by caution tape on the ground.  That space is no more than the width an airplane aisle in some spots.  It feels as if you are on a tight rope.  Even when I would take a photograph from well outside the restricted zone, I still had an overwhelming sense of fear.

How is technology aiding land mine eradication?

The metal detector, along with a thin metal probe and a trowel, is still the preferred method for removal.  However, there are land mine removal “tanks” that chew up the ground and set off the land mines in the process.  The British military designed a Python Minefield Breaching System — a rocket is shot out attached to a 200 yard cord, which, after it is laid, carries a charge which will detonate every mine within a seven meter-wide area. Then there are mine sniffing dogs and the HERORats from Mozambique that can smell out the TNT in a mine.  Lastly there is Mahmoud Hassaini’s Mine Kafon.  The wind-blown, tumbleweed-like device, costs about 40 Euros and can detonate several mines in a single pass across a plain.  Specifically, the Mine Kafon device allows for locals to inexpensively survey an area to see if their suspicions are correct.

What else can be done to eradicate land mines globally? What can we do?

The first thing we can do as Americans is pressure our representatives in Congress to ratify and sign the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention Treaty, a.k.a. The Ottawa Treaty. We need to join in condemning and outlawing these indiscriminate killing machines.

Supporting local NGOs that do work supporting mine victims is another step.  However, passing the word on and telling your friends and family to pressure their representatives is the most direct action we can take.  If the United States can formally ratify the treaty and sign it, then hopefully this will put pressure on states like Russia, China, India and Pakistan.

Minescape is available for Kindle and Nook, as well as through the iBookstore. Or download the TED Books app for your iPad or iPhone.