Sheena Iyengar talks about how cultural differences affect the way we percieve choices. “For those unaccustomed to them, lots of options simply create confusion, not better choices.”
Laurie Santos says the errors we make in decision making are predictable — we tend to make the same mistakes again and again. She asks, “How is such a smart species capable of so many bad decisions?” Her experiments with “The Monkey Marketplace” show why.
Lewis Pugh‘s first attempt at a swim on Mt. Everest almost ended in disaster, but he managed to pull himself out. The lesson? The way you’ve done something in the past may not be the best way to do it in the future.
Jamil Abu-Wardeh on comedy in the Middle East: We must laugh at ourselves, before others can laugh with us. (He shows the first Middle Eastern, homegrown, all-woman comedy group.)
Comedian Maz Jobrani — star in Middle Eastern comedy group Axis of Evil — talks about the inner conflicts of being Iranian-American.
Photos: TED / James Duncan Davidson