How do you define well being? To be well with your well being, you need to accept it’s not just a state of being but also an active journey. Did you know fewer than 10% of adults sustain healthy habits throughout their lives, and over 40% of adults aged +45 live with multiple chronic conditions? In today’s fast-paced world, many of us feel stuck, aimless, or struggle with enacting and sustaining our well-being goals. Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh shares the transformative VIP CWRE framework—a pragmatic and powerful blend of science, humanity, and actionable strategies for whole-person well-being. Drawing from decades of innovative research, personal insights, and real-world practice, this talk empowers you to rethink well-being and navigate life’s quiet moments and inevitable storms with intention and confidence. Whether you’re striving for better health, professional fulfillment, or community connection, this talk will inspire you to live a VIP life worth living—purposeful, resilient, and uniquely yours.#Wellbeing #Healthandwellness #Health #Wellness Dr. Moain Abu Dabrh is a medical humanist, researcher, and physician-coach at the Mayo Clinic, committed to redefining well-being as more than the absence of illness. Drawing on decades of evidence-based research, clinical and coaching practice, and innovative collaborations, his work empowers individuals, communities, healthcare systems, and policymakers to navigate the dynamic complexities of modern life demands and healthcare delivery with intention, resilience, and confidence. Bridging the science of well-being with the soul of humanity, his work inspires a path toward a more meaningful life and a thoughtful approach to healthcare. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Post-COVID Downtowns have been gutted nationwide. It is not that they are not dead, but how we think of them is. Creative Placemaking expert Kady Yellow believes that remaking and renewing our city centers requires social architecture, not only building up with brick and mortar but building up our people. Yellow unleashes the power of the public imagination through her award-winning open-call process that centralizes the resident as the expert city builder and transforms entrepreneurs through her process into more educated urbanists. By highlighting and embracing the everyday citizen as catalysts for positive change, we can enhance our cities aesthetically, bridge social divides, promote economic growth, and cultivate active public spaces.#Placemaking #Downtown #Art #Transformation #UrbanRenewal Kady Yellow is the Vice President of Placemaking for Downtown Vision, bringing over fifteen years of experience in creative placemaking and community-building expertise from her work in New Orleans, California, Alaska, New York, and Western Europe. She holds a master's degree in Arts Administration from the University of New Orleans and two bachelor's degrees in Mathematical Sciences and Graphic Design from Binghamton University. Yellow is known for her work in civic entrepreneurship and the night time economy and specializes in "making public space(s) more public" through partnerships around the world. She has received special training from Federal Resources for Creative Community Development, City Repair Project, and Project for Public Spaces, has taught at university and authored a book on the topic, and is a recipient of prestigious grant awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, American Planning Association. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Civil rights activist Desmond Meade shares his journey to empower communities and highlight how every citizen has the power to inspire meaningful change. Fireside chat moderated by Hope McMath, founder and director of Yellow House, an organization that works at the intersection of art, civic engagement, and social justice. Desmond Meade is a formerly homeless returning citizen who overcame many obstacles to eventually become the President of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), Chair of Floridians for a Fair Democracy, a graduate of Florida International University College of Law, a Ford Global Fellow, and a 2021 MacArthur “Genius” Fellow.As President and Executive Director of FRRC, which is recognized for its work on voting and criminal justice reform issues, Desmond led the FRRC to a historic victory in 2018 with the successful passage of Amendment 4, a grassroots citizen’s initiative which restored voting rights to over 1.4 million Floridians with past felony convictions. Amendment 4 represented the single largest expansion of voting rights in the United States in half a century and brought an end to 150 years of a Jim Crow-era law in Florida. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

People often assume the worst of people we disagree with, especially those who hold opposing political views, and especially in America today. We know that when *other* people do this, they are usually being irrational — they're experiencing what behavioral economist Dan Stone calls "undue hate." But we very rarely see this in ourselves. Why do we tend to make this mistake — to dislike people we disagree with more than we should — and how can we become more self-aware when we make this mistake? Our best bet may be to better understand the range of cognitive biases that contribute to undue hate. In this talk, Stone explains four of these biases and how all four boil down to one underlying psychological factor: WYSIATI (What You See Is All There Is).#UndueHate #Politics #DisagreeBetter #Right #Left #Bias Dan Stone is Associate Professor and chair of the Economics department at Bowdoin College, author of Undue Hate (MIT Press, 2023), and advisor to the anti-polarization organizations Starts With Us, More Like Us, and Braver Angels. His team's submission to Stanford University's Strengthening Democracy Challenge yielded the largest reduction in emotional polarization among the 25 tested. Stone has taught behavioral economics at Bowdoin and Oregon State University since 2011, and his research is on polarization, biases in beliefs, media, sports, and socially responsible capitalism. He has also served with Americorps, worked for the consulting company Novantas, and coaches youth baseball, basketball, and soccer. Originally from Charlottesville, VA, Stone lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his spouse and two children. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

PanMarco Handpan is a collaboration of handpan artists. The handpan is a relatively new musical instrument invented in Switzerland in 2000—but it’s not just a musical instrument. It has a prominent place in the wellness and health world, and PanMarco Handpan takes these instruments into hospitals, cancer treatment and behavioral health facilities, hospices, and even food banks, bringing this soothing sound into places where they can help people heal. We hope you take the sense of peace these instruments offer and bring it into your world. The world surely needs a little bit of that.#Handpan #Music #Percussion #LivePerformance The PanMarco Players is an ensemble comprised of John Guinta, Elise Dietz, Chris Staton, and Krishna Acath. They are skilled practitioners of the handpan, a 21st-century musical instrument first created in Switzerland. When this instrument is played with hands, it creates soft, mallet-like notes rich in harmonics. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

Scroll through any social media network and you’re highly likely to encounter content created by artificial intelligence. Some of it, like the ubiquitous cat videos, will be cute and harmless. However, the same platforms that bind us together and create moments of communal joy and connection can also divide us through algorithmic radicalization. The ability of AI to produce deceptive information and create convincing fake content, combined with social media's rapid dissemination capabilities, has dangerous implications for societal dynamics.As an AI researcher, Aishwarya Reganti is focused on the intersection of these two trends. She’s investigating how social media and AI are merging to escalate the risks of misinformation. She believes it’s crucial that we change our mindset from "believing what you see" to "believing what you verify,” and she offers strategies for navigating this complex landscape and promoting a more informed and resilient digital future.#AI #SocialMedia #Misinformation #MachineLearning #ArtificialIntelligenceAI #Artificial_Intelligence As an AI researcher and tech lead at Amazon, Aishwarya Reganti is a highly recognized industry expert at the forefront of AI and social media. Her work, which includes over 30 research papers published in collaboration with top universities such as Stanford and the University of Michigan, focuses on social media aggression, fake news detection, fact verification, and meme interpretation.Aishwarya's thought leadership is evident in her frequent invitations to speak at industry and academic conferences. She also shares her expertise as a guest lecturer on AI topics at institutions like MIT andOxford. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx