Translator: TED Translators admin Reviewer: Denise RQ
Good morning.
Listenberg, the great German scientist,
said that man has 62 different ways of supporting the head.
I wonder why the skull is so heavy?
Why do we always relate the act of thinking,
to the image of Rodin's "Thinker,"
this bronze sculpture of a man in deep meditation?
That's why I ask myself, why do we believe
that the act of thinking is a sad and dismal action?
Can't it be a lighter and a more joyful one?
This is my first question.
Einstein had a somehow comforting and ironic quote,
on how he had only two original ideas all his life.
Facebook posed a similar question last year,
"What are you doing?"
sort of an action-oriented question,
but at the end of the same year they decided on a more philosophical one,
"What's on your mind?"
The answers are right there; posted on your walls.
We are almost always thinking about silly things,
something unworthy to be shared.
So, my next question is,
aren't we thinking in a very staid and uncreative way
about Amazon's serious problems?
Haven't we dedicated too much time to finding a way
to remind people what's important to us?
That's what editors and writers do, create memory.
What I and a worldwide group are trying to do
using "The Black Label" magazine and the articles I write
is to create a memory,
so that what matters to me can concern others too.
That's what I aim at.
How can I make people uninterested in Amazon
care about it?
How can I make residents of Vila Madalena
care about the Amazon?
To make this happen,
what I do is write,
and look for people who can tell stories.
Here are some of them.
"The woman who arrived the following day"
is a Zoe Koplowitz's story.
We sent the journalist Sergio Vilela to cover the New York Marathon,
but we didn't want something
about the repeated victories of Ethiopians and Kenyans.
We'd wait for the last runner instead,
who turned out to be Zoe Koplowitz.
Besides the fact that Zoe won none of the marathons
she participated in,
she also succeeded in always being the last one
to get at the finish line.
She turned the word "last" into an issue of pride,
she was almost proud to be the last one to get there.
Amidst all this driving popular winning culture
her view was focused on avoiding the tedium of winning.
She simply reinvented the meaning of the word "lose."
She added charisma to it.
Sergio Vilela has been already waiting for 7 hours at the finish line,
when he sees a man in a turban,
looking like a centenarian,
but happy because he made it.
Vilela asked an Associated press photographer
near him if that was the last participant.
He answered no,
the last one would finish tomorrow.
And 29 hours later she crossed the finish line.
Zoe Koplowitz has been running
since she was saved by a vitamin C tablet.
She almost died
of multiple sclerosis complications
but saved only by taking
a vitamin C tablet.
She promised herself she'd do something
beyond her capability
and since then, with the help of crutches,
she attends every marathon in New York.
That's one of our stories.
The other one is about Messi,
the top scorer who fires us up and then goes to sleep.
What else is left to say about an overexposed person
who we think we already know everything about?
And how to make people read this story,
especially if they aren't soccer fans?
The obvious answer is by searching for small details.
Thus, Leonardo Faccio arranged
a 15-minute interview with Messi,
after 9 months of waiting.
15 minutes indeed after 9 months of waiting.
During the interview,
Leonardo found out in that interview
that Messi, when he is not playing ball
he likes to take a nap best.
And it's not a regular 30-minute nap,
but a longer, two, three-hour one.
If we do the math, it turns out that besides playing brilliantly,
he spends a great deal of the afternoon sleeping.
There must be a reason,
and I believe it's because nobody gets bored while sleeping.
This is a hard fact.
No one wakes up all of a sudden and says,
"What a boring dream!"
So, he feels great when he's playing ball
but whe he isn't, he doesn't know what to do and gets bored.
And this is humanity's big problem.
What to do not to get bored?
We know the answer now from Messi.
The only way for him not to get bored
since he was a little child and injected growth hormons,
was to rest and allow cells to regenerate.
And he kept that custom even as an adult,
and that's why after he entertains us he goes to sleep.
The next story is about the Inca Empire.
The only two soft drinks
that de-throned Coca Cola in their own country
were "Guarana" and "Inca Kola".
We have something in common, don't we?
It's the story of how a urine-colored and gum-flavored drink
defeated the arrogant black queen.
That was our point of view.
Instead of covering it as a business story,
we turned it into a taste-related story
to explain why "Inca Kola" came out as a favorite
only in Tahuantinsuyo,
and couldn't be exported.
The reason was a simple one.
Peruvian food flavors are extreme,
and very little convincing.
We tell all foreigners, or they believe
we only know "ceviche,"
but it's more than that.
A similar story was the ketchup enigma, covered by Malcolm Gladwell.
Malcolm studies reasons rather than people.
He wondered on the reasons why mustard changed over time,
and ketchup didn't.
He looked into the reasons
why people, driven by their taste,
never want to change their ketchup brand.
"The Russian who never returned from Machu Picchu"
is a story we read from a news agency
about a Russian tourist who had died
struck by lightning in Machu Picchu.
It was like a tale.
First of all, how many Russian tourists are there?
Second, how many people did die struck by lightning?
And third,
how many people really die in places
such as the Egyptian Pyramids or Machu Picchu?
Also, who dies on vacation?
But this man died at Machu Pichu.
It's an amazing story,
because the press tried to make us belive,
and the man's relatives as well,
that the man was carbonized.
When the man's remains were returned,
his family didn't want to open up the coffin,
because they believed he was all burnt up, and didn't want to see him,
when in fact, he died,
- and this was discovered later -
when lightning struck the ground
and the expansive wave
threw the man against the floor
causing him severe blow to the head.
That was the real cause of death.
This is a story about Joe Loya.
Robbing banks is a sexy bussiness,
especially when nobody gets hurt.
Joe Loya robbed almost one bank per week during one year.
Then he took on a new personality,
of a man with a bank account,
who pays taxes and writes books,
one of which is a self-help book.
We sent a writer to interview Joe Loya
on the Hollywood's bank robbery goofs and bloopers.
As a master bank robber, arrested once or twice,
who, after serving time, redeemed himself,
told us how to rob a bank
and what are the film industry's mistakes and virtues.
This is what we keep doing.
And to end, this is a story I've written,
and it's titled "Garcia Marquez goes to the dentist."
Since Garcia Marquez never gave interviews,
the only way to approach or get to know him
was to try to do it indirectly.
While looking for a way to meet him, what I found instead was his dentist.
The incredible part was that I called the dentist,
asked him if he could see me and he said yes.
I believe he made a mistake in receiving me,
because he divulged me things
protected by professional secrecy;
nonetheless, they all were great compliments to Garcia Marquez.
It's about how Garcia Marquez agrees to be
the dentist son's godfather
as they had been friends for 7 years.
This gesture reveals the greatness of a Nobel prize winner
who doesn't like interviews.
This story isn't actually an anecdote, or a prank story,
but the secret story of a smile.
A scientist once said
that already during the first 10 minutes of a first encounter,
we usually tell 3 or 4 lies.
I hope that during my 10-minute talk
I didn't tell any.
Thank you.
(Applause)