TEDxSalem

Ideas worth spreading

TEDxSalem V

Jackson Rayne: Magician. Escape artist. TEDxSalem speaker.

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Jackson Rayne

Illu­sion­ist. Escape artist. World record break­er.

TEDxSalem explores more than ‘ideas worth spread­ing’ at its Jan­u­ary 6th event, which will fea­ture both a talk and per­for­mance by Las Vegas-based magi­cian Jack­son Rayne.

When asked what he is pas­sion­ate about in life, Jack­son is quick to respond: peo­ple.

“I love learn­ing and I love teach­ing and inspir­ing oth­ers. Life is tough and I feel great pur­pose when my work can pos­i­tive­ly affect peo­ple through enter­tain­ment,” he said.

No stranger to Salem, Jack­son attend­ed Willamette Uni­ver­si­ty where he grad­u­at­ed with his BA in Eco­nom­ics. It’s also where he gained nation­al media atten­tion for his first under­wa­ter escape and real­ized his oppor­tu­ni­ty of a career in mag­ic.

And for the past 25 years, Jack­son has been push­ing the extremes, both phys­i­cal and men­tal, through dynam­ic illu­sions and dar­ing escapes. What began for the fun of learn­ing, devel­oped into a call­ing that’s earned Jack­son a place on cen­ter stage as a head­lin­ing per­former as well as recog­ni­tion on nation­al tele­vi­sion.

But it doesn’t stop there. Jack­son is also the hold­er of mul­ti­ple world records.

“I broke the fastest escape from a posey strait­jack­et,” Jack­son said. “My orig­i­nal record break­ing time was 7.26 sec­onds which I can now beat by quite a bit. I also broke the world record for most escapes from a straight jack­et in one hour with 54 escapes.”

“I did­n’t even know I was capa­ble of break­ing a world record,” he said. “The first time I was locked up the jack­et it took me 45 min­utes to escape but I did it. Once I fig­ured out the most effi­cient route it was just a mat­ter of time. It actu­al­ly looks very easy now when I escape because it hap­pens so fast.”

Join us at TEDxSalem to hear illu­sion­ist Jack­son Rayne’s ‘idea worth spread­ing’ and pos­si­bly a lit­tle some­thing else we might have up our sleeve.

Speak­er: Jack­son Rayne
Hob­bies: Flag foot­ball, golf, snow­board­ing, and trav­el­ing the world
Favorite food: New York style Piz­za and sushi
Favorite place to relax: Aru­ba
Favorite beach: Horse­shoe Bay, Bermu­da
Favorite peo­ple: Mani­la, Philip­pines
Favorite cul­tur­al des­ti­na­tion: All of Japan

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Pur­chase tick­ets here. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.

Creativity for all: Meet TEDxSalem speaker Laura Mack

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Laura Mack

Art makes the impos­si­ble pos­si­ble.

Salem artist Lau­ra Mack bridged the gap between Trump and Hillary sup­port­ers even if it was just on can­vas. She start­ed with pho­tographs of scream­ing pro­test­ers and then redrew the faces in char­coal, soft­en­ing their eyes, clos­ing their mouths.

“I tried to turn these angry pro­test­ers into thought­ful lis­ten­ers,” she said, “bring­ing us to the table to lis­ten to each oth­er.”

She hopes peo­ple see that it’s pos­si­ble to find com­mon ground. Mack doesn’t have much time for her art these days as a moth­er of two, col­lege instruc­tor and art advo­cate, but she does spend a lot of time think­ing about the cre­ative process.

The abil­i­ty to see things and solve prob­lems in a new way is not just for artists, she said. It’s a vital skill for every­one.

That thought inspired her to cre­ate a class at Chemeke­ta Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege that fos­ters the cre­ative process. Most of her stu­dents don’t con­sid­er them­selves artists.

Art is one of the tools she uses to teach, but it’s not the only one. Stu­dents also do improv, cre­ate lists, per­form, make books and invent. One time she asked stu­dents to pick two objects, such as a bench and a con­vey­er belt, and think up 50 inven­tions.

“After about nine,” she said, “things start to get inter­est­ing.”

“We’ve been trained to get one right answer,” she said, “instead of stick­ing with it and com­ing up with a bet­ter idea.”

That process of being inspired, ask­ing ques­tions, tak­ing time, incu­bat­ing ideas and refin­ing leads to bet­ter ideas whether that’s in com­put­er sci­ence or psy­chol­o­gy, she said.

But many col­lege stu­dents strug­gle at first because they haven’t thought this way since ele­men­tary school, she said. As an art advo­cate, Mack devel­ops pro­grams that will keep the cre­ative process in schools through col­lege.

“Cre­ativ­i­ty needs to be main­tained from a very young age,” she said. “We don’t want to wait until col­lege.”

When she’s not teach­ing or cre­at­ing, Mack hangs out with her two boys, hus­band and their new pup­py Vad­er as in Darth Vad­er.

“It’s an iron­ic name because he’s incred­i­bly sweet,” she said.

She also vol­un­teers at her son’s school, offer­ing art class­es. That expe­ri­ence inspired anoth­er pro­gram meant to fos­ter the cre­ative spark. Hear more about Mack’s vision to keep that spark going in Salem-Keiz­er schools and in class­rooms around the world at TEDxSalem V.

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Pur­chase tick­ets here. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.

Brad Burge has an ‘idea worth spreading’ for a solution to help with PTSD

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Brad BurgeTEDxSalem is proud to announce anoth­er sur­prise speak­er for our Jan­u­ary 6, 2018, event “Through the Look­ing Glass.”

A few months ago, Brad Burge returned from Burn­ing Man, the tem­po­rary city of artists and cre­ators in the Neva­da desert. He was there vol­un­teer­ing for the Zen­do Project, a group that sup­ports peo­ple who are hav­ing dif­fi­cult episodes with psy­che­delics or oth­er drugs.

Brad is Direc­tor of Strate­gic Com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the Mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary Asso­ci­a­tion for Psy­che­del­ic Stud­ies (MAPS), an asso­ci­a­tion that rethinks the role of psy­che­del­ic drugs in our soci­ety. The Zen­do Project falls in line with the first part of MAPS’ mis­sion: edu­cate and reduce harm.

“We don’t call it a bad trip,” Brad said, “because every psy­che­del­ic event brings up infor­ma­tion that needs to be dealt with. The Zen­do Project has found that they can pro­vide sup­port in a way that offers the best out­come pos­si­ble.”

Tra­di­tion­al respons­es of police or med­ical per­son­nel, while well mean­ing, he said, can make a bad trip worse. Those respons­es don’t allow a per­son to fin­ish pro­cess­ing the thoughts and mem­o­ries that have come up. At Zen­do Project, in con­cert with law enforce­ment and med­ical staff, they sit with the per­son, offer sup­port and lis­ten until they are safe to return to their friends. Brad reports that the ser­vice is so suc­cess­ful that Burn­ing Man is plan­ning for a sec­ond Zen­do Project facil­i­ty next year.

The sec­ond part of MAPS’ mis­sion is to pro­vide research into new ways of treat­ing psy­chi­atric dis­or­ders with psy­che­del­ic drugs. Rather than being counter-cul­ture, MAPS works with­in the sys­tem to explore the legit­i­mate ben­e­fits psy­che­del­ic drugs may have in treat­ing men­tal health.

Brad describes the results they are see­ing in their work with PTSD as “real­ly promis­ing.” So promis­ing that the FDA grant­ed them break­through ther­a­py des­ig­na­tion, which means pre­lim­i­nary clin­i­cal evi­dence indi­cates that the drug may demon­strate sub­stan­tial improve­ment over exist­ing ther­a­pies. They are now mov­ing into phase III of clin­i­cal tri­als.

Brad’s per­son­al sto­ry brought him to MAPS while he was work­ing on his doc­tor­ate at UC San Diego. After study­ing both psy­chol­o­gy and com­mu­ni­ca­tions at Stan­ford, Brad’s mas­ter’s research on psy­che­delics inter­sect­ed with his own jour­ney of men­tal ill­ness.

He had been on lithi­um for near­ly 11 years when he had his first expe­ri­ence on a psy­che­del­ic drug. Brad’s train­ing and edu­ca­tion on the evils of psy­che­delics stood in sharp con­trast to his expe­ri­ence.

“For my whole life I had been raised to believe that men­tal health phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals work like keys in a lock… that I was some­how bro­ken and need­ed to be fixed… For the first time in my life I felt like I could be a whole per­son… I felt like I had been miss­ing out on oppor­tu­ni­ties to grow.”

Brad’s per­son­al expe­ri­ence of the impact that ther­a­peu­ti­cal­ly guid­ed psy­che­delics could have has moti­vat­ed him to edu­cate peo­ple about the pol­i­tics of drugs in our soci­ety and to pro­mote the legal research of the ben­e­fits that these drugs can have.

Come to TEDxSalem and hear the rest of Brad’s sto­ry as he offers us a glimpse into an unex­pect­ed future for psy­chi­a­try in Amer­i­ca.

Speak­er: Brad Burge

Pets: “My part­ner has a pet, a beau­ti­ful lit­tle cat, Maho, that is very talk­a­tive, and I have effec­tive­ly adopt­ed her.”

Favorite Movie: “Sci-fi always works. I am super into imag­in­ing what the future holds.”

Favorite Book: “Dune”

Favorite Music: Grate­ful Dead or glitchy tech­no. Brad also con­firms lis­ten­ing to Alaba­ma 3 “for sure.”

Favorite Food: Sala­mi. “Because it keeps for a long time out of the fridge.”

Favorite Drink: Guaya­ki Yer­ba Mate

Hob­bies: Big time back­pack­er: “I just got back from a 45-mile hike through Sequoia and King’s Canyon in Cal­i­for­nia Sier­ra. I hope to find some back­pack­ing or hik­ing while I am in Port­land.”

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Pur­chase tick­ets here. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.

Mas Blue comes to TEDxSalem in January

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TEDxSalem is proud to announce one of the first of our sur­prise speak­ers —

Mas Subramanian

Mas Sub­ra­man­ian trans­formed the world’s col­or palette in 2009 when he dis­cov­ered the first new blue pig­ment in near­ly 200 years.

The world respond­ed with won­der for YIn­Mn Blue, a bright, elec­tric hue. Cray­ola released its “Blueti­ful” cray­on as a cel­e­bra­tion of his dis­cov­ery. Artists have embraced the new blue, which was recent­ly released as an oil paint by the Shep­herd Col­or Com­pa­ny.

Many refer to it as Mas blue, a nod to the inventor’s name and the word for more in Span­ish. Artnet.com even announced that this dis­cov­ery will be chron­i­cled in Har­vard Art Museum’s pig­ment col­lec­tion.

“I have filed a lot of patents in my life,” Mas said, “but none have changed my life like this one.”

Mas, a pro­fes­sor of mate­r­i­al sci­ences at Ore­gon State Uni­ver­si­ty, first sub­mit­ted his research to the Jour­nal of Amer­i­can Chem­i­cal Soci­ety  in 2009. Since then he has been fea­tured by The New York Times, NPR, the Ore­gon­ian, Men­tal Floss, Quartz, Busi­ness Insid­er, Fast Co. design, The Tele­graph, Forbes, Today, NY Mag, and even Cos­mopoli­tan.

But Mas didn’t just dis­cov­er a new blue, he dis­cov­ered a new way to pro­duce pig­ment for both blue and many oth­er col­ors as well.  YIn­Mn blue is non-tox­ic, has heat-reflec­tive prop­er­ties and is set to rev­o­lu­tion­ize indus­tries from home and auto paint to roof­ing.

As a young boy in India, Mas was inspired to pur­sue the life of a sci­en­tist by the movie “2001: A Space Odyssey,” which he con­sid­ered one of the great­est movies ever made.

“What was fic­tion in the movie became real­i­ty. The movie showed a tablet-like device which resem­bled the iPad of today. That was amaz­ing!”

Mas earned a Ph.D. in Chem­istry from Indi­an Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy, Madras, India and was a post­doc­tor­al fel­low at Texas A&M Uni­ver­si­ty. He has writ­ten sev­er­al books and worked as lead researcher for DuPont Chem­i­cals.

Mas was raised in the Hin­du faith, which has had a sig­nif­i­cant impact on his life and giv­en him val­ues to pat­tern his life after.

“I con­sid­er Hin­duism a “phi­los­o­phy” rather than a reli­gion. Respect is an extreme­ly val­ued com­po­nent of the every­day life in India.”

Mas says the val­ues of renun­ci­a­tion, giv­ing, ded­i­ca­tion, truth and non-vio­lence have helped him to live well and be a bet­ter per­son. Mas also makes a point to influ­ence his com­mu­ni­ty.

“One of my pas­sions is to inspire young minds (both boys and girls) to become sci­en­tists.”

Mas also invites two to three local high school stu­dents to his lab at OSU each year to gain hands-on expe­ri­ence in sci­en­tif­ic research.

Mas and his wife love trav­el and learn­ing about oth­er cul­tures and cus­toms. They recent­ly spent three weeks in the Aus­tralian out­back learn­ing about Abo­rig­i­nal Aus­tralian cul­ture.

Mas says trav­el is the best kind of edu­ca­tion he has expe­ri­enced.

“Trav­el gives me time to think, observe and learn new things — cul­ture, food, his­to­ry.”

TEDxSalem is excit­ed to wel­come Mas and his ‘idea worth spread­ing.’

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Pur­chase tick­ets here. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.

Rose Barker: The Value of Identity

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TEDxSalem speak­er Rose Bark­er is equal parts world trav­el­er and safe­ty guru.

 

She spent a year in Ecuador doing every­thing from vol­un­teer­ing at a church and orphan­age to get­ting her kite­board­ing cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and swim­ming in the ocean near­ly every day.

 

“It was a full expe­ri­ence,” she says.

 

She also lived in Mex­i­co for about a year, vol­un­teer­ing as an inter­preter for sev­er­al non­prof­it orga­ni­za­tions.

  

Yet she bal­anced her desire for adven­ture with an empha­sis on safe­ty. A self-described “para­noid trav­el­er,” Bark­er invent­ed a ‘Pass­port Pock­et’ to safe­ly and com­fort­ably con­ceal pass­ports, mon­ey and oth­er vital doc­u­ments inside one’s cloth­ing.

 

Despite her focus on safe­ty and pro­tec­tion, her out­ward dis­po­si­tion is friend­ly, open. The first word that comes to mind is ‘ebul­lient.’ Not only in the way that she greets vis­i­tors with a hug and insists on offer­ing them some­thing to eat, but in the way she talks — thought­ful­ly, ani­mat­ed­ly.

Bark­er believes strong­ly in social jus­tice and liv­ing in com­mu­ni­ty. She worked at CAPACES Lead­er­ship Insti­tute, a Wood­burn-based non­prof­it geared toward devel­op­ing advo­ca­cy in Oregon’s migrant farm­ing com­mu­ni­ty. It was dur­ing her time at CAPACES that Bark­er got inter­est­ed in increas­ing access to legal ser­vices, which she calls “empow­er­ing.”

“You have to know what your rights are in order to stand up for your­self,” she says.

Her inter­est in advo­ca­cy and safe­ty even­tu­al­ly merged and led to a career as a cer­ti­fied risk man­age­ment con­sul­tant. She gives talks to employ­ers and state agen­cies about the impor­tance of, and use­ful tech­niques for, pro­tect­ing one’s iden­ti­ty from hack­ers and thieves.

 

“Our iden­ti­ties,” she says, are “one of the most valu­able things we own.”

 

And reclaim­ing your iden­ti­ty is a tough bat­tle. Vic­tims can have a chal­leng­ing time prov­ing that some­one else stole and assumed their iden­ti­ty to com­mit a crime. Iden­ti­ty theft, she said, is one of the few crimes where the vic­tim is guilty until proven inno­cent.

 

She hopes to help oth­ers pro­tect them­selves before it’s too late. If you want to learn about the inter­net of things and how to keep your­self safe, check out Barker’s talk Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6 at TEDxSalem.

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Pur­chase tick­ets here. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.

Seth Tichenor: Why philosophy?

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“Why phi­los­o­phy?” Seth Tichenor has been answer­ing that ques­tion for more than 20 years.

For Seth, it’s just the way he thinks. He remem­bers hav­ing his first philo­soph­i­cal thought at age 3, but it wasn’t until col­lege that he real­ized it was what he want­ed to do.

“I was talk­ing with a friend,” he recalls, “when he point­ed out that what­ev­er I do, I’m going to approach it from a philo­soph­i­cal per­spec­tive.”

Seth, a 2018 TEDxSalem speak­er, real­ized that he would always ask ques­tions such as “why do we do it this way?” “how might oth­ers do this?” and “even if we could, should we?”

Now he talks phi­los­o­phy to any­one will­ing to lis­ten, whether it’s part of his work as a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor, life­guard, swim instruc­tor or dri­ver for vis­it­ing musi­cal acts.

Seth describes him­self as an Ore­gon native and a for­mer All-Amer­i­can swim­mer liv­ing in Asto­ria with his part­ner Gad. He finds a way to use all his pas­sions to bet­ter the com­mu­ni­ty. He spends a lot of his time as a life­guard and swim instruc­tor. With all the water sur­round­ing Asto­ria, Seth sees it as a pub­lic ser­vice.

But the Philosophar­i­an project is his pas­sion.

The Philosophar­i­an project aims to bring phi­los­o­phy into the lives of every­day peo­ple. It start­ed with pro­mot­ing local phi­los­o­phy talks and grew into a larg­er project that includ­ed a road trip of prac­tic­ing “guer­ril­la phi­los­o­phy tac­tics.”

Seth bemoans the fact that study­ing phi­los­o­phy doesn’t finan­cial­ly pen­cil out for most stu­dents. The Philosophar­i­an vision treats phi­los­o­phy as a nor­mal part of the real world. It was inspired by stu­dents who were inter­est­ed in phi­los­o­phy, but who didn’t have room for it in their class sched­ules and Gad’s back­ground in Alter­na­tive Edu­ca­tion and Kines­thet­ic Learn­ing.

In his free time, Seth stays active with hik­ing and water sports. He is a com­pet­i­tive swim­mer in mid­dle dis­tance but­ter­fly and freestyle.

“I’m like Seabis­cuit,” he said, com­par­ing his water skills to the race horse. “I’ve got finesse.”

His swim back­ground also influ­ences the way he thinks. Seth describes his world and his phi­los­o­phy as being dynam­ic and emerg­ing, much like water.

“Water makes its way into a lot of my think­ing,” he said. “My class­room looks out over the Colum­bia, and I will make a ref­er­ence to water at least once a week in my lec­tures.”

Seth also enjoys paint­ing and doing cos­tum­ing work with Gad. He has been a pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy for 23 years and teach­es at Clat­sop Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege. He was named teacher of the year in 2015. He has an M.A. in Phi­los­o­phy of Reli­gion from Boston Uni­ver­si­ty and is a PhD can­di­date at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawaii at Manoa in Com­par­a­tive Phi­los­o­phy.

If you have ever won­dered how phi­los­o­phy might be rel­e­vant to you, come see Seth at TEDxSalem and expe­ri­ence his guer­ril­la phi­los­o­phy tac­tics for your­self.

Speak­er: Seth Tichenor

Favorite Book: The Glass Bead Game by Her­mann Hesse: “It real­ly dis­cuss­es the strengths and lim­its of for­mal intel­lec­tu­al aca­d­e­m­ic work.” Or Can­nery Row by John Stein­beck.

Favorite Music: Chet Baker’s jazz, Arcade Fire and art rock, old punk, under­ground hip hop such as Dead Prez.

Favorite Food: “Thai or Indi­an food with vibrant tastes – I’m aes­thet­ic, but not a good sense of smell. I also got a taste for that kind of food while attend­ing grad school in Hawaii.”

Favorite Drink: “I’m very fond of Fort George Vor­tex IPA, or a well-made Man­hat­tan or a Moscow mule.”

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6 at the Salem Con­ven­tion Cen­ter. Pur­chase tick­ets here. Fol­low us on Face­book for the most up-to-date news from our com­mu­ni­ty, and check our web­site reg­u­lar­ly for new infor­ma­tion. You can also reach us at info@tedxsalem.com.