TEDxSalem

Ideas worth spreading

TEDxSalem

Let’s spend the night together…

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Salem at night from the City of Salem website

 

You don’t have to leave Salem once the TEDxSalem par­ty is over. Stay. Explore. Enjoy.

We think Salem rocks, which is why we work so hard to bring you TEDxSalem, a show­case for just how cool this city, and our com­mu­ni­ty, is.

Here are a few ideas to help you get to know us.

Ice Skat­ing. Try your skills at Salem’s newest attrac­tion: Salem on Ice, an ice skat­ing rink at Salem’s River­front Park.

The Capi­tol. Guid­ed tours occur on week­days only, but it’s worth wan­der­ing in just to see the rotun­da.

The Elsi­nore The­atre. This beau­ti­ful his­toric the­ater shows clas­sic films, com­mu­ni­ty per­for­mances and nation­al tour­ing enter­tain­ment.

Eat your way through down­town. You’ll already be down­town for TEDxSalem, so why not do some explor­ing? We have clas­sic, long-stand­ing lunch coun­ters, qual­i­ty Ital­ian, Span­ish and French restau­rants, local­ly beloved estab­lish­ments and cozy cof­fee shops.

Riverfront Park from the City of Salem website

Head to the river­front. You could stroll the pedes­tri­an bridge, go for a spin on the Carousel or just soak up the atmos­phere. Use the new Minto Island bicy­cle and pedes­tri­an bridge to walk to Minto-Brown Island Park.

Taste the best wine Ore­gon has to offer. We’re pret­ty par­tial to Pinots. There are dozens of world class vine­yards and winer­ies just out­side city lim­its, many of them offer­ing wood-fire piz­zas, cheese plates or full kitchen options. Yum!

Take in a show, comedic or musi­cal. The options are darn near end­less. There’s fam­i­ly-friend­ly improv at Capi­tol City, the hottest indie films at Salem Cin­e­ma, and the lat­est musi­cal from the Pen­ta­cle The­atre (Beau­ty and the Beast launch­es the same week­end as TEDxSalem!).

Feel col­le­giate at Willamette. Our local uni­ver­si­ty has one gor­geous cam­pus, with wind­ing trails and autumn leaves just beg­ging for a leisure­ly stroll.

Art? Check. His­to­ry? Check. See the lat­est exhib­it at the Hal­lie Ford Muse­um of Art, peruse the finest pieces for sale at the Bush Barn Art Cen­ter, see the film-famous Ore­gon State Hos­pi­tal muse­um or soak up local his­to­ry at the Willamette Her­itage Cen­ter.

If wine isn’t your thing, maybe beer is? Our small but wild­ly tal­ent­ed (and deli­cious) col­lec­tion of brew­eries are win­ning awards and mak­ing head­lines.

Still need a place to stay? May we rec­om­mend the Grand Hotel in down­town Salem? Not only is it right next door to the Con­ven­tion Cen­ter, but TEDxSalem atten­dees get a dis­count! Just men­tion that you’ll be at the con­fer­ence and get a room for $139, plus tax.

Look­ing for oth­er must-see tips about Salem? Ask any of our vol­un­teers or team mem­bers!

Still need tick­ets for TEDxSalem? Nev­er fear, they’re still avail­able online.

Tippy Toe: Taking over the TEDx stage

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As if there wasn’t enough to see and do, atten­dees of this year’s TEDxSalem event “Through the Look­ing Glass” will be treat­ed to a per­for­mance by Salem’s own Tip­py Toe Dance Stu­dio.

The stu­dio focus­es on bal­let, but also teach­es hip-hop, con­tem­po­rary, and pas de deux, along with fit­ness class­es and com­pet­i­tive danc­ing.

Those who came out to 2015’s “Fear­less” event will remem­ber their lights-out com­bi­na­tion per­for­mance with the Tru­Root break­danc­ing squad.

We sat down recent­ly with stu­dio founder Rebec­ca Swish­er, 32, and stu­dio man­ag­er Nicole Tea-Pel­ley, 20, about their upcom­ing per­for­mance.

TEDx Salem: Tell us about the start of the stu­dio.

Rebec­ca Swish­er: “We cre­at­ed it in 2009, and I had been work­ing local­ly as a chore­o­g­ra­ph­er for quite some time. And I kept being asked by friends and peo­ple that I would meet in the com­mu­ni­ty: ‘Oh, could you just teach my child dance, or my friend dance,’ and so I start­ed with just a hand­ful of stu­dents, actu­al­ly in my back­yard, we built a small stu­dio for it.

And I just kept think­ing, if I’m going to have a stu­dio, I want­ed to do it dif­fer­ent­ly than stu­dios had been in the past. So, we’ve real­ly grown into this family…We real­ly focus on dancers find­ing their indi­vid­u­al­i­ty, their own cre­ativ­i­ty, and just feel­ing free to express them­selves in any way. And we’ve real­ly become a fam­i­ly out of that.”

Nicole Tea-Pel­ley: “From the ground up from the lit­tle kids to the old­est dancers – We have peo­ple who are in their lat­er twen­ties here – every­body knows every oth­er per­son who dances at the stu­dio, and we all can build off of that, and we become bet­ter dancers off of that.

We all have dif­fer­ent traits and you’ll see that in every stu­dio, but com­pared to oth­er places that I’ve seen, we real­ly embrace that, and we use that to make our­selves bet­ter and more well-round­ed.”

TxS: How do you feel your per­for­mance will align with this year’s theme, “Through the Look­ing Glass?”

RS: “…when I think of TEDx, I think of a safe place where peo­ple come togeth­er to share ideas, and how it has this rip­ple effect with­in our com­mu­ni­ty when we share ideas with each oth­er. When think­ing ‘through the look­ing glass,’ I thought of that and put it on a larg­er scale.

Our piece express­es not always going with just the norm, not always just fit­ting in a par­tic­u­lar social group or way of think­ing… We’re try­ing to express to peo­ple being open to new ways of think­ing and real­ly expe­ri­enc­ing free­dom from that.

Once you’re will­ing to chal­lenge the way you’re think­ing a whole new world can open up to you.”

TxS: What can the TEDx audi­ence look for­ward to? What are you going to hit us with?

NTP: “They won’t just see dancers on a stage — they’re going to see real peo­ple, and the real emo­tions that peo­ple go through, as they, as Bec­ca was say­ing, break out of the norm of soci­ety and real­ly con­nect with some­thing in them­selves.

Because no mat­ter what somebody’s jour­ney is, every­body has gone through some­thing sim­i­lar to that, in one way or anoth­er. With this piece we are real­ly try­ing to con­nect with peo­ple on that lev­el. We get real­ly real, we get to points where we’re not doing spe­cif­ic moves, but we’re just being our­selves, and I think that peo­ple will real­ly be kind of shocked by that. And it’ll make them think real­ly hard.”

RS: “There’s also a lit­tle bit of sur­prise ele­ments in the dances, of pair­ing togeth­er dif­fer­ent styles of dance that you wouldn’t nor­mal­ly think of putting togeth­er.”

TxS: Tell me there’s going to be break­danc­ing!

RS: “There’s a lit­tle bit of break in there, yeah.” (laughs)

TxS: How do you keep it fresh?

RS: “Well, I don’t pay atten­tion to what oth­er peo­ple are doing. We def­i­nite­ly do things our own way, and we all play a part in chore­og­ra­phy, and we move the way we’re feel­ing.”

TxS: What do you want to accom­plish at TEDxSalem this year?

RS: “I want to feel like our mes­sage has been heard, and I think TEDx is a real­ly good plat­form for that. For me as an artist, when I have some­thing that I need to express, I need to be able to know that I was heard or I was seen, and it’s like some­thing in me that has to get that out.”

NTP: “I’m excit­ed about the con­nec­tion between the audi­ence and us. TEDx has audi­ence mem­bers from all walks of life, but def­i­nite­ly there’s a strong sense of peo­ple who do have the artis­tic and cre­ative minds there. And I think that if we can con­nect with some of those peo­ple and impact some of those peo­ple, that’s where we get real­ly cool new and big ideas, and that’s where that flow starts to go that we real­ly are inspired by.”

TxS: Now this is real­ly impor­tant — How are you going to avoid hit­ting the TEDxSalem sign when you dance?

RS: “That’s a real­ly good ques­tion. We’ve actu­al­ly been tap­ing out our stu­dio [floor], to say if you cross this line of tape you are going to be hit­ting the TEDx sign. So right now that’s our plan of attack.”

Learn more about the stu­dio at www.tippytoedancestudio.com, and join us Jan. 6 to catch ’em live on our stage.

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag that takes place Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, 2018, 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.

Stereo RV: Bringing the beatbox to TEDxSalem

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For six years, Stereo RV has been a fix­ture on the Port­land music scene, but lead singer Myra Glea­son and vocal per­cus­sion­ist and hus­band Gabe Glea­son have been per­form­ing for even longer togeth­er, ever since their paths crossed on the stage at “Port­land Teen Idol.”

The duo, which hails from Keiz­er and Port­land, respec­tive­ly, recent­ly released their debut EP, “Human,” and will be per­form­ing live at our TEDx Salem event. We recent­ly caught up with Myra who spoke to us about the group, their inspi­ra­tions and their hopes for their TEDxSalem appear­ance.

TEDxSalem: Talk a lit­tle bit about the name — You both chose to live in an RV for some years. What was that expe­ri­ence like?

Myra Glea­son: Well, up until last Decem­ber, we were liv­ing in an RV. The expe­ri­ence… [laughs]

We bought the RV three years ago, so that we could down­size our life, that we would have more mon­ey avail­able for oppor­tu­ni­ty should it come with music, because we were liv­ing in Port­land at the time and Port­land it was just so expen­sive. So the RV was real­ly the best way that we could go to save funds and pur­sue music.

So that’s evi­dent­ly where our name came from… Stereo is dual, you have your left and your right, and we’re mar­ried, so we thought that fit in as a duo, and then the RV, because that’s where we lived for three years, and that’s where all the songs on our “Human” EP were cre­at­ed. But right now we are not liv­ing in the RV. I get to live in a fine town­house with my moth­er. So…

TxS: Where’s the best place to camp out? 

Myra: Uh, gosh, somebody’s dri­ve­way? [laughs] We nev­er got to take her camp­ing, to be hon­est with you, because we lived in her, and so she was just always stuck on a pad in one of the Port­land parks, so… We met a lot of inter­est­ing peo­ple, though.

TxS: Now you say “her…” Does this RV have a name?

Myra: Yeah, her name’s Beat­rice. She’s a beast, that’s why her name is Beat­rice.

TxS: Talk a lit­tle about how your part­ner­ship with Gabe formed. On your web site it says you met at a singing com­pe­ti­tion.

Myra: I was a spe­cial guest per­former that sang dur­ing the judges’ delib­er­a­tion, and Gabe was also a spe­cial per­former that did some beat­box­ing with anoth­er artist. I saw the beat­box­ing and the oth­er per­son play­ing, so it was quite cool cause I’d nev­er seen any­thing like that, and I want­ed to bring Gabe in for beat­box­ing on one of my songs, which we were solo artists at the time, so I had Gabe come in, and we put some beat­box­ing down on some of the songs I was doing at the time, and that led to him giv­ing me gui­tar lessons, and us start­ing to write togeth­er, and then we did Salem’s Got Tal­ent back in 2011, and we got fourth place on that, and so that was the first take that we did as a duo, to see if we had the chem­istry that it need­ed to be on stage.

Could we make this as a duo, could we do this as a work­ing rela­tion­ship? And from there we just liked each oth­er and here we are, mar­ried. [Laughs]

TxS: So it sounds like he won you over with his beat­box­ing.

Myra: Yeah, that was the start of it, and he was real­ly, real­ly fun­ny with it, so humor and beat­box­ing got me.

TxS: …must be some beat­box­ing.

Myra: [Laughs] Yeah.

TxS: For your song, “Human,” you say that a lot of your inspi­ra­tion comes from your time spent work­ing with fos­ter chil­dren. Tell us about that expe­ri­ence and how it informs the song.

Myra: For me, we build this rela­tion­ship, and at first, there’s noth­ing there. It’s like, “Okay, here’s anoth­er adult that’s forced to come and work with me, because my case work­er says so, or because I’m in this pro­gram,” and the foun­da­tion for any type of change is trust, and rela­tion­ship build­ing. Once I start work­ing with these indi­vid­u­als, you start to find com­mon­al­i­ties with them with­in our rela­tion­ship, and start to learn about trust. And in that trust they told me their sto­ry.

They’ve cried in my car, they’ve explained to me what real­ly affects them and a lot of it, is… One girl just broke down cry­ing, because she want­ed to be loved, and she doesn’t care who it’s by, as long as some­body loves her. I had anoth­er gal who self-harmed, and so she has all of these scars on her arms, and to get her to not wear a long-sleeved shirt in 90-degree weath­er was a big vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty for her to be exposed, to have those real­is­tic scars exposed, and the emo­tion­al ones. So, the first line of “Human” is “I’ve got scars / That show me just where my past has been.” It’s from a con­stant three years of telling her those scars don’t define you, and you don’t have to be afraid of them any­more. Because she had changed so much from who she was. So a lot of it what makes us human?

TxS: Have any of them heard your music? What have they said?

Myra: They have, actu­al­ly, and the first com­ment that I got was, “Myra, did you write this for me?” Every sin­gle youth that I have come in con­tact with, they’ve either asked to hear it, want to hear it, they actu­al­ly talk about the songs that I wrote, and it inspired a lot of them to actu­al­ly start writ­ing, and devel­op that cre­ative, musi­cal side of them. And a lot of them start with rap songs, but it’s been a real great plea­sure to watch how music is work­ing with­in fos­ter care. It’s real­ly cool, it’s real­ly cool to be able to expe­ri­ence that with them, and say, “Yes I did write that for you guys, so you guys could have a voice.” And that encour­ages them to say, “What else is in my voice?”

TxS: Head­ing into our new TEDxSalem event, how do you think Stereo RV fits with the theme, “Through the Look­ing Glass?”

Myra: Our music is based off sto­ries, of course, look­ing through the micro­scope of each per­son as an indi­vid­ual human, and what makes them their own indi­vid­ual per­son, and we tend to judge peo­ple by stereo­types or by assump­tions, or by their cir­cum­stances, and being able to find the com­mon­al­i­ties with­in us all. It’s some­thing our music is able to achieve in the sense of through the look­ing glass, through the eyes of some­body else.

TxS: What about your songs do you think will make them res­onate with our audi­ence?

Myra: I think in some way, we’ve all been at that point, where we’ve said, “well, gosh, I’m human. Stop beat­ing me up for mis­takes that I’ve made…” I think our songs will res­onate with the TED audi­ence because they’re hon­est, and trans­par­ent, and they’re melod­i­cal­ly made in a way that can bring inspi­ra­tion or just any­thing pos­i­tive to them as peo­ple who are in our com­mu­ni­ty com­ing to these events to be inspired, to learn some­thing.

TxS: Any­thing else the TEDx Salem audi­ence should know?

Myra: Well, I think we’re going to… [REDACTED: Hmmm, curi­ous? Join us at TEDxSalem “Through the Look­ing Glass” on Jan. 6 and find out.]

Get your tickets for TEDxSalem V

TEDxSalem V is an all-day event fea­tur­ing talks, per­for­mances, refresh­ments, lunch and a swag bag that takes place Sat­ur­day, Jan. 6, 2018, 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.

Anna Nixon: An advocate for girls in science

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Anna Nixon, Founder of STEM 4 Girls

Meet our final sur­prise speak­er for TEDxSalem V “Through the Look­ing Glass.”

Anna Nixon’s STEM career began in the sec­ond grade, when she and her father start­ing build­ing robots togeth­er in their garage. She was hooked imme­di­ate­ly.

“I loved that feel­ing of accom­plish­ment that came with final­ly get­ting a robot work­ing after hours of hard work,” she said.

Now, a senior at West­view High School in Port­land, she intends to take her pas­sions to a big­ger stage. Once she earns her degree in com­put­er sci­ence, com­put­er engi­neer­ing, or bio­med­ical engi­neer­ing, she aspires to work with robots that will be used to pro­vide med­ical aid.

Anna has learned a lot since the sec­ond grade, being involved in FIRST Robot­ics, tak­ing advanced STEM class­es in school, and start­ing a non­prof­it, STEM 4 Girls. She’s not only more knowl­edge­able and skilled, she’s become aware of the field’s chal­lenges recruit­ing and retain­ing girls and women.

Ever since Anna first joined robot­ics, she was often the only girl in the room.

“I think that the biggest chal­lenge that comes with being the only girl in the room is feel­ing the pres­sure that your actions will reflect on every girl,” she said. “And I think this is true for any minor­i­ty in any field. It’s easy to get into the mind­set of ‘If I make a mis­take peo­ple are going to think it’s because all girls are bad at this’ instead of mere­ly accept­ing your mis­take and mov­ing on. While it may seem unfound­ed, that fear of fail­ure makes you less con­fi­dent tak­ing risks or ask­ing oth­ers for help which can have a neg­a­tive impact.”

Anna’s non­prof­it, STEM4Girls, aims to solve these issues and help girls stay in STEM by build­ing up their con­fi­dence and fos­ter­ing a sup­port­ing and encour­ag­ing com­mu­ni­ty.

“Var­i­ous stud­ies have shown that girls actu­al­ly tend to do bet­ter in STEM sub­jects than their male coun­ter­parts, at least until around mid­dle school,” Anna said. “As they grow old­er, girls often tend to lose inter­est in STEM because they don’t see oth­er girls doing it or they get the mes­sage that ‘STEM is a guy thing’. Thus, the great­est sup­port that girls can get is mak­ing them feel includ­ed in the STEM com­mu­ni­ty. This means pro­vid­ing them with female role mod­els and peers that they can depend on as well elim­i­nat­ing prej­u­diced views against women in STEM.”

Join us Jan­u­ary 6 to hear more about Anna’s sto­ry and her call to action.

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.

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.

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.