Notes from TEDxManchester 2025

I've been meaning to write about TEDxManchester 2025 since 7th March but have been a bit busy! But I couldn't break what has become an annual tradition of writing about attending TEDxManchester.

In fact, you can read my previous years write-ups about TEDxManchester here 2024, 2023, 2022.

Introduction

Host Herb Kim shares that this is the 12th TEDxManchester, with its origins back in 2009 being a lot smaller and the importance of having a growth mindset. Something popularised by Dr Carol Dweck in her book Mindset. This mindset is strongly encouraged in Many organisations, most notably in Microsoft.

You can read my review of the Mindset book here.

Carl Miller

Journalist Carl Miller shared a startling discovery he made while researching the dark web during lockdown. That there were websites that allowed you to hire the services to have someone kidnapped, beaten up and even killed in exchange for bitcoin. With the help from a programmer acquaintance, they found a vulnerability in the website that allowed them to access their database and the requests made for their services.

Carl shared not only example messages but also some general observations.

Firstly, people were requesting people be killed for very little money, in many cases < 10,000 Euros. Secondly, after researching into the buyers they found that they came from all walks of live from church leaders to school teachers and from around the world.

Worried about the wellbeing of the targeted individuals, they took their findings to various authorities in the relevant countries and were met with surprising reluctance that ranged from "not our problem" to threats of prosecution from hacking.

Feeling they had no other choice, Carl contacted some of the targeted individuals to warn them of the potential danger they were in. Unfortunately he was met with suspicion and people thinking it was a scam. He even shared recordings of the conversations.

Being able to see the back and forth messages between the requesters and website admins, he noticed that many of the "assassins" constantly provided excuses such as "gun jammed", "weapon taken at customs", "attempt failed, hire better assassin?" and found the site to be a scam with little or no intention of carrying out the wishes of the requesters.

Nonetheless, it was 100% evident that the requesters genuinely thought they were contracting to have people killed.

Eventually it was the FBI that took Carl seriously, they reviewed the data and stopped the Romanian cyber group behind the website, investigated 174 cases as well as making arrests of the requesters for assassination attempts.

His closing remark "We all might be closer to being on a kill list that we'd like to think".

What an interesting first session to start the day!

His Kill List podcast series can be found on Spotify and other places https://open.spotify.com/show/0MKZSB39sSnSYHzey11SPF

Joshua Fletcher

Joshua wanted to share that anxiety is very common and that we should alter our perception and relationship with anxiety.

He went into the biology of panic tacks / Amigdala / flight or flight instincts etc and how anxiety is largely a thread monitoring system.

He is not an advocate of external / fad anxiety remedies claiming that we are our own best anxiety coping mechanisms.

Simona Francese

Simona discussed some alarming numbers in breast cancer numbers and survival rates and the various factors that go into early detection and treatment as well as government target rates for screening as well as cultural and personal reasons people don't get screened.

There are also logistical reasons - access, backlogs etc.

She went on to discussing non-invasive screening tests and how they found that finger prints (or more accurately, the residue left from fingerprints), with some clever use of mass spectrometry technology can be sufficient to detect early bio markers of breast cancer.

Of course, the validity of the research was covered including the numbers of groups of study and confidence percentages etc but the results were astounding. 97.8% accuracy (more than mammograms).

Not only can finger prints help detect breast cancer but an array of other things such as drug use - they can tell us a lot!

Even if this was used for pre-screening to determine whether someone should get further tests, this approach could save the NHS £millions while more importantly increase the number of people being screened for breast cancer and ultimately saving lives.

Her closing remark - This technology is hopefully coming and will be approved but don't wait for this - go get checked now.

Chris Boardman

Former racing cyclist Chris Boardman CBE encourages us to change our perception and relationship with failure, remarking that the phrase "later loser!" is a sign of endearment in his family having taught his kids the importance of losing.

Admitting to being a very ordinary child, he says he owes his gold medal racing success to failure and that success and failure are two sides of the same coin. Failure is a superpower.

He dislikes how mistakes and failures are seen as "wrong" - they are our biggest moment of learning. Attitude is a choice.

He is currently involved in getting more people into walking and cycling.

Charlotte Armitage

Charlotte encourages us to think carefully regarding how much screen time we allow our children to have. Having two children (9&11) this is something I also wrestle with so looked forward to this talk that didn't disappoint.

She provided a bit of a history lesson regarding substances parents used to give children which at the time were acceptable, looking back - knowing what we know now we wouldn't dream of giving. These substances included opiates, sugar, cocaine and alcohol.

All of these substances use the same addictive brain pathways and release dopamine.

Having recently read about the dangers of Dopamine in Dopamine Nation, I too share her concerns - You can read my review of Dopamine Nation here.

She wonders if in the future we will look back and scold ourselves for giving young children access to mobile devices (aka digital drugs), as they also result in the same release of Dopamine in our brains.

Sharing that "the past helps us predict the future", she shared studies showing that children exposed to these substances at a young age went on to have bad outcomes including speech and language development issues - something that she is noticing is on the rise with 20% of children on the waiting list for speech and language therapy.

Both difficulties in emotional regulation, and ADHD can be attributed to certain substances and practices in childhood. Other issues include lack of socialisation skills (not playing with others as much) and rise in obesity rates (not playing outside as much).

Therefore, she believes we wake up and realise that too much device use is resulting in a public health crisis. Apparently 50% of Americans aged 4 have some device with a screen.

She gave a few suggestions of how we can combat this issue. Firstly, delay device introduction for as long as possible, then only gradually introduce and importantly model healthy device usage behaviour - If children see parents doom-scrolling on phones for hours - this becomes learned behaviour.

Personally, I think over the next few years we will see the first generations who grew up with unlimited access to screens have to deal with the real world and other people with varying results.

Just because we can assuage our children by giving them a device to placate them - whilst tempting, we shouldn't. What is easy is often a bad choice.

Aled Roberts

I find the work Aled doing to be of extreme importance - he is looking at how we can discover and scale sustainable building materials.

Prefixed with the question. When we get to Mars - what are we going to build with? - A good question and starts by explaining the problem of taking building materials to Mars, means that building materials will likely have to be created on Mars.

He gave both an enlightening and entertaining talk about the various substances that have applications for building both on the red planet but also much needed on Earth.

During Covid, with restricted access to laboratories and materials - he investigated with household materials and products to see which could be combined to create viable building material substances, remarking afterwards "constraints and challenges aren't necessarily a bad thing".

Eventually he experimented with artificial spider silk- something very sticky and strong but being too sticky, pivoted to "spider glue".

Did you know that spiders make 7 types of web? Even sticker they found was cow blood protein allowing them to stick Mars dust together but transporting cows to Mars poses several problems - even before the vampiric nature of the idea. Apparently human blood would do - but again there are ethical problems with that (imagine funny slides at this point).

Urea was also considered, but apparently no-one wants to live in "human houses". They looked at human skin - aka skincrete and corncrete lol.

He's investigated Starcrete (using starch) - apparently twice as strong as concrete. Most recently he's found success in creating tiles from leaves after extracting the chlorophyl (Cyalinth) that don't require firing in a furness.

The baking process traditionally makes up the majority of the cost of traditional fired tiles.

He's currently building a startup to scale production of ceramic type materials that don't require firing - managing to undercut many other tile providing businesses.

Personally I think Aleds curious, lateral and innovative mind is what we need more of in order to meet some of todays challenges. Looking in new or different places that we would traditionally.

Aaron Calvert

Inspired by Darren Brown, Aaron left a career in medicine to show how our brains employ heuristics and bias so consistently and predictably that they can be taken advantage of by performing a number of predetermined acts making the audience think they had the impression of free choice.

He believes that some have mastered this art so artfully that it is a good idea to question our decision making process.. "was I led to this conclusion"? Did I make this decision? or was it chosen for me?

I do find Psychology and our mental models fascinating.

Pam Warhurst

The final talk I was able to watch was also inspiring by a speaker passionate about making the world a better place - is there any greater calling?

Pam admittedly has tried for years to influence policy around sustainability through official channels and mechanism - but has come to the unfortunate conclusion that the world is in such dire a state with inaction from COP events and governments with oil and gas companies "still oiling and gassing" that it is time for the population to do what needs to be done themselves - even if that means without permission. There is no leadership around sustainability.

She was of course talking about growing our own food - wherever we can. Ideally in officially dedicated spaces - but perhaps in non official areas too.

She still campaigns for "the right to grow" - the legal right for people to grow food where they can and for public land be repurposed for community planting.

This is a growing movement all over the world with 150 groups in the UK alone.

She believes in not only a Northern Powerhouse but an incredible Northern Greenhouse of communal growing across the North of England.

She encourages us to "believe in the power of small actions" and regarding climate change - it is too late to wait for permission.

"You can keep drinking gin, or you can roll up your sleeves"

Other talks

Unfortunately I wasn't able to stay for the talks from Kiran Morjaria, Ilyena Hirskyj-Douglas, Amie McNee, and Javeno McLean

Summary

I always find myself inspired by TEDxManchester. I'm also inspired by the speakers and the attendees. The speakers are often passionate about changing the world and sharing that passion and knowledge. The attendees seem to have an open mind to learning about new ideas and topics. I am especially encouraged to see more parents taking their children to these talks and look forward to my daughter (11) being old enough for me to take; as it is her generation that will not only exist in a world shaped by the actions from my generation, but also the ones who will change it for future generations.

I strongly advise you to attend TEDxManchester 2026 (link below) and follow them on LinkedIn.

https://www.tedxmanchester.com/

-- Lee