How to have a say in how society is built w/ Tessza Udvarhelyi

How to Be a Better Human

TED

Self-improvement, Education

4.2 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 1 July 2024

⏱️ 38 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

No matter who you are or where you live, political choices influence your life. Hungarian activist and academic, Tessza Udvarhelyi, emphasizes that anyone, whether or not they work in politics, has collective power. This week, she joins Chris to discuss her work fighting for democracy under an increasingly authoritarian government, why affording power to the people is a must, and how we can all participate.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective.
0:02.0	Audio Collective.
0:04.0	You're listening to how to be a better human.
0:10.0	You're listening to How to Be a Better human. I'm your host Chris Duffy.
0:15.0	Let me tell you one of the most dramatic moments from my time as a middle school student.
0:19.0	I had run for and won a seat in student government. I was very happy about that. Now unfortunately
0:25.2	the student government meetings often happened at the same time as other
0:28.8	extracurricular activities that I was already doing. So at the first semester that I was on the Student
0:34.2	Government Council I ended up missing about three meetings over the course of the
0:38.1	semester. My friend Ben was also in student government and while he was reading the bylaws
0:43.5	something that I think no other representative had ever done he discovered that if
0:47.8	anyone missed three or more meetings there was a provision in the student government
0:52.4	that said that the other representatives could hold a vote to impeach that member and
0:56.4	Ben thought that that was a hilarious idea and so did the other kids on the council so they held a vote and they successfully impeached me.
1:04.0	I was the first and to my knowledge the only eighth grader in my school's history to ever be impeached.
1:09.0	I was stunned, but you know what? I was also impressed. You know I love a good bit. So while
1:14.7	that ended my political career right there, it may very well have planted the seeds for my comedy
1:19.9	career to begin. Outside of middle school, one of the big areas where we
1:24.6	humans express our views about how we would like the world to be is in politics and
1:28.8	on today's episode we are going to talk about politics. We're going to talk
1:32.0	about political organizing and we are going to talk about political organizing and we are going to talk about
1:35.0	elections and freedom and democracy and that is because regardless of where you live
	...

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