Ted Audio Collective.

Audio Collective.

You're listening to Ted Talks Daily,

where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.

I'm your host, Elise Hugh.

We have this expectation in the developed world that things should just work, things like

lights and our phones and water faucets.

But as engineering professor Deb Chatra reminds us,

water, power, and communications are all part of networks of infrastructure, systems,

and this systems model is a helpful approach

to think about how we should take care of each other

and the planet after the break.

Like TED Talks, you should check out the TED Radio Hour with NPR.

Stay tuned after this talk to hear a sneak peek of this week's episode.

And now our TED Talk of the Day.

I'm going to tell you about the most boring part of my day.

So on a typical evening, I come home to my apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts

and I turn on the lights, I stream music to my stereo from my phone, I head into the

kitchen to make dinner. For making something like pasta, right?

I would get water from the sink and I put it on the stove to heat up.

I'd get vegetables out of the fridge.

I would get olive oil, spices out of the pantry.

...