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  • Mockingbirds are badass.

  • (Laughter)

  • They are.

  • Mockingbirds -- that's Mimus polyglottos --

  • are the emcees of the animal kingdom.

  • They listen and mimic and remix what they like.

  • They rock the mic outside my window every morning.

  • I can hear them sing the sounds of the car alarms

  • like they were songs of spring.

  • I mean, if you can talk it, a mockingbird can squawk it.

  • So check it, I'm gonna to catch mockingbirds.

  • I'm going to trap mockingbirds all across the nation

  • and put them gently into mason jars like mockingbird Molotov cocktails.

  • (Laughter)

  • Yeah. And as I drive through a neighborhood,

  • say, where people got-a-lotta, I'll take a mockingbird I caught

  • in a neighborhood where folks ain't got nada and just let it go, you know.

  • Up goes the bird, out come the words, "Juanito, Juanito,

  • vente a comer mi hijo!"

  • Oh, I'm going to be the Johnny Appleseed of sound.

  • (Laughter)

  • Cruising random city streets, rocking a drop-top Cadillac

  • with a big backseat, packing like 13 brown paper Walmart bags

  • full of loaded mockingbirds, and I'll get everybody.

  • (Laughter)

  • I'll get the nitwit on the network news saying,

  • "We'll be back in a moment with more on the crisis."

  • I'll get some asshole at a watering hole asking what brand the ice is.

  • I'll get that lady at the laundromat who always seems to know what being nice is.

  • I'll get your postman making dinner plans.

  • I'll get the last time you lied.

  • I'll get, "Baby, just give me the frickin' TV guide."

  • I'll get a lonely, little sentence with real error in it,

  • "Yeah, I guess I could come inside, but only for a minute."

  • (Laughter)

  • I'll get an ESL class in Chinatown learning "It's Raining, It's Pouring."

  • I'll put a mockingbird on a late-night train just to get an old man snoring.

  • I'll get your ex-lover telling someone else, "Good morning."

  • I'll get everyone's good mornings.

  • I don't care how you make 'em.

  • Aloha. Konichiwa. Shalom. Ah-Salam Alaikum.

  • Everybody means everybody, means everybody here.

  • And so maybe I'll build a gilded cage.

  • I'll line the bottom with old notebook pages.

  • Inside it, I will place a mockingbird for --

  • short explanation, hippie parents.

  • (Laughter)

  • What does a violin have to do with technology?

  • Where in the world is this world heading?

  • On one end, gold bars --

  • on the other, an entire planet.

  • We are 12 billion light years from the edge.

  • That's a guess.

  • Space is length and breadth continued indefinitely,

  • but you cannot buy a ticket to travel commercially to space in America

  • because countries are beginning to eat like us, live like us and die like us.

  • You might wanna avert your gaze, because that

  • is a newt about to regenerate its limb,

  • and shaking hands spreads more germs than kissing.

  • There's about 10 million phage per job.

  • It's a very strange world inside a nanotube.

  • Women can talk; black men ski; white men build strong buildings;

  • we build strong suns.

  • The surface of the Earth is absolutely riddled with holes,

  • and here we are, right in the middle.

  • (Laughter)

  • It is the voice of life that calls us to come and learn.

  • When all the little mockingbirds fly away,

  • they're going to sound like the last four days.

  • I will get uptown gurus, downtown teachers,

  • broke-ass artists and dealers, and Filipino preachers, leaf blowers,

  • bartenders, boob-job doctors, hooligans, garbage men,

  • your local Congressmen in the spotlight, guys in the overhead helicopters.

  • Everybody gets heard.

  • Everybody gets this one, honest mockingbird as a witness.

  • And I'm on this.

  • I'm on this 'til the whole thing spreads,

  • with chat rooms and copycats and moms maybe tucking kids into bed

  • singing, "Hush, little baby, don't say a word.

  • Wait for the man with the mockingbird."

  • (Laughter)

  • Yeah. And then come the news crews, and

  • the man-in-the-street interviews, and the letters to the editor.

  • Everybody asking, just who is responsible for this citywide,

  • nationwide mockingbird cacophony, and somebody finally is going to tip

  • the City Council of Monterey, California off to me,

  • and they'll offer me a key to the city.

  • A gold-plated, oversized key to the city

  • and that is all I need, 'cause if I get that, I can unlock the air.

  • I'll listen for what's missing, and I'll put it there.

  • Thank you, TED.

  • (Applause)

  • Chris Anderson: Wow.

  • (Applause)

  • Wow.

  • (Applause)

Mockingbirds are badass.

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