I am a knowledge junkie. At least that’s what I tell myself when I buy that new book when I have hundreds waiting to be read. So, it is nice when a site feeds my addiction without tapping into my wallet. Enter Ted.com.

It’s hardly a new site and this isn’t the first time I mentioned it on my blog. I try to listen to 2 talks a day on subjects that aren’t in my scientific arena.

Recently, one talk in particular caught my attention. It talked about how children born into poverty will likely stay that way and yet, with major help from the parents 50% can rise above their circumstances.

The reason it resonated so loudly with me is because a friend and I often talk about the subject. She has 3 adopted children which she took in while two of them were over 9. Of those 2—1 is in prison, and 1 just got out of jail. The third is struggling to achieve any sense of what most middle class folks would call normalcy.

At what point does nature trump nurture? At what point does nurture no longer matter?

For those people who think folks should be able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and make something of themselves (like me), that doesn’t seem possible. Still, there were threads of hope in the talk. If only because, should we as a society chose to invest our money in people, every generation the number of children in poverty could be reduced significantly.

Here’s the talk. Tell me what you think after you’ve watched it.

Until next time.