MARK EARLS

Have you ever considered whether time controls us or if we control it?

For 250 years, in the Industrial Age, we have lived and run our organizations to the tick-tock of the clock. We have created great wealth and incredible technology that has taken us to amazing technological advancements. But our clock-time obsession is all making us sick and unhappy.

TEDxPatras 2025 welcomes Mark Earls on stage who will inspire us to rethink our

relationship with Time, to re-learn old ways and old skills that each of us has, now – as the specter of uncertain futures looms over us. Sometimes it can seem that we are stuck inside a clockmaker’s machine but the truth is we are not: we can travel back and forth, to the past and the future; we can jump into alternative timelines and back again. We can make time bend and stretch and loop back on itself: we do it without thinking.

This talk will convince you that you can time travel and show you how to put it to work.

About the speaker

Mark Earls is an award-winning writer, thinker, producer, and speaker who is passionate about understanding human behavior, how it works at scale, and how to put those insights to work. His background is in marketing and advertising, and it is there he first pioneered the use of behavioral science and what we now know as the “Nudge” theory.

In particular, Mark has argued strongly and repeatedly for the idea that we are a social species and that behavior is commonly shaped in the space between us (rather than between our ears).

Mark works extensively as an advisor to businesses and NGOs around the world. This international perspective leads him to prioritize the role of culture over psychology universals, and this is where his interest in our ideas about Time comes from: both ideas we are conscious of and those embedded in our experience of the world around us.

🎙️ This talk will be delivered in English.