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From Ted andNPR. I'm Anouche Zamorodi and our story today begins one winter night in 2013 in an isolated area ofScotland.
Asmall, like ahamlet,cordlock-hailet, fairly near the west coast ofScotland.
Soyeah, a volume of moatplace.
This is KateStone. She's a physicist and the founder of an electronicscompany.
But thatnight, she was onvacation.
Some of my closefriends, we spent the little time between Christmas and New Year in anAirbnb.
And we went out to thepub, drank lots ofGuinness, and some locals were playing music with their guitars and violins andthings.
And we listened to the music and then they invited us to go back to theirplace, which was a little shed in the garden where they played more music and drank morewhiskey.
So we said yes and we followed our pipe through the dark woods atmidnight.
Imean, it sounds like the perfectevening.
It wasperfect. It was all goingwell.
And then something completely out of the darkhappened.
Something out of the darkhappened.
Yes. I shouldn't reallylaugh.
I think kind of what happened is the locals walked a little toofast, disappeared into thedarkness.
My friends fell behind and I tried to be that person that stayed in the middle to keep the two groupstogether.
So I ended up on my own in thedarkness.
The next thing Kateknew.
I remember just feeling a massivethud, hitting mychest.
And then a secondthud. And then falling to myknees.
And then realizing there was a hole in my throat from where the deer's antler hadgone.
Astag, a deer with massive antlers had mulledKate.
And I found out later that it stopped two millimeters before my spinalcord.
And as I tried to call forhelp, it was really more of agargle.
Did you realize how what hadhappened?
I was conscious for 40minutes.
It took 20 minutes for an ambulance tocome.
Youknow, and my friend came to my side and the one thing she said to me was justbreathe.
So I took my friend's advice and I put all my attention on tobreath.
Live very still and focus on the next breathin.
And then when you getthere, focus on the next breathout.
And then I ask myself the question oflike, youknow, I'm happy with how I've lived mylife.
And I'mlike, youknow,oh, I wish it was a bitlonger, youknow, and it'slike, it's as if my life waslike, youknow, a TV showseries.
It'slike,like, I'm theprotagonist.
Like, I'm the main character in myshow.
And they've written me out as a great seasonfinale.
Like, comeon, a couple moreseasons.
Exactly.So,yeah, so my end of season finale was me dying in the forestfloor.
But I'mlike, I'm really proud of who Iam, what I'vedone.
Okay, it's time to goout, but I'm going to go outcalmly.
But you didn't goout. You ended up beingairlifted.
Yes. They operated onme, reconstructed mythroat, and then they decided to put me in an inducedcoma.
Soyeah, it took a while to get back toreality.
It was a slowprocess. You've come to in thehospital.
You know what'shappened.
Youknow, you've got a long road ofrecovery.
When did you first know that this had made thenewspapers?
This had been in thepress.
You're crazy freakaccident.
Youknow, tabloid papers love that kind ofstuff.
When did you figure thatout?
Yeah, that was a fewweeks.
Youknow, I gave myself the sort of the luxury of not being on an iPad or any social media or anything for probably my memory is about amonth, butthat, youknow, that could bewrong.
So I tried to really keep away fromthat.
Said to mysister, has there been anylike, is it been in the news oranything?
And she'slike,oh, a littlebit.
She didn't tell me that newspapers were out headlines such assex,swap,scientist, gore to buystag.
I just want to make it clear to the listener what ended uphappening, which was that multiplenewspapers, national papers like the DailyMail, theSun, your accident was featured in all ofthem.
But what they did was put it into theheadlines.
They called you sex swapKate, some of themdid.
And in some ways they made the story about yourgender, not theaccident.
And it's just explained to people how it felt to readthat.
Soyes, I'm a transwoman, but calling me a sex swap scientist is derogatory and not pertinent to thestory.
But it implies that itis.
And it tells everyone who seesthat, which is probably a few million people that when you see someone that'strans, you label them as someone that's trans tosay, youknow,hey,Tranny, I'm talking toyou, youknow, when it's nothing to do withthat, it'soffensive.
It's absolutelyinappropriate.
But worst of all to me is it tells a nation that this is how you refer to a transperson.
They wanted to know form aname, dates ofoperation, whatoperations, youknow, they made that part of thestory.
It's not part of thestory.
It's absolutelyirrelevant.
Youknow, I was lay on a forestfloor, gawed by astag.
And they wanted to sensationalizeit, youknow, my children had to leave that home because of camera crewsoutside.
They hadto, they had to leave where they were living to go somewhere else because people were interested inthis.
And wanted to ask inappropriate questions of people that knewme.
And so I waslike, I have to dosomething.
I know I can make adifference.
I know I can't stop them from doingthis, but I know I can make them less likely to doit.
For KateStone, this invasion ofprivacy,well, it felt like the world had let herdown.
And as much as she wanted to lean on herfamily, herfriends, hercommunity, she realized she needed to take matters into her ownhands.
So today on theshow,DIY.
Stories and ideas about taking oninstitutions,companies, and stereotypes in ingeniousways.
Because sometimes you just need to do ityourself.
Back in her hospitalbed, recovering from herinjuries, Kate began strategizing on how to confront the UK press for sensationalizing heraccident, and especially heridentity.
A warning in thissection, we will mentionsuicide.
I felt an overwhelming sense of responsibility andduty.
And I'd seen what happens to otherpeople.
What came to my mindwas, I think it might have been the previousyear.
A newspaper wrote a piece about a Transloman called LucyMeadows, who transitioned as a schoolteacher.
And they wrote in that theheadline, not only is she in the wrongbody, but she's in the wrongjob.
And she then committedsuicide.
Oh,gosh. And it'sheartbreaking.
And so I waslike, I know I can dosomething.
And if Idon't, and someone elsedies, that's on my hands as far as I wasconcerned.
So I knew I hadto. And my kind of science brain islike, identify thegoal, which is reduce the chances of them doing this again to someoneelse.
Okay.Identify, youknow, the resources I have athand, which is connecting withthem, communicating withthem, helping them see what they've done iswrong.
And then identify what this is going to costme.
And what this is going to cost me is myprivacy.
I take pride in talking about who I am as ascientist, being outside of that open about beingtrans, but not talking aboutit.
And I only don't talk about it because I want people toknow, but I want them also to know that I'm a pretty awesome creativescientist.
Youknow, I want to be open about being trans in a way where people who maybe have never met a Transloman and maybe are a little bigger toit.
For one moment mightbe,wow, I hope my children turn out to be likeher, youknow, I want to be like that kind of rolemodel.
So for me to have to sacrifice my privacy and tell 10 millionpeople, that's the price I will payto, youknow, hopefully achieve mygoal.
Here's Kate Stone on the TEDstage.
I'm a kindnessninja. I don't really know what a ninjadoes, but tome, they slip through theshadows, crawl through thesewers, skip across the rooftops before you know it there behindyou.
They don't turn it with an army or complain and they're laser focused on aplan.
And so I didn't attack them and they weredefenseless.
And I wrote kind and calm letters to thesenewspapers.
And the sunnewspaper, the kind of Fox News of the UK thanked me for my reasonedapproach.
And I asked for noapology, noretraction, nomoney, just an acknowledgement that they broke their own rules and what they did was justwrong.
And on thisjourney, I started to learn who they are and they began to learn who Iam.
And we actually becamefriends.
And after threemonths, they all agreed and the statements were published on a Friday and that was the end of that or so theythought.
On theSaturday, I went on the evening news and with theheadline, six national newspapers admit they arewrong.
And the anchor said tome, but don't you think it's our job as journalists to sensationalize astory?
And Isaid, I was lay on a forest floor gawd by astag.
Is that not sensationalenough?
And I was now lying the headlines and my favorite one was the stag trampled on my throat and the press trampled on myprivacy.
And it was the most red piece of BBC news online thatday.
And I was kind of havingfun.
Imean, you didn't ask forretraction,right?
You didn't askfor, did you ask for anapology?
Like, what did you actually ask for in yourletters?
So in theUK, the press isself-regulated.
So most of the press sign up to the independent press standards organization and there's a set of rules by which they have to abide by about reportingaround, youknow, diversity or around gambling or suicide or all those types ofthings.
So I just asked them to acknowledge that it was wrong and acknowledge that it broke therules.
And I asked for that to be published in the pressGazette, which is an industry newspaper that's really not read by thepublic.
But I gotit, I wanted it onrecord.
And they responded in a really kind and slightly shockedway, youknow, Philip aKennedy, the ombudsman for the Sun waslike,well, we actually really respect the way you were approached as they couldn't understand why I wasn'tangry.
And I think Ifelt, I felt a sense that other people maybe in my community were angry at me too for not using it as an opportunity to get people fired or to actually bring a formal complaint and get a judgment againstthem, get a ruling made againstthem.
I just didn't feel for me that was the most effective thing todo.
I just like to say I'm not an angryactivist, I'm a happyhealer.
That's a nice way to putit.
Because I can see myself in these people like I just feelthere, but for the grace ofGod, youknow, like I can see myself in these otherpeople.
I can see why they have their perspective from the journey that they'vetaken.
In aminute, how Kate's budding relationship with reportersevolved.
On the showtoday, ideas about doing ityourself.
I'm Manouche Zamorodi and you're listening to the Ted Radio Hour fromNPR.
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I'm Manouche Zomerodi and on the showtoday,D-I-Y.
Ideas about rolling up your sleeves and fixing thingsyourself.
And we were just talking to physicist and engineer KateStone.
Kate had a terrible accident in2013, which the British media sensationalized along with her transgenderidentity.
What I saw is on the Daily Mail onlinearticle, I saw like 180 comments and 179 of those comments were saying the way you've spoken about her and spoken about her being trans isinappropriate.
So I saw an industry that was out of touch and oldfashioned.
So it was really about holding a mirror up and all it was going to take is a gentle nudge and done in a kindway.
So you got all six newspapers that had written about you to admit that they were wrong and thenwhat?
What happened was I was encouraged by the newspaper industry to apply to this committee that writes these rules which is formed of the editors chaired by at thetime, the Daily Maileditor.
So you have this room filled with the editors who make these decisions deciding what their own rules shouldbe.
It was recommended to them that they include three members of the public and they put me on thatpanel.
And six years later I still sit on thatpanel.
Oh youdo?Yeah. In the room with the editors who respect me as a member of thepublic, who has a brain and can contribute usually and nearly exclusively about things and nothing to do with beingtrans.
I'm just a smart woman in the room who has a seat at thetable.
That makes adifference.
People can show and say how they still do some of thesethings.
But I know a report was commissioned and it showed that one of the biggest impact on the press in the last decade to do with trans reporting was what Idid.
So I know it made adifference.
I just don't claim it changedeverything.
No, but it goes to show that one person taking charge of a situation and being willing tosacrifice.
Yeah. Yet more of their privacy can have animpact.
Yeah. I think there's three things that decides what goes in thenewspaper.
One is what the editordecides.
The other is the fact that you click on it and read it as areader.
And the other is that you buy the products that are advertised in thatnewspaper.
And as members of the public we have to realize we hold the power over two after three of thoselevers.
We can choose to not buy a product and we can choose to notclick.
Every time you click you are the reason that thing isthere.
So you know that we do have thepower.
We have two thirds of thepower.
Do you see yourself as an activist because there are some people who might think well thisapproach, one woman doing itherself, that can't bescaled.
She needs to joinorganizations, activist organizations that are trying to change laws that are trying to change not just the way one industry works but the way societyworks.
What would you say tothat?
I think it depends on thecircumstance.
You know sometimes joining the movement being an activist by joining another group is the right thing todo.
But sometimes you know we can be in such an independent moment where we can see how we can make an impact by doing something directlyourselves, by not aligning us with other people and how other people do things that sometimes the most effective way is to do ityourself.
And honestly personally I'd rather be that one person that tries to make a change that no one ever notices or hears and that change neverhappens.
Then the millionth person that joins the millionth person march because you know the biggest movement potentially can come from the individual who just saysenough.
And so we should not be oppressed by our own feeling ofinsignificance.
We should always speak out even when we tell ourselves no one's going to care because it actually makes adifference.
I kind of believe in like I call a quantum state of mind which is everything ispossible, everything has aprobability.
Are those newspapers going to be mean tome?
Probably. Probably means they might not be aswell.
Everything in the future is apossibility.
And our job is to try and change the odds so that in the moment they're more likely to do the thing you want them todo.
And that's the way I look at theworld.
That's physicist and engineer KateStone.
She's the founder of the tech company Novalia and you can see both of her TED Talks atTED.com.
On the showtoday, ideas about doing ityourself.
And for our nextspeaker, well her story starts by doing not much atall, just scrolling through socialmedia.
Yeah, so this was July 2014 and at that time I fully would use Twitter and socialmedia, but mostly Twitter as a sort of newspaper and just scroll through my timeline for any sort of news just to see what was happening in theworld.
This is Tiffany AshleyBell.
And on that day in2014, one new story caught hereye.
I ran across an article that talked about how people in Detroit were about to have to live without runningwater.
The article was in the Atlantic and the headlineread, what happens when Detroit shuts off the water of 100,000people?
At thetime, I was a consultant for the city ofAtlanta.
So seeing the story where another major city was going to shut off the water of a ton of people mademe, youknow, intrigued andconfused.
And so I also just decided to readit.
The crew came out this morning and cut her off by cloningher.
When she learned was prettydry.
Formonths, trucks had been going street bystreet, shutting off the water to nearly anyone who was overdue on theirbills.
I can't take abath, I can't washup, I don't have water to doanything, it is me and my three shoesright.
So people had started collectingrainwater.
Well, I think we're going into a third worlddirection.
Others walk torelatives' houses to fill up jugs or takeshowers.
My neighbors who don't have water can come and getwater.
Andyes, there was one childcustody.
Was itrisk? A child living in a home without basic utilities like water is living in a dwelling that's like the legal language unfit forhabitation.
And when that's athing, then that child can be removed from thathome.
Turns out water in Detroit costs twice the nationalaverage.
And one out of three residents live below the povertyline.
So sometimes they just can't afford to pay forwater.
Tiffany also learned that the shut-off started after Detroit declared bankruptcy in2013.
So a lot of it had to do with the city being on a emergencymanagement.
The day we decided to file for chapter 9protection.
Chapter 9 filing cametoday.
Detroit faces a long-term debt estimated at a whopping 18 to 20 billiondollars.
Detroit had a lot of bond debt that they needed topay.
And so the solution the city had at that time to collect the money they were not collecting was just to shut peopleoff.
And so what I ended up seeing was people who were in truly direstraits, effectively being bullied by their localgovernment.
And that's what really triggeredme.
Let's behonest, most of us probably would have read thearticle,retweeted, and movedon.
NotTiffany. Here is Tiffany Ashley Bell on the TEDstage.
Tome, how they were being treated and how easy it was to simply denythem, something that we all need to live wasdisgusting.
But tome, this also feltpersonal, even though I have no direct family ties toDetroit.
And here'swhy. Many of the people who were facing shut-offs wereblack.
Many were also likemyself, blackwomen.
And Lord knows it's not the first time in the United States that black people have been denied basic humanrights, likewater.
So tome, that created an overwhelming urge to do something tohelp.
Imean, I couldn't just read that and then go on about myday.
Then it became a question of what can I sitting in my pajamas as one person at home actuallydo?
Well,what?Oh, butwait, I'm a programmer and aheavy, heavy social mediauser.
So I decided totweet. I hate to hear people suffering and dealing with what is turning into a completely undignifiedsituation.
People are withoutwater.
July17, 2014 at 2.10pm, is there a directory of any sort where people from Detroit can go for waterrelief?
405pm. Info on what people owe Detroit for water isonline.
1026am. 1027am. 1028am.
We want to connect people who need water bill assistance to folks who are willing tohelp.
Now, with a course of a few hours of back and forth about what todo, we resolved to do thesimplest, most obviousthing.
We decided to paste some waterbills.
To dothat, I spent a few hours digging around on the water company'swebsite.
And I found something interesting that sort of jump started what to do forpeople.
For somereason, there was a 400 page PDF of customers on the website that the water company couldn't deliver their bills to through themail.
One of the things I was interesting about this list is that it also included account numbers forpeople.
So you could just take one of those account numbers and at that time plug it into the website and see everything about thataccount.
So I didthat. And one of the things that was interesting though there was that I saw a makeup paymentbutton.
So the idea then became what if we got the account numbers of people that needed help and then made payments forthem.
So a few hourslater, I built a website to find those people and start connecting them to people that neededhelp.
So you build thewebsite, you figure out a way to get people who maybe have some money and are mad like you that people can't pay their waterbills, that there's a way to paythem.
And you just put it out on Twitter like what happenedthen?
Yeah, so we just tweetedit.
My former co-founder andI, we just tweeted it and people saw that and they began to pay some billsthemselves.
I heard from people over the years that they saw the same article and just werelike,oh, this isgreat.
I'm happy I can actually helpsomebody.
That's how in the first 40 or so days of doingthis, we paid over $100,000 in water bills by justsimply...
Thankyou. Thankyou. By just simply sending people directly to the utility company's website topay $5, $10, whatever they couldafford.
Imean, so it's a decadelater,basically, since that July day and the Detroit water project is now called the humanutility.
Do you remember when there was a moment where youthought, maybe this is something that needs to help cities beyondDetroit?
I think some of the earliest storiesand, youknow, despite the fact that our website originally saidDetroit, people from other places just started filing applications and asking if we could help where theywere.
And that's alwayshappened.
We've had people ask for our assistance in mostof, youknow, the states in theUS,basically.
And then also we ask on the application to what people's situationsare.
And it's a lot of the same stuff people lost their jobs or there was a death in thefamily.
We've had people who have gotten terminally ill and they can'twork.
And utilities don't have a lot of resources for folks even in just thatsituation.
So we've helped in a lot of situations that are pretty common across differentcities.
I'm sure you've heard all of the criticism outthere.
This is a much greater problem than what you'retackling, isn'tit?
Imean, people need water tolive.
It's just thatsimple. What do you say to people whosay, youknow, that's a very nice short term solution that you'vecreated, but how do we change thingsfundamentally?
Imean, I hearthem. I think it's a validcriticism, youknow, some people have referred to us as a bandaidsolution.
And the bandaid atleast, youknow, an appropriately sized bandaid at least gets you into the healingprocess.
Youknow, I also want to emphasize that we're not the only ones that are doing something around thisproblem.
There are a lot of activists and researchers and policymakers who are looking at thisissue.
And Ithink, youknow, forus, we essentially give people a bridge to be able to still maintain access to water while these other folks are doing work around policychange.
I always sort of believe we shouldn'texist,honestly.
It would be great in10, 15 years if we didn't have to do this for people because water is affordable in the firstplace.
So what has been the response from utilitycompanies, places like the Detroit watersystem?
What do they think of what you'vedone?
Do you talk tothem?Yeah, wedo.
Wedo. I willsay, and just behonest,initially, they were not happy to seeus.
We didn't mean to dothis, but I think we embarrassed them as far as having a program in place that worked in certain ways before theydid.
But I think we've really tried to do the work and built a lot of relationships with people at utilities so that they know we'renot, youknow, they're not there to antagonize them in certainways.
We're just there to helppeople.
And once they see that you sort of have the same imperative theydo, and they want to serve the public and things likethat, it's easier to work withpeople.
When you put together and you start doing something that'simperfect, people will see what you're doing and they'll want to joinyou, make what you're doingbigger, moreimpactful, moremeaningful, but all in ways unique tothemselves.
Forus, that was the city employees who answered our emails onweekends, and then during the week drove people to appointments to get their water turn backon.
It was the people in mutual aid groups and nonprofits that partnered with us to completely pay off the water bills for somefamilies.
It was the people who actually really made this workpossible, some of whom had been in this situation themselves a few yearsprior, where they couldn't afford their ownbills, but they nowcould, so they were generous aboutit.
It was the people who held bake sales to help people that they didn't know and would nevermeet.
People will see you walking the walk and they'll understand that that compassion iscontagious.
There's something incredibly simple in some ways or a fourthrate.
You read about aproblem.
You got theinformation, figured out asystem, built thething, got people's billspaid, and then the water gets turned backon.
It really is thatsimple, but what really seems like the hardest part to me in some ways is not continuing to scroll inTwitter,stopping, and deciding that in some ways the buck was going to stop withyou.
Yeah,again, I think some of that is just mypersonality.
And for me as a black woman in the UnitedStates, when you see your people being impacted by something that's justindefensible, at least forme, it was easy to try to dosomething.
And I also am a militarybrat, and I grew up not wanting foranything.
We didn't want forclothes,water,food,housing, and I just think that should be the baseline we provide foreverybody.
Those are just human rights forme.
Butyeah, people really were enthusiastic about having a reallysimple, transparent way of helping their fellow manbasically.
It was the case of if you buildit, they willcome.
I thinkso, that's not alwaystrue, but I think it was a very emotional thing forpeople.
Everybody sees problems in thiscountry.
People are not blind to the suffering ofothers, but they're often is a sort of question of what can Ido.
People tell me this all thetime, you made it very easy to dosomething.
And I think just that resonated withpeople.
Tiffany Ashley Bell is the executive director of the HumanUtility.
You can see her full talk atTed.com.
And a quicknote, the city of Detroit is now piloting a water affordability program with2% of itsresidents.
You're listening to the Ted Radio Hour fromNPR.
I'm AnushZomerodi, and we'll be rightback.
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On this week's episode of WildCard, poet Nikki Giovanni says you can choose yourfamily.
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In the1950s, paranoia gripped thenation.
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And do they pose a threat to nationalsecurity?
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On NPR's ThrewLine. The LavenderScare.
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I'm ManouchiZamorodi.
Today'sshow,DIY. Do ityourself.
It's an ethos very often associated with hammers andnails.
Oh, I can talk about tools all daylong.
My true favorite is a Makita ImpactDriver.
It is the best tool for drivingscrews.
It makes a very satisfyingnoise.
It's likea... But like way louder and screws just go in likebutter.
This is EmilyPilatin-Lam.
She has always lovedbuilding.
Even as a young four or five yearold, I was really drawn to the physicalworld, like buildingforts, going out in the forest and like making ad hoc treehouses.
And so it helped me feellike,okay, I'm able to shape my ownworld.
When she was16, Emily worked on her first constructionsite.
And that was the first time when the idea of a career in building became tangible and real forme.
So she decided to study architecture in college and then in gradschool.
And I loved my architecturaleducation.
Ireally, reallydid. But I think some of the rose colored glasses came off when I left graduateschool.
And I was met with a little bit of disappointment that the love that I found of building physical things was kind of lost within the architecturalprofession.
And she noticed somethingelse.
Within the constructiontrades, only11% of jobs are filled bywomen.
And then on an actual constructionsite, only4%.
So there's a huge genderimbalance.
And I have walked onto constructionsites.
I've walked into rooms where I have to do this social calculus and thinklike, how do I prove that I'm smart enough to behere?
How much am I going tovolunteer?
How much am I going to show what Iknow?
How much am I going to just like sit back and try to understand the dynamichere?
And it'sexhausting. It's franklyexhausting.
So when she turned26, Emily decided to call a timeout on hercareer.
It was a way for me tosay,like,look, I don't know how I'm going to practicearchitecture, but I know how I'm not going to practiceit.
I kept thinking about youngpeople.
Like, how do young people think aboutspace?
What kind of future are we buildingtogether?
And so I was super interested in these like oneoff, reallysmall, really localized projects that lived in yourcommunity.
And within a couplemonths, I was standing in front of a class of students in a barn that we had turned into a woodshop.
She got a job teaching a co-ed woodworking class at a high school in NorthCarolina.
Yeah, at a public high school within a town of about 2,000 people in a way that really hadn't been taughtbefore.
Thinking about shop class as a mechanism for community service instead oflike,huh, let's build birdhouses to take home to ourmoms.
So you're looking at thesekids, and are they looking at youblankly?
Or are they thinkinglike,yeah, let's dothis.
I think it was a little bit ofboth.
Imean, this is a school district where everything is prettystandard.
You have five classperiods.
You have English mathscience, maybe an elective and alanguage.
So tosay, guesswhat, you're in this design-build shop classnow.
There was a lot oflike,huh?
And what about the genderthing?
Did you see it playing outthere?
The class itself did have more boys init.
It was about two-thirdsboys, but pretty much everyone's skill level was about thesame.
Imean, my female students knew how to use the chop saw as well as any of their malecounterparts.
The biggest difference that I saw was just in that socialcalculus.
I would saylike,hey, I need someone to go cut 10 pieces at 96 inches on the chopsaw.
And I could just see that brief moment of hesitation where my female students would look around and belike,hmm, should I raise myhand?
Like, if I'm the first person to raise my hand andsay, I will doit.
Who's going to be rolling their eyes atme?
Like, what is that saying about the boys in theroom?
Are they feelingthreatened?
Like, these are not things we should be thinkingabout, but they're so ingrained inus.
There was an ongoing and ever-present and nagging voice in my head that I think came from my own experiences on constructionsites, in architecturefirms.
There is a very gender dynamic within really any industry that is responsible for the builtenvironment,architecture,engineering, constructiontrades.
And as I was teaching theseclasses, I started to feel that that gendered dynamic was also something that my female students wereexperiencing, even with me as a woman as theirteacher.
And that was really the moment when I realized my female students really deserve to have a safespace.
We must create intentional spaces for the next generation of trades women to learn technical skills while being unconditionally supported by a community of otherwomen.
Here's Emily Pilaton-Lam on the TEDstage.
So in2008, I founded a nonprofit to teach design and construction skills to middle and high schoolstudents, specifically young women ofcolor.
Now, nearly 14 yearslater, thatnonprofit, GirlsGarage, has taught over a thousand girls and gender expansive youth how to use powertools, andtools,weld, draft constructiondocuments, and work on a jobsite.
Andtogether, we have built over 150 pro bono projects for other nonprofits in ourcommunity.
When young women walk into GirlsGarage, they are acknowledged as capable andwhole.
They are taught by female instructors who are architects and carpenters andwelders, who have lived lives and who have walked paths similar to theirown.
When a student uses the chop saw for the very firsttime, I'm standing right next to themsaying, you gotthis.
And these are the things that make thedifference.
And so the next generation of tradeswomen, ourstudents, will enter the trades knowing what it feels like to be respected and valued and will know how to demand it when they'renot.
Hi, I'm EricKachu. I'm 21 yearsold.
So I've been part of Girls Garage for a decadenow.
When I completed my firstweld, I was 11 yearsold.
And you can imagine like a little girl in this like big wall and gear with like the shieldon.
You have to put your hairup.
And I do remember being verytimid, seeing those flames for the firsttime.
Imean, I've never felt that power of using two metal piecestogether.
It wasexhilarating. I always saylike, how many 11 year old girls do you know that canweld?
Incollege, I'm studying civil and environmental engineering with a focus in constructionmanagement.
Learning how to build and construct really made me want to apply that into the real world and learn how to work inconstruction.
Emily, your students are growingup.
Imean, it is clear that you and Girls Garage made a huge difference in Eric'slife.
But I just read a statistic that the number of young people applying for technical jobs fell by half last year compared to2020.
Imean, this country is facing a bigproblem.
We are not going to have enough people to build new bridges or roads or fix ourinfrastructure.
Yeah, the legacy of vocational education is a complicatedone.
So I think we're kind of up against this pejorative history of like vocational used to be the track for kids that aren't going to go tocollege.
It was for quote unquote thosekids, which ishorrible.
I think our role in helping young people think about their careers is to ask how do you take that power that you feel when you're welding and bring that into your college applications or your gap year or yourjob.
We've had over a hundred graduates and alumna and between a third and half have gone into a field related to the builtenvironment.
So that includes architecture or engineering or design or directly into thetrades.
Forwomen, a job in construction can pay more than twice the hourly wage of a comparable job in child care or health aidwork.
And while the gender pay gap in the US hovers around 82 cents earned by women for every male earneddollar.
Inconstruction, the pay gap is nearly non-existent at 99 cents to thedollar.
The trades desperately need womentoo.
With over 300,000 jobs leftunfilled, women are hugely untapped laborpool.
And this is a time when the demand for infrastructure is onlygrowing.
We already understand the value of having more women in historically male dominated spaces likepolitics, seasuites, andSTEM.
What is it going to take for trades women to take part and to takeover?
Your talk is called what if women built the world they want tosee?
In yourmind, what does that world looklike?
Yeah, so women do experience the built environment very differently thanmen.
We think aboutsafety. We think about how we navigate space with our families or withfriends.
And so I think a world built by women is more inclusive in its thinking about how the physical world servespeople.
And it's about rethinking the really old and tired narratives of about who gets to build theworld.
That the authorship should not just be owned by whitemen.
That we all deserve a say in what our world lookslike.
That was EmilyPilatin-Lam.
She is the founder and executive director of GirlsGarage, a nonprofit that teaches design and construction to girls and gender expansive youth and many thanks to EricaChu.
You can see Emily's full talk atTED.com.
So we've talked about people taking on the media utilitycompanies, genderstereotypes, and we want to end our episode on DIY with an individual who is taking on economics on socialmedia.
Because social media is of course a place whereanyone, anywhere can make anything and reachmillions.
This is NPR's very own JackCorbett.
But you won't hear him onair.
I'm going to show you a video that just kind of went through all theprocesses, explained fractional reservelending, how bonds and the bank run and pretty layman'sterms.
Justlike,yeah, simplifyit.
Welcome to Silicon ValleyBank.
I'd like to withdraw all mymoney.
Yeah, our vote is kind of out ofmoney.
If you've never seen Jack'swork, picture a very tall young man acting out strange skits that end up describing financialfundamentals.
So you guys screwedup.Well,no, this is how bankswork.
We only keep a fraction of our total reserves available for lending or for withdrawals at any onepoint.
It's called fractional reservelending.
It'sgreat. Unless everyone tries to withdraw their money onemonth.
Oh, so I can't have mymoney.
No, everyone tried to withdraw their money onemonth.
Jackwrites,shoots, starsin, and edits thevideos.
It's like likeamateur, but not in like the amateurbad, likeamateur, like just do it forfun.
Even though I do it forwork.
And if you're thinking the audio from these videos soundsterrible, it's kind of thepoint.
It'svery, it's very low budget kind ofthing.
Which is why he does his own soundeffects.
That's the great thing about TikTok.
You can getweird. You can get soweird.
Infact, Jack's data ask hack together style has helped grow the planet money Tik Tok account to over 750,000viewers.
And made him social media famous in theprocess.
Sometimes people would come up to me and they'll belike, so like fractional reservelending.
And I'mlike,man, I'm off theclock.
The film school student turned online educator thinks he knows why he's hit a nerveonline.
I think it's just like speaking theirlanguage.
Imean, in filmschool, I would just read a bunch of like film theorypapers.
And I became so frustrated with how like needlessly complicated all of these giant words and self serving theywere.
And so I'mlike, justlike, just talk like a normalperson.
Just like explain tome.
It'slike, I'm fromOhio.
It's like explain to an Ohio guy likeme.
What's really goingon?
I, youknow, I never studiedeconomics.
And so I would always hear thesethings.
These terms like flyingaround.
So you're S&P ended the day down3.6%.
We're talking about that debt ceiling debatenow.
Federal Reserve raising by one quarter point by 25 basepoints.
And no one waslike, explaining them in like a way thatlike, I was keenon.
I mean like to just put itsimply, it takes some time just to like find out like what really is goingon.
I did a video on tax brackets and I made it entirely just because my mom didn't know what theywere.
And like she thought thatlike, youknow, if you made like a little bit more money that you would like ultimately make less money because you would go into a newbracket.
Taxes areconfusing. But that's not how itworks.
Like the first $10,000 you make is taxed at10%.
The next $30,000 is taxed at12%.
Between 40 and $86,000 is taxed at22%.
You're never going to bump up into a new bracket and make less overallmoney.
And I waslike, youknow, there's going to be people in like my mom's position who like won't knowthis.
But like there were so many more people than Ithought.
Even my manager came out to me and he'slike,oh, I saw this one video about like taxbrackets.
So it waslike, youknow, and I'mlike, that was myvideo.
You're telling me about the video that I made foryou.
Yeah. And it's like I never took any economics or financial literacyclasses.
I always thought it would belike, youknow, either too complicated or tooboring.
But I don'tknow. It'snot.
It doesn't have tobe. If you just talknormal, if you don't make itcomplicated, it'sfun.
Are you concerned atall?
Imean, TikTok is in hot water here in the UnitedStates.
I'm not thinking of this at all from like a national securityperspective.
I'm just thinking of this as like a guy who likesvideos.
Imean,worse, youknow, if TikTok isbanned, thatwould, thatwould, youknow, that would stink forme.
But incollege, I didn't think I'd be doingTikTok.
Tell me what you thought you'd bedoing.
I thought I'd be making like experimental documentaries and getting like maybe like 20 people into a theater to seethem.
Instead, you have amillion, you're teaching millions of people about basic macroeconomics.
Iknow. And I studied the least financially secure major out thereprobably, which is like experimentalcinema.
So Imean, youknow, Igot, I got that to fall backon.
I got experimental cinemaalways.
That was JackCorbett. You can see his work on the TikTok app at PlanetMoney.
Thank you so much for listening to our show thisweek.
DIY. This episode was produced by Rachel FaulknerWhite, MatthewCloutier, AndreaGutierrez, and FionaGehrin.
It was edited by Sana's Meshkanpur andme.
Our production staff at NPR also includes James De LaHousi, HershaNahaada, Lane KaplanLevinson, KatieMontellone, and JuliaKarney.
Beth Donovan is our executiveproducer.
Our audio engineer was MargaretLuthar.
Our theme music was written by RomteenArablui, our partners at TedR.
ChrisAnderson, ColinHelms, MichelleQuint, JimmyGutierrez, AlejandraSalazar, and DanielleBalorezzo.
I'm ManouchZomerodi, and you've been listening to the Ted Radio Hour fromNPR.
Was it just me or did brands seem a little quieter for Pride last month than they usuallyare?
Actually, brands generally aren't jumping at the chance to advertise to marginalized communities or weigh in on politics like they usedto.
Thisweek, we look at why brands got woke thenunwoke.
Why was that sounusual?
And what could it say aboutyou?
Listen on its been a minute fromNPR.
From Cowboy Carter to Old Town Road toYellowstone, the symbol of the cowboy has been riding high for a few yearsnow.
But my big question is why are we turning to thecowboy?
What's actually holding the reins on America'simagination?
And what does it reflect about ourpsyche?
