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This is the Ted Radio Hour.
Each week, groundbreaking Ted Talks.
Our job now is to dream big.
Ted Conferences. To bring about the future we want to see.
Around the world. To understand who we are.
From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.
You just don't know what you're going to find.
Challenge you.
We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy?
And even change you.
I literally feel like I'm a different person.
Yes. Do you feel that way?
Ideas worth spreading.
From Ted and NPR.
I'm Manouche Zomerodi.
And this is Mind Body Spirit.
Our special series exploring new, strange, and wonderful ideas about how we think, move, and feel.
So welcome to part three.
An official announcement from the Council of Ministers.
One of the atomic reactors at the Chernobyl Atomic Power Plant of the City of Kiev was damaged.
And there is speculation in Moscow that people were just being perhaps the worst accident in the short history of the world's nuclear power industry.
In 1986, the Chernobyl disaster shocked the world.
And it was an absolute catastrophe for people living near the plant.
Tanya Luna was just a year old.
Yeah. I mean, I guess the wild thing is that the accident happened over 50 miles from where we lived.
But my sister had this like long thick hair that she was so proud of.
And she went outside, rained that week, and her hair just kind of oozed out.
Six days after the explosion, an exclusion zone of 2,600 square kilometers was established across Ukraine and Belarus.
I got super sick. I was in the hospital for nine months.
More than 300,000 people were forcibly removed from their villages.
You know, it completely changed the course of countless lives.
The comfort and familiarity of home was suddenly taken away from Tanya's family.
But they're ended up being a silver lining.
Five years after the accident, the US granted them asylum.
Yeah, it was this, you know, one of the worst things that could have happened.
And one of the most amazing opportunities for us to come to the US and to have this completely new start and, you know, world full of possibility.
Here we were just transported into this new dimension, brightly lit supermarkets.
Someone had pre-sliced all the cheese, all the bread was sliced. It was like, what is this magical universe?
You know, meanwhile, we had probably $2 a day to eat on as our budget.
So, very tough for my family.
But we had TV and we had running water.
And, you know, on the one hand, of course, so much scarcity.
On the other hand, for me, just the sense of, like, infinite supply.
You know, when I think about what was it that made that time so magical and what was the gift of that experience, I think it's because I was able to hold both the beauty and the wonder of it and the pain of it.
You know, I grew up with constant stories of my grandmother, you know, going through the war and surviving off of potato peels and seeing my family struggle.
Well, they never hit it from us when we moved here or even when we were in Ukraine. So, I think some of the magic comes from the richness of the pain and the beauty coexisting.
Bad things happen to all of us.
Some are large-scale, like environmental disasters or war.
Others are more personal, like poor choices or the loss of a loved one.
And depending on how we react, the consequences can devastate or focus us.
So, in the final installment of our series, Mind Body Spirit, ideas about rekindling exist for life and how confronting, rather than shirking, our fears, our mistakes and even our mortality, can give us purpose and meaning.
So, back to writer Tanya Luna. As a young adult, all the upheaval in her childhood started to catch up with her. And it had an interesting effect.
Yeah, so my coping mechanism for all this change, for all this uncertainty, being an immigrant in the US, you know, having constantly moving, constantly having changes in like who I was living with in my family, I coped with that by saying, you know what?
I'm gonna be in charge of my life from now on.
And the thing, Tanya hated most, surprises.
So, I outlawed surprises across my friends and family. And I would say, like, I don't want gifts. And if you're gonna give me a gift, let's talk about it beforehand. I don't want any surprises.
It was her early 20s. She planned her life to a T.
Oh, literally. Yeah, exactly.
I even at one point had this locket that was a flash drive that I wore around my neck. And it was full of spreadsheets that were essentially outlining all of the details of the plan.
Oh, yes.
And that was, you know, my attempt at going, I'm gonna take control and I'm gonna keep the surprise and the unexpected aspects of life out.
But then something happened that Tanya didn't have on her schedule. She fell in love.
Turns out you can't really fully fall in love without embracing some surprise and unpredictability.
And the aliveness of not knowing exactly what's gonna happen when you say what you say or, you know, when you allow yourself to feel certain things you haven't felt before.
So part of it was falling in love and just recognizing if I were, if I allowed that surprise back into my life and found that balance of the ritualistic and the safe and the unpredictable, that is really the essence of aliveness.
I mean, Tanya, your life took so many twists and turns from Chernobyl to immigrating to planning out your life and then to falling in love.
Yep.
And you were so bold over by your romance that you ended up writing an entire book about surprises. That thing you hated.
Yes. And for me, I was thinking of surprise as a little deeper than like, ooh, this is a fun thing.
I was thinking this is training for people on how to embrace the unknown and the unpredictable because so much of life is that.
All right. So what did you learn about what was happening in your brain? I mean, what happens in all our brains when we get surprised?
Yeah. So something that doesn't meet our expectations happens. The first thing that happens is this freeze moment for this less than a second.
Our brains are just completely shut down. There's this brain wave called the P300 that kind of shoots through your brain and interrupts everything you're doing and it just says, pay attention.
Then our brains go into a find phase. They go, what's going on? What's going on? We become incredibly curious. We start asking a lot of questions.
During this point, our emotions are incredibly intensified. It's like this aliveness intensifier. We like to say surprise makes you err.
So depending on what the surprises makes you happier, angry, or a sadder.
Then is shift. So in order for our brains to go, okay, I can feel certain again to kind of mend that discrepancy of expectation.
We have to shift our expectations a little bit. And sometimes that shift is small. Like, oh, this person is much nicer than I thought.
Or maybe it's significant. Like, oh, my entire belief system, my faith has just shifted because of this surprise.
And then finally share surprise creates this cognitive overload that makes us want to, you can really only reduce the cognitive overload by talking about it with others, whether it's positive or negative.
And so in so many ways, it's just such a connecting force for humans is to tell stories of their surprise experiences.
Okay, so let's talk about this. If we are like, you know what, this is ringing true to me. I need to add a little zest, a little zing to my life to bring back that feeling of wonder.
And connection to the world around me. How can we all learn to engineer surprises, good surprises in daily lives?
Well, I think one of the easiest things you can do is try to notice, what are the patterns of my life? Like, what do I do consistently? Maybe it's your commute. Maybe it's who you talk to. Maybe it's how you talk to them.
And then just start out with a little bit of pattern interrupting. Where are you holding on to control? Where are you so attached to how something is going to turn out, attached outcomes?
And how might you release that sense of control and replace it with like 10% more wonder? So literally just go through your day and go, oh, okay, that's a control feeling. That's my neck tightening up. That's my stomach tightening up.
It's almost like we're living in this world full of these like secret hidden doors into other worlds, other possibilities. And most of us just walk down that hallway, never peek into any of those doors. So start opening those little doors and see what happens.
I do want to ask you though, I mean, I have been on the receiving end of an unlucky surprise, a phone call that I got. It was a woman saying I'm with your husband. He's been in a bike accident.
And when you have a nasty surprise, as you did in your childhood, it can be really hard for some people to bounce back from that to recognize surprises, something that's delightful and can build your spirit instead of diminished it.
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely right because our bodies are our brains protect ourselves. And that's good. That's that's absolutely good.
Sometimes it's just a matter of kind of checking back in with your body after a while and saying, is that protection still serving me or is that protection now actually holding me contained when we try to keep surprise out.
We are preventing this relationship, this constant dynamic experience with the rest of the world. We're trying to prescribe how things are going to go.
But the beauty and the sort of richness of spirit, I think comes from removing those filters and embracing the fact that the world is inherently surprising.
And so there's a lot of research that shows that just literally saying I wonder either out loud or in your mind over and over and over just shifts how you perceive the world around you and again intensifies that sense of
that sense of aliveness and connectedness. Dinner time. I hate dinner time right now. I'm tired of cooking. I always cook the same things.
I wonder what it would be like to serve fluff or not or sandwiches. I love that so much. All I know is my kids will be like marshmallows for dinner. Yes.
I love that. I love that. And also you can invite them to be the surpriseologist in the kitchen and say like, hey, I'm out of this dinner game. Let's see what you can come up with. I wonder.
I wonder what it would be like not to make dinner. But let's see that's the thing. Like who knows maybe something really wonderful will happen.
So much of even like, you know, conflict resolution or relationship problems so much of that has to do with us being stuck in a surprise free predictable system. As soon as something gets too predictable, it's kind of like that red flag where you have to go might not be good for my spirit.
Let me see what happens if I just go in a slightly different direction or in a totally different direction just to see what happens.
That's right or Tanya Luna. Her book is called surprise, embrace the unpredictable and engineer the unexpected. You can see her full talk at Ted dot com.
On the show today, part three of our series mind body spirit. I'm Anusha Zomerodi and you're listening to the Ted radio hour from NPR. We'll be right back.
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It's the Ted Radio Hour from NPR. I'm a new summer Odie on the show today spirit and our next speaker is a French artist with a very particular style.
It's based on photography specifically black and white portraits, which he massively enlarges and then paces onto buildings wrapping up, you know, squares, buildings, communities, village and it's really like endless.
The art is anonymous. I never sign my work and no one really knows what he looks like either. I always hide myself in different ways with sunglasses and hats.
Because some authorities might think he's defacing property. And anyway, he'd rather people pay attention to the art.
And so that's what I've been doing the last 22 years.
This is the artist J.R. Even if you've never heard of him, you have probably seen his work like the huge photo of a Mexican toddler peering over the border wall into the US.
Or the faces of Brazilian women plastered on the sides of homes dotting a poor hillside neighborhood looking out over Rio.
Or more recently, the image of a smiling Ukrainian girl nearly the width of a football field paraded through the streets of Lviv reminding anyone flying above that children live there.
I'm an artist. I'm not an activist. For the simple reason that I just raise questions. I go there, I learn from people, I create art with them.
So when I do the little kid overlooking the world between US and Mexico, I just actually showed this little kid called Kikito and just by seeing him overlooking the world.
In this context, you know, people make their own interpretation. And that's what I find fascinating. I don't have a political message or agenda behind it.
When did you realize that sort of the theme you were sticking to was making people seen who are usually invisible?
And there they are larger than life.
Yeah, I guess, you know, I started this journey from the projects I saw Paris.
JR grew up in these housing projects where many poor immigrants and their French porn children live.
Young people from these projects are often vilified in the press.
I was doing graffiti. So, you know, it was not even called art at the time. It was called vandalism.
It was more way to write your name to say, I exist. I'm here.
He had never considered photography, but then one day, out with his friends, he spotted a camera left behind on a subway seat.
And I just started to take photos of my friend doing graffiti. And then I just had no money to print them. So I made photo copies of them.
So I was just like giving them to my friends and then I was just pasting them on the streets.
It was the mid-2000s. JR began enlarging these photo copies, pasting them everywhere, including in his own neighborhood.
And one of these pictures ended up launching his career.
It's a photo of a friend holding a video camera like it's a machine gun pointed right at the viewer.
And I took this photo of him and he looks really like, you know, like with a very strong look and he holds his camera like a gun.
The message is clearly aimed at the public and the media. You see us as violent thugs. But you should turn the camera on yourselves and see what we see.
JR had put up the photo in 2004 and a year later.
The riots actually exploded in 2005 in front of that photo.
The largest riots that France had ever known since the French Revolution. That then spread all over France, started there.
And my photos happened to be in the background of it.
That photo appeared in news reports all over the world.
November 2005. The streets are burning.
JR picks up the story from the Ted stage.
Everyone was glued to the TV, watching, disturbing, frightening images, taking from the age of the neighborhood.
I mean, these kids without control, showing more of the f-cocthole, attacking the cops on the firemen, looting everything they could in the shops.
These were criminal, thugs, don't jurors, destroying their own environment.
And then I saw it. Could it be possible? My photo on a wall, revealed by a burning car, a pasting I've done a year earlier, an illegal one, still there.
I mean, this was a face of my friend. I know those guys, all of them are not angels, but they'd administer either.
It was kind of weird to see those images and those eyes that back at me through the television. So I went back there with a 28-millimeter lens.
It was the only one I had at that time, but with that lens, you have to be as close as 10 each from the person.
So you can do it only with that trust. So I took full portraits of people from LeBoschik.
They were making scary faces to play the caricature of themselves. And then I pasted. Huge poster everywhere in the bourgeois area of Paris.
With that name, age, even building number of these guys. A year later, the exhibition was displayed in front of the city hall of Paris.
That's where I realized the power of paper and glue.
You spent the next two decades traveling to troubled places. And let's talk about a recent project you did in a prison in California.
If listeners Google to Hatchapy Prison, they will see a photo taken by a drone of an incredible mural.
It's a group of inmates gathered in the prison yard looking up. And you see the faces of the people who live in this maximum security prison.
JR, you got very rare access. And if I understand correctly, you picked this facility off a map?
Exactly. I sent two friends to scout one prison. I had just scouted on Google Earth. And when they came back from it, they called me.
And they said, JR, it's incredible. And I said, OK, come with me. We're going to paste the entire prison.
And I looked, JR, that's a super max security prison. It's called the Hatchapy. It's actually in the top five of the most violent prison.
I was like, that will do it. The next day we flew there. We arrived there. And of course, you know, it's not that easy.
You get there, it's like fences, electric fences, walls. And you add more walls and more people that check your IDs.
I got to get all the way to the yard. And it's like some army guy with like bulletproof jackets and heavily armed who say, all right, there's some people waiting for you in the gymnasium.
We got us some inmates. You cannot approach them. You cannot touch them. You can sit at the chair that we designated for you. And we're going to surround the area of the gymnasium.
When I went there, they had actually got a group of maybe, you know, something like 40 inmates. And I sat at the table with all of them.
And a lot of them were there since they were kids between 13 and 20. Some of them had life with a parallel of them had life.
Really even the warden told me he said, look, those guys, we don't even screen movies for them. We don't even do any art program.
You know, they couldn't even imagine that a project like that could happen.
So what was the goal? Like when you were thinking about it, was it to give voice to people who were incarcerated because you also did recordings with the inmates too?
Or I don't know, was it just to draw attention to the rate of incarceration in the US? Like what was your purpose going in?
At first, it always starts the same way, which is there's not a direct goal. I think the goal was to create a project with the people there.
And let me tell you, there are some people that really need to be there, you know, and really deserve to be there.
And we don't have that same energy of that group that I had.
So what happened actually is, I explained them what I do. I said, well, you know, in the process of what we're about to do, if you want to do it, you'll record your story.
And you'll tell your story by yourself, but I just want you to do before you do that. That I won't be asking question.
You know, this is how you want to actually share your story.
And a lot of them, when they did the audio, they spent like 30, 40 minutes in, you know, the room recording their story by themselves, sometimes crying.
And because they never had, it's in all those years, a moment where they could actually share and explain with their own words.
Hello, I'm Elton World, my name's Richard. My name is Carlos Arrantes.
My name's Ricky Black. I'm from Bakersville, California. I'm currently serving a 15-year-old life sentence.
I've been incarcerated since I was 22 years old. I'm 30 years old now. My birthday's on Wednesday.
I grew up, you know, in messed up environment. Always being evicted. I never really had a dream growing up.
I remember, like, it was yesterday, my dad and my little brother went to go visit me for the first time.
Shackled behind glass.
It's wild here. When we do come out for yard, there's stuff happening all the time. People fight, people get stabbed.
They get shot with the black guns. They throw smoke grenades.
You've pretty much lose touch with reality. And I spent many years back there, never thinking I would have an opportunity like this to present myself in a humane manner.
I work in the library. I'm the library's clerk. I'm the college clerk. I had my paralegal certificate. I'm a certified paralegal. I'm going to college. Who would have thought I would be in college?
I'm hoping that people will see this. And I know that a lot of us deserve another chance, a second chance.
Right now, we have a great opportunity to change the narrative of who we are, change the way they treat us.
Because as many people know, being in prison is really incumane.
I am human. I do have feelings. And I still know that people care about me out there. I love Deer Link. I hope you guys see this.
My daughter needs me right now. I want her to see that someone heard a click on my picture and see me.
Because I've been gone her whole life. She's eight years old.
And I love her. Do you know what I love her? I'll be home soon, sweetie. I'll be home soon.
These stories, I mean, they feel so intimate. And each of the prisoners did their own recording.
But you pasted the massive mural down in the prison yard together, right? And that's a whole big thing. Your process is complicated.
Exactly. I told them I'm going to come back and we're going to paste this. And I'm actually going to do that within the next 10 days.
Because I want to see if they will really let us come with like giant strips of papers, clue, scissors.
I mean, all those tools you need to paste, you know, in a maximum security prison.
Then I went back to my studio and that's what we do. We print strips of papers like a giant puzzle.
So we have to combine it together. And then we went back there and we started bringing everybody on the yard.
And we started pasting. Everyone from every gang, every race, participated.
So I said, wait, stop. Give me a second. I'm going to try to get some guards to paste with us.
And they were like, look, we love your utopism and stuff. But like, that's where it's stopped.
No, no, just give me a second. So I start going to the guards and I say, hey, do you mind participating? No, no, no.
Fifty-no. One guy said, yes. Say cool. Come with me. They're going to show you. And then another guard and another guard.
And that's where the real walls were falling down. Because there's no communication between those guards and the inmates.
And you know what? From the floor, it was so big. We couldn't say it anyway. You had to send a drone.
So we sent the drone. Those guys have never seen a drone the whole life. They were more excited about the drone than a whole project.
And I was so scared because I was like, I hope we did the puzzle right. Because if not, it's going to look a bit ugly from up there.
And that's what you see from up there. That's what you see from up there.
Thank you. I mean, you can hear the audience gasping. When you show them the mural there, it really packs a punch.
But your story about trying to cajole the guards to take part. I mean, you only got a few to join in.
Yeah, I mean, you know, those prisons, they are made to dishumanize people. So you can talk with the guards. You have to keep at safe distance. The guards are not in the yard.
They're only from towers. Then they move the inmates. So when there's a fight, they will actually ask everyone to get on the ground.
Then who is not on the ground? They will shoot at with rubber bullet. And so everything is made. So even if you change, no one will notice it.
You still like stuck in that system. So what that project actually create is during that day of trying to paste a giant collage of pieces of puzzle to create the image.
The guards and the inmates talk, had to talk to say, hey, can you pass me the glue? Oh, wait, there's no more water. Let me get the water.
Now don't worry. I get it. Oh, you're so kind. Little things, but those little things actually reveal the humanity of each other because then suddenly when they would talk or when they'll take a little 500 break and then they'll exchange you know, you know, what a beautiful day today.
Oh, yeah, the winter time was hot. And oh, yeah, what do you leave? Oh, you live close by from here? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Oh, well, that's normal. That's exactly. Well, that shit chat right there is game changer because when that projects over everything goes back to normal. Well, those guards will never see those inmates the same way. And the inmates will never see those guys the same way.
And what happened, which I could never believe in a lifetime devised the guards to vouch for them if they would go to board parlor again. And it's incredible to think that just a little piece of paper and a community action can have such an impact.
So I get a permit to go back in the prison and this time I say let me walk on some more walls. I'll find an idea. Let me get back in. So I go back in there and I started walking on the walls, but it was really the excuse was like I need to speak to you guys.
So I said, what happened guys? They were like, well, what do you mean what happened? I was like, well, I was in the outside. I can't speak to you guys. What was the impact inside? It's like, oh, the impact inside is pretty simple.
I mean, my daughter never visited me in 14 years. And now she sat in her bedroom and she listened to my audio and now she sees me every week.
He said, you can ask to every one of those guys here. And then tell you the same story. That's what's important. And after this whole project, after everything I showed you, what shook them, what struck them the most is that I shook their hand. So at the end, they even asked me for a hug.
Now, I remember that first question, which was, what is the purpose of your art? Well, art can change things, but can it change the world or can it change a man?
Before you answer that question, think at some point of in your life, have you changed? And if yes, if you did, why can't they?
You know, I'm a Gen X cynic. And so part of me worries that, but you don't do this. Part of me thinks like, oh, prisoners do an art project.
Prisoners have a heart of gold. Prisoners are reform. They're actually really good guys. But there's something about your approach that doesn't make me feel cynical. And I'm trying to put my finger on what it is.
You know, I have to say those guys had hope even if they had no hope of living that prison one day. But they still have hope. And it was incredible. Because then we could imagine crazy things, you know, and we did.
It's something that even in my wildest dream, I couldn't have imagined.
I always told myself that if I didn't change or grow or mature or do everything I could, the better myself, I was still making things worse.
I gotta still push forward because that's what defines me. People in prison are human beings who have the ability to learn, to grow, to change. And they deserve that opportunity.
That's a body. That's all I wanted to share. And I thank you all for the appreciation for the time and just take it easy and God bless.
Those were some of the voices of current end-former inmates at Tatjapi State Prison.
J.R. is an artist and the winner of the 2011 Ted Prize. You can see all of his talks at Ted.com.
On the show today, part three of our series, Mind Body Spirit. I'm Manou Shazamaroti and you're listening to the Ted Radio Hour from NPR.
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It's the Ted Radio Hour from NPR, I'm Anush Zomerodi. And now the last speaker in our special series, Mind Body Spirit. Someone who takes these concepts to their limits.
I would pay anything to have a meaningful conversation with my father again.
If you could talk to your father, spirit, what would you ask him?
I don't know, I would say, hey, nice to see you again. And maybe let's just go for a walk and chat about things that are happening in our lives with your grandchildren and with me and just having a conversation with him wouldn't be amazing.
This is Artora Sichoff, the founder of Somnium Space, a platform where Artora hopes that one day people can live forever, at least virtually.
Yeah, what if my grand, grand kids can meet me in virtual reality or meet my alter ego or my AI avatar with my voice, with my movements, with my biometrics.
And probably with my personality because AI is progressing so fast and talk to me long after I'm gone.
Somnium Space is a virtual world, a metaverse where everyday people log in, put on a headset or even a full body haptic suit with sensors and live.
Right, so it's a virtual reality platform where people hop in from all over the world and they build, communicate, socialize, earn, have fun and do whatever they want.
There are parties, movie nights, festivals, fashion shows.
Yeah, we have daily meetups, we have some, you know, disco nights or even yoga classes.
And even though it's all online, these experiences can feel very lifelike.
Yeah, your brain is strict, your eyes believe, you know, and brain believes, what do you see?
I'm wearing VR headset and I'm physically at home, but my mind is in this space.
That's the beauty and the magic of virtual reality because the moment you take your headset on, the snow, the sunset, all those buildings, all the city which is built by users, all of that, I can feel the distance, I can feel the height of this building.
So yeah, that's the magic of VR. When you're here, you totally believe that you are actually inside this world.
Archer has been working with engineers for years to build Somnium Space.
And their latest feature is called Live Forever Mode.
Users can pay to create a digital doppelganger of themselves or loved ones, an avatar that will live on even when they die.
But doing so requires collecting data, a lot of data.
So when you're in virtual reality, you are not only present there with voice, for example, but you use your whole body, right?
And this body is tracked in this in the virtual space.
Meaning collecting information on how you move and much, much more.
You could actually record your ECG and other biometrics, like heart rate and stress levels.
So when you take this data and you apply AI on top of those data and you will be able to recreate the life like avatar of yourself when you are not there.
Are you collecting that much data right now about like every time you go into Somnium Space, are you collecting all the way you walk,
the way you move, the way you talk, the way all of that right now to create another version of you?
Right now we're doing a lot of tests because collecting the data, it sounds easy, but it's not that trivial.
It's a huge amount of data and we're doing the tests to see what is the best way to not only record the data, but also encrypt the data.
So it's safe. So we are in a, let's say early testing and late planning phase of this feature.
And step one would be enabling people to record themselves.
And step two would be enabling AI to actually be applied on those data and actually recreating the avatar.
So in your mind, do you ever picture you as a virtual avatar long after your physical flesh body has passed away?
Absolutely.
Yes, and even before I'm gone actually, I think this could be a very useful feature. Imagine I'm running an avatar shop in Somnium and I'm busy in my real life. I can just let my avatar tell everything about these products, what I'm selling in virtual reality to my guests or I, for example, collect digital art.
I can let people talk to me or my second me about this gallery I have there. So of course, I picture that and you know, if we talk about mortality, even right now we're making pictures of ourselves and our relatives.
Now, you know, in the past 20 years, we started to make a lot of videos. Isn't the same because videos are kind of like it's a window to who those people were.
I want you to hold those people who are watching those videos later.
I think I should be driving. I think so too. But actually meeting those people and being able to make a conversation with that person, it's a next level and it's a natural progression of the technology.
So there's a couple things that I don't know make me a little nervous. I'm curious what other people have told you. Part of me thinks like, I don't know what I want.
A virtual version of me walking around a virtual space that's there's something sort of out of, I can't even put words to it.
How do we describe what why we feel that there's this unease between the real world and creating a virtual version of a person.
Yeah, there's a lot of debate happening inside the company and community. I think, you know, will it be one to one person as it was before? I don't think so.
But it will be close enough for people to recognize the person and to feel the presence 100%. But right now we are most of the time concentrated on this experimental thing where how can we allow people to record themselves as early as possible because that what matters.
If they have data about themselves, then if something happens, at least we have something which we can then maybe together with their family or with relatives to decide what do we do with that.
At least they have an option because not having an option is the worst case scenario. And I don't want people to not have an option.
Part of me feels hesitant in that you've described collecting vast amounts of some of the most intimate personal data a person can generate. I mean, Arter, I hesitate giving a company my phone number.
The thought of getting rightfully so absolutely.
You know, the thought of handing over my stress levels for two years or or my gate for two years or all of that information.
I probably can't even think of how much information it is. That sounds worrying.
It is and people should definitely think a million times before they do that.
Part of why we believe people will do that with some name is because you would have to pay for this feature which in return allows us to run secure encryption on top of your data.
Make sure that everything is secure. Now, can we at this moment guarantee 100% that all of this will never be hackable?
I don't know. But we are transparent and we want to earn the trust of people by proofs.
When I try to imagine this technology being part of like our regular lives, I cannot help but think of all the sci-fi movies and TV shows that illustrate this idea or versions of this idea of preserving a human digitally like the movie Marjorie Prime.
The father of you that your mother is talking to a computer program or that the computer program is pretending to be your dad.
It bothers me that you are helping it pretend to be some out-of-use version of my dad.
It's how she remembers her and she accepts her.
Or of course Black Mirror.
She scheduled the past.
You know, scheduled the past. It's just call it dying.
If you can call it dying.
I've blown it to the clouds. That's like heaven.
And a lot of these plots illustrate the darker side of this quest to live forever virtually.
But our turn is like, what is your vision for how people will use this feature?
Like, would I... I don't know. Decide to give it as a gift to my children and my grandchildren so that when I'm gone I can leave them a virtual version of me that they can hang out with in your metaverse.
Is that what you picture?
To be honest, I think I would picture something more of a, hey, we had grand-grandmother, right?
And let's take a tour in VR altogether as a family and visit her and just talk to her about what did she do in her life, who she was, what her interests.
And I think even just having a question-answer conversation about that person and being even able to come and touch the arm or the heart and feel the heart rate, the actual heart rate of that person, it's magical.
And we know it's possible today with the technology available today.
Here's the thing, is like, I can imagine you capturing someone's mannerisms or their way of speaking and the way that they move their body and all of those things.
But each of us contains sort of this, you know, it's an ineffable sort of sparkle or spirit. It's what some people might refer to as the soul.
Can you really replicate that? Artur, can you really save that digitally?
That is an incredible question, which I don't have a direct answer to.
You know, maybe it will be a bit different soul, which AI will be able to recreate.
You know, when I'm getting into the territory of AI being sent in, but if something, you know, to a person who speaks to that AI avatar, it will feel as if that...
AI had a soul. You know those robot pets, like Sony did a robot in the past with a robot dog and people playing with them?
People created real relationship with those dogs. They were their friends. And it's just a rudimentary robot.
But imagine that with a personality times one's solvent. That's where it can get really interestingly tricky to then realize whether something is real or not.
Does it has soul or not? We don't know. But this will be multiplied by one's solvent because of VR and body movements and voice.
And all of those things combined will create some magical moments.
There are going to be some people listening to this who are saying, oh yeah, definitely. I want to preserve the people in my life.
I want to meet my ancestors. I want my children's children's children to meet me. And they're going to be other people listening.
And I want to thank the teacher, Ardru, who think you sound absolutely crazy. What do you say to them? Is this what innovation looks like?
It's exactly what innovation looks like. And I think it's exactly how it should be. And I want people to say, oh my god, Ardru is crazy.
What is he thinking about? Is he insane? And then again, there will be other people saying, oh my god, you know, take my money. Where can I sign up?
And that's I think that's exactly how it should be.
I read somewhere that you were inspired to build this feature in part because of your father losing your father.
Yeah.
It's kind of personal. My father some years ago, my father was diagnosed with cancer.
He was a great guy and very energetic. And of course, you know, as every son and father, there were some tough moments.
But overall, he was very easy to talk to and a lovely person. And it did occur to me that what if I had more recordings of my father in VR,
what if I had more audio recordings of him, of his movements and heartbeat, I could have recreated him later.
Is it a way of reconnecting with someone you love or is this also about trying to find immortality in some way?
You know, I understand people who freeze their bodies and hope that they will be revived at some point in the future because when you die,
if you don't do that, you have 0% chance to survive. 0, you're dead, you're gone.
If you do this, you have maybe 0.000001% chance of living again.
But not really come on, Artur. That's not really living, is it?
You don't know because the medicine in 200 years could be able to revive you and give you a new body. You don't know.
That's the beauty of it. You don't know. But if you don't do it, you know that you're gone.
If you do it, you have a chance.
And I think chance is what half of the humanity lives for every day. Why don't give us a chance to live forever?
That's Artur Sichov. He's the founder and CEO of Somnium Space. You can see his talk at TED.NPR.org.
We debated whether it was wise to end this episode and our entire series on such a futuristic note.
But whether we look to ancient practices for inspiration or to technological innovation for what might be,
people will keep trying to enhance the mind, body, and spirit. However you define it.
Science and social norms will continue growing our understanding of their mechanics, parsing how one affects the other two.
And of course, we will keep searching for balance between all three. It is the human condition.
So we hope this series has brought back to life a phrase that has become a trite hashtag or an esoteric concept depending on your perspective.
Thank you so much for listening. If you didn't hear parts 1 and 2, just go back in your feed. They're worth it.
This episode was produced by Katie Montellione and Rachel Faulkner White. It was edited by Sana's Meshkanpur and Meek.
Our production staff at NPR also includes James De La Housi, Matthew Cloutier, Fiona Gehrin, Andrea Gutierrez, Harsha Nahada, and Julia Karney.
Beth Donovan is our executive producer. Our intern is Susanna Brown.
We also want to give a special shout out this week to the many people who helped us bring this series to life.
Matilda P.R. Gary Duong, Malvika Dang, and artist Bug Robbins.
This episode featured home video clips from Sina and Mina, Meshkanpur, Agdom, and Family.
Eleanor Brown and her dad, Mike, Adelina, Lansiannees, and her grandfather, Pasco, and Andrea Gutierrez and her family.
Our theme music was written by Romteen Arablui. Our audio engineers were Robert Rodriguez and Gile Moon.
Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Felen, Michelle Quint, Jimmy Gutierrez, Alejandra Salazar, and Danielle Balorezzo.
I'm Manouch Zomerodi, and you've been listening to the TED radio hour from NPR.
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