TED Radio Hour - Mind, Body, Spirit - Part 3

Episode Date: March 31, 2023

When times get tough, how do we keep our spirits up? In part 3 of our series Mind, Body, Spirit, TED speakers tell stories of salvaging the human psyche and rekindling a zest for life. Guests include author Tania Luna, artist JR and tech entrepreneur Artur Sychov. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our job now is to dream big. Delivered at 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 Manus Shumeroody. 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... This has been 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, that the accident happened over 50 miles from where we lived. But my sister had this long, thick hair that she was so proud of.

And she went outside, it 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 full. 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 there ended up being a silver lining. Five years after the accident, the U.S. granted them asylum. Yeah, it was this, you know, one of the worst things that could have happened. And one of the most, you know, amazing opportunities for us. to come to the U.S. 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.

I 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 this 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. 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 a zest 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 appearance, 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 U.S., you know, having just 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 going to, I'm going to 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 going to 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 tea. 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 plans. Oh, yes. And that was, you know, my,

attempt at going, I'm going to take control and I'm going to 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 going to 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, 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. It interrupts everything you're doing, and it just says pay attention.

Then our brains go into the 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 er.

So depending on what the surprise is, it makes you happy or angry or sadder. Then is shift. So in order for our brains to go, oh, 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, you know, 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, you can really. 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 our 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 to outcomes?

And how might you release that sense of control and replace it with like 10, percent 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 and 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 surprise as something that's delightful and can build your spirit instead of diminished it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, right? Because our bodies or our brains protect ourselves. And that's good. 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 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 nutter 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. like not to make dinner. But 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, we're in a totally different direction, just to see what happens. That's writer Tanya Luna. Her book is called Surprise, Embrace the Unpredictable and Engineer the Unexpected. You can see her full talk at TED.com. On the show today, part three of our series, Mind, Body, Spirit. I'm Anoush Zamoroti, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

Before we get back to the show, I want to tell you about. TED Radio Hour Plus. It is a new way to listen and support the show, and it comes with bonus episodes made just for you. For example, plus listeners just got a behind-the-scenes look at our interview with choreographer Ryan Heffington that went along with our body episode. Earlier, Dan Harris from part one of the series led just plus listeners in a guided meditation. The bonus for this episode, Tanya Luna, takes you on a surprise-filled and venture. And here's the thing. These bonus episodes and the regular show, none of them have ads. Yeah, you don't need to listen to that. So please join us. Go to plus.npr.org slash TEDd or click the link in our show notes. If you can't sign up right now, don't worry about it. Ted Radio Hour will still be free in your feed every week. But if you are ready for fewer ads and more ideas from TED and you can show your support, please.

Please go to plus.npr.org slash TED. And thank you. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manus Zameroidi. 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 paced onto buildings.

wrapping up, you know, squares, buildings, communities, village, and it's really like endless. The art is anonymous. I never sign my walk. 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 U.S. 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 Leviv, 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 show this little kid called Kikito and just by seeing him overlooking the wall. 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 at South Paris. J.R. grew up in the...

these housing projects where many poor immigrants and their French-born 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 a 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 photocopies 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. J.R. began enlarging these photocopies, 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 2000. 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. J.R. 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 Molotov cocktail, attacking the cops on the firemen, looting everything they could in the shops. These were criminals, thugs, dangerous. They're showing 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 is what the faces of my friend. I know those guys. All of them are not angels, but they're not monster either. It was kind of weird to see those image 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 their trust. So I took full portraits of people from Lesboske. 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 their name, age, even building number of these guys, 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 Hatchapie 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. J.R., 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 had just scouted on Google Earth. And when they came back from it, they called me. They called me. me and I said, Jayor, it's incredible. And I said, okay, come with me.

We're going to paste the entire prison. I like, look, Jeo, that's a super max security prison. It's called Tehachapi. 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 had more walls and more people that check your IDs. And my God, I got all the way to the yard. And it looked 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 gather 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 gathered 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 without parole. A lot 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, or was it just to draw attention to the rate of incarceration in the U.S.? 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 their audio, they spent like 30, 40 minutes in, you know, the room recording their story by themselves. I'm crying because they never had in all those years a moment where they could actually share and explain with their own words.

Hello, outside world. My name is Richard. My name is Carlos Aranthus. My name is Ricky Black. I'm from Bakersfield, California. I'm currently serving a 15 years of life sentence. I've been incarcerated since I was 22 years old. I'm 30 years old now.

My birthday is on Wednesday. I grew up, you know, and messed up environment. Always being infected. 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 block guns. They throw small 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 got 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 know that a lot of us deserve another chance,

a second chance. Like 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. Didn't you set, Marissa, who I love dearly, hope you guys see this?

My daughter needs me right now, and I want her to see this. I want her to click on my picture and see me, because I've been gone her whole life. She's eight years old. And that I love her. She knows I love her. I'll be home soon, sweetie. Yeah, I mean, 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,

glue, 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 paper, 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 stopped. I'm like, 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, no. 50 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. 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're sending the drone. Those guys have never seen a drone their whole life.

They were more excited about the drone than the 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 eat.

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, you know, 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're still 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 had to talk to say, hey, can you pass me the glue?

Oh, wait. There's no more water. Let me get the water. No, 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 five minute break and then they'll

exchange it. You know, what a beautiful day today. Oh, yeah. The winter last time was hot. And oh, yeah, where do you live? Oh, you live close by from here. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow.

Just normal chit chat. Exactly. Well, that chit chat right there is game. changer. Because when that project's 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 parole 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 got a person. I've got a person.

me 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 they'll 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 their first question, which was, what is the purpose of your art? Well, art can change things. But can it change the world? Or can he change a man? Before you answer that question, think, at some point 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.

Like part of me thinks like, oh, prisoners do an art project. Prisoners have a heart of gold. prisoners or, you know, reform. They're actually really good guys. You know what I mean? 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 their prison one day. And 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 to better myself, I was still making things worse.

I got to still push forward because that's what, like, 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 about it. 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 and former inmates at Tahatchapie 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 Manoosh Zamoroti, and you're a good. listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manus Shumeroody. 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's 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, what are happening in our lives with your grandchildren and with me and just having a conversation with him. It would be amazing.

This is Artur Sitchoff, the founder of Somnium Space, a platform where Artur hopes that one day people can live forever, at least virtually. Yeah. What if my grand, grandkids can meet me in virtual reality or meet my ultra 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 every, day, 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 yours. And even though it's all online, these experiences can feel very life-like. 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 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 lifelike avatar of yourself when you're not there. Are you collecting that much data right now about like every time you go into Somnium space, are you collecting all the like the way you walk, the way you move, the way you talk, 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 test 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 being 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. Really? 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, you know, 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. How are you? For those people who are watching those videos later. I think I should be driving. I think so too. And mom, how about you? Let's see it again.

Oh, when the moon hit your eyes like a big piece of eye. 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, would I want a virtual version of me? Walking around a virtual space? There's something sort of out of, I can't even put words to it.

How do we describe 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, you know, the company, community. I think, you know, will it be one-to-one personality as it was before? I don't think so. But will it 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 is 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 giving so, absolutely.

You know, the thought of handing over my stress levels for two years or my gait 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 Somnum is because you would have to pay for this feature, which will in return allow us to, you know, 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 crucial. 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, our versions of this idea of preserving a human digitally, like the movie Marjorie Prime. Is it bother 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 fountain of youth version about my dad. It's how she remembers so.

And she accepts. Or, of course, Black Mirror. She's scheduled to pass tomorrow afternoon. Scheduled to pass. Let's just call it dying. If you can't call it dying. Upload it to the clouds. Sounds like heaven.

And a lot of these plots illustrate the darker side of this quest to live. live forever virtually. But Artur, 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 all together as a family and visit her and just talk to her about what did she do in her life, who she was, what were 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. It's 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, we're now getting into the territory of AI being sentient. 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 solvent. That's where it can get really.

interestingly tricky to then realize whether something is real or not, does it have soul or not? We don't know. But this will be multiplied by 1,000 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 there are going to be other people listening, Archer, 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, Archer is crazy. What is he thinking about? Is he insane?

And then again, and then there will be other people saying, oh my God, you know, take my money. Where can I sign up? And 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, 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. survive. Zero. You're dead. You're gone. If you do this, you have maybe 0.000, 0.00, 0.1% chance of living again. But not really. Come on, Artur. That's not really living, is it? Yeah, but you don't know, because the medicine in 200 years could be able to revive you and

give your 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 Arter Sitchov. 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. And 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 one and two, just go back in your feed. They're worth it. This episode was produced by Katie Montalione and Rachel Faulkner White. It was edited by Sanaas Meskampore and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes James Delahousie, Matthew Cloutier, Fiona Girin, Andrea Gutierrez, Harsha, Nihada, and Julia Carney. 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. Matild Piyard, Gary Duwong, Malvica Dang, and artist Bug Robbins. This episode featured home video clips from Sina and Mina, Mesqunpur, Agdam, and family. Eleanor Brown and her dad, Mike, Adelina Lansia Nees, and her grandfather, Pascoe, and Andrea Gutierrez and her family. Our theme music was written by Ramteen Arablewee. Our audio engineers were Robert Rodriguez and Gilly Moon. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Feeleyn, Michelle Quint, Jimmy Gutierrez, Alejandra Salazar, and Daniela Baleirozzo. I'm Manusse Zameroody, and you've been listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR.