TED Radio Hour - The women missing from music

Episode Date: October 2, 2026

Women have been writing music for centuries. Why do we know so few of them today? This hour, TED speakers explore the role of women in music history and how we can remember their contributions. Guests include opera singer and activist Gabriella Di Laccio and Nadya Tolokonnikova, a Russian artist and founder of Pussy Riot.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.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 Shumeroidi. Today on the show, The Women Missing from Music. This is Gabriella Delaccio. She is a classical singer here, performing an opera by Vivaldi. I always sung since I was a kid, very young.

I'm Brazilian, so I grew up in the south of Brazil. and singing. It's a big part of the culture, school, church, at home. But it was not until I was, I guess, 11 or 12 that I started to listen to opera on TV and classical music, and I loved it so much. What that music did to me and singing in harmony, so I started to imitate them in my living room. And that's how I started to fall in love with classical music. Gabriella has found that classical music is a language that anyone can understand. It can touch so many people.

And I think that was why I wanted this to be my career, because to be able to see what, just by singing, I could move people and touch people in a way that I never imagined. It's really priceless. When you were younger, who were your favorites? Who were the composers that you thought were just the best? Mozart was the composer who I was completely obsessed with because, you know, I watched the movie, Amadeus, I guess, as well.

But Beethoven as well, you know, I grew up in a small town. I didn't have access to going to concerts all the time, But eventually I started to, when I was a teenager, I started to go and watch the symphony orchestra every week. And I started to make the music I knew much broader. But of course, they were all men. Did that even occur to you that they were men? Or were you just kind of like? No, I simply accepted women didn't write music.

But I wasn't like thinking about it. It was, I didn't question. Let's put it this way. I didn't question. It was much later that I even thought about it. As an adult, Gabriella left Brazil to continue her education. She moved to London, where she studied Baroque music and opera at the Royal College of Music. And she started performing professionally in operas and as a soloist,

singing major works by the classical greats like Bach Puccini and Mozart. But her career changed forever one day in 2016 when she was browsing in a secondhand book market in London. In South Bank on the weekends under the bridge, they have these sort of outside market with lots of things, secondhand books or art. And I was walking there and I'm very curious. I love books. And I found this an encyclopedia. It looked like two big blue books. art cover and he said

the international encyclopedia of women composers publication done in the 80s and I was like what and then I looked

opened the book and he said this man had listed 6,000 women composers in the history of music from medieval pre-medieval

times to until 1984 anyway I bought the book took it home and really shocked, felt, okay, this is embarrassing. I am the most ignorant singer in the whole world. I will not tell anyone. I probably missed a lesson.

I don't know. The day they taught about women composers at the Royal College. And the first thought across my mind was this, oh, I bet this is just a big list. It doesn't mean their work. was any good. And then I was immediately shocked with my own thought because I went, what? Why did I think that? So I did what I thought, at least my curiosity and these women deserved. And I started to look for their music, their names. And then I discovered one story and another story and another

story. And then he became a joke in our house because my husband is an engineer and, you know, he loves music, but it's not his field. And every. Every morning at breakfast, I would tell him, oh, my God, you must listen to this. Do you know this woman? La, la, la, la. And then he was like, wow, so interesting this. And I was like that for, I think, almost a year. And then every rehearsal, you know, I was singing, I performed.

So I was talking to colleagues. And I said, oh, do you know that composer? No. And conductor. Oh, do you know, no, never heard of it. But how about that one? No, no. So it wasn't just you.

No, nobody knew. And I was like, what's going on? And this makes absolutely no sense. The more Gabriella dug in, the more confused she got. How could this vast archive of music written by women just go unnoticed for so long? Eventually, her confusion turned to anger. I did get angry. But I think my husband got angry too because I think he got sick of he listening to me.

And one day he said to me, look, it's very nice. You're telling me all these stories. Nothing's going to happen, you know. Are you going to do something about it or what? So I tell you what I did. I created a tiny website and I listed 4,000 women, the ones I could find that had links online. And I decided to call the website Donne, which means women in Italian.

And then I just interviewed. living composers who are here in London, including Rachel Bortman, who's the first woman, whoever won an Oscar as a composer. He did little interviews and posted on YouTube. And as a curiosity, extra piece, I decided to look into the top 15 orchestras in the world. And I decided to count what they were playing. Because I thought, these orchestras, they have the power to share this music. And they already have an audience. Imagine if they would play this music. So I counted, took me months, and I published a tiny infographic and it said only 2.3% of these orchestras, the music these orchestras played was written by women. That was

it. And then published this website on International Women's Day, 2018. It kind of became a mission to rescue missing voices for our future. You know, because at the end of the day, women were always creating. Their music was there, but what disappeared somehow was our memory. Who decides which music is preserved for generations to come? And how can we unearth that missing half of music history? These questions have been the focus of Gabriella Delaccio's work over the past decade, as her website has turned from a side project into a nonprofit,

the Donne Foundation, which has now built a massive database of women composers, documenting their contributions and advocating for equal opportunities for women throughout the music industry. So on the show today, a conversation with singer-turned-historian Gabriella DiLaccio on the forgotten stories in music's history and how this affects the ways AI could shape its future. But let's start with the basics. At the risk of sounding completely naive, can we just go back and can I ask you the obvious question, which is why don't we know about all of these female composers? Oh, that's a million dollar question.

And I think we start with, initially women didn't have the same access to education. They were considered to be less than men. so whatever they produced perhaps was not even registered. And then we have, we go to, I don't know, Baroque period. And again, you start to see more women and you start even to see women who are clever to register their work and to publish their work to make sure their voices carried on. but there were not many. You have incredible stories.

If you think like the Medici's in Florence, one of the most high-paid musician at the court of the Medici's was Francesca Caccini. And she was a woman, daughter of a very famous Baroque composer. And because she was producing music for the Medici's, a lot of music didn't survive because it was not published by a proper publishing house.

house. She's known to be the woman, the first woman who wrote an opera, but she wrote hundreds of pieces who simply disappeared. So we have a problem of record, why we didn't keep record of these women. And then moving through the ages, I think a lot of the fault as well, and not totally, but, you know, who was writing the history books? A lot of men were in charge, I guess, and perhaps they didn't think we should keep this. One. story, which is great from the encyclopedia, this man, Aaron Cohen, who is the man who compilated all these women. It was his passion work. And he tells on the encyclopedia introduction that when he would go back to a country after a year or two to check the new

women composers, all the ones who were there before had been deleted. They would not keep. And this is, we're talking like, I don't know, the 70s or the 80s. It's not medieval times. So we have this problem, the erasure of the works, which we will never know, which is really sad. That creates an unconscious bias on all of us because we grow up not knowing and we grow up just accepting like I did, thinking, oh, but yeah, women didn't have access. That's why they didn't create. Okay, so when you first started your website, did you know that this was going to be what you would dedicate your life to? or did you think, okay, I've made these women's names known to the world. I'll just go back to singing.

Yes. I never stopped singing, but I thought, okay, now I've done that. It will take a life of its own and it's there. And then women from all over the world start writing to me. And they just, I'm sorry, I get very emotional when I tell that story. They just said, thank you so much. I'm a composer. Can you add me to your list?

That changed my life. I remember that day forever because I remember I published and, you know, I didn't know how to do a website, so it took me forever to sort of, oh my God. It was a lot of work for something I didn't even know. And I just felt like I did my part. At least now I can relax.

Little did I know. It was only this beginning. In a moment, Gabriella DiLaccio shares some of this forgotten music, including a lullaby that was found buried underground. I'm Manushe Zamoroti, and you're listening to The TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us. Love TED Radio Hour? Then come hang out with us in the NPR app. It's the best way to catch every episode. And if you turn on notifications, we'll let you know the second a new conversation drops. Download the NPR app and let's keep talking. It's the TED Radio

from NPR, I'm Manoosh Zamorodi. On the show today, the women missing from music. We were just talking to Gabriella Di Lachio, a classical singer and founder of the Donne Foundation, which has built a massive database of female composers who'd largely been left out of music history. These days, she spends her time combing through records, searching for more women who should be added to this list. I have the luxury now of access to online libraries and access to musicologists all over the world and access to people who are doing this and sometimes write to me and say, oh my God, I'm studying, I'm researching this composer and here is her file and here is our music. But a lot of this music is still in manuscripts, in libraries, in boxes, sometimes, you know, the most

heartbroken things that happen are when I meet a family of a composer who died and they have all this music and I look at this music and they don't know what to do with it. They don't have money to publish. They don't know if the music is good. Right. So at the moment, so the big list of women composers is going through a massive update. So we have found more than 18 times. now. I think the website currently has over 10,000 and we're just making sure that all the data is correct and publishing them as we go with volunteers all over the world. It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful project. So let's talk about some of the women you've discovered in the past decade. Are there any that particularly stand out to you? Oh yeah. One of the first ones was

Ilse I'llse Weber because one thing that it became very clear to me is like when people were asking me

they were asking me like oh but how do you decide if a composer is good enough to join your website how many compositions so they start asking me

kind of practical questions and I found very difficult to answer this question because Ilse Weber

was not a big, orchestral, you know, massive pieces of work composer. She was, you know, a Czech Jewish writer, poet, composer who wrote songs, plays for children. She was imprisoned in the

ghetto of Terezenstadt during the Second World War and as she was there, she wrote songs for the children and the elderly who were at the hospital. Sadly, she was sent to Auschwitz with her son and she died there. But her husband, just before they left the ghetto,

he buried her compositions and her poems. And after the war, they found her book. Wow. Yeah. And... It's an incredible story. Yes, I read the book that has all her poems and the letters she sent to...

I think it was the grandmother of her other son. She managed to send one son to Sweden on the Kinder Transport. So one son survived. And all those letters. And I found this lullaby. And then she wrote this lullaby. And it really moved me to another level. Yeah.

So what we're listening to is actually you singing this lullaby called Vigula. It is lovely, but also. chilling. Yeah. And no, you know, she was not only one. There are so many people during that period who did everything they could to make everybody's lives easier around them, you know, with art. And if you go to Prague, you see the Jewish Museum. Oh my God, it's all these unspoken heroes who used art to, you know, make their lives better. somehow. And Ilse's story really touched me. And then I decided

I don't care if a woman wrote one piece of music. If I can find the record is going on the website, it's going on the list because I believe we must recognize for what they

did. Another one was Mariana Martinez. She played with Mozart. Apparently he played her music. I never heard her name. And I was really sort of, what? What's going on? Then her music is beautiful. You know, it has the same sort of, I'm not going to compare, of course, with Mozart. Mozart is a massive genius. But, you know, I should have known her name. And somehow, you know, we know Mozart. She disappeared.

And we now know, but she still has a lot of music. And that's another problem. So a lot of her music. is still unpublished. And here is a very particular sort of practical information. If you want to listen to a symphony on Spotify, before you listen, that symphony

needs to be recorded. For that symphony to be recorded, you need to have the music published. If you don't publish the music, all you have is a manuscript of the composer's handwriting. So imagine Shakespeare's, manuscript of all his place. Imagine if you had to read his handwriting. So musicians and an

orchestra, they're not going to do that. They are paid by session, by hour, by rehearsal. They need a very good copy in front of them of the music they're going to record. And this is another problem because we don't care as much about these women. So a lot of this music is still unpublished. And because it's not properly published, it's not properly published. It's not recorded. And then we have 1,500 recordings of Beethoven's symphonies of the same ones, but maybe one of a woman composer in comparison. This other woman that you mentioned in your TED Talk, Florence Price, the first African-American woman to have a symphony performed by a major orchestra. Tell me more about her. So Florence Price, huge composer, you know,

And normally when people also think of women composers, they think they wrote songs or smaller. No, huge pieces for orchestra and also chamber music. Very prolific woman. And then very respected as well amongst her peers in the area and all her colleagues. But then after her death somehow, got forgotten. What year was that, around when? She died in 1953.

Okay. And then, you know, years later, I think it was 2009, they found in a house in Illinois some of her manuscript. Again, that almost disappeared. So all that music was rediscovered. And I think that was a good, great thing because it was like a new rediscovery of a composer who always existed, who was not new at all, but it just brought the whole conversation back to live. And I think she now has more recordings

because of all this interest, deserved interest that, you know, but how do we know how many more like her we still don't know? I mean, I feel like the sheer will that someone, like, someone, like, like Florence Price, must have had living in the United States, Jim Crow laws, black woman to become, to compose symphonies. Can you imagine? And what strikes me is like, why we never seen a movie about her, Florence Price, for example? Hmm.

You know, there are stories. Oh, my God. You just need to look for it. Because I, I'm doing a PhD now. about music artivism, the art of activism. I don't like to preach. Preaching is really tiring. Activism is tiring.

Anybody who is an activist will know. You don't have a holiday. Every time I go to a concert and I'm going to enjoy myself. And then my husband goes like, oh, my God, it's only dead white men on the program. And you're like, oh, yeah, that again. And I go, oh, my God, can I just, can I just enjoy? But, you know, and you're making an interesting point, which is that that's not to say that those, you know, just because they've gotten more PR with these, you know, obviously Mozart, Beethoven, they're geniuses for sure.

But there could also have been many other female geniuses coming up at the same time. Yes. Right? It's not about taking people off the list. Yes. It's putting more people. on the list. I always say this. This is not about, you know, oh, we need to play less Mozart. No, no, I love Mozart. My gosh, I love Mozart. I love Beethoven. I love Verdi. I love the

modern composers. Honestly, it's about making the list bigger because we own it, to all of us also to allow everybody who goes to a concert to see themselves on stage, to hear different voices to hear composers from different backgrounds and ethnicities and different countries. And I think classical music still sometimes a bit, I don't know, afraid of opening the gates. I can't speak because I'm not an artistic director for those organizations. But anyway, I guess it's an opportunity. It's a huge opportunity. I mean, it's making me think of one of the most.

famous songwriters and performers who died recently, Dolly Parton, who really started out as a songwriter and composer, and then found a way to make people look at her by being just an extraordinary spectacle and showwoman. And a lot of people, I think, don't even realize how many songs they hear performed by other artists that were written by her, because that part of her profession was not quite as celebrated. What an iconic woman, so intelligent. So honestly, you have to so much. I could not believe on she died.

I thought she would not die ever. But what a legacy, what an inspiration. But if anything, you know, she made sure she was not invisible. That's for sure. And she just played the patriarchy, didn't she? She was like, fine, you want to look at me? Look at me. At least you're looking at me.

I am not invisible, right? Yeah. And people are, oh my God, there's so many interviews when people were asking her, oh, well, why do you do this? Why do you dress like this? And then she tells the story that when she was a child, she went to town once and there was the town hooker, that she thought the woman was beautiful. She thought when I grow up, I'm going to be like her. And her mom told her like, oh, she's just trash.

And then she said, oh, I thought trash was a good word. I love it. No, I mean, yes, we should all be more dolly. It's reclaiming that space, though, isn't it? And it's like, well, however you need me to do it, I will do it. And presumably that builds on the next one. I did want to ask you, like, I'm wondering if you feel that there's more hope in the progress for women in the pop field. Because I was just looking at, you know, the numbers.

like the billboard, you know, hot 100 sort of charts. And from what I see, it has improved. Like, it's gone up from about 22%, 23% women on those charts. And now it's around like a third or so. Is that a sign of progress? It's definitely a sign of progress, absolutely. and my focus is more on the creation of music. So we definitely see more performers

and women were always performers on stage. But when I count, for example, I count the women who write music. And I think on that front is never as good, but it's way better. It's way better. We have so much more women to look up to and the role models who can inspire

the future generations. But the music industry is still very male. It's still, you hear from different experiences still things happening that are not the best for women. And I guess, why do we have to be happy with 30%? I guess. Yeah, yeah. In a way. But we need to, we need to, certainly acknowledge all the progress that has been happening and, you know, ride on it and just, you know, make it better and faster and easier for the women today. So they don't have to experience the invisibility or, you know, this fear of not having your talent recognized or scene. Can you describe that moment after you have found a piece of a score that has been hidden away and then you translate the music to an arrangement and you perform it? What is, I mean, I know how I feel when I hear

Mozart performed. I feel almost comforted. It's so familiar to me and so beautiful. But, Something from, I don't know, the same period that has never been heard or hasn't been heard in centuries, what does that feel like to perform it? And how does the audience react? Magic. Magical. Of course, the pieces I choose are pieces I want to share, you know, that I personally love as a singer. And normally there is a story, of course. And so it's a journey that I live by myself first.

And then the sharing with the audience is, then I treated it as really my job to make justice to what I'm trying to do. How can I make that experience the most magical for them? And that's a job between how do I present the music? I'll always sing by memory. because I want to be connected with the audience when I sing. And then I need to trust the music and let them experience. And, you know, not everybody will love all the pieces, of course.

And one thing we must remember when you say Mozart, oh, when you listen to Mozart, you feel, we feel the same. But we do that because we listen to him thousands of times. We have the chance to have familiarity. These women don't get that privilege. So familiarity is needed. We need to play things a few times to allow us to even, oh, yeah, I like that.

So I think it's a bit magical for me when I get to do that. But it's a big responsibility because I want to do it well. When we come back, Gabriello Delacchi, on the future of music. How AI is changing music composition and how the history of music may shape what we'll hear. I'm Manus Zameroody, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manusse Zamorodi. On the show today, we're talking to singer and activist Gabriela Delaccio about the oft-forgotten or even lost contributions. of female composers to music. Today, AI is a hot topic in the music industry. Well, for all of us, right? And put simply, the technology learns by studying compositions

and then remixing those ideas to create new compositions. Gabriela remembers when it dawned on her that the poor representation of women in the history of music will certainly be a problem for its future. I strongly feel that writing art or creating art belongs to humans. But we can't stop AI right now. I actually was in a completely different event. And I was watching a panel conversation about AI.

And then there was a woman, an AI specialist, talking about Africa. And she said something like a huge portion of Africa. doesn't even have internet. So AI is generating a lot of data and is not taking into consideration a whole continent and the whole African continent is not, you know, AI doesn't know much about it. And I remember thinking about that and I thought, whoa. And then I connected that to music. Because I was doing this research. I, you know, I like numbers. So I've been doing this research, the classical music research for the foundation. And I also follow all the foundations that do pop music and film music research.

So I know the numbers. So I went like, hold on a minute. That's the same in music. So AI is generating art, generating music. The whole thing with music is really messy because AI creates new music. It doesn't pay any royalties to the people's music is using it to create.

It's messy. But there is another part, which is also majority of the people, of the music recorded is it has a male imprint and I think we deserve to have a more fair imprint of voices so at least the music generated has more data to generate future music. Otherwise we're just going to replicate this erasure of the women's voices at, you know, much faster. scale. So if you're generating music based on, let's say, 85% catalog that has male imprint, so exponentially you're going to regenerate more music, which is little by little going to be

deleting the female imprint of our voices. And I think we can do better than that. And that's that's why my, and it's quite funny that when I did the talk and now, still when I talk about this, many people say to me, oh, I never thought about that, which is interesting. Because the day I thought about that, I remember exactly what it was, how it was. And I felt like, wow, no, no, no, we can't let that happen. We must record this music. Part of me is wondering, like, what if you created your own AI model? that was trained only on female composers and compared its output to the more traditional AI

music models that are majority trained on male composers. Oh my God, Manus, are you offering? Can you... No, I can't, I don't know how to do that, but you must know how to do that. I'd just be curious how different they would be, you know? I will be so curious and this is it. This is my open invitation to all tech companies. I want to build that.

Manush gave me the idea. No, I mean, how amazing would that be? I don't think it would be that hard. No, I don't think it'll be that hard. I just need the money to do. I don't think it's hard, but you need to, yeah, it would be a great experiment, I must say. It would be a great experiment. That'd be interesting. I mean, it brings up so many questions, too, which is like, is there something just, you know, we should be encouraging more real human women to be writing. as opposed to getting machines to write it. On the other hand, as you say, this is the future, and it is happening. And so why not try to improve on it while we still can? I think both things can happen. I think all of us, nobody can predict what's going to happen.

We are living very interesting times. And I'm not going to predict, but I think both things must happen. We must continue to support living artists because I'm not. I'm not going to predict. I'm I think in 10 years time, we will crave live music done by people. I know I will. I will want to be in a room singing for 10 people with me, live, making mistakes. You know, I will want to do that. I will still want to go to a live concert. So we must nourish the artists today.

We must. We really must. And then, but we also, we call. can't stop the machine. I'm not going to try to stop it. But I think it's so exciting to imagine this world where we can have a much more complete record, because this is going to help the living musicians as well. It's going to help the people who are making music now to record.

It's going to help people researching the music. It's going to help the publishers who are publishing this music. It's a whole echo system of. of humans who will be involved together with AI. And I think that's beautiful and exciting. I know I can't do it alone. I don't think I'm supposed to. But I really hope that people can hear this and think,

whoa, that's nice. I want to be part of that. So maybe we find a way of doing it together, I guess. Even just listening to more music composed by women, I suppose. Yes. That's number one. Discover, find, listen, share, be amazed. I think everything starts with curiosity.

That was Gabriela Delaccio, founder of the Donne Foundation. You can listen to the works of hundreds of female composers at Donne, D-O-N-N-E-U-K.org. And you can see Gabriela singing in her TED Talk at TED.com. So Gabriella's work reminded me of another TED speaker, one whose music has been actively suppressed by a government that has tried to silence her. Narya Tolokonikova is a member of the feminist punk music group Pussy Riot that was imprisoned in Russia for speaking out against the government and using music as a tool for resistance.

Here she is explaining how she has made sure she gets heard from the TED stage in 2023. It's August 17th, 2012. I'm handcuffed and standing for four long hours while the judge is reading my sentence. You're in a small cage and you're surrounded by 10 prison guards in balaclavas. I'm stripped down from

my humanity, I'm reduced to being just a prisoner. I'm 22 and I smell like prison. And as I'm standing here handcuffed behind the bars, I'm thinking to myself, can one person change the world? Is it even worth trying? Or am I just setting myself up for a failure? will I be able to achieve my dreams or I'm going to be inevitably smashed by the system?

What is my crime exactly? I sang a song, Virgin Mary, please get rid of Putin. Me and for other members of Pouserat came to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior and we preached to the people of Russia from the holy place that for thousands of years was reserved only for the male preachers, and in particular for the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, who today sends Russians to kill and to die in Ukraine. We sang our song on February 21st of 2012,

we did it in response to Putin's announcement that he wants to rule Russia pretty much indefinitely. I dropped everything I was doing, and I promised to myself that I'm going to dedicate my life to resistance. I felt deep inside me that Putin equals death, medieval torture, knife in the back, stagnation, new dark ages for Russia. To resist, we used our loud voices, bright ski masks, dresses, courage, commitment, and performance art. We would show up in public places, unannounced, guerrilla style, no permits at all, and perform bridge.

We performed in government buildings, squares, shopping malls, and we would get arrested almost every single day, get out and go back to action. Our job was to show the people of Russia that resisting is indeed an option. The supreme, sacred, holy rule in Putin's Russia is to remain afraid. We decided to break this role. By breaking this rule, we disrupted the game as such. We exposed it as a mere game. We said that the emperor is naked.

Did we achieve what we wanted? As I'm standing behind the bars, handcuffed, I'm asking myself this question. Yes and no. As I said in my closing statement, we are, behind the prison bars, but we are freer than people who are prosecuting us, because we can say whatever we want to say, and they can say only things that the government censorship allows them to say. Despite of the global movement in support of Pusirut, we got convicted two years in jail. The hell was in front of me, but even in the darkest moments, I knew that our fight is

not over. Two years later, I will get out of jail and I will meet thousands of young Russians who will tell me that they got inspired by our fight. Over the next 10 years, we surround will build infrastructure, tools, and network for effective resistance. In 2014, we started media zone. It's unique in Russia, free of censorship, independent media outlet. In 2022, we raised $7 million in two days for Ukraine. When reproductive rights became under attack in United States, we raised close to $1 million for Planned Parenthood. We started Unicorn Dao, and raised $2 million to collect art made by women and non-binary people. I really wish I could tell all of this to a 22-year-old version of myself

that is standing behind the bars, separated from her family, not knowing what's going to happen next. Much work remains to be done. My friends and family are getting beaten, imprisoned, poisoned, tortured, and murdered back home. In March, 2023, I was put on Russia's most wanted list. I'm facing new criminal charges for the art I made. Why? Because I said that the emperor is naked, and because he is in fact naked, he's scared of it. We shattered the world of appearances,

and we said that living a lie is indeed living a lie, and it's dangerous for any dictatorship. The reason why I became a threat to the system, not because of any actual physical power that I have, but because courage is contagious. And any act of speaking the truth can cause, incalculable transformations in social consciousness. And we all have this power.

It's a moral act to use this power. You may or may not achieve the results that you wanted, but there is eternal beauty in trying to find truth in risking everything you got for what's right. Stop calculating your profits. and just taking a leap of faith. Courage is an ability to act in the face of fear. And some of us have chosen to live courageously.

For some of us, it's not a choice. It's a matter of survival, like for our Ukrainian friends. Yesterday, my friend, my colleague and comrade, Vladimir Karamurzan, was sentenced to 25 years in jail for publicly condemning the war in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin's regime. He said in his closing statement, I know that the day will come when the darkness engulfing our country will dissipate. This day will come.

inevitably as spring comes to replace even the frostiest winter. And I'll finish my speech with words of 22 years old version of myself. I said in my closing statement, passion, openness, and naivety are superior to hypocrisy, cunning and contrived decency that conceal us crimes. Thank you. That was Nadia Tolokonikova, a member of the resistance group and band Pussy Riot. You can see her full talk at TED.com.

Thank you so much for listening to our episode. It was produced by Rachel Faulkner White with help from Harsha Nahada. It was edited by Saanaz-Meshkampur and me. Our production staff also includes Katie Montalione, James Delahousie, Matthew Cloutier, Avery Keatley, and Fiona Guren. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Our audio engineer was Jimmy Keely. Our theme music was written by Romteen Arablewe. Our partners at TED are Sal Khan, Logan McClure Davda, Helen Walters, Roxanne Highlash, and Danielle Ballorezzo.

I'm Manusse Zamorodi, and you have been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.