TED Talks Daily - How to see the future coming — and prepare for it | Jane McGonigal

Episode Date: March 17, 2025

As a futurist who helps people prepare for all different kinds of possibilities, Jane McGonigal thinks we overuse words like "unthinkable" and "unimaginable." She introduces three hypothetical scenarios, showing how you can foster the ability to think creatively, anticipate new risks and feel ready for whatever the future may hold. (Created in collaboration with Ignite Talks) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This episode is sponsored by Edward Jones. You know, as I talk about these big ideas that shape our world, I sometimes think about the decisions that have impact on our daily lives, like financial decisions. That's where Edward Jones comes in. Earning money is great, but true fulfillment in life isn't just about growing your wealth. It's about using your resources to achieve your personal goals. And Edward Jones gets this. Their advisors take time to understand you as an individual. They build trusted relationships

to help you develop strategies that align with your unique goals. What's special about Edward Jones is their holistic approach. They see financial health as a key part of overall wellness, just as important as physical or mental wellbeing. It's not about chasing dollars, it's about finding balance and perspective in your financial life. That's something anyone should be able to achieve. Ready to approach your

finances with a fresh perspective? Learn more at edwardjones.ca. Money's a thing, but it's not everything. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. Last summer my family and I had an amazing Airbnb stay while adventuring in Playa del Carmen. It was so much fun to bounce around in ATVs, explore cool caves, and snorkel in subterranean rivers. Vacations like these are never long enough, but perhaps I could take advantage of my empty home by hosting it on Airbnb while I'm away. And then I could use the extra income to stay a few more days on my next Mexico trip. It seems like a smart thing to do since my house sits empty while I'm away.

We could zipline into even more cenotes on our next visit to Mexico. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. This episode is sponsored by Cozy. You know how daunting it can be to transform your living space. Well, there's this Canadian furniture company called Cozy that's aiming to make that process a whole lot easier. Cozy is all about blending style with practicality. Their furniture is customizable, so people can start small and add pieces as they go. And get this, they've got this AR feature

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I'm your host, Elise Hugh. With everything going on in the world right now, it can be really scary, at times even unthinkable, to imagine how the future may unfold. But game designer Jane McGonigal is constantly imagining different scenarios for our future on this planet. And she believes that unimaginable and unthinkable are actually the two most dangerous words in the English language. In her talk, why helping people expand their imaginations is necessary for our survival. As a futurist, I think the two most dangerous words

in the English language are unimaginable and unthinkable. So I want to invite you to think creatively and courageously about some hard-to-imagine possibilities. Let's play a game of what if. I'll describe three hypothetical future scenarios. You try to imagine how you would feel and what you would do if you woke up in these strange new worlds. Future number one.

It's 2033. Extreme heat, wildfire and droughts have been worse than even the most dire climate predictions, so now geoengineering is up for a global vote. Nine billion people are eligible to vote yes or no on a 10-year plan of aggressive solar radiation management, injecting sulfate particles into the atmosphere to block some of the sun's rays.

The election is called sun exit. They're saying a yes on sun exit could bring about a 10-year winter, but it could also solve some of our biggest climate challenges. Is it worth the risks, the unintended consequences? How would you vote? How would you educate yourself to be ready to vote? Oh, scenario update, sun exit passed, we're doing it. Solar radiation management starts in 10 days.

Now how do you feel? What do you do in the next 10 days to get ready? OK, it's one year later. The geoengineering is working, yes. But paradoxically, trust in science is now at an all-time low. People are saying there are mental and physical side effects. Is it just misinformation? What do you do to stay healthy?

New future. OK, it's 2029 now, and your federal government has gone full-blown, zero-waste authoritarian style. It is now illegal to throw anything away. They literally took everyone's garbage cans. Mm-hmm. Now, composting's still allowed, recycling never worked,

and garbage, you can't make any of it. Nothing. But there's some good news. Psychologists have invented a new word to capture the positive emotion that defines life in a zero-waste age. Ah! Zerophoria. It's a combination of joy, pride and resourcefulness, a lightness of being that comes from wasting nothing

and leaving no trace behind. How do you react to these changes? Do you learn new habits, help others adapt, or do you rise up enjoying the pro-trash resistance? Or become a reformer, propose ways to make zero-waste society better? OK, let's imagine one final future. It's 2031.

Climate migration is on the rise. Countries with low fertility rates are competing with each other for immigrants. Governments are building climate-resilient welcome cities and paying people to move there. It's part of a new geopolitical movement called the Welcome Party. Up to one billion people are expected to climate relocate with assistance over the next decade.

You have been asked to take a personal survey of climate risk to climate relocate with assistance over the next decade. You have been asked to take a personal survey of climate risk and intention to migrate. The Welcome Party is collecting data to simulate and plan a safe and equitable mass climate migration. You have to name three climate-resilient cities you would be willing to move to, given social and economic support.

Which three cities do you name? How prepared do you feel to consider this question? Why am I posing these hypotheticals? Well, how often we use the words unimaginable and unthinkable in our journalism. Look how common they've become. We are so often shocked and blindsided by how the future unfolds, but it doesn't have to be that way.

At the Nonprofit Institute for the Future in Palo Alto, California, I help people build imagination leadership skills by simulating hard-to-imagine futures like you've thought about today. Our goal is to improve everyone's scores on three measures of future imagination, like mental flexibility. On a scale of one to 10, how plausible or realistic is this future scenario?

In other words, is it thinkable to you? Also, realistic hope. On a scale of one to 10, how worried or excited would you be to wake up in this future? We want you to anticipate new risks, but also opportunities for positive transformation. And finally, future power. On a scale of one to 10,

how ready do you feel to help yourself and others if this future were really to happen? This is the number we see go up the most after people imagine themselves taking action in a hypothetical world. So the next time you have an instinct to describe a possibility as unthinkable or unimaginable, wait. Play with that possibility instead. Help us become a community, a society,

that can confidently say, we can face and we can solve previously unimaginable challenges together. For us, there are no unthinkable futures. Thank you. Thank you. Applause. Music. That was Jane McGonigal at

Ted Next 2024. If you're curious about Ted's curation, find out more at Ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today's show. TED Talks Daily is part of the Ted Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team,

Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar, and Tansika Sarmarnivon. It was mixed by Christopher Fazy-Bogan, additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

Dr. Catherine Saunders is a leading obesity specialist at Weill Cornell Medicine and co-founder of Flight Health, a software and clinical services company democratizing access to medical obesity care. One of her goals as a physician is to create a long-term relationship with her patients and break down stigma surrounding obesity. She recently sat down with one of her patients, Barbara, to talk about what an empathy and science-based approach to healthcare actually looks like. I really battled obesity and I have been battling it my entire life. In 2010, I weighed about 340 pounds. I had a rule-on-why bypass. I probably lost about 150 pounds and I felt pretty good. But my weight gradually began to creep up. I went back to my bariatric

surgeon. I was looking for help. He looked me straight in the eye. He was very blunt. And he said, go see Dr. Catherine Saunders. We talk a lot about how it's so important in this field of medicine to have a good partnership between the patient and the care team against the disease. Especially in the field of obesity medicine, it's so critical that we as health care providers listen to our patients. the patient and the care team against the disease. Especially in the field of obesity medicine,

it's so critical that we as healthcare providers listen to our patients. They've heard from so many other healthcare providers, oh, just eat less and exercise more, just go off and lose weight. It's a long-term relationship where there has to be trust. Yeah, Dr. Saunders, you said there are gonna be bumps in the road, and when that happens,

I want you to contact me immediately. The fact that you gave me that permission, it was almost like vaccinating me against failure. Yeah, it's so much better for us to understand early what's going on. We have to be detectives. And we can very often pinpoint what it is. Dr. Saunders, you probably remember the time I came to you

and I said, I've started eating in the middle of the night. And I have no idea why. I was flabbergasted. We talked and came up with a plan. Yeah, and it's my job to figure out, why is this happening? What's not working? I think we adjusted the timing of one of your medications to cover night time better. When you reached your health goals, we decided to transition from the phase of weight loss to the phase of weight

maintenance. We recognized at that point that your pre-diabetes was gone, your blood pressure was in the normal range, and all of the health complications that were associated with your higher weight were improved or gone. That was really exciting. You allow yourself as a patient to start to think about what that means for your life. I realized that I didn't fear being around food anymore.

It's really important for people to understand that what they are struggling with is not their fault and there are effective treatment plans. Hearing stories like Barbara can change so many lives. If obesity was just about willpower, losing weight and keeping it off would be simple. Novo Nordisk is committed to driving change to defeat serious chronic diseases.

Learn more about our mission to defeat obesity at novonordisk.com. That's N-O-V-O-N-O-R-D-I-S-K dot com. That's where Edward Jones comes in. Earning money is great, but true fulfillment in life isn't just about growing your wealth. It's about using your resources to achieve your personal goals. And Edward Jones gets this. Their advisors take time to understand you as an individual. They build trusted relationships to help you develop strategies that align with your unique goals.

What's special about Edward Jones is their holistic approach. They see financial health as a key part of overall wellness, just as important as physical or mental wellbeing. It's not about chasing dollars, it's about finding balance and perspective in your financial life. That's something anyone should be able to achieve. Ready to approach your finances with a fresh perspective?

Learn more at edwardjones.ca. Money's a thing, but it's not everything.