TED Talks Daily - Poetry and music that reaches across the digital void | Elle Cordova

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

In this whimsical talk and performance, musician and comedian Elle Cordova ponders what happened before the Big Bang. She’s then joined by guitarist Toni Lindgren for the original song “Carl Sagan,” exploring social media, human connection and how we’re all just reaching out like stars in the night sky.

TED Audio Collective. You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. Something a little different today from writer, musician, and comedian Elle Cordova. She took the TED 2024 stage to share a poem she wrote about the Big Bang and follows it with a musical performance of a particularly timely piece called Carl Sagan. It's a song about connection and how to find it beyond the infinite scroll of social media.

This is all coming up after the break. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel. They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs, I pictured my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host.

And now, our TED Talk of the day. Hey everybody, I'm Elle. If I look familiar to you, it's probably because at some point you scrolled across one of my many goofy videos about fonts or AI or the planets or whatever. One of the nerdy sundries I've put out there. I am a literature person by trade and by training, but I love to nerd out about science. And one of the questions that keeps me up at night is what happened before the Big Bang. So I wrote a poem about it with an assist

from science communicator Hank Green, who was talking about that very topic. And he sort of said in passing this line, which really struck me as simple but powerful. So I expanded it into this poem. Here it is. Before the Big Bang, there was no up, there was no down,

there was no side to side. There was no light, there was no dark, nor shape of any kind. There were no stars or planet Mars or protons to collide. There was no up, there was no down, there was no side to side. And furthermore, to underscore this total lacking state, there was no here, there was no there, because there was no space. And in this endless void,

which can't be thought of as a place, there was no time, and so no passing minutes, hours, days. Of all the paradoxes that belabor common sense, I think this one's the greatest, this time before events. Because how did we get from nothing to infinitely dense, from immeasurably small to inconceivably immense? But before we get unmoored from the question at the start, let's take a breath and marvel

at when math becomes an art. Because we don't have to comprehend it to know there was a time when there was no up, there was no down, there was no side to side. Thank you. Thank you.

And now, back to the episode. Well, I just have one other thing I want to share with you before I go. And I'm going to invite guitarist Tony Lindgren up here to join me for this. This is a song I wrote about social media, where I spend so much of my time. And I think where so many of us spend maybe too much of our time. And I wrote this about kind of the endless scroll and I think the conscious and unconscious desire that we all might have to reach out to other human beings and make connections in the digital void, even as we're sitting alone on our devices in our homes. And I named the song Carl Sagan after the great astronomer and philosopher who

saw the connections between ourselves and the billions and billions of stars in the night sky that are constantly sending out their light through the void to make contact. So this is Carl Sagan. Hey, how are you? Are you scrolling alone inside your room? Is your heart good? Or did something go and break it? In the words of Carl Sagan,

we're all just stars and bacon. That's not quite what he said, but it's true. Hey, you're still here. Are you like me? On this app so you can be lost and numb in a warm bath made of content watching brilliant bits of nonsense cause it feels like making contact. Maybe that's just me How are you?

And we are billions And billions of lights Reaching out through a satellite just to know that feeling that even when we're cold and on our own

we're not alone not alone I don't know. We are billions and billions of lights Reaching out through a satellite just to know That feeling that even when we're cold and on our own we're not alone, not alone And hey, are you alright? Are you scrolling alone again tonight? You'll be fine, even if your heart is breaking You got me and Carl Sagan And his famous postulation

And if we're all alone in space It'd be an awful waste So I'm just signing in to say How are you? How are you? Thank you. Support for this show comes from Airbnb. If you know me, you know I love staying in Airbnbs when I travel.

They make my family feel most at home when we're away from home. As we settled down at our Airbnb during a recent vacation to Palm Springs, I pictured my own home sitting empty. Wouldn't it be smart and better put to use welcoming a family like mine by hosting it on Airbnb? It feels like the practical thing to do, and with the extra income, I could save up for renovations to make the space even more inviting for ourselves and for future guests. Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. That was Elle Cordova speaking at TED 2024. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. 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, Autumn Thompson, and Alejandra Salazar. It was mixed by Christopher Fazi-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. Looking for a fun challenge to share with your friends and family? TED now has games designed to keep your mind sharp while having fun. Visit TED.com slash games to explore the joy and wonder of TED Games.