Shoham Arad: Ideas Into Action
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Anyone can have a big idea. But how do those big ideas come to fruition and grow? Director of the TED Fellows program Shoham Arad walks us through several speakers who turned a spark into a movement.
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Shoham Arad
Manoush Zomorodi
Andrew Bastawrous
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Transcript
Verified
Break
Manoush Zomorodi
00:17
This is the
TED
Radio Hour
. Each week, groundbreaking TED
talks.Share
00:24
Our job now is to dream big.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
00:25
Delivered at
TED
conferences -Share
00:27
To bring about the future we want to see.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
00:29
Around the world.
Share
00:30
To understand who we are.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
00:32
From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.
Share
00:37
You just don't know what you're gonna find.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
00:39
Challenge you.
Share
00:40
You have to ask ourselves like, why is it noteworthy?
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
00:42
And even change you?
Share
00:44
I literally feel like I'm a different person.
Share
00:46
Yes.
Share
00:46
Do you feel that way?
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
00:48
Ideas worth spreading, from
TED
and NPR
. I'm Manoush Zomorodi
. And as we all know, TED
is about big ideas. But sometimes the people with those big ideas need a little support and encouragement.Share
Shoham Arad
01:07
Yeah, like imagine the biggest way they can possibly have impact. The biggest version of what they're dreaming about.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
01:15
This is Shoham Arad.
Share
Shoham Arad
01:17
And I am the Director of the
TED
Fellows program.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
01:21
Now for someone who has not heard of the
TED
Fellows program, how would you describe it?Share
Shoham Arad
01:27
So we're in our 12th year, and what we do is every year through an open application process, we bring 20 new fellows into our community and we give them a platform to amplify their ideas.
Share
01:43
Great things happen at intersections.
Share
01:46
And knowledge is freedom.
Share
01:47
I'd like to challenge you.
Share
01:49
We need to start thinking Harder.
Share
01:50
Try to see the world as one.
Share
01:52
About what defines social currency.
Share
01:54
There has to be an easier way.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
01:57
So today on the show, Shoham Arad brings us a curated selection of some of these remarkable
TED
fellows. These are people who had an idea, turned it into a movement, and are now taking their vision global. Shoham, welcome.Share
Shoham Arad
02:14
Hi, it's so nice to be here.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
02:17
So how do you choose these fellows? Do you get lots of applications?
Share
Shoham Arad
02:21
So we get thousands and thousands of applications. And at this point, because we're only choosing 20 a year, we wind up with a less than 1% acceptance rate. So it's really hard to become a fellow and we wind up with really exceptional people — mental health innovators, epidemiologists, medical imaging innovators, dermatologists, artists, photographers, conservationists, electric aviation entrepreneurs, filmmakers, and cultural innovators. It runs the gamut.
Share
02:54
I mean, if
TED
is ideas worth spreading, the fellows program is like the action item there. It's like the people in the field, the people doing the work. There are the people who are embedded in communities, who are solving problems locally who are then trying to make a bigger global impact, but who are really examining all kinds of intrinsic issues. They are people who have dedicated their life to something, honestly.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
03:19
So out of the hundreds of fellows with whom you have worked, you have narrowed it down to a handful that we are going to talk about today on this episode. So let's start with the first speaker you brought to us. This is a graffiti artist, an activist, based in
Brazil
and his name is Mundano
. His talk is called "Trash cart superheroes". OK, so tell us about him.Share
Shoham Arad
03:49
So he is a street artist. He's a graffiti artist. And his artistic practice painting in the streets of
Rio
and Sao Paulo
led him to come into contact with workers known as "catadores", which translates in English to collectors.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
04:05
So what are these collectors collecting?
Share
Shoham Arad
04:08
They are collecting trash and recycling basically. They are part of an informal but essential economy. So they're doing a service for their local communities and for their cities and ultimately for their countries. They're just not often recognized.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
04:25
OK, let's listen to
Mundano
described these catadores, these trash cart superheroes. Here he is on the TED
stage in 2014.Share
Mundano
04:34
Our world has many superheroes, but they have the worst of all superpowers: invisibility. For example, the catadores — workers who collect recyclable materials for a living. Catadores emerged from social equality, unemployment, and the abundance of solid waste from the deficiency of the waste collection system. Catadores provide a heavy, honest, and essential work that benefits the entire population, but they are not acknowledged for it. Here in
Brazil
, they collect 90% of all the waste that's actually recycled.Share
05:21
Most of the catadores work independently, picking waste on the streets and selling to junk yards at very low prices. They may collect over 300 kilos in their bags, shopping carts, bicycles and carroças. Carroças are cars built from wood or metal and found in several streets in
Brazil
, much like graffiti and street art.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
05:47
Wow Shoham catadores collect 90% of all the waste that's actually recycled in
Brazil
, he said. So Mundano
wanted to celebrate and help these workers who are providing this service. What did he do?Share
Shoham Arad
06:04
So what
Mundano
wanted to do was he wanted to draw attention to them and he wanted to make visible what has been invisible. To make visible people who are doing this essential work, what he calls essential and honest work. And it's true.Share
06:18
He started by painting their carroça, their carts that they use.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
06:25
Describe them for me.
Share
Shoham Arad
06:27
So it's a very signature style. They're very brightly colored. They often have really recognizable kind of symbols. He has a very signature style of face that's kind of cartoonish. They're often also covered in phrases like, let's say some of them say "Recycling respect". Some of them say "My work is honest, is yours?", "My cart doesn't pollute". I saw one that said "Long live the collectors", which I love.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
06:58
That is so cool. OK, so in addition to being eye-catching, he took this idea of what could have just been a local exhibit or temporary movement. But he turned it into something global.
Share
Mundano
07:12
By adding art and humor to the cause, it became more appealing, which helped call attention to the catadores and improve their self-esteem, and also they are famous now on the streets, on a mass media and social. I have painted over 200 carroças in many cities and be invited to do exhibitions and trips worldwide.
Share
07:33
And then I realized that catadores in their invisibility are not exclusive to
Brazil.
I met then in Argentina
, Chili
, Bolivia
, South
Africa
, Turkey
, and even developed countries such as United States
and Japan
. And this was when I realized that I need to have more people joined the cause, because it's a big challenge. And then I create a collaborative movement called Pimp my Carroça.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
08:06
Pimp my Carroça!
Share
Shoham Arad
08:09
Is the obvious next step.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
08:10
I love that. But what was the point? Is it to say, you know, pay attention to people who are helping you that you ignore? Is it to actually- I mean, these are poor people, right? Is it to help them get more resources or get them out of poverty so they don't have to do this?
Share
Shoham Arad
08:29
I think for him, it's all of those things. So, he's always been an activist and an artist. He is interested in not just drawing attention to this, but since then he's really become more explicitly interested in making improvements to their lives.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
08:44
So when he first started doing Pimp my Carroça in
Brazil
, what kind of effect did it have? Did it work?Share
Shoham Arad
08:55
I think it worked in a lot of ways. I think it worked for the people who are involved, for the catadores themselves. I think it gave them a lot of essential voice that they didn't have before. Something as simple as drawing attention to something changes it.
Share
09:13
And I think it also worked in that it recognized people beyond
Brazil
in the same kind of category, people started taking part of more collective action. People started carrying a little bit more about what was happening. Mundano
built a team around continuing to provide services for this very specific group of people.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
09:35
And he's really saying two things, right? He's saying, "Let's talk about increasing respect and visibility for the catadores, but also very tangibly increasing their income as well". Tell us more about how he's done that.
Share
Shoham Arad
09:50
Yeah, so I think, like so many of our fellows, he's expanded his own vision of what impact means. And he went from thinking about supporting a group of people in his community and on the ground where he lives, to really thinking about how he could create a marketplace that's built with equity. And he started a nonprofit app, a platform called Cataki. So basically like, it's a connective device, right?
Share
10:18
It helps the people who hire them get the recycling picked up. It creates a more efficient route for people who do this work. And it also creates a kind of market value for what they do, it makes their job better. And he's done all of this with the catadores themselves. So based on what they actually need, like how to create — and they did create — a kind of minimum wage for them during the pandemic.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
10:43
So the app, just to clarify it, connects the catadores with people who- like, companies essentially who are like, "Well we have all of these recycled materials, come and get it".
Share
Shoham Arad
10:55
Yeah, I mean, and it helps everybody.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
10:57
And are we talking about doing this just in
Brazil
or in other countries as well?Share
Shoham Arad
11:00
Yeah, so right now it's just in
Brazil
, but he has a team that's working on expanding the app. I think there's a real demand for it. It's proven to be incredibly successful. I mean, this is also somebody who's a graffiti artist, right? So it's like this really different approach to something like entrepreneurship. A lot of people could have created this app and kind of made it for profit, made it more like Uber
.Share
11:24
What he's doing is basically creating something that is needed for this population. He's also working now on creating electric vehicles for catadores. So it's backbreaking work, right? It's like they're carrying hundreds of kilos worth of stuff. So they're addressing some of the real health concerns that happened as a result of this work. So he continues to work on a lot of different parallel paths all towards a vision of justice.
Share
Mundano
11:54
So catadores are leaving invisibility behind and become increasingly respected and valued because of their pimped carroças, they are able to fight back prejudice, increase their income, and their interaction with society. So now I'd like to challenge you to start looking at and acknowledge the catadores and other invisible superheroes from your city.
Share
12:20
Try to see the world as one, without boundaries or frontiers. Believe it or not, there are over 20 million catadores worldwide. So next time if you want, recognize them as a vital part of our society. Muito obrigado, thank you.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
12:44
When we come back, more with
TED's
Shoham Arad and the fellow who wants to eradicate preventable blindness for everyone, no matter where they live.Share
Andrew Bastawrous
12:54
It still makes no sense to me. How is it we- in a world where glasses that completely changed my life, have been around for 700 years, yet 2.5 billion people still can't access them.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
13:07
On the show today: Taking ideas and turning them into action. I'm
Manoush Zomorodi
and you're listening to the TED
Radio Hour
from NPR
.
Stay with us.Share
Break
Manoush Zomorodi
14:21
It's the
TED
Radio Hour
from NPR
,
I'm Manoush Zomorodi
. Today on the show: a conversation about taking ideas into action.Share
14:31
We're talking to the director of the
TED
Fellows program, Shoham Arad. She has brought us a selection of her favorite talks from fellows and she's filling us in on what they've been up to since they gave their talks. OK, Shoham, the next speaker that you have chosen is Andrew Bastawrous.Share
Shoham Arad
14:51
Yeah, so Andrew is an Egyptian-British ophthalmological surgeon who we met when he became a fellow in 2014. And at the time that we met him, he was a practicing medical doctor and he had a great idea to go out into rural areas and communities and help some of the most vulnerable populations get the eye care they needed that they weren't getting.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
15:16
And Andrew gave a talk in 2018 called "A new way to fund health care for the most vulnerable". But he starts with a very personal story about his own eyesight problems as a child.
Share
Andrew Bastawrous
15:29
Things happened to me at the age of 12 that completely transformed my life. My teachers insisted that I would go for an eye test. I resisted it for as many years as I could because as the only brown boy in the school, I already felt like a chocolate chip in rice pudding, and the idea of looking more different was not particularly appealing.
Share
15:48
See, I associated an eye test with wearing glasses and looking different, not with seeing differently.
Share
15:54
When eventually I was persuaded to go, the optometrist fitted me with the trial lenses and was shocked at just how poor my sight was. He sent me outside to report what I could see. I remember looking up and seeing trees had leaves on them. I had never known this. Later that week, for the first time, I saw stars in the night sky. It was breathtaking.
Share
16:17
In fact, the entire trajectory of my life changed. I went from a failing child at school who was constantly told I was lazy and not paying attention, to suddenly being a child with opportunity and potential.
Share
16:29
But I soon realized that this opportunity was not universal. That same summer in
Egypt,
the home where my parents originally from, I was with children that looked a lot more like me, but couldn't have been more different. What separated us was opportunity.Share
16:43
How is it that I had this life, and they had theirs? It still makes no sense to me. How is it in a world where glasses that completely changed my life, have been around for 700 years, yet 2.5 billion people still can't access them?
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
17:01
Oh, I mean this little boy, not so little 12 year old looks up and sees the leaves and he's like, "What!"
Share
Shoham Arad
17:09
"What are leaves?" I know it's insane.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
17:12
But what a menschy kid in that he also realized that many of his- had he been growing up in
Egypt
where his parents grew up, he might not have had access to this life-changing opportunity. So tell us what he did.Share
Shoham Arad
17:28
So, OK, so at the time that we met him, he was practicing medical doctor and he wound up leaving his very comfortable and lucrative job as an eye surgeon and he moved to
Kenya
to pursue this big idea that technology-enabled practices could mean that the 1.1 billion people today who can't access life-transforming eye care services might get a chance at receiving sight-restoring treatment.Share
17:56
So he really went from kind of doing this idea on the side and developing a proof of concept in a kind of technology, to dedicating his life to it full-time.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
18:06
OK, so he leaves his life in the
UK
, his family moved to Kenya,
and his idea was to use technology that the people there already had on their cell phones in a new way.Share
Andrew Bastawrous
18:18
More people in
Kenya
and in Sub-Saharan
Africa
have access to a mobile phone than they do clean running water. So we said, "Could we harness the power of mobile technology to deliver eye care in a new way?"Share
18:32
And so we developed Peek, a smartphone that enables community healthcare workers and empowers them to deliver eye care everywhere.
Share
18:42
We set about replacing traditional hospital equipment, which is bulky, expensive, and fragile, with smartphone apps and hardware that make it possible to test anyone in any language, and of any age.
Share
Shoham Arad
18:54
So that was the original idea. The original idea is Andrew and his team developed this way to give eye exams to people who don't have access to them. And then they also developed a way to take retinal scans, the type that are usually done with the heavy equipment. But then what they also further developed was a way to then connect people to the care that they actually needed, which was like the bridge that hadn't been built yet.
Share
Andrew Bastawrous
19:21
All that's needed is a single person on a bike with a smartphone. And it costs just $500. The issue of power supply is overcome by harnessing the power of solar. Our healthcare workers travel with a solar-powered rucksack which keeps the phone charged and backed up.
Share
19:39
Now we go to the patient, rather than waiting for the patient never to come. We go to them in their homes and we give them the most comprehensive, high-tech, accurate examination which can be delivered by anyone with minimal training.
Share
19:53
We can link global experts with people in the most rural, difficult to reach places that are beyond the end of the road, effectively putting those experts in their homes, allowing us to make diagnoses and make plans for treatment.
Share
20:06
So for patients like Mama Wangari who've been blind for over 10 years, and never seen her grandchildren, for less than $40, we can restore her eyesight. This is something that has to happen.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
20:18
So he mentions Mama Wangari, I mean that is- it's beautiful. The video he shows when she first can open her eyes and realizes that she can see, and she gets up and dances.
Share
Shoham Arad
20:31
It's amazing, awesome. Well, I also want to give a tiny bit of context about like what it means to be blind, especially in the rural community. Like it's really, it affects people's entire economic and financial lives and it can affect people for generations. They can't go to school if they're blind, they can't work if they're blind.
Share
20:55
You know, somebody might have to stay home and take care of their blind grandmother for example. So it's like a really hard to even understand how impactful, something like this really is.
Share
21:08
But yeah, so that wasn't enough, right, for Andrew. So he continues to serve thousands and thousands of people, but he then goes on to replicate his system in other countries across
Africa
, he goes to Botswana
, he started a program to screen every single school child by 2021, and that's been happening in more and more countries.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
21:32
So what sort of reaction did Andrew get to talking to people like, "Here's what we can do". What sort of help did he need after presenting the idea, to get this very simple technology to more people so that more people can have their eyesight corrected?
Share
Shoham Arad
21:50
What Andrew wound up doing was connecting with none other than the
Queen Of England
herself.Share
21:59
Yeah, sure go to the top. So he continues to run Peek, his organization. But he wound up working with the
Queen's
jubilee fund to raise a $1 billion catalyst fund. That's "billion" with a B. That has gotten all of the commonwealth countries to pledge to eradicate preventable blindness. That's like a complete eradication of preventable blindness. So his mission and his vision has obviously grown tremendously.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
22:29
So the next one is actually, it's not necessarily concrete. It's more celestial. So we're going to the next person you brought us, astrophysicist,
Jedidah Isler,
who gave a talk in 2015 that was called "The untapped genius that could change science for the better".Share
Shoham Arad
22:51
Yes.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
22:52
Let's talk about it.
Share
Shoham Arad
22:53
OK. Oh, I can talk about
Jedidah
all day everyday. Jedidah
studies blazars, which are supermassive black holes that are at the center of whole galaxies that form around them.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
23:05
What I love though is that she does make an incredibly complex topic, like a black hole, like a blazar, relatable because she compares herself and her identity to the stars that she studies.
Share
Jedidah Isler
23:19
Beyond the physical landscape of our planet, some of the most famous celestial images are of intersections. Stars are born at the messy intersection of gas and dust instigated by gravity's irrevocable pull. Stars die by the same intersection, this time flung outward in a violent collision of smaller atoms, intersecting and efficiently fusing into altogether new and heavier things.
Share
23:46
We can all think of intersections that have special meaning to us. To be intersectional then, is to occupy a position at an intersection. I've lived the entirety of my life in the in-between. In the liminal space between dreams and reality, race and gender, poverty and plenty, science and society. I am both black and a woman. Like the birth of stars in the heavenlies, this robust combination of knowing results in a shining example of the explosive fusion of identities.
Share
Shoham Arad
24:24
So good.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
24:24
Yes, so she's very powerful. Tell us a little bit about her story.
Share
Shoham Arad
24:32
So
Jedidah
dreamed of becoming an astrophysicist since she was 12 years old. She had no idea that at the time, only 18 black women in the United States
had ever earned a PhD in a physics-related discipline.Share
Jedidah Isler
24:49
I began my college experience just after my family had fallen apart. Our financial situation disintegrated just after my father's departure from our lives. This thrust my mother, my sister, and I out of the relative comfort of middle-class life and into the almost constant struggle to make ends meet.
Share
25:10
Thus, I was one of roughly 60% of women of color who find finances to be a major barrier to their educational goals. Thankfully,
Norfolk State University
provided me with full funding, and I was able to achieve my Bachelor's in physics. After graduation, and despite knowing that I wanted a PhD in astrophysics, I fell through the cracks.Share
25:33
It was a poster that saved my dream. And some really incredible people and programs. The
American Physical Society
had this beautiful poster encouraging students of color to become physicists.Share
25:46
It was striking to me because it featured a young black girl, probably around 12 years old, looking studiously as some physics equations.
Share
25:55
I remember thinking I was looking directly back at the little girl who first dared to dream this dream. I immediately wrote to the society and requested my personal copy of the poster, which to this day, still hangs in my office.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
26:10
She's like, "I'm not going to be able to get my PhD in astrophysics". But then she sees a poster and she's like, "Actually, you know what, maybe I can do this."
Share
Shoham Arad
26:20
"That could be me."
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
26:22
And then she gets back on this path to getting her PhD and she ends up at
Yale
, where she unfortunately, it was not exactly welcomed by all her fellow PhD students.Share
Jedidah Isler
26:36
It became immediately apparent that not everyone was thrilled to have that degree of liminality in their space.
Share
26:43
I was ostracized by many of my classmates, one of whom went so far as to invite me to "do what I really came here to do", as he pushed all the dirty dishes from our meal in front of me to clean up.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
26:56
I mean, come on.
Share
Shoham Arad
26:58
I know.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
27:01
I would love to say that I'm shocked to hear that story, but
Jedidah
also mentions a study which said that all of the 60 women of colour who were interviewed said that they had faced racialized gender bias like that, including being mistaken for the janitorial staff. And that was not reported by any of the white women who were interviewed for the study. But luckily for us, Shoham, Jedidah
was not deterred.Share
Shoham Arad
27:35
Yeah, thank goodness.
Jedidah
actually became the first black woman to earn a PhD in astrophysics in Yale's
then 312-year history.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
27:46
Wow, that is shocking.
Share
Shoham Arad
27:48
That is shocking.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
27:49
Yeah, give us the update. What has she been doing since?
Share
Shoham Arad
27:52
So where are they now?
Jedidah
, Dr. Isler, She's only gotten bigger in her thinking and her work has only gotten more expansive.Share
28:03
Jedidah
has very recently joined the Biden Harris administration.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
28:08
She's in the
White House
.Share
Shoham Arad
28:09
She is. So she is the assistant director for
STEM
opportunity and engagement in the science and society division. So she's basically at the table with a team of excellent and brilliant people who are making sure that STEM
is considered at every intersection where decisions are being made around technology for our nation.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
28:30
So spending some time in the
White House
, even if it means taking a few years away from the laboratory and doing research, that's very much at the intersection, as she says, of her work.Share
Shoham Arad
28:42
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. So and I want to give you like I think it's important and one of the things that I get to see, that most people don't get to see is how hard these trajectories are. Before
Jedidah
joined the Biden Harris administration, she had already left- voluntarily left her job.Share
29:00
That's without another offer, because she knew she wanted to leave and do something different than a traditional academic trajectory, and I want to highlight that she left a ten-year track, ivy league position with no other offer because she believed that she needed to do something more. And that's a big deal. That's really hard. That can be really scary.
Share
29:21
And then this really special opportunity came along. So for her, being part of the Biden Harris administration was a complement between this moment in history and society, and her biggest dreams of what she had been wanting to do.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
29:36
And unfortunately though, as wonderful as that is, that means that there are now no black women astrophysicists in academia.
Share
Shoham Arad
29:45
Yes. Well OK, so not in academia, but in the ivy leagues. But what she's doing, and I think what her work is now, where it is now, is exactly solving for that problem, right? Like she is now making sure that the next time a black astrophysicist leaves the ivies, that doesn't mean there's literally no one else there.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
30:07
When you worked with
Jedidah
. Did you- Was it hard for her to take the more personal route in a talk?Share
Shoham Arad
30:18
That's such a good question.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
30:20
Or was she like this is my duty and therefore, you know, I have to be what that little black girl and that poster was for me. I need to be that for somebody else.
Share
Shoham Arad
30:30
I think
Jedidah
takes her role really, really seriously. And some of, I mean, honestly you should search her name sometime and see the kinds of responses she's gotten as a result of her talk. There is an elementary school that has her photo on the wall and kids make drawings of her.Share
30:51
Like, her very being on that stage is impactful. So I think she she's very aware of what it means to see someone like her give exactly that talk. And she takes it really seriously.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
31:09
I feel like she sums it up so beautifully at the end of her talk.
Share
Jedidah Isler
31:13
I am now part of a small but growing cadre of women of color in
STEM
who are poised to bring new perspectives and new ideas to light on the most pressing issues of our time. Things like educational inequities, police brutality, HIV/AIDS, climate change, genetic editing, artificial intelligence, and mars exploration. This is to say nothing of the things we haven't even thought of yet.Share
31:42
Women of color in
STEM
occupy some of the toughest and most exciting socio-technological issues of our time.Share
31:50
Thus we are uniquely positioned to contribute to and drive these conversations in ways that are more inclusive of a wider variety of lived experience. It's a reminder that we cannot get to the best possible outcomes for the totality of humanity without precisely this collaboration, this bringing together of the liminal, the differently lived, distinctly experienced, and disparately impacted.
Share
32:18
Simply put, we cannot be the most excellent expression of our collective genius without the full measure of humanity brought to bear. Thank you.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
32:31
We'll be back with more from Shoham Arad on growing ideas into action and the
TED
Fellows program. I'm Manoush Zomorodi
, and you're listening to the TED
Radio Hour
from NPR
. Be right back.Share
Break
Manoush Zomorodi
34:32
It's the
TED
Radio Hour
from NPR
, I'm Manoush Zomorodi
. Today on the show: Taking an idea and turning it into global action. With us is the director of the TED
Fellows program, Shoham Arad. Hey, Shoham. Welcome back.Share
Shoham Arad
34:49
Thank you so much.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
34:51
OK, so so far we've heard about a graffiti artist, an astrophysicist, and an ophthalmologist. And the next speaker you've brought us gave a talk called "How
Pakistani
women are taking back the internet". Her name is Nighat Dad
. Tell us about her.Share
Shoham Arad
35:07
So
Nighat
is a Pakistani
lawyer and an activist who fights against sex-based harassment online. Pakistan
has a very serious history of violence against women, and Nighat
is fighting that from a digital angle. She became a TED
fellow in 2017, and that's when we met her.Share
Nighat Dad
35:29
I come from a very small village in punjab
Pakistan
where elders of my extended family didn't allow the woman to pursue their higher education or their professional careers. However, unlike the other male guardians of my family, my father was one who really supported my ambitions.Share
35:49
To get my law degree, of course it was really difficult, and frowns of disapproval. But in the end, I know it's either me or them, and I chose myself.
Share
36:02
My family traditions and expectations from women wouldn't allow me to own a mobile phone until I was married. And even when I was married, this tool became a tool for my own surveillance.
Share
36:18
When I resisted to this idea of being surveilled by my ex-husband, he really didn't approve of this and threw me out of his house along with my six-month-old son, Abdullah. And that was the time when I first asked myself why. Why women are not allowed to enjoy the same equal rights enshrined in our constitution.
Share
36:40
While the law states that women has the same equal access to the information, why it's always men, brothers, fathers, and husbands who are granting these rights to us, effectively making the law irrelevant?
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
36:56
I think that's crucial. What she's saying is like on paper, yes, all things being equal. But in reality, the culture is not keeping up with the law. And despite that,
Nighat
did get her law degree, and after that a divorce, and then what happened?Share
Shoham Arad
37:13
So she founded a nonprofit called the Digital Rights Foundation back in 2012, which works to address all the issues and women's experiences in online spaces and cyber harassment. So from lobbying for free and safe internet, to convincing young women that access to this safe internet is their fundamental basic human right, she's trying to play her part to address the questions that have bothered her for years.
Share
Nighat Dad
37:40
Pakistan
is the birthplace of the youngest Nobel Peace Prize
winner Malala
Yousafzai
. But that's just one aspect of Pakistan.
Another aspect it is where the twisted concept of honor is linked to the woman and their bodies. Where men are allowed to disrespect women and even kill them sometimes, in the name of so called family honor. Where women are left to die right outside their house for speaking to a man on a mobile phone in the name of family honor. Let me say this very clearly, it's not honor, it's a cold-blooded murder.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
38:24
So
Nighat
mentions Malala
. Do you have a sense like, how big a deal it is that Nighat
is speaking out like this. Does she worry for her safety?Share
Shoham Arad
38:35
Yeah, I think it's a really big deal. I've talked to her on multiple occasions over the years when she's been the target of threats. I worry about her. But I worry about a lot of our fellows, honestly. She's really smart, and she's really brave, and I love that we have even a small part to play and supporting her work.
Share
Nighat Dad
38:57
Be the hope in my heart and to offer a solution to this menace. I started
Pakistan's
and region's first cyber harassment helpline in December 2016. To extend my support to the women who do not know who to turn to when they face serious threats online. I think of a woman who do not have necessary support to deal with the mental trauma when they feel unsafe in the online spaces.Share
39:27
And they go about their daily activities thinking that there is a rape threat in their inbox. Safe access to the internet is an access to knowledge. And knowledge is freedom. When I fight for women's digital rights, I'm fighting for equality.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
39:44
So from what I understand, this hotline is kind of like an on-demand support system for
Pakistani
women who are experiencing cyber harassment.Share
Shoham Arad
39:52
Yeah, that's exactly right. And I think you know, it offers a few things, it offers legal assistance, it offers digital security health, and it offers mental health counseling.
Share
40:04
It also offers judgment-free support, which I think cannot be understated, you know, to know, to have somebody tell you like, "No, this is serious, this is dangerous, what you're feeling is real", and it's a way for women to know that they're not alone at a time in their lives that's pivotal and it's dangerous.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
40:21
And what about
Nighat
, what is she doing now?Share
Shoham Arad
40:24
After giving her talk, she went back and for a while she thought about going into politics. And I think even that didn't feel big enough for her and she wanted to move beyond the borders of her home country.
Share
40:37
So she's now working directly with multinational companies that we all know who know that they cannot move forward without the guiding principles of human rights within their businesses.
Share
40:48
And she can effectively be touching and helping millions of people. Like, she's the person we want in those conversations because she knows firsthand the extremes to which these issues affect women and marginalized communities.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
41:04
We have now come to our very last speaker that you've chosen for this episode. This is an artist named
Christine Sun Kim. Christine
was born deaf, and in 2015 she gave a TED
talk entitled "The enchanting music of sign language", which on the face of it can sound counterintuitive, but you're going to explain. Tell us how you found out about Christine
.Share
Shoham Arad
41:32
So actually
CK
was just chosen as a fellow and I joined the team in 2013, and she was one of my first fellow friends. And she's just, I know. She's just, she's very obviously brilliant.Share
41:48
She's mainly been a visual artist, and a performance artist, and all of her work talks about the idea of agency and what it means to be with and without a voice. She speaks up for her deaf community and for all marginalized communities through her work.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
42:04
So let's start by hearing about
Christine's
relationship to sound, which I found fascinating and the voice we're going to hear is her ASL
interpreter.Share
Christine Sun Kim
42:15
I was born deaf and I was taught to believe that sound wasn't a part of my life. And I believed it to be true. Yet I realize now that that wasn't the case at all.
Share
42:27
Sound was very much a part of my life, really on my mind every day. As a deaf person living in a world of sound it's as if I was living in a foreign country, blindly following its rules, customs, behaviors, and norms, without ever questioning them.
Share
42:44
So how is it that I understand sound?
Share
42:48
Well, I watch how people behave and respond to sound. You people are like my loudspeakers and amplify sound, and I learn and mirror that behavior. At the same time I've learned that I create sound, and I've seen how people respond to me. Thus I've learned, for example, don't slam the door, don't make too much noise when you're eating from the potato chip bag, don't burp, and when you're eating make sure you don't scrape your utensils on the plate.
Share
43:16
All of these things I term sound etiquette. Maybe I think about sound etiquette more than the average hearing person does. I'm hyper vigilant around sound, and I'm always waiting in eager, nervous anticipation around sound about what's to come next.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
43:32
She's so funny. So she's taught to believe that sound isn't a part of her life as a deaf person, but she's like, "But it is, because I have to be conscientious about how you all are relating to sound."
Share
Shoham Arad
43:44
Yeah. So I mean even listening to that clip of her talk, it's interesting because Denise, her interpreter, who is incredible, doesn't conjure up
Christine
at all. Like Christine
doesn't look like how that voice sounds.Share
43:58
So even that gets you thinking about like, what does it mean to have agency over your voice? What does it mean to think about sound when you're deaf? What does it mean for people who are hearing to think about sound differently?
Share
44:09
So yeah, she makes work that shows that sound doesn't just have to be heard, it can be felt, seen, it can be experienced, it can mean something highly conceptual.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
44:19
We certainly cannot do her work justice. But is there a favorite piece of her, do you have a favorite example of that connection that she's making that you might be able to describe for us?
Share
Shoham Arad
44:31
Yeah. As a result of knowing
CK
in her work, I've actually been studying ASL
for the last year.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
44:38
No way.
Share
Shoham Arad
44:39
Yeah. It's an amazing language to learn. So in
ASL
, things like pitch and tone are conveyed in motion and spacing and expression, facial expression. And CK
analyzes sound through empty and changing space on the page, and movement, or even like smudges in her drawings. She often refers to musical notations.Share
45:03
The drawings that she makes are usually like, one color on paper, made of soft charcoal or oil pastels and they usually have text in them. And that text usually has multiple meanings. I'm very lucky to have to own one of her drawings and it hangs over my bed.
Share
45:20
It's one of my favorite things in the world, and it's a drawing of the notation and music that's called pianissimo, p, meaning something that's to be played very quietly. And the drawing makes a kind of a tree of the notations going down, showing the idea or the notion of something getting more and more quiet, but never silent. And it's beautiful as a drawing. And as a meditation.
Share
Christine Sun Kim
45:52
Everything that I had been taught regarding sound, I decided to do away with and unlearn. I started creating a new body of work and when I presented this to the art community, I was blown away with the amount of support and attention I received.
Share
46:07
I realized sound is like money, power, control, social currency, at the back of my mind. I always felt that sound was your thing, a hearing person's thing, and sound is so powerful that it could either disempower me and my artwork, or it could empower me.
Share
46:31
I chose to be empowered.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
46:32
So she's using her artwork to become more of an activist, right? Like let's talk about what
Christine
has been doing since she gave her talk. She acted as an interpreter at the Super Bowl
. Right?Share
Shoham Arad
46:47
That's right. And honestly, like, if you have not seen her interpretation of national anthem at the
Super Bowl
into ASL
just hit pause, go find it on Youtube,
and watch the clip, because it's incredible, and it's beautiful, and it is by far my most favorite Super Bowl
moment ever.Share
47:05
I mean, she is making big gestures. Like for me, it's an embodiment of the national anthem. It is as powerful as an entire stadium of people singing together in unison. It is really an interpretation.
Share
47:23
It's her decision about how big to make these gestures or how small to make them, and how to convey the feeling behind the words in the song. So she's wearing this incredible outfit, she is incredibly striking. She's gorgeous. Like you look at her and you're like, "Oh God, she's so cool", you know, and she is. She's just so cool.
Share
47:42
So it's just, it's beautiful.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
47:45
But she was unhappy about her performance at the
Super Bowl
because the idea was to sort of highlight ASL
and she really didn't get much screen time.Share
Shoham Arad
47:57
Yeah, I mean she was only on screen for a couple of seconds ultimately, but what it wound up doing was giving her another platform to talk about what that means, right? So she wound up writing an op-ed for
The New York Times
about the ways in which that continues to silence people and you should go read it because it's really kind of the essence of a lot of her work.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
48:22
I think it's interesting how she made me think about sound differently. She made me more curious to learn about
ASL
, but she also makes beautiful works on paper while talking about deaf discrimination and disability rights. It's so many different levels that she's working on.Share
Shoham Arad
48:47
Yeah. One of the things she's been doing since that talk is billboards, actually. She's done a lot of political billboards and she did this billboard, this story that I just love, she lives in
Berlin
now, and she was working with a deaf school there. And it's right next door to a school for the hearing. And they created this billboard that says "If you spoke ASL
, we'd be friends by now."Share
49:13
And I just love that because it really flips the notion of otherness on its head. Like, just learn
ASL
and we can all be friends. It's not a way of marginalizing and othering people, it's a way of connecting if you can just sort of slightly switch your mindset.Share
Manoush Zomorodi
49:35
So Shoham, as we wrap up, I guess I'm wondering, you know, after listening to all these speakers and their amazing ideas, and all the things that they're doing, do they ever feel like giving a
TED
talk is subbing down their ideas? Or is it more a distillation of their work in a way that makes it more- makes them more accessible?Share
Shoham Arad
50:00
Yeah, I mean, I think that's true with all
TED
talks, but especially with the fellows. I think one of the things that's really true for fellows is that they're often representing much larger communities, and often marginalized communities.Share
50:14
So not only are they up there giving a short talk — our talks are shorter, but they're also up there with the weight and responsibility of the communities that they carry with them on their shoulders. So
CK
is up there giving a talk, and she's thinking about the entire deaf community when she's up there, and that's a lot. That's a really hard thing to do.Share
50:39
So we have to distill it to one idea even though most of these brilliant people are doing, you know, 100 things at the same time. And I think that the thing that's interesting to me too, is like when we talk about representation, we also talk about impact.
Share
50:56
So even though in 12 years, you know, we have 500 and something fellows, what that really means is they're having an impact on millions and millions of people around the globe. Like their work is impacting communities. Their very presence at the table is making change. So that representation on stage becomes really big when you think about it.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
51:21
Shoham Arad is the director of the
TED
Fellows program. Shoham, thank you so, so much.Share
Shoham Arad
51:27
Thank you so much. It was so nice talking to you.
Share
Manoush Zomorodi
51:31
And thank you so much for listening to our show this week on
TED
fellows turning their ideas into action. And by the way, you can see some of Christine Sun Kim's
artwork at TED. Npr
. org.Share
51:45
This episode was produced by Deba Motisham and Fiona Gearan, and edited by James Delahoussaye. Our
TED
radio production staff includes Jeff Rogers
, Sanaz Meshkinpour, Rachel Faulkner, Katie Monteleone, Matthew Cloutier, and Harrison VJ Choi. Our audio engineer is Daniel Shuqin.Share
52:04
Our intern is Katie Cipher. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at
TED
are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Phelan, and Michelle Quint. I'm Manoush Zomorodi
, and you've been listening to the TED
Radio Hour
from NPR
.Share
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Manoush Zomorodi
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Nighat Dad
Christine Sun Kim