0:00

This message comes from Fisher Investments,

0:02

who knows the importance of the

0:04

relationship between a client and their

0:07

financial advisor. As a fiduciary, Fisher

0:09

always acts in their client's best

0:11

interests. fisherinvestments.com, investing in securities involves

0:13

the risk of loss. Hey,

0:16

it's Minouche, and as we wrap up 2023 and get into

0:18

2024, I

0:23

want to bring you an episode that's

0:25

one of my favorites from earlier this

0:27

year, which seems particularly appropriate as we

0:29

think about who we want to

0:31

be in the year to come. It's

0:34

always a daunting question, right? How are we going

0:36

to improve ourselves, improve

0:38

our lives, maybe just be

0:40

content with what we have? So

0:43

this episode is called Future You.

0:46

It seems like a perfect way to kick

0:48

off the new year. So

0:50

happy new year from everyone here at TED Radio

0:52

Hour. Thanks for being with us all year long.

0:56

This is

0:58

the TED Radio Hour. Each

1:01

week, groundbreaking TED Talks. Our

1:03

job now is to dream big. Delivered at TED

1:05

conferences. To bring about the future

1:07

we want to see. Around the

1:09

world. To understand who we are.

1:11

From those talks, we bring you

1:13

speakers and ideas that will surprise

1:15

you. You just don't know what you're going

1:18

to find. Challenge you. We truly have to ask

1:20

ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy? And even change

1:22

you. I literally feel like I'm a different

1:24

person. Yes. Do you feel

1:26

that way? Ideas worth spreading.

1:30

From TED and

1:32

NPR, I'm

1:34

Manoush Zamorodi. And today's show is

1:37

about you. The future you.

1:40

The one who will someday reap the

1:42

benefits or pay the price for

1:44

what you do today. And

1:47

the question is, why is it so hard,

1:49

at least for some of us, to

1:51

be kind to our future selves?

1:54

It sounds like a relatively simple question, but it

1:56

turns out to be a huge

1:58

can of worms. This is

2:01

psychologist Hal Hirschfield. He's

2:03

a professor at UCLA's Anderson

2:05

School of Management, and he's

2:07

devoted his career to studying

2:09

people's relationship to their future.

2:12

It all started for Hal in grad school,

2:14

when he was wondering why people struggled to

2:17

do the things they said they wanted

2:19

to do, like save money. And we

2:21

started thinking about, what are

2:23

some of the psychological reasons why people say that they

2:25

want to save, but they don't. And so that really

2:28

got me on this path of trying to figure out,

2:31

how do people sort of move through time and think about

2:33

these much older versions

2:35

of themselves, since ultimately those

2:37

are the people who are affected by any

2:40

of the choices that we make. He

2:43

started looking into the neurological

2:45

research about our perceptions of

2:47

ourselves, and there wasn't

2:49

much there. But another

2:51

finding really struck him. I

2:54

had come across this early,

2:57

what they call social neuroscience article,

3:00

that basically made this interesting

3:02

claim that in the brain, the

3:05

self can be distinguished from other people. It

3:08

turns out that there's part of the brain

3:10

or region of networks, the cortical midline structures,

3:14

that show more activity when we're thinking about

3:16

ourselves right now compared to when we're thinking

3:18

about another person right now. In

3:20

other words, different parts of the brain

3:23

are activated if you're thinking about yourself

3:26

or another person. So how

3:29

I wanted to know, would those

3:31

same parts be activated if you're

3:33

thinking about yourself now or yourself

3:36

in the future? And I had this sort

3:38

of connect the dots moment, which is, well,

3:41

you know, if the brain can

3:44

distinguish between me

3:46

and someone else, what

3:48

would happen in the brain

3:51

when we ask people to think about

3:53

themselves now and

3:55

themselves later? Basically,

3:57

would your brain identify

3:59

you? your future self as

4:02

a different person. So

4:04

in 2007, how devised a test? So

4:08

we thought, all right, let's ask

4:10

people to think about

4:12

their future selves and to think about other people

4:15

while we scan them. As

4:18

participants lay down in an MRI

4:20

machine, the researchers would

4:22

ask them questions about who they

4:25

are right now. Are

4:27

you funny? Are you smart? Are

4:29

you sarcastic? Are you quiet? These

4:31

sorts of trait questions. Then

4:34

they'd ask them the same questions

4:36

about two people they probably didn't

4:39

know personally, but who they could

4:41

picture in their minds. Matt Damon

4:43

and Natalie Portman. OK,

4:47

wait. So you're saying that you

4:50

would ask them, is Matt Damon

4:52

funny? Is Natalie Portman funny or

4:54

smart? Yeah, so you'd be either making

4:56

a judgment about Matt Damon or Natalie

4:59

Portman. So one

5:01

section of the brain lit up

5:03

when people were asked about themselves,

5:06

and the different part lit up when

5:08

they were asked about Matt Damon or

5:10

Natalie Portman, just as previous

5:12

research had shown. But

5:15

then things got really interesting,

5:17

because Hal asked the participants

5:19

to picture themselves in the

5:21

future and ask the same

5:24

question. Are you funny? Are

5:26

you smart? Are you sarcastic? Are

5:28

you quiet? And the same region

5:30

of the brain lit up as when

5:32

people were thinking about Matt or

5:35

Natalie, meaning in the brain,

5:37

the future self looks

5:39

like another person. I

5:43

mean, this was pretty groundbreaking when you figured

5:45

this out, right? That you scientifically proved

5:47

that in our brain, we

5:49

think about our future self as

5:52

someone separate from who

5:54

we are right now. That's exactly right. I mean, I

5:56

have to say, it was a surprising

5:59

thing. finding to us. In fact,

6:02

we actually ran the whole thing again to make

6:05

sure this was right. And

6:07

again, we found the same results. And

6:10

so we started thinking in the same way, there

6:13

could be a version of myself in the future

6:15

who I really don't feel all

6:17

that emotionally connected to or invested in.

6:19

And if that's the case, I am

6:22

probably going to live much more for today

6:24

than tomorrow. Who

6:26

will you be this year? In

6:29

five years? In 25 years?

6:32

Predict all you like, but envisioning

6:34

how you'll evolve over time is

6:37

incredibly hard for many

6:39

reasons. On this

6:41

episode, we hear ideas about what we

6:43

can do to better plan our lives

6:45

while allowing for the unexpected, from

6:48

a neurological, philosophical, and

6:51

historic perspective. Psychologist

6:54

Hal Hirschfield says that when you

6:56

think about future you, you

6:58

might as well be thinking about a colleague

7:00

who you kind of see around the office

7:02

but don't really know that well. You

7:05

know they exist, but you don't really know much

7:07

about them. And if they

7:09

were to shoot you a message and say, hey, I

7:13

have to move this weekend, do you mind helping

7:15

me out? It's not

7:17

that you're selfish or mean, but you'd

7:19

probably come up with a million reasons

7:21

why you don't need to help them out.

7:25

If our future selves look

7:27

like that coworker who you kind

7:29

of know but not really and you're not

7:31

particularly connected to, all

7:33

of a sudden it

7:35

starts to make sense why

7:38

it's often really hard for us to do

7:40

things today that benefit us later. In

7:43

other words, if you want to

7:47

debate between eating a high-calorie

7:49

dinner versus the healthy salad,

7:52

you know you should probably eat the

7:54

salad because the steak and chocolate cake

7:56

and extra glass of wine,

7:58

that's going to be bad for you. your future

8:00

health. But then you stop and say,

8:02

well, is it my future health or just some

8:05

other person? And

8:08

when you start to think in those

8:10

terms, in some ways it's almost rational

8:13

to live for today because these consequences

8:15

are gonna befall some other

8:17

person. I

8:21

mean, there's not every person like that, right?

8:23

There are some people who are incredibly careful

8:26

about what they eat and always thinking about

8:28

their health in the future. What's

8:30

the range of this sort

8:33

of generosity or meagerness that we

8:35

feel towards ourself in the

8:37

future? The question you're asking is

8:39

so good because I think what you

8:42

quickly realize with this analogy of the future

8:44

self that this coworker you don't know is

8:46

that there are lots

8:48

of people in our lives who we

8:50

are empathetic toward, who we will drop

8:52

our weekend plans to help move. One

8:55

of the things that we found is that people

8:57

do vary in the sense of connection and the

8:59

sense of similarity that they have to

9:02

their future selves. But then

9:04

you start asking, well, what's at the root of

9:06

that? To some extent, this

9:08

is a big open question, one

9:10

that we're trying to figure out. But

9:13

if I have that sense of closeness, well,

9:15

then I'm probably gonna be more likely to do

9:18

things that might benefit me later, right? And

9:21

I guess I'm wondering, why is it

9:24

so hard, do you think, for people

9:26

to connect with their future selves? Is

9:28

there something innately human that makes it

9:30

tough? Yeah, we live in the present,

9:32

right? So anytime you think about these

9:34

back and forths between current self and

9:36

future self, it's me right

9:38

now who needs to make

9:41

quote unquote sacrifices for that future

9:43

person. And

9:45

that future person is abstract. There's

9:47

this great quote from Grattschow Marx, which

9:49

is, what have future generations ever

9:51

done for us? And you'd

9:54

be forgiven for not really wanting.

10:00

to make all the sacrifice, to do all

10:02

the pain right now for this sort of

10:04

uncertain gain. The other thing

10:06

is that all of the temptations

10:09

happen right now. You know, being

10:11

able to buy things with just like my

10:14

face ID and like anything

10:16

that I want, I can get it

10:18

right now. Even when we

10:20

say we want to do things for our future

10:22

selves, it can still be really hard to follow

10:24

through because I'm pulled by all the

10:26

temptations that exist right now. Here's

10:29

how Hirschfield on the TED stage. We

10:31

brought people back to the lab two weeks

10:33

later and we had them take part in

10:35

a financial decision-making task where they could basically

10:37

decide between smaller amounts of money right now

10:39

and larger amounts of money that they would

10:41

have to wait for. And these are real

10:43

choices. We actually paid them. And

10:46

what we found was that the people who had

10:48

the biggest difference in the brain between thoughts about

10:50

the current self and thoughts about the future self

10:53

were the worst at this task. In

10:55

other words, the more the future

10:57

self looks like another person on a

10:59

neural level, the less likely

11:02

people would be to save for that future

11:04

self. The question of course

11:06

is, how can we get people

11:08

to feel closer to their future selves and

11:10

take better care of them? Okay,

11:13

if we know that this future self is another person

11:16

and we know that relationships matter, how

11:18

can we make those relationships

11:20

stronger? And at some point I realized, you

11:22

know what, this isn't like the first time

11:24

somebody has asked this sort of question. Charities,

11:28

they do a really good job at

11:31

getting you to feel closer to charity

11:34

recipients so that you'll end up

11:36

forking some of your hard-earned dollars

11:39

and cents over. They tell good

11:41

stories, making the recipients vivid, and

11:44

that makes them more emotional. And we know

11:46

that emotions are the types of things that

11:49

really sort of push the

11:51

ball down the field in terms of behavior. So

11:54

you know, early on, one of

11:56

the things we decided to do is try to actually

11:58

use is age

12:01

progression technology to

12:03

show people what they look like in the future. Sag

12:06

the cheeks and add some age

12:08

spots and... There's a filter for this, right? Where

12:10

you can see what you look like 20 years

12:13

from now. When I do it, it's

12:15

crazy. I look just like my dad.

12:18

And so one of my favorite aspects of being

12:21

in a business school that I get to also

12:23

work with company is I'm trying to put some

12:25

of these ideas into practice. And so we

12:28

have shown people images

12:30

when they've been making sort of

12:32

hypothetical decisions about saving. And when

12:34

they're exposed to these future selves,

12:37

they express a little more desire to save for the

12:39

future. We worked with the bank and we had about

12:42

50,000 customers and half

12:44

of them got access to these aged images

12:46

and half of them didn't. They all got

12:48

the same message that it's important to make

12:51

a contribution to their retirement accounts. And the

12:53

people who got exposed end up being about

12:55

16% more likely to make

12:58

a contribution. Now, the question is, does

13:00

this work? I don't wanna overstate

13:02

it, right? It's not like I download

13:04

one of these apps and suddenly I'm living

13:07

this austere life and doing everything for

13:09

tomorrow, right? These are

13:11

relatively small effects, but as a

13:13

social scientist, that excites me

13:15

because anything we can do to move the needle

13:18

that ends up compounding over time is

13:21

really quite important. But

13:23

you wanna sort of pair those sorts of

13:25

interventions with context where

13:27

people can make a decision for

13:31

some future self, whether it's saving more, signing

13:33

up to work with a service that can

13:35

allow you to plan an estate and will,

13:37

these sorts of things, right? It's

13:39

another way of making that future self more

13:43

vivid and more emotional. In

13:47

a minute, planning ahead, even

13:50

if the future looks pretty bleak

13:53

on the show today, future you. I'm

13:56

Anoush Zamorodi and you're listening to the TED

13:58

Radio Hour from NPR. are. Support

14:10

for this podcast and the following message come

14:12

from Fisher Investments, who wants you to know

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they take a personalized approach to retirement

14:17

planning. Fisher starts by getting to

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more so they can tailor your portfolio

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to your unique goals. Then they check

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in regularly to help make sure you

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stay on track. And with a transparent

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you do better. Now that's clearly different

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money management. Learn more at fisherinvestments.com. Investing

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in securities involves the risk of loss. Hey,

14:42

it's Minouche. Before we get back to the show, 2023 is coming

14:45

to a close and we've been

14:48

doing some reflecting a bit here at

14:50

Ted Radio Hour. We have

14:52

loved bringing you episodes about why

14:54

wolves are thriving near Chernobyl, about

14:57

how your brain sees your future

14:59

self, and what needs

15:02

to happen to fix the foster

15:04

care system, among many other topics

15:06

this year. And this

15:08

is when we need to say a big

15:10

thank you to our Ted Radio Hour

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make a tax deductible donation

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now at donate dot NPR

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dot org. It's the

16:01

Ted Radio Hour from NPR. I'm

16:09

Manoush Zamorodi. On the show

16:11

today, Future You. We were

16:13

just talking to psychologist Hal

16:15

Hirschfield. His research focuses

16:18

on our relationship with our

16:20

future selves, which as Hal

16:22

just explained, our brains

16:24

perceive as a different person. But

16:27

is it getting harder for some

16:30

people, especially younger people, to imagine

16:32

their future selves at all? I'm

16:36

thinking of this 2022 study

16:38

that found that young adults feel

16:41

really pessimistic about what's going on in

16:43

the world, whether it's, you know, coming

16:46

out of a pandemic, the economy, climate

16:48

change, and that 45% of people between

16:50

the ages of 18 and 35 don't see

16:55

a point in saving money as a

16:57

result. They want to live in the

16:59

now. And part of me says, well,

17:01

how can you blame them? So

17:04

how do you tell people who feel pretty

17:06

hopeless about the future that they need to

17:08

plan for it anyway? I

17:10

don't blame them. This to me is

17:13

one of the great sort of

17:15

negative fallouts of all of

17:17

the, you know, world

17:19

changing events that have happened over the

17:21

last several years, you know, especially since

17:23

I started doing this research originally. But

17:26

this isn't the first moment in history

17:28

where people are experiencing this high degree

17:31

of existential terror and angst, right? So

17:33

during the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was

17:35

quite a bit of existential angst and

17:38

terror. Now one

17:40

could say these are unprecedented events

17:42

and the confluence of them is

17:44

particularly unprecedented. One

17:47

thing that I would suggest

17:49

there is that time

17:52

marches on, time progresses, regardless

17:55

of how we feel about it. So

17:57

if we want to bury our heads in the sand, because because

18:00

the future feels so scary, we can, but

18:02

that doesn't mean that the future won't come.

18:04

It doesn't stop it from moving forward. One

18:08

takeaway from this is that it's still

18:11

worthwhile to deepen the

18:13

conversations we have between

18:16

now and later. I

18:18

wonder, is there a way to give a

18:20

little bit more to the

18:23

future, whether that comes in terms of

18:25

saving or whatever sort of the flavor

18:27

of the decision might be.

18:30

It is a question of figuring out what's

18:32

the allocation of resources between now

18:34

and later, so

18:36

that later doesn't become much worse than it

18:38

is or that we fear it's going to

18:40

be. And I suppose

18:43

on a personal level, you're saying

18:45

that you need to find a

18:47

balance between smelling

18:50

the roses, living in the moment,

18:52

and making decisions that are

18:54

kinder to your future self. I

18:56

think harmony might be a better word. Balance

18:59

implies that we're constantly trading off. You're on

19:01

the seesaw, you're either up or you're down.

19:05

Harmony, you think about it in music. It

19:07

implies that two voices can be singing at

19:10

the same time at different levels and almost

19:12

work together. I

19:14

think the same could be said for our current and future

19:16

selves. There are decisions we can make right now that

19:19

aren't just for the future, but could be for

19:22

now and for later as well.

19:25

I can spend more time with

19:28

family and away from work that could benefit me

19:30

now, it'll benefit me later. There also may be

19:32

times where working more right now

19:34

is beneficial now and it's beneficial later, but

19:36

I also need to figure out where I

19:38

fit in, the family and friends,

19:41

and sort of create

19:44

a word that I like as a mosaic,

19:46

where I'm sort of fitting the pieces in

19:48

together all at once. But

19:51

that sort of mindset shift, I

19:54

hope, sort of takes

19:56

away some of the constant Conflict

19:58

and tension between us. now and later

20:00

and makes it possible that the to can kind of

20:02

coexist. That was

20:05

Psychologist Al Hirschfeld is a professor in

20:07

the Anderson School of Management at U

20:09

C L A and the author of

20:12

the books Future You, How To make

20:14

tomorrow Better Today. You can

20:16

see his full talk at Ted. That.

20:19

So. That's the neurological perspectives

20:22

and know for something a

20:24

bit more philosophical about who

20:26

will grow up to be

20:28

in the future. Because

20:30

ask most kids about their plans

20:32

for their future and they'll be

20:34

pretty certain about everything they will

20:37

accomplish. What are you on a be in the future.

20:39

A doctor may or six

20:41

evil there is a my

20:44

scalp. Thirty one step of scope. of

20:47

this one is good. Which

20:50

were just. Need assignments

20:52

And as says, you're

20:54

serious. These. Are voices from

20:56

a popular web series called Recess Therapy

20:58

where they talk to kids about their

21:01

lives, their advice for grown ups and

21:03

the future I didn't see to is

21:05

known as the Like. My. Dream: What's

21:08

your dream? Is as the of

21:10

Harrys and then it tastes Your My

21:12

children may say I get lost in

21:14

these spaces I think is gonna feel

21:17

good Heart says. Oh do you think you'd

21:19

make a good president? I think

21:21

right now the family is a Css.

21:25

And we'll Doesn't that sound familiar? In

21:27

the fourth grade I said that I

21:29

wanted to grub to be an actress

21:32

and that I was going to change.

21:34

My name to Hillary or

21:36

Christina. At one point my

21:38

daughter told me she was going to be a

21:40

neurologist. And a big at the

21:42

same time. And if

21:44

you ask journalist soccer Vedantam when he

21:47

was a child what the future held

21:49

for him, he would have been just.

21:51

as sure of himself when i was a

21:53

small kid i thought i was gonna be

21:56

a soccer star and i put all my

21:58

hopes and energies into being professional soccer

22:00

player. But as is the case

22:02

for most of us, that sadly

22:04

did not come to pass because

22:06

my talents did not match my

22:09

enthusiasm when it came to soccer.

22:11

So in his 20s, Shankar thought

22:13

he'd picked a more realistic path.

22:16

I studied engineering in

22:18

southern India. And

22:20

after I finished my engineering college, or as

22:22

I was nearing the end of it, I

22:24

thought I was going to get an MBA

22:27

and follow a corporate track,

22:30

which is very different from the world

22:32

that I'm in today. Shankar

22:34

says that most people don't think their

22:36

hopes and dreams will change much over

22:39

the years. But actually,

22:41

we grow to be fundamentally

22:43

different people who want different

22:45

things. Here he is on

22:47

the TED stage. When I was 22, I

22:51

was a freshly minted electronics engineer

22:54

in southern India. I had no

22:56

idea that three decades later, I would be living in the United

22:58

States, that I would be a journalist, and

23:00

that I would be the host of a podcast called

23:02

Hidden Bone. It's a show about human

23:05

behavior and how to apply psychological science

23:07

to our lives. Now,

23:09

we didn't have podcasts when I graduated

23:11

from college. We didn't walk around with

23:13

smartphones in our pockets. So

23:16

my future was not just unknown. It

23:19

was unknowable. All

23:21

of us have seen what this is like in the last three

23:23

years as we slowly try and emerge from the

23:26

COVID pandemic. If we think about the people we

23:28

used to be, we can see how anxiety

23:30

and isolation and upheavals in

23:33

our lives and livelihoods, how

23:35

this has changed us, changed our outlook, changed

23:38

our perspective. But

23:40

there is a paradox here. And the paradox is

23:42

when we look backwards, we

23:44

can see enormous changes in who we have become. But

23:48

when we look forwards, we

23:50

tend to imagine that we're going to be the same people in

23:52

the future. Now, sure, we

23:54

imagine the world is going to be different. We know

23:56

that AI and climate change is going to

23:58

mean for a very different world. But we don't imagine

24:00

that we ourselves would have different perspectives, different

24:03

views, different preferences. I

24:05

call this the illusion of continuity. And

24:08

I think one reason this happens is that when we look

24:10

backwards, the contrast with our

24:12

prior selves to who we are today is so

24:15

clear. When we look forward,

24:17

we can imagine ourselves being a little older,

24:19

a little grayer, but we don't

24:22

imagine fundamentally that we're going to be different people.

24:25

And so those changes seem

24:27

more amorphous. The

24:30

illusion of continuity. I

24:33

mean, I can think of very sort of mundane

24:35

ways that's happened to me. I

24:37

never really liked spicy food. And if you

24:39

had told me, oh, no, you're going to

24:41

end up being a person who loves spicy

24:44

food, I would not

24:46

have believed you. Yeah. Little did

24:48

I know, pregnancy would change my

24:50

taste buds. But you have demonstrated

24:52

on your show that it's not

24:54

just the little things, this inability

24:56

or this, I guess it's a

24:59

lack of imagination in some ways that you will change. You

25:01

will change who you fundamentally are and what you believe

25:03

in. It can have huge

25:06

ramifications. One of the

25:08

stories that you tell is about a couple.

25:11

I wonder if you could share that story. Yeah, we

25:13

featured the story of John and Stephanie

25:15

Rinca, a wonderful story. They

25:17

married when they were quite young,

25:19

and then they traveled around the country. John

25:22

became a basketball coach, and Stephanie became

25:24

a nurse. And they were eventually living

25:26

in a rural area, and Stephanie would

25:28

pay house calls to people who were

25:31

very sick, sometimes people who had terminal

25:33

illnesses. And she would come back from

25:35

these visits really shaken, and she would

25:37

tell John that if she ever was

25:39

struck by a terminal illness, she

25:42

didn't want him to do anything that

25:44

would prolong her suffering unnecessarily.

25:47

She would say, John, just shoot me.

25:50

Don't ever let me get to that point. Just shoot

25:52

me. I heard that, I don't

25:55

know how many times. As fate

25:57

would have it, Stephanie, in fact, did

25:59

fall sick with it. Lou Gehrig's disease

26:01

or ALS when she was in her

26:03

50s and she went

26:05

downhill relatively quickly. I was

26:07

hanging my hat on. She knows what

26:09

she's going to do. The most comfortable

26:13

life until it's time to

26:15

die and then making sure she died with

26:17

dignity. Dignity, peace,

26:19

calm, they were all what I was

26:21

working towards. And the

26:23

day came when she was no longer

26:25

able to breathe on her own and

26:27

John rushed her to the hospital where

26:29

a nurse asked her, Mrs.

26:32

Rinca, would you like us to put you on

26:34

a ventilator? And she

26:36

nodded yes. And

26:39

that's when my jaw dropped. Stephanie

26:42

wanted to be put on life

26:44

support. What? No.

26:47

She was saying, no, she doesn't. No,

26:49

she doesn't want

26:51

that. She said, yes. John

26:54

was so surprised by this that he asked her the next

26:57

day. She said, you know, Steph, is that really what you

26:59

want? And Stephanie said, yes. And

27:02

the challenge here is that it's

27:04

not that Stephanie was being inconsistent.

27:06

I think it's really that Stephanie

27:09

at age 35, you know,

27:11

imagining what her future self would be like, imagining

27:13

what it would be like to have a terminal

27:15

illness, was not really able to

27:18

put herself in the shoes of Stephanie

27:20

at age 59, you know, suffering from

27:22

a terminal illness and gasping for air.

27:24

I mean, what if Stephanie had

27:26

been unconscious when her husband brought her

27:29

to the hospital? What if she

27:31

hadn't been able to advocate

27:33

for her new thinking? I

27:35

mean, the decision would have been made. Yes,

27:38

the decision would have been made. And if Stephanie

27:40

had written out an advance directive, the advance directive

27:42

would have said, you know, please do not put

27:44

me on a ventilator, you know, do not prolong

27:46

my suffering. But of course,

27:48

the advance directive is Stephanie at age

27:50

35 or age 40 making

27:53

plans for her future self. But what if we don't

27:55

actually know who our future selves are going to be?

27:58

That's actually kind of a... both an

28:00

interesting thought but also a terrifying thought

28:03

because throughout our lives Manoj, we are

28:05

constantly making plans for our future

28:07

selves. We invest money and save

28:09

for retirement because we have an image of the kind

28:11

of people who are going to be in retirement. We

28:14

propose marriage and get married to people because we

28:16

imagine that we know what we will want 25

28:18

years in the future when we are married

28:20

to this person. But if in

28:23

fact we are different people in the future

28:25

than we are today, we are

28:27

making plans for a stranger, a stranger

28:29

who might look back at us with, you

28:31

know, bewilderment or even resentment and ask us

28:33

what made you think that that is what

28:35

I would want. So

28:38

I think there's a temptation here to quote

28:40

the old bumper sticker stuff

28:43

happens, right? And shrug and be like, well, I

28:45

don't know, what are you going to do? This

28:48

is life. But actually in

28:50

your talk, you share three

28:52

ideas that you think can help us

28:54

with our future self. Can we talk

28:56

about that? The first piece of advice

28:59

is accepting this idea that you are going to be

29:02

different in 30 years time. That's right. So

29:04

if you buy the idea that you're going to

29:06

be a different person in the future than you

29:08

are today, perhaps the important

29:10

question to ask is what

29:12

are things about ourselves today that

29:14

perhaps we might wish to see changed? Are

29:17

there elements to our personality to our being

29:19

short tempered or impatient or, or unempathetic? Are

29:21

there things about ourselves that we would like

29:24

to change? And one of the questions then

29:26

becomes, if you allow for the fact that

29:28

you're going to become a different person, how

29:31

do you help construct that person that you're going

29:33

to become? And I think I like that idea

29:35

very much, because it suggests that we can be

29:38

the authors of our future self that we can

29:40

actually construct this person we're going to become the

29:42

engine to do this is curiosity,

29:44

which is that if we only are doing

29:46

the things that we're used to doing, if

29:48

we're only talking to the people who are

29:50

already in us in our circle of friends

29:52

and family, we're never going to expand our

29:55

horizons to imagine the people we might become.

29:57

The second piece of advice that I

29:59

had is to is to exercise humility,

30:01

especially when it comes to expressing our

30:03

opinions on various things. You

30:06

know, social media platforms have

30:08

become vehicles for grandstanding and

30:10

accusation and malevolence sometimes. And

30:12

so much of that, I think, is

30:14

based on a false certitude

30:16

that the way I think today is going

30:19

to be the way that I think tomorrow.

30:21

And if we had a little bit

30:23

more humility, if we actually said, I

30:26

think the way I think today, because

30:28

my circumstances, my environment, in some ways

30:30

has conspired to shape who I am

30:32

today in powerful ways, my environment

30:34

is going to shape me to be a different person tomorrow.

30:36

I might have very different views one month from

30:39

now, one year from now, or 10 years

30:41

from now. I've

30:43

given you a number of ways in which our future

30:45

selves are going to be weaker

30:49

and frailer than we are today.

30:53

And that is true. It's part of the

30:55

story. But our future selves are

30:57

also going to have capacities and strengths

31:00

and wisdom that we do not

31:02

possess today. So

31:04

when we confront opportunities and we hesitate,

31:08

when I tell myself, I don't think I have it in

31:10

me to quit my job and start

31:12

my own company. Or

31:14

I tell myself, I don't have it in me to

31:17

learn a musical instrument at the age of 52. Or

31:21

I tell myself, I don't have it in me to look

31:23

after a disabled child. What

31:27

we really should be saying is, I

31:29

don't have the capacity to do those things today.

31:34

That doesn't mean I won't have the capacity to

31:36

do those things tomorrow. So

31:40

lesson number three is to

31:42

be brave. That's

31:44

my favorite one, Shankar. This idea that

31:46

our future selves won't be weaker, won't

31:49

be less able, and that maybe we

31:51

need to trust that we

31:53

will maybe change for the better. Tell me

31:55

what you think about that. Is there an example that comes

31:57

to mind for you in your own life? think

32:00

all of us who are parents have

32:02

some vision of this, right?

32:04

So, you know, your six-year-old comes home

32:06

in tears one day from school, and

32:08

she thinks that, you know, her life

32:10

has ended because she didn't get the

32:12

part in her elementary school production of

32:14

a play, and she's sort of heartbroken

32:16

by it. And you understand this is

32:18

only a passing breeze,

32:21

that this too shall pass. In

32:23

some ways, we don't bring that same empathy

32:25

and compassion to ourselves, right?

32:27

So, we should tell ourselves when we're going through a

32:30

tough time. So, we are going to look back on

32:32

in 10 years' time, and it's possible

32:34

that we will remember those tough times with a

32:36

smile and not a tear. I'm

32:38

not saying that bad things don't happen to people, and

32:40

I'm not saying that those bad things don't stay with

32:43

people for a long time, but I think the smart

32:45

thing to do is almost

32:47

to treat ourselves the

32:49

way we treat the children

32:51

whom we love. And if you think about yourself

32:53

that way, you can extend some

32:55

of the same empathy you extend to a

32:57

crying child to your own self when you

32:59

come home at the end of the day,

33:01

and you're heartbroken about something. Part

33:04

of me feels like it's, you

33:06

know, maybe it's futile trying to

33:08

plan your life when there are

33:10

new emotions and new weird circumstances

33:12

that you can never predict. Yes, that's

33:14

right. What's the point? I think this is

33:16

something that it's important for people of all

33:18

ages, but I think especially young people to

33:20

keep in mind, which is that, you know,

33:22

we often freight ourselves with so many worries,

33:24

and we ask ourselves, am I doing the

33:26

right thing? Am I making the right choice?

33:28

Am I going to the right college? Have

33:30

I picked the right course? And

33:32

the truth is that all of these things

33:35

are going to change in such profound ways in the next

33:37

10, 20, or 30 years that the

33:39

individual choices you make are going to matter less

33:41

and less. This is not to say that we

33:43

shouldn't care about anything. We absolutely should care about

33:45

what's right in front of us, but

33:47

things are going to change in remarkable ways. We

33:49

are going to change in remarkable ways, and we

33:52

and the world are going to be very different

33:54

tomorrow than who we are today. That's

33:57

Shankar Vedantam, host of the podcast Hidden in

33:59

the World. His most

34:01

recent book is called Useful Delusions,

34:03

the Power and Paradox of the

34:06

Self-Deceiving Brain. We also heard from

34:08

John Ranka from an episode of

34:10

Hidden Brain and Julian Shapiro Barnum,

34:12

host of the web series Recess

34:15

Therapy. You can see Shankar's

34:17

full talk at ted.com. On

34:20

the show today, Future You. I'm

34:22

Manu Shahzammarodi, and you're listening to the TED

34:24

Radio Hour from NPR. We'll

34:27

be right back. It's

34:40

the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

34:42

I'm Manu Shahzammarodi. On

34:44

the show today, Future You. And

34:46

so far, we've talked about our relationship

34:49

to ourself, singular. But

34:52

what about our collective connection to

34:54

the future, to generations to come?

34:57

How do we as societies form a

34:59

relationship to people that we will never

35:02

know? There's some sense that as

35:04

long as you do your own future planning,

35:07

perhaps you'll be okay and the people you

35:09

know will be okay in the future.

35:11

But it's not enough to just keep your

35:14

family healthy and safe. There's

35:16

something about using history and

35:18

using our collective memory that's really important

35:20

when it comes to collectively planning for

35:23

the future. This is

35:25

Bina Venkatraman. I'm a columnist

35:27

at the Washington Post, and my book

35:29

is The Optimist Telescope, Thinking Ahead in

35:31

a Reckless Age. Before

35:33

she wrote her book, Bina was working

35:36

in the Obama administration as a science

35:38

advisor, helping mayors, governors,

35:40

corporate executives think through their

35:42

planning for future disasters. There

35:45

was a sense that this sounds

35:47

really important, but at the moment,

35:49

my board is basically focused on

35:52

how we're going to do our quarterly

35:55

earnings report, what

35:57

kind of stock dividends we're going to

35:59

be paying. very short-term

36:01

oriented metrics, people

36:03

just couldn't seem to take these threats

36:06

of the future that seriously. This

36:09

led Bina on a search

36:11

to understand why some societies

36:13

succeed and others fail

36:15

to plan for their future. In

36:18

2017, she went to Fukushima,

36:20

Japan. It was the sixth

36:22

anniversary of the nuclear disaster

36:25

there at Fukushima Daiichi, the

36:27

nuclear plant, where the tsunamis

36:29

had breached the seawall of the

36:31

nuclear reactor. Peetering on what looks

36:33

like a meltdown, after

36:35

the quake and the tsunami, a blast

36:37

at the Daiichi nuclear power plant in

36:40

Fukushima. Its sheer power,

36:42

plain to see. Well, experts are

36:45

warning that radiation levels now are rising

36:47

at the Fukushima nuclear plant. And there

36:49

is a high... In 2011, a

36:51

magnitude nine earthquake hit Japan,

36:54

causing massive tsunamis, one

36:57

of which flooded the nuclear plant in

36:59

Fukushima. Chemical

37:01

explosions, damage surrounding buildings,

37:03

smoke was everywhere. And

37:06

so this disaster led to

37:09

a meltdown of the nuclear reactors

37:12

and displaced hundreds of thousands of people.

37:18

We could see cracks in the walls of

37:20

the stairwells still from the

37:22

earthquake six years before. There

37:24

were still more than 100,000 people in 2017, six

37:28

years later, displaced by that nuclear disaster.

37:32

One of the things that was so

37:35

interesting to think about and learn was

37:37

how the company that ran the nuclear

37:39

power plant, TEPCO, how

37:41

they had thought about planning for the future

37:43

at the time. TEPCO

37:46

had done a risk analysis, but it

37:48

hadn't looked far enough into the past.

37:50

And what was interesting to learn was the

37:53

high contrast between what happened in

37:55

Fukushima and what happened in Onagawa,

37:58

Japan in 2011. When

38:01

I was there, I learned about the

38:03

Onagawa Nuclear Power Station, which was even

38:05

closer to the epicenter of that earthquake

38:07

than the infamous sukashima daichi that we

38:09

all know about. Here's Bina

38:11

Venkatraman on the TED stage. In

38:14

Onagawa, people in the city actually fled

38:17

to the nuclear power plant as a

38:19

place of refuge. It was

38:21

that safe. It was spared

38:23

by the tsunamis. It

38:25

was the foresight of just one engineer, Yanosuke

38:28

Hirai, that made that

38:30

happen. In the 1960s,

38:34

he fought to build that power plant farther

38:37

back from the coast at higher elevation and

38:39

with a higher seawall. He

38:42

knew the story of his hometown

38:44

train, which had flooded in the

38:46

year 869 after his tsunami. It

38:50

was his knowledge of history that

38:53

allowed him to imagine what others could not. Yes,

38:56

yeah. It's

38:58

not a thousand years, more than

39:00

a thousand years before you have

39:03

a tsunami that floods a shrine

39:05

and the story gets carried forward,

39:07

the Jogon earthquake of 869. So

39:11

there was a marker in his hometown

39:13

shrine and there were actually markers in

39:15

other areas of Japan that had survived

39:17

from that particular earthquake. There's

39:20

a place called Murahama where on the top

39:22

of a particular hill, in 869, people

39:25

had fled to the top of that hill thinking

39:28

that was a safe place during an

39:30

earthquake given the risk of tsunami to

39:32

flee. In fact, it

39:35

was one of the worst places you

39:37

could go because two tsunamis, two

39:39

big waves, crested over the

39:41

hill and killed the people who had fled to

39:43

the top of the town. The

39:46

people who survived this disaster, who weren't on the

39:49

top of the hill, decided to

39:51

mark that place and to have that

39:53

marker stay intact and the story of

39:55

it taught to local school children and

39:57

sort of passed on through the Jogon earthquake. So

40:02

part of this future planning is taking

40:05

the long view backwards

40:07

and forwards. Yeah,

40:09

so one of the principles here is that

40:11

when we're planning for the future, it's

40:14

not helpful to only look at

40:16

what's just happened. And it's very

40:18

much in human psychology to respond

40:20

to whatever risk or disaster has

40:23

just befallen us. So for example,

40:25

right after Fukushima, Japan actually

40:27

cut a lot of its nuclear

40:29

capacity in part over safety

40:31

concerns. But the

40:34

net effect of that was a

40:36

turn to natural gas, LNG,

40:38

and more fossil fuels, which as

40:40

we know is contributing to climate

40:43

change. And other countries of the

40:45

world similarly reacted

40:47

to what happened in Fukushima and

40:49

pulled back on nuclear power. And

40:51

that is an example of, I

40:54

think, sometimes how we can overreact

40:57

to events that happen in recent

40:59

historical memory. Can we

41:01

talk about another example of governments having

41:03

to deal with figuring out our collective

41:05

future for people who won't be alive

41:07

when this finally does happen? And you

41:09

talk about this a little bit in

41:11

your book, Nuclear Waste, because

41:13

this is, you know, where you dispose

41:15

of this stuff, it doesn't go away,

41:17

does it? Is that forcing certain

41:20

political leaders to really think generations

41:22

ahead? You know, nuclear waste is

41:24

one of those challenges that is

41:27

similar to the climate crisis in

41:29

that the time horizon in which

41:31

people today are implicated is far

41:34

longer than we are used to

41:36

contemplating and we're used to imagining.

41:39

So we're actually obligated to those

41:41

future generations that are going to live in

41:44

a world that we

41:46

have warmed with our decisions about how we use

41:48

energy. And with nuclear waste, there

41:50

have been a number of efforts to try

41:52

to say, how should we imagine if we

41:54

create a nuclear waste site marking that

41:56

for future generations, knowing that language has

41:58

changed, that the older living language is

42:00

only a few thousand years old and some

42:03

of the time horizons of this waste often

42:05

extends much farther into the

42:07

future. Can you share some of

42:09

the ideas that came up? Some of them are

42:11

really funny in your book. There have been really

42:13

interesting kabbal that have been brought together to think

42:15

about the nuclear waste question. An

42:18

example that I love

42:20

to talk about in this realm

42:22

is genetically engineering cats whose fur

42:25

will turn green around nuclear waste

42:27

sites and the

42:30

idea being that since cats were loved

42:32

in ancient Egypt and are loved

42:34

today they'll probably be loved by

42:36

future humans and some of these ideas

42:38

just really expose the futility of trying

42:41

to really intimately know future generations.

42:45

So even things like trying

42:47

to make a signal you would think okay we

42:49

can mark this as a hazardous waste site and

42:52

put a skull and crossbones there. Well

42:55

that could also mark like a pirate

42:57

theme park. It doesn't have to be

42:59

something that's hazardous, right? So we

43:02

don't know what people 10,000 years from now

43:04

are gonna want or like or do

43:06

but what we can do is

43:08

we can pass things on that are

43:10

carried on by each generation to come

43:13

and explain their importance, explain their value

43:15

to that next generation and hope that

43:17

that next generation then adapts and

43:20

brings that message forth carrying

43:22

the torch to the next one. It

43:24

sounds like what you're saying is to

43:27

connect to our future collective

43:29

selves we have

43:31

to see these new generations as real

43:33

people and we need to see ourselves

43:36

as future generations for previous generations in

43:38

some way. We have to see ourselves

43:41

as part of a continuum.

43:44

Absolutely. I really

43:46

believe in this way of thinking about

43:48

ourselves. We all want to feel like

43:50

we belong to something greater and what greater thing to

43:53

belong to than the fabric

43:55

of time. In

43:58

the winter of 2012 I

44:00

went to visit my grandmother's house in South

44:02

India, a place, by the

44:04

way, where the mosquitoes have a special taste for

44:06

the blood of the American born. No

44:10

joke. When

44:12

I was there, I got an unexpected

44:14

gift. It was

44:16

this antique instrument made

44:18

more than a century ago, canned,

44:20

carved from a rare wood, inlaid

44:23

with pearls, and with dozens of

44:25

metal strings. It's

44:28

a family heirloom, a link

44:30

between my past, the country

44:33

where my parents were born, and

44:35

the future. The unknown places

44:37

I'll take it. I

44:39

didn't actually realize it at the time I got it, but

44:42

it would later become a powerful metaphor for

44:45

my work. It was

44:47

custom made for my great grandfather. He

44:50

was a well-known music and art critic in India

44:52

in the early 20th century. My

44:57

great grandfather had the foresight

44:59

to protect this instrument at

45:02

a time when my great grandmother was pawning

45:04

off all their belongings, but that's

45:07

another story. He

45:09

protected it by giving it to the next

45:12

generation, by giving it to my grandmother, and

45:14

she gave it to me. When

45:18

I first heard the sound of this instrument, it

45:21

haunted me. It

45:24

felt like hearing a wanderer in

45:26

the Himalayan fog. It

45:29

felt like hearing a voice from the past. This

45:40

instrument is in my home today, but

45:43

it doesn't actually belong to me. It's

45:46

my role to shepherd it in time, and

45:50

that feels more meaningful to me than just owning

45:52

it for today. This

45:55

instrument positions me as

45:58

both a descendant and an artist. ancestor.

46:02

It makes me feel part of a story bigger

46:05

than my own. And

46:09

this I believe is the single

46:11

most powerful way we can reclaim

46:13

foresight. By

46:16

seeing ourselves as the good ancestors we

46:18

long to be. Ancestors

46:22

matches to our own children, but

46:25

to all humanity. Whatever

46:29

your heirloom is, however

46:32

big or small, protect

46:36

it and

46:38

know that its music can resonate

46:40

for generations. That

46:45

was Bina Venkatraman. Her book

46:47

is called The Optimist Telescope,

46:50

thinking ahead in a reckless age.

46:53

You can see her talk at

46:55

ted.com. So

47:01

what can we each do

47:04

to future-proof, as Bina suggests,

47:06

and become good ancestors? Author

47:09

and philosopher Roman Kriznarik is leading

47:11

what he says is a movement,

47:13

a grand mind shift in how

47:15

to think about a future that

47:17

we will never experience ourselves. Here's

47:21

Roman's 2020 TED Talk. influence

48:00

in the marketplace. The

48:02

great silent majority of future generations

48:05

is rendered powerless. In

48:08

the next two centuries alone, tens of

48:10

billions of people will be born. Amongst

48:13

them, all your grandchildren and

48:16

their grandchildren and the friends and communities

48:18

on whom they'll depend. How

48:20

will all these future generations look back on us

48:23

and the legacy we're leaving for them? How

48:25

can we become the good ancestors

48:28

that future generations deserve? Well,

48:30

over the past decade, a global movement

48:32

has started to emerge of people committed

48:34

to extending out time horizons towards a

48:36

longer now. I

48:39

think of its pioneers as time

48:41

rebels. They can be

48:43

found at work in Japan's visionary future

48:45

design movement, which aims to overcome the

48:47

short-term cycles that dominate politics by

48:49

drawing on the principle of seventh

48:51

generation decision-making practiced by many Native

48:53

American communities. Future design gathers

48:56

together residents to draw up and discuss plans

48:58

for the towns and cities where they live.

49:01

Half the group are told they're residents

49:03

from the present day. The other half

49:05

are given ceremonial robes to wear and

49:07

told to imagine themselves as residents from

49:09

the year 2060. Well, it turns out that

49:11

the residents from 2060 systematically

49:13

advocate far more transformative city

49:16

plans from healthcare investments to

49:18

climate change action. And this

49:20

innovative form of future citizens assembly

49:23

is now spreading throughout Japan from

49:25

small towns like Yerhaba to major

49:27

cities like Kyoto. What

49:29

if future design was adopted by

49:31

towns and cities worldwide to revitalize

49:33

democratic decision-making and extend their vision

49:35

far beyond the now? Time

49:38

rebels have also taken to courts of law

49:40

to secure the rights of future people. The

49:43

organization Our Children's Trust has filed a

49:45

landmark case against the US government on

49:48

behalf of 21 young people

49:50

campaigning for the legal right to a

49:52

safe climate and healthy atmosphere for both

49:54

current and future generations. Their

49:57

David versus Goliath struggle has already

49:59

inspired groundbreaking lawsuits worldwide from

50:01

Colombia and Pakistan to Uganda

50:03

and the Netherlands. So

50:06

the time rebellion has begun.

50:08

The rebels are rising to

50:10

extend our time horizons from

50:12

seconds and minutes to decades

50:14

and far beyond. But

50:17

how can we really think and plan

50:19

on the scale of millennia? Well

50:22

the answer is perhaps the ultimate secret to

50:24

being a time rebel and it comes from

50:26

the biomimicry designer Jeanine Benyres who suggests we

50:28

learn from nature's 3.8 billion

50:31

years of evolution. How

50:34

is it that other species have learned

50:36

to survive and thrive for 10,000 generations

50:38

or more? Well it's by taking

50:40

care of the place that will take

50:43

care of their offspring. By

50:45

living within the ecosystem in which they're

50:47

embedded. By knowing not

50:49

to file the nest, which is what

50:51

humans have been doing with devastating effects

50:53

of an ever increasing pace and scale

50:55

over the past century. So

50:58

a profound starting point for time rebels

51:00

everywhere is to focus not

51:02

simply on lengthening time but

51:04

on regenerating place. We

51:07

must restore and repair and care for

51:09

the planetary home that will take care

51:12

of our offspring. For

51:14

our children and our children's

51:16

children, let us

51:18

all become time rebels and

51:21

be inspired by the beautiful Mohawk blessing

51:23

spoken when a child is born. Thank

51:26

you earth, you know the way.

51:32

That was philosopher Roman Kriznorik.

51:34

His book is called The

51:36

Good Ancestor, a radical prescription

51:39

for long-term thinking. You

51:41

can see his full talk at ted.com.

51:45

Thank you so much for listening

51:47

to our show this week about

51:49

future you. This episode was produced

51:51

by Andrea Gutierrez, Rachel Faulkner-White, Lane

51:53

Kaplan-Levinson, and Fiona Guiran. It was

51:55

edited by Sanaz Meschkin-Pour and the

51:57

Meet. Our production is available now.

52:00

The production staff at NPR also

52:02

includes Matthew Cloutier, James De

52:04

La Houssie, Harsha Nahada, and

52:06

Katie Monteleone. Beth Donovan is

52:08

our executive producer. Our audio

52:10

engineer was Ted Meebang. Our theme

52:12

music was written by Ramteen

52:15

Erablui. Our partners at TED

52:17

are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms,

52:19

Michelle Quint, Alejandra Salazar, and

52:21

Daniela Balarezo. I'm Manoush

52:23

Zamarodi, and you've been listening to the TED

52:26

Radio Hour from NPR. This

52:29

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