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I'm Manoush Zamorodi. And

0:56

I want to talk about a force

0:59

that is happening all around

1:01

us. And it's something that

1:03

we actually, we learn about in school.

1:05

Friction. Friction is the force

1:07

that opposes motion. So,

1:10

very much a basic physical concept.

1:13

Two things rubbing together. But

1:15

usually when we say there's friction, we're talking

1:18

about a conflict. Which can

1:20

make friction sound like a bad thing. Friction

1:23

very much has a bad

1:25

reputation. That's just the truth of the matter.

1:27

And it comes from the definition

1:30

itself. You know, resistance to motion.

1:33

This is Jennifer Vale. Maybe I should start

1:35

a campaign to try to raise

1:37

awareness or other fact that friction's a good thing.

1:39

It's the reason our cars don't slide off the

1:42

road. It's the reason we don't fall on our

1:44

face. We do need friction. Jennifer

1:47

is a friction expert. I

1:50

am a tribologist. Someone who studies wear

1:52

and friction of materials. And

1:55

if you've never heard of tribology, I hadn't.

1:57

The word tribology has the origin.

2:00

in the Greek word tribos, which is

2:02

rubbing or to rub. And

2:05

it is the science of interacting

2:07

surfaces in relative motion. We

2:09

look at wear, friction, lubrication. And

2:12

there are so many examples. Your

2:15

car tire rolling against

2:17

the ground is one. Or

2:20

your new sneakers hitting a basketball

2:22

court. The squeaky basketball shoes is

2:24

probably one of the best examples

2:27

of the sound that friction can make. Which

2:29

is what wears out the soles of your

2:31

shoes. Yes. And why

2:33

do certain fabrics like wool irritate our

2:35

skin? They cause more friction.

2:37

That was going to be my example.

2:39

But something like ice skating. That's low

2:41

friction. And if it's too low, you'll

2:43

lose your balance. Friction is one of

2:46

these things. It's always there. And we

2:48

deal with it all day long. But

2:51

we hardly notice friction unless

2:53

it's causing problems, like

2:56

a painful blister or tension

2:58

between friends. And there

3:00

are situations that could use more resistance,

3:02

where quick and seamless can

3:04

lead to trouble. So today

3:06

on the show, ideas about

3:09

friction. How this force

3:11

can be dialed up or down

3:13

to improve our lives. Because

3:16

tribologist Jennifer Vail says you want to

3:19

get it just right, even

3:21

on the smallest scale. Brushing

3:24

teeth, for example. For sure.

3:26

And I feel like I'm worried that

3:28

I'm doing the friction wrong all the

3:30

time. Because if you do it right,

3:32

you get rid of the germs. You

3:34

get rid of the plaque. But if

3:36

you do it wrong, you erode your

3:38

gums. It seems like a very fine

3:40

line with finding the right amount of

3:43

friction. Yeah, so this is another one

3:45

of these benign activities we always do

3:48

that is actually a pretty complicated friction

3:50

problem. The toothpaste and toothbrush

3:52

are working to remove or wear the plaque from

3:54

your teeth. Jennifer Vail continues

3:57

from the TED stage. You

3:59

have hard materials. Those will be your teeth. Soft

4:02

materials like your gums, the toothpaste, the

4:04

toothbrush. There's lubrication, the form

4:06

of saliva and water, the dynamics

4:08

of the person doing the brushing and more. I

4:12

promise, if we put diamonds in your toothpaste, you're

4:15

going to remove that plaque. Probably

4:17

going to remove your teeth as well. So

4:20

there's a fine balance to be had between wearing

4:22

the plaque away and not damaging your teeth and

4:24

gums. We all

4:26

brush our teeth on a regular basis. How

4:28

many of us brush our pets' teeth? Animals

4:32

as adults commonly get periodontal disease, so we

4:34

really should be brushing their teeth. So

4:36

what pet food suppliers are trying to do is

4:39

incorporate plaque removal in things like treats. If

4:42

you have a dog, you may have

4:44

observed that you give your dog a treat and it

4:46

magically seems to disappear after just one bite. So

4:49

the added challenge here is, how do you remove plaque when you

4:51

have one bite? I

4:54

developed a benchtop test to study this problem, and to do

4:56

so, I had to mimic the oral system of dogs. And

4:59

I used friction and wear measurements to study the

5:01

effectiveness of that treat on removing plaque.

5:06

All right, so how exactly do

5:09

you do this, Jennifer? What we

5:11

do is get a material that

5:13

mimics a tooth, and then we

5:15

also have the dog bone itself.

5:17

So we could see maybe different

5:19

recipes, even different shapes or roughness

5:21

of that treat, how that impacts

5:23

this. We would have a mimic

5:26

plaque on the tooth, and you

5:28

load these two samples together, and

5:30

you rub them back and forth at a

5:32

speed similar to what you do with a

5:34

chew. So we use something

5:36

called a tribometer, and the

5:39

tribometer itself will measure the force

5:41

of friction. So we can see

5:43

for our conditions what that force

5:45

is that's resisting the motion. And

5:47

what you can also do is measure where

5:50

and see the plaque removal. Can

5:52

you just describe for me what your lab

5:54

looks like? Because right now I have kind

5:56

of like a Willy Wonka-esque

5:58

vision in my mind. of like

6:01

lab tables with things that are

6:03

just rubbing against each other and

6:05

sort of like a kooky kind

6:07

of situation. But what is

6:09

the lab like? The lab is a

6:12

bunch of pieces of equipment rubbing things together.

6:14

That is exactly what a tribology lab is.

6:17

And each tribology lab will be a little bit

6:19

different depending what they're studying. So if we're talking

6:21

about a dog biscuit, we

6:23

want to start with your hypothesis and

6:25

designing your system. I think this is

6:27

going to be better at removing plaque.

6:29

You do the benchtop test that either

6:31

confirms it or sends you back to

6:33

the design table. And when you have

6:35

something that looks promising, then you

6:37

would go ahead and give that to the dog

6:39

and monitor the plaque over time in their mouth

6:41

and see, did it do what you thought it

6:44

was going to do? Huh. There

6:46

are so many applications. All right. Tell me, tell me

6:48

another project that you've worked on. My

6:50

PhD work was looking

6:53

more at syringes, which is

6:55

very topical nowadays. But

6:58

yeah, vaccines. Right. Exactly

7:00

with vaccines. And a lot of times when I tell people

7:02

that I was looking at syringes, they automatically assume I mean

7:04

the needle in the arm, which there

7:07

will be friction there. That is a problem to

7:09

look at. That wasn't what I looked at. I

7:11

was actually studying the stopper in a

7:14

syringe. And the

7:16

stopper is one of these things where you really

7:18

don't pay attention to it, but you would if

7:21

it wasn't doing its job. If friction was working

7:23

against you so much that that needle is having

7:26

to be pushed multiple times and

7:28

harder and harder because the stopper is

7:30

getting stuck, you would definitely know. Oh,

7:32

no. So, okay. So you

7:35

want there to be very little friction because you

7:37

want the vaccine to be delivered into a person's

7:39

arm very quickly. And smoothly. But the other trick

7:41

here is we have some syringes that we need

7:43

it to be smooth and quick. And

7:46

then there are some drip systems that are actually

7:48

really large syringes where there is a stopper and

7:50

it rotates really slowly. So these stoppers

7:52

cover the full spectrum of

7:55

different conditions. And it's critically

7:57

important that they seal the

7:59

vaccine. or whatever they're administering

8:02

to keep it sterile, to keep

8:04

it from getting contaminated, which causes

8:06

the problem with friction. And

8:08

so how do you execute that syringe down

8:10

the barrel so that it moves smoothly? And

8:12

when you think about it, it's

8:14

such a well-designed system because you have

8:16

not had to think about it before.

8:21

But what's the big deal with tribology? Let

8:25

me give you one more example. No

8:28

matter where you are right now, you got to

8:30

this location somehow. Maybe you walked or rode

8:32

your bike, but for most people in this room,

8:34

you probably came in a car. Just

8:37

think about all the tribological systems in a car.

8:40

You have your personal reactions with a car, the

8:42

car's interactions with the road, and everything under

8:44

the hood in the drive train. Did

8:46

you know that about one third of the fuel

8:49

that you put into your internal combustion engine vehicle

8:51

will be spent overcoming friction? One

8:54

third. Tribology research

8:57

has helped us reduce friction and therefore

8:59

increase fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. Holmberg

9:03

and Erdemar have actually done some great studies

9:05

showing the impact tribology research can have on

9:07

reducing our energy consumption. And they

9:10

found that looking over the span of 20 years,

9:12

we had the opportunity to reduce the

9:14

energy consumption of passenger vehicles up

9:17

to 60%. We think

9:19

about all the cars in the world, it's a lot

9:21

of energy we can save. It's

9:23

part of the nearly 9% of

9:26

our current global energy consumption

9:28

that the authors identified tribology

9:30

can help us save. This

9:33

is through new materials, new lubricants,

9:35

novel component design, doing

9:38

things like making wind turbines more efficient

9:40

and reliable. This

9:42

happened just by putting 31 people in a room

9:44

who viewed the world through a tribology lens. Energy

9:48

losses due to wear and friction can be

9:51

reduced by up to about 40%, which

9:54

would translate to over 8% of

9:57

global energy consumption. So there's a big.

10:00

opportunity here. And it all comes from

10:02

the fact that friction is a non

10:04

conservative force, it's dissipating energy, if we

10:07

can minimize it in these contacts

10:09

where we don't want it there, then

10:11

we can help conserve energy. And

10:14

that also translates to a mission.

10:16

So tribology turns out to be

10:18

a nice little toolset that we

10:20

have in our pockets for climate

10:22

change battles. It's

10:24

funny, because after talking to all these folks, I

10:27

feel like, you know, when you when you're pregnant, and

10:29

you look at you're like, oh my god, everyone's pregnant,

10:31

because you like, right, you see

10:33

it, you know, I feel like that

10:35

way with friction, like I can't do

10:38

anything now without thinking about it. That is

10:40

exactly what friction and tribology is. And I

10:42

always say it's a blessing and a curse.

10:44

And if I have to see it everywhere,

10:46

everyone else has to see it everywhere. It's

10:49

to the point, if something squeaks,

10:52

I will cringe a little bit. Or if

10:54

I hear, you know, someone riding a bicycle,

10:56

and I'm just like, Oh, you need to

10:58

use a different lubricant on that chain. But

11:00

it is everywhere. If I have to see

11:02

it everywhere, you have to see it everywhere.

11:05

But when that happens, when people

11:08

start seeing it everywhere, that's when the

11:10

innovation starts to come. That's when we

11:12

start having you know, that energy consumption

11:14

going down, because people are thinking about

11:16

it in this way. So

11:18

it's just a very sneaky thing that it has

11:20

a bad reputation. But I think we also need

11:23

to appreciate it. I think we need to reframe

11:25

it a little bit. Reducing energy

11:27

through friction is a great thing. But

11:29

we also need friction. I want my

11:31

car's brakes to work. I want my

11:33

shoes to have good traction. So

11:36

just recognizing it's there, and

11:39

thinking about how we coexist with it and use

11:41

it to our advantage, whether it's getting more of

11:43

it or reducing it. Well,

11:45

Jennifer, I hope that I provided the right

11:48

amount of friction in our conversation that I

11:50

smoothed the way to give answers but

11:53

pushed back just enough to make sure

11:55

that you clarified the work that you

11:57

do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank

12:00

you. I hope I didn't wear you out with

12:02

this conversation or rub you the wrong way. Beautiful.

12:07

The puns don't stop in tribology. They don't

12:09

stop, do they? My God. It's a slippery

12:12

slope. That's

12:14

tribologist Jennifer Vale. You can

12:16

watch her full talk at

12:18

ted.com. So

12:23

we just learned how friction affects us

12:25

in the physical world. But

12:27

what about the virtual? Coming

12:29

up, a conversation about adding a

12:31

lot more friction to our online

12:34

experience. We Americans have come

12:36

to expect that things are going to be easy and

12:39

free and convenient and

12:43

we don't want friction in our lives. We want

12:45

to be able to order dinner and have it

12:47

as our door as quickly as possible. It's what

12:49

we've come to expect. But

12:51

are we sure that's the best idea

12:53

when it also comes to political rhetoric,

12:56

to how we debate incredibly

12:58

important topics that matter

13:01

for our entire planet?

13:04

When we come back, Facebook

13:06

whistleblower Yael Eisenstadt tells her

13:08

story. On the show today, friction.

13:12

I'm Anush Zamerodi and you're listening to the

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at amazonbusiness.com It's

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the Ted Radio Hour from NPR.

15:26

I'm Manoush Zamorodi on the show

15:29

today. Friction in the

15:31

tech world. Entrepreneurs want as little

15:33

friction as possible in their products

15:36

so that we keep coming back.

15:39

We expect everything to be

15:41

first, fast, free and frictionless.

15:44

This is Yael Eisenstad. Yael

15:47

is an advocate for building slower

15:49

tech, for adding friction

15:51

to social media platforms to

15:53

keep misinformation from spreading. She

15:56

is also a Facebook whistleblower. I

15:59

first spoke to her in the comments. When

18:00

did you realize that this diplomacy, this

18:02

kind of friction, needed to be deployed

18:04

back home in the U.S.? When did

18:07

you start to see extremism

18:09

spreading here? Yeah,

18:12

so I left government in

18:14

late 2013, and my

18:16

goal at that point, I

18:19

always focused overseas. I think I had

18:22

taken for granted that we were

18:24

okay, that our democracy was secure,

18:26

we were okay at home. My

18:28

role was to focus on conflict

18:31

abroad, on threats coming in

18:33

from overseas. I didn't

18:35

really have my focus on the U.S.

18:38

And in 2015, just the way the

18:41

rhetoric was going, the way

18:43

people largely online, but

18:45

offline as well, were starting to

18:47

engage with each other, just

18:50

completely started paralleling things that I

18:52

had seen in my counter extremism

18:54

days and made me do a

18:57

complete 180 and focus all

19:00

my efforts on, oh my

19:02

gosh, what is happening in the U.S.? To

19:05

be clear, I don't mean that I feel

19:07

everyone should get along and have the same

19:09

political views and everyone should be polite to

19:11

each other. It's not that, but

19:13

there's a difference between disagreeing

19:17

over issues and just

19:19

fundamentally hating the person who has a

19:22

different opinion than you. And

19:24

so that's when I started digging in and

19:26

really trying to figure out what was that,

19:28

because I truly, truly believed that

19:31

we were becoming not only our worst

19:33

enemy, our own worst enemy, but

19:35

that we Americans were starting to

19:38

become radicalized in

19:40

some of the exact same steps

19:42

that I had seen in

19:45

different communities around the world, including the ones

19:47

that I had worked with along the Somalia

19:49

border. And so I

19:51

didn't have the answers. I didn't know what it was

19:53

about yet, but I knew something really

19:55

terrifying was starting to happen in the U.S. at

19:57

that point. How much did you

20:00

blame? social media or I don't know, Fox

20:02

News or where were you looking in terms

20:04

of the source of the problem? I mean,

20:07

sort of all of the

20:09

above. So yes, it

20:11

started with really looking at the news,

20:13

but then honing in more and more

20:15

on social media. And to be clear,

20:17

not because I think

20:20

social media is at fault for all

20:22

of our societal ills or for some

20:24

of the very real rifts

20:27

in American society, but

20:29

it did start to become more and more

20:31

clear that the way certain social media companies

20:34

were designed, they were

20:36

taking advantage of those rifts and

20:39

starting to monetize that

20:42

anger, that divisiveness. And

20:45

that's why I started getting really focused

20:47

on social media. One

20:50

of the problems you helped

20:52

identify and draw attention to was

20:55

that these platforms have a lack

20:57

of friction. There is

20:59

no spending hours drinking tea

21:01

and debating ideas online. These

21:04

companies help us share information

21:06

as easily and as fast

21:09

as possible to

21:11

the point where things, many say,

21:13

have spiraled out of control.

21:15

Yeah, absolutely. This is a

21:17

world optimized for frictionless virality.

21:20

And if you want to be

21:22

able to compete with the world

21:24

that our online ecosystem is created,

21:27

you have to be frictionless. And

21:29

we all know now that

21:32

companies like Facebook, for example, or

21:34

I guess we'll call them meta

21:36

now, their entire business

21:38

model is they want you

21:40

on their platform as long as

21:42

possible. And so constantly feeding

21:44

you content as quickly as possible

21:48

is part of how they do that. And

21:51

the idea of actually building a

21:53

system to help you slow down,

21:55

building a system with friction that

21:57

allows you to stop and question.

22:00

Am I sure this is even true?

22:02

Like that's what friction is. Friction is

22:04

these signals that helps you slow down

22:06

so that your brain can actually

22:09

process what it's receiving.

22:13

And that's not how these platforms are designed.

22:15

I mean, it's kind of antithetical to how

22:17

they make their money. Okay,

22:20

so here's the twist though, Yael. Here

22:22

is the twist to the story, to

22:24

your story. It's that here you

22:27

are, a Facebook critic, and then

22:29

you went to work at Facebook.

22:31

Yep. All right, before

22:33

you tell us what happened, just wanna mention

22:36

Facebook parent company, Meta, pays NPR

22:39

to license NPR content. Get that

22:41

disclosure out of the way. Tell

22:44

us what happened. So

22:46

I started speaking to more and

22:49

more audiences, especially of technologists. I

22:51

learned how is Facebook designed? How is it

22:54

incentivized? And the more I learned, the more

22:56

I started speaking about them and then they

22:58

called. What'd they say? I mean,

23:00

so this is where I like to

23:02

say they're very good at telling you what you need

23:04

to hear because

23:06

oh yeah, no, we need that. That's

23:09

exactly what we need. And

23:11

they started making me feel like they meant

23:13

it. And then on the

23:15

same day that Mark Zuckerberg testified in the

23:18

Senate, that famous hearing in 2018

23:20

about Cambridge Analytica, I

23:22

listened to the entire thing and heard Mark

23:25

Zuckerberg say over and over again, how

23:28

much he was gonna prioritize elections

23:30

integrity. And then a minute after

23:32

that hearing ends, they call me with an actual offer.

23:35

And the offer is to be their elections integrity

23:38

head in

23:42

what was called their business integrity

23:44

division, which it's the part

23:46

of Facebook that really works to

23:48

protect advertising, to

23:50

protect the things they monetize from

23:53

bad actors or from whatever it

23:55

is. So

23:58

I went in, I would say cautious. optimistic

24:01

that maybe this 2018

24:03

moment, Cambridge Analytica scandal, the

24:06

2016 elections, all of

24:08

that, maybe the company truly did

24:10

want to finally figure

24:12

out who do they want to be in

24:14

this space. This is not a company that's

24:17

just connecting friends or

24:19

just serving you cute cat

24:21

videos. This is a company

24:24

having a profound impact on

24:26

so-called public squares, on how

24:29

political engagement happens, on elections themselves. And

24:32

so I thought maybe this really is

24:34

a pivot point for them. So yeah,

24:36

how could I say no? Tell

24:39

me about day one or the first few

24:41

days. What do you remember of that time?

24:43

I mean the first few days were insane

24:45

to be frank. So day one, it really

24:47

did feel a little bit like a cult

24:49

and doctor nation. It was a lot of

24:51

like, you're the smartest in the world. The

24:53

only way you got hired by Facebook is

24:55

because you're the best, you're the brightest. Day

24:58

two, I had my first meeting with my

25:00

boss and my boss told me in that

25:02

very first meeting that they're changing my title,

25:04

they're gonna figure out my job description, and

25:06

now when I was

25:08

hired to be the global head of

25:10

elections integrity ops, yeah, we're

25:13

just gonna call you manager now until we figure out

25:15

what to really do with you. So what did you

25:17

do in those first few days?

25:19

Like did you start making trouble? Probably.

25:23

So you know, I did,

25:25

I started reaching out to

25:27

as many people as I could. I wanted to

25:29

understand why we would fact check certain

25:34

information on the newsfeed,

25:36

but why we're refusing to do the

25:38

same thing in advertising

25:41

and started posting questions about it. And

25:44

so my team put together this amazing

25:46

plan on how to at

25:48

the very least ensure that political advertising

25:50

was checked to make

25:52

sure it wasn't engaging in lies about

25:54

how to vote, where to vote, when

25:56

to vote, like your most basic online

25:59

voter suppression tax. And

26:02

when I sent that up the chain,

26:04

that we had a whole

26:06

plan. It was coordinated across multiple parts of

26:08

the company, that it wouldn't

26:10

be about censoring speech. It would be

26:13

very specific about voting information. And this

26:15

was, by the way, to protect the

26:17

US midterm election that was coming up.

26:20

I was pulled into a very senior

26:23

person's office. I was

26:25

yelled at that I made them look bad. I

26:28

was accused of all sorts of

26:30

things that really were shocking to

26:33

me. But what was it

26:35

that they disagreed with? I mean, the tools that

26:37

you were proposing, like what was it about them

26:39

that they didn't want to do? So there

26:42

are two things there. The first is what

26:44

they said, which was as

26:46

soon as we sent up this plan.

26:48

And again, it's a plan to basically

26:50

make sure that political advertising ahead

26:52

of the 2018 midterm elections

26:55

was not engaging in voter

26:57

suppression tactics. And

26:59

the first thing was, well,

27:02

what is the prevalence right now of that? Which is their

27:04

way of saying, is it a problem? My

27:07

response was, no, because political advertising hasn't started beefing

27:09

up yet for the 2018 election. What I'm doing

27:12

is helping anticipate a problem that's coming

27:15

so that we can stop it in

27:17

advance. Well, that's just not really

27:19

the Facebook way. Then back to the word friction.

27:21

What I was proposing is going to put friction

27:23

in the system. But after

27:25

everything, after Cambridge Analytica, after the

27:28

Russian interference in our election in

27:30

2016, you don't

27:33

recognize how important it is to

27:35

make sure you don't let your

27:37

platform be used in a way

27:39

to negatively affect our election. That

27:41

to me was shocking. So

27:44

that's one side of it. The other side

27:46

of it is a political decision. Fundamentally,

27:49

that moment was a political

27:51

decision on behalf of

27:54

Mark Zuckerberg and others at the top

27:57

to ensure that they

27:59

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35:20

It's the Ted Radio Hour from NPR I'm

35:23

Anoush Zamorodi on the show

35:25

today, Friction. And right now

35:27

I would like you to imagine

35:30

you are running

35:32

down a rocky hill in

35:34

a pair of shoes that are way too tight.

35:37

If it's too tight, then you're gonna hurt your

35:39

body from inside. Your toes and

35:41

all your legs are gonna be really painful.

35:44

Like it's gonna hurt, it's gonna lead to

35:46

blisters. You're gonna have blisters first of all.

35:48

You're gonna have all of these pains

35:52

internally. Okay,

35:54

so now imagine you're going down

35:56

this hill wearing shoes that are

35:58

way too big. If you're wearing

36:00

a big pair of shoes, then you're going

36:02

to break your skin from outside. Your

36:06

foot is just going to slide in and out. You're going

36:08

to get some cuts at the back of your foot. You're

36:10

going to get cuts in other parts, you

36:12

know, because it's not fitting well. This

36:16

is what everyday life can be like

36:18

if you wear a prosthetic leg. Lots

36:21

of pressure soles, lots of back pain

36:24

and hip pain. And it can be

36:26

hard to get a good fit. So

36:28

just walking, never mind running down a

36:30

hill, can lead to that pain.

36:34

Now prosthesis have several components.

36:37

The biggest problem that was affecting the

36:39

pain was on the socket, which is

36:41

the part that connects to the body.

36:44

The prosthetic socket has to be

36:47

perfectly fit for you to be

36:49

comfortable and for you to avoid

36:51

injuring yourself even more. This

36:54

is David Molina-Sengay. I

36:57

am sitting in my office in

36:59

New Englandville in Freetown Sierra Leone.

37:02

From that office, he serves as the

37:04

nation's education minister, as well as its

37:06

chief innovation officer. But before

37:08

joining the government, David spent years

37:11

in the U.S. researching and testing

37:13

ways to make better-fitting prostheses. And

37:16

what he discovered was that it all

37:18

came down to having just the right

37:20

amount of friction. So

37:23

there's a fine balance between

37:25

how friction plays here. You

37:28

want the friction, you want to

37:30

attach your prosthetic leg to your

37:33

biological leg to prevent

37:35

your leg going in and

37:37

out so loosely in the

37:39

socket. But you also don't want

37:41

it to be too tight because

37:43

then what's going to happen is you're just

37:46

going to have these internal

37:48

soft tissue stresses and strains. Having

37:52

this problem became a personal mission for

37:54

him. Here's David Sengay on the TED

37:56

stage. in

38:00

Sierra Leone, a small and

38:02

very beautiful country in West Africa. A

38:05

country reached both in physical resources

38:08

and creative talent. However,

38:11

Sierra Leone is infamous for a decade-long rebel

38:13

war in the 90s when entire

38:15

villages were burnt down. An estimated

38:18

8,000 men, women and children had

38:22

their arms and legs amputated during this time.

38:26

As my family and I ran for safety

38:28

when I was about 12 from

38:30

one of those attacks, I resolved that

38:33

I would do everything I could to

38:35

ensure that my own children will

38:37

not go through the same experiences we

38:40

had. The world in fact be

38:42

part of a Sierra Leone where war and

38:45

amputation were no longer a strategy

38:47

for gaining power. As

38:50

I watched people who I knew

38:52

loved ones recover from this devastation,

38:55

one thing that deeply troubled me was

38:58

that many of the amputees in the country

39:00

will not use their prosthesis. The

39:03

reason I'll come to find out was

39:06

that their prosthetic sockets were painful

39:08

because they did not fit well.

39:13

So David was this specifically a problem

39:15

in Sierra Leone or is this just

39:19

every person who wears a

39:21

prosthetic leg has to deal

39:23

with this, this pain that can come from

39:25

where the cup of

39:27

the prosthesis connects to the

39:30

body. So when

39:32

I started this I thought look this is the

39:34

Sierra Leone problem because that's what I knew and

39:37

then I went to the

39:40

US and I met Professor Hugh Herr. He's

39:42

a professor at MIT. He's

39:44

a double amputee himself and

39:47

here was a tenured

39:50

MIT professor with all kinds of

39:52

patterns and really brilliant and runs

39:54

his own lab. He's a double

39:57

amputee and he has the same

39:59

problem. as the people in Sierra Leone. And

40:03

he had a robotic ankle. Huh, so

40:05

even the state of the art prosthesis, he had the

40:07

same issue. Yeah, exactly. He

40:10

had powerful robotic ankles, but

40:13

he had the same pressure source and

40:15

his prosthetic socket sucked the same way

40:17

that other people's prosthetic sockets sucked. And

40:19

we connected on this. We connected

40:22

on the fact that this was

40:24

unacceptable and how was it

40:26

that it didn't matter whether you were

40:28

in free town and a kid

40:30

who was begging on the street or

40:32

you're a professor at MIT or

40:35

an ex-military person in the US,

40:37

you all had the same problem. So

40:41

you ended up going to MIT and

40:44

what did you say to your professor?

40:46

Did you say like, I

40:48

want to try and solve this problem with you?

40:50

How did you even begin to tackle it? So

40:53

when we were developing the technology in

40:55

2014, our thesis

40:58

was this. If you touch

41:00

the human body, it's made out of different

41:02

materials. The tissue, the fat,

41:04

the skin and the bone react

41:07

to these external pressures when you

41:09

walk or when you stand. So

41:12

we said, okay, if

41:14

the body is made up of

41:17

multi-material, then a

41:19

prosthetic interface, a socket, that

41:21

is also multi-material will minimize

41:24

the internal stresses and strains.

41:27

You essentially just want to have soft

41:29

where you need soft, but you also

41:31

want it to be structural. Hmm,

41:34

okay. So how do you

41:36

get a prosthetic leg to

41:38

be more human? So

41:41

just below your kneecap. If you

41:43

press below your kneecap, I'm doing it now. that

41:46

can take a lot of load on

41:48

that tendon. So we essentially drove a

41:50

lot of the pressures through that to

41:52

the patella tendon and then also to

41:54

the back of your leg because your

41:57

back of your leg has lots of

41:59

muscle. and we removed the

42:01

pressures from what we

42:03

call the fibular head. So on the outside

42:06

of your leg, just below the knee, if

42:08

you rub your hand down, you feel some

42:10

bones there. You see a really sharp bone.

42:12

Yep, yep, I found it. It's kind of knobby. Yes,

42:15

and that's the fibular head. Almost

42:17

every amputee will tell you that they have a

42:19

pressure sore there or pain or blister. It's a

42:21

worse place for them. And

42:24

so you essentially want that

42:27

to be super, super soft. And

42:30

then if you rub your hand on your shin, your

42:32

tibia, that has little

42:34

skin, right? So if you have friction

42:37

there, you're going to be in pain

42:39

all the time. So

42:42

just imagine then that the amputees

42:44

have most of their pain on

42:46

the fibular head and then on

42:48

the tibia and then under their

42:52

legs. And

42:55

so we were building these models that

42:57

will reduce pressures at those locations and

42:59

put it in other places where you

43:01

can take those pressures. I

43:05

use magnetic resonance imaging to capture

43:07

the actual shape of the patient's

43:10

anatomy, then use finite element

43:12

modeling to better predict the internal

43:14

stresses and strains on the normal

43:16

forces and then create

43:19

a prosthetic socket for manufacture. We

43:22

use a 3D printer to

43:25

create a multi-material prosthetic

43:27

socket, which relieves pressure

43:29

when needed on the anatomy of

43:31

the patient. You

43:33

know, when I watched your talk, you had

43:36

one of these sockets on stage with you.

43:38

And I was kind of surprised. It was

43:40

very beautiful. The one that you had was

43:42

rainbow colored. It almost looked like sand art.

43:45

It was pretty. I was

43:47

gorgeous. It was gorgeous. The

43:49

thing with the multi-material 3D printers is that

43:51

each material has different color and you can

43:53

choose. And I must say, I

43:56

knew I was going to pass my thesis when

43:59

my professor said. Oh, it's sexy.

44:01

And then he also said, it's

44:03

like walking on pillows. Oh. And

44:06

so I think if your professor

44:08

says it felt like walking on

44:10

pillows compared to what he had

44:13

and that it was sexy, then I think I was

44:15

like, okay, fine, I'll get this PhD. So

44:18

you have since returned home to Sierra

44:20

Leone. You are the country's

44:23

first chief innovation officer. More recently, you

44:25

were also appointed the minister of education.

44:28

It's impressive. I mean, my understanding though,

44:30

is that while you're no longer working

44:32

on the project, it is still up

44:34

and running. Yes. And it's very

44:36

interesting. I go to church and then Sunday,

44:39

this was past Sunday, this gentleman comes, I

44:41

don't know where he heard it from or

44:43

something, but he'd heard about the

44:46

bionics work and was like, oh, I'm so happy

44:48

that this is coming. I can't wait that I

44:50

can use my prosthetics here because

44:52

he was in pain and he was showing me

44:54

his pain. So it's even though they

44:57

know that I'm a minister and I'm

44:59

in education and CIO, you

45:01

still have lots of people who still come to me

45:03

to say, so these prosthetics work.

45:06

When am I going to use it? Oh,

45:08

they're excited about it. Okay. Yes,

45:10

absolutely. So what do you say to him?

45:12

Like if he's like, when am I going

45:14

to get it, minister? What do you say?

45:16

I say soon. I say, look, we're working

45:18

on it and it's really wonderful.

45:23

That's David Moina Senge. He is Sierra Leone's

45:26

chief innovation officer and minister of education. His book,

45:28

Radical Inclusion, will be out in 2023 and you

45:30

can see his full talk at ted.com. So

45:36

on this episode, we have heard about

45:38

all kinds of friction, but we can't talk about

45:41

friction without talking about relationships. And real quick, parents,

45:45

this last segment delves into some

45:47

more mature content with potentially offensive

45:50

language. So we want to

45:52

end our show with some ideas, even

45:54

some advice about how to deal with friction.