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-pop fans, are you ready? It's your boy

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isn't just a podcast. It's a

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K -pop experience. Are you in?

0:47

Let's go. In

0:50

a world of economic uncertainty

0:52

and workplace transformation, learn to lead

0:54

by example from visionary C -suite

0:57

executives like Shannon Schuyler of

0:59

PWC and Will Pearson of iHeart

1:01

Media. The good teacher

1:03

explains, the great teacher

1:05

inspires. Don't always leave

1:07

your team to do the work. That's

1:09

been the most important part of

1:11

how to lead by example. Listen

1:14

to, leading by example, executives

1:16

making an impact on the

1:18

iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or

1:20

wherever you get your podcasts. Hey,

1:24

I'm Dr. Maya Schunker. I host

1:26

a podcast called A Slight

1:28

Change of Plans that combines behavioral

1:30

science and storytelling to help

1:32

us navigate the big changes in

1:34

our lives. I get so

1:36

choked up because I feel like

1:38

your show and the conversations

1:40

are what the world needs, encouraging.

1:43

empowering counter -programming that acts

1:45

like a lighthouse when the

1:47

world feels dark. Listen

1:50

to a slight change of plans on

1:52

the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast,

1:54

or wherever you get your podcasts. There

2:04

are no girls on the internet as a production of

2:06

I Heart Radio and unbossed screen. I'm

2:12

Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the

2:14

Internet. I

2:17

am so excited about the upcoming season of

2:19

There Are No Girls on the Internet. And

2:21

season five is launching on May 13th. But

2:24

in the meantime, I wanted to share an

2:26

episode from our friends over at the podcast,

2:28

Ted Tech, hosted by Cheryl Dorsey. So

2:30

we've chosen a pair of episodes from Ted

2:32

Tech and There Are No Girls on the Internet

2:34

that address the same topic from two totally

2:36

different angles. The use of tech to preserve

2:38

the memory of someone who is no longer with us. Back

2:41

in March of 2022, we published

2:43

There Are No Girls on the Internet

2:45

episode where I talked to spirituality writer Brooke

2:47

Obey about a hologram of the late

2:49

Whitney Houston doing a residency in Las

2:51

Vegas. Too long didn't read. We thought

2:53

it was creepy AF. It

2:55

felt like this crass, capitalistic digital

2:57

neck romance. If you didn't

2:59

listen to it back then, I invite you to

3:02

listen to it after this. But in the TED Tech

3:04

episode that you're about to hear, you'll hear a

3:06

totally different perspective. Cartoonist Amy Kurzweil

3:08

talks about her own experience helping her

3:10

father train an AI chatbot to embody

3:12

a lost relative and unveil a family

3:14

history she never knew. The fact that

3:16

these two episodes are about such similar

3:18

topics but land in completely different places,

3:20

I find pretty interesting. And I think

3:22

it highlights the complicated ways that AI

3:24

is already changing our world. I

3:27

hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

3:29

And if you do, I invite you to check

3:31

out other TED Tech episodes. And of course, thanks

3:33

for listening to There Are No Girls on the

3:35

Internet. And I hope you're as excited as I

3:37

am about the launch of season five coming up

3:39

on May 13th. Art

3:44

and technology are constantly interacting

3:46

with each other, pushing the

3:48

boundaries of social expression and

3:50

human representation. Consider

3:53

the use of digital archives and

3:55

how that tech has evolved

3:57

our understanding of identity and legacy,

3:59

or the rise of AI as

4:01

an artistic assistant. limited

4:03

only by our imagination. By

4:06

blending artistic expression with

4:08

advanced technology, we can

4:10

begin to appreciate the vastness of

4:13

the human experience in ways

4:15

previously unimaginable. These innovations

4:17

invite us to rethink how we

4:19

preserve, interpret, and celebrate who

4:21

we are, both in the

4:23

present and for future generations. This

4:26

is TED Tech, a podcast

4:28

from the TED Audio Collective.

4:31

I'm your host, Cheryl Dorsey. Our

4:34

speaker today is Amy

4:37

Kurzweil, an American cartoonist and

4:39

writer. Amy's recent work

4:41

with AI and animated portraits

4:43

exemplifies how this tech has the

4:45

potential to capture not just

4:47

our likeness, but our essence, immortalizing

4:50

moments of humanity in new

4:52

and dynamic ways. But

4:55

before we dive in, a quick break

4:57

to hear from our sponsors. And

5:09

now, Amy Kurzweil takes

5:11

the TED stage. I love

5:13

being a cartoonist because I can

5:15

travel anywhere. I

5:17

can visit historical

5:20

artifacts and make improvements.

5:23

I can voyage to

5:25

mystical lands and

5:27

solve problems. I

5:29

can bring objects to life. And

5:32

I can make those objects

5:34

think and talk. and I

5:37

can send those objects wherever

5:39

I want them to go.

5:42

I became a cartoonist to travel through

5:44

space and time, and

5:46

I became a graphic memoirist because

5:48

the place I wanted to go

5:50

was the past. I

5:52

come from a legacy of dramatic

5:54

stories and lost characters. My

5:57

grandmother, Lily, on my mother's

5:59

side, born in Warsaw, Poland, the

6:01

oldest of four sisters. She

6:04

was 13 in 1939, when

6:06

Nazi bombs razed her home

6:08

and her family was sealed

6:10

to starve inside the Warsaw

6:12

Ghetto. Eventually,

6:14

her father encouraged her to slip through

6:16

a hole in the wall and she

6:18

survived the Holocaust on her own, hiding

6:20

her Jewish identity. This is the

6:22

subject of my first book. I

6:24

wondered, what did my

6:26

grandmother's lost home and lost family

6:29

look like? her parents, her grandmother

6:31

and her sisters. They are

6:33

all gone without a trace. My

6:36

father's parents were luckier. They

6:38

were also Jewish, and they both fled Austria

6:40

at the start of the war. My

6:43

father's father, Fred, was a

6:45

pianist and conductor. In

6:48

1937, the year before the

6:50

Nazis marched into Austria, he was

6:52

26, and he conducted a

6:54

magnificent choral concert at a music

6:56

hall in Vienna. A

6:59

wealthy American woman in the audience

7:01

was so impressed with his performance that

7:03

she later agreed to sponsor his

7:05

visa to the U .S. So

7:08

music saved his

7:10

life. But

7:12

three decades later, Fred

7:15

died of heart disease. I

7:17

never met him. While

7:19

alive, Fred meticulously preserved

7:22

the documents of his life,

7:24

a response to the threat of

7:26

erasure he fled in Europe,

7:28

And for decades after his father's

7:30

death, my father continued this

7:32

preservation project. This is the subject

7:34

of my second book. You

7:38

might know my father, Ray

7:40

Kurzweil, as an

7:42

inventor and futurist. You

7:44

should also know that he's a person with an

7:46

extraordinary sense of humor. And although

7:48

he's dedicated his mind to the

7:50

future, his life is full

7:52

of the past. My

7:54

father has worked for decades on

7:57

natural language processing, and several

7:59

years ago, he realized that if

8:01

we married AI with my grandfather's

8:03

writing, we could build a chatbot

8:05

that writes in my grandfather's voice. Back

8:08

in 2018, this

8:10

seemed very sci -fi. But,

8:14

um... Rather than ushering in

8:16

our demise, this project helped

8:18

me realize that AI could

8:20

actually help us ward off

8:23

annihilation by animating the legacies

8:25

of our families and our

8:27

cultures. I

8:29

wanted to talk to my

8:31

grandfather because he, like me,

8:33

was an artist. I

8:36

wondered, could I get to know

8:38

him? Could I even come to

8:40

love him, even though our lifespans

8:42

didn't overlap? So...

8:44

got involved. This

8:47

chatbot needed language from my grandfather,

8:49

as much as could be found,

8:51

so I, with some assistance, set

8:53

about finding his words and transcribing

8:55

them. This was a selective

8:57

chatbot, meaning it responded to questions

8:59

with answers from the pool of sentences

9:02

that Fred actually wrote at some

9:04

point in his life. The more examples

9:06

of Fred's writing we could find,

9:08

the more dynamic the experience of chatting

9:10

the bot would feel. Sometimes

9:12

this transcription task

9:14

proved challenging. But

9:17

the more time I spent

9:19

with the symbols of my grandfather's

9:21

life, the more easily

9:23

I could decode them. Finally,

9:28

after much anticipation, I

9:31

sat down to chat with

9:33

this new intelligence, an algorithm

9:35

commanding over 600 -typed pages

9:37

of letters, lectures, notes, essays

9:39

and other written documents from

9:41

the grandfather I never met. When

9:44

I asked about Fred's dreams,

9:46

he told me about the

9:48

challenge of keeping his new

9:50

orchestra afloat. When

9:53

I asked about Fred's anxieties,

9:55

I learned about the stress of

9:57

being a new father while

9:59

working so hard. When

10:01

I asked about the meaning of life, Fred

10:04

wrote about the joy of working with

10:06

other musicians in pursuit of beauty, and he

10:08

wrote about the highest aims of art. I

10:12

asked again about the meaning of life, because isn't

10:14

that really the best question for a robot? And

10:16

Fred's second answer was

10:18

much simpler, but even better.

10:22

Some of these answers felt familiar

10:24

to me. I remembered seeing them

10:26

in the archive, but the words

10:28

gained impact through surprise and the

10:30

roleplay of conversation. I

10:32

could identify patterns in my

10:34

grandfather's life and patterns across generations,

10:36

because I was also an

10:38

artist trying to make it in

10:40

New York City, and I

10:42

also believed the meaning of life

10:44

is art and connection and

10:46

love. I had wondered

10:49

if this project would feel like

10:51

a resurrection. But

10:53

rather than bringing my grandfather from

10:55

the past into the present, it

10:58

felt like I was the one time

11:00

traveling, visiting him for a moment at

11:02

different points in his life. And

11:04

this kind of time travel didn't feel

11:06

like sci -fi. It felt like

11:08

the kind of imaginative travel I do

11:10

when I'm cartooning. When

11:12

I'm cartooning, I'm always thinking

11:14

about how I could possibly represent

11:17

a person fully. And

11:19

the answer is, I

11:21

can't. Similarly, I

11:23

know how many aspects of my

11:25

grandfather can't be captured by digital text

11:27

alone. There's all those quivers in

11:30

his handwriting and what they denote about

11:32

the sensations in his body. There's

11:34

his body, how it moved and how

11:36

it felt. There's his music and

11:38

all the ineffable aspects of his performance.

11:41

And, of course, there's everything

11:43

he thought but didn't

11:46

write down. What

11:48

would we have to do to be able

11:50

to capture all of this? I

11:52

may fail as an artist

11:54

to fully represent a person's

11:57

constantly evolving complexity, but

11:59

I can ask what features of

12:01

a person are essential to who

12:03

they are across the lifetime. The

12:07

puzzle of personal identity is one of

12:09

our oldest philosophical questions, so I'm not here

12:11

to solve that one for you. I'm

12:13

just a cartoonist, after all. I

12:15

do believe that we are

12:17

more than our bodies. that

12:20

the projects and impressions we leave

12:22

behind are a part of our

12:24

essential selves, and I think AI

12:26

has a special role to play

12:28

in the mission of memory. I

12:31

did not come to see the

12:33

chatbot of my grandfather as replacing my

12:36

grandfather. I came to see it as

12:38

one way to interact with his legacy. As

12:41

somebody who has spent their whole

12:43

life trying to document people, I can

12:45

assure you that people are much

12:48

bigger and weirder than anyone depiction or

12:50

anyone moment in time can possibly

12:52

evoke. And

12:54

I can also assure you

12:56

that people don't just disappear

12:58

when they die. AI

13:01

swirls our conception of

13:03

time and space. It

13:05

can remix and extend our

13:07

identities. Our own digital

13:09

archives are growing beyond belief, and

13:11

we need a framework for

13:14

understanding technologies of representation. So

13:16

I offer you mine. Just

13:19

like the comics I've drawn

13:21

about the characters in my life,

13:24

these technologies are animated portraits. They

13:26

are one part of our true

13:28

immortal selves. Seen this way,

13:31

AI, like cartooning, and all

13:33

-good artistic endeavors could help

13:35

us appreciate the vastness

13:37

of humanity if we let

13:39

it. Thank you. That

13:44

was Amy Kurzweil at

13:47

TED 2024. Yo,

13:49

K -pop fans, it's your boy Beaumont,

13:51

and I'm bringing you something epic. Introducing

13:54

the K -factor. The

13:56

podcast that takes you straight into

13:58

the heart of K -pop. We're talking

14:01

music reviews, exclusive interviews, and deep

14:03

dives into the industry like never

14:05

before. From producers and choreographers to

14:07

idols and trainees, we're bringing you

14:09

the real stories behind the music

14:11

that you love. And

14:13

yeah, we're keeping it all hunted,

14:15

discussing everything from comebacks and concepts to

14:17

the mental health side of the

14:19

business. Because K -pop isn't just a

14:21

genre. It's a whole world. And

14:23

we're exploring every corner of it. And

14:26

here's the best part. Fans get

14:28

to call in, drop opinions, and even join

14:30

us live at events. You never know where

14:32

we might pop them next. So

14:35

listen to the K -Factor on the iHeart

14:37

Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get

14:39

your podcasts. This isn't just a

14:41

podcast. It's a movement. Are

14:43

you ready? Let's go. Run

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15:19

Hey, y 'all. If you're interested

15:21

in learning more about how technology and

15:23

the Internet of Things are shaping all

15:26

of our lives, I have a podcast

15:28

recommendation for you. It's called TED Tech,

15:30

and it's hosted by the wonderful Cheryl

15:32

Dorsey. She guides you through the latest

15:34

ideas from Ted speakers on covering how

15:36

tech is shaping our lives by influencing

15:38

our beauty standards, our memory, and even

15:40

our understanding of the universe. Tune

15:42

in to Ted Tech wherever you get your podcasts. We'll

15:46

return to your podcast in a moment. This

15:49

is Dave Kalen, Jimmy Jam, and

15:51

Kelsey Webb for us. Yep,

15:53

you have to listen to us. We have

15:55

a radio show on WNCI 97 .9, and

15:57

you must listen or we will steal

15:59

your car. Only if it's a Kia. Hey,

16:02

someone stole my daughter's Kia show.

16:04

Oh, sorry. Hurry up. They want to

16:06

get back to the podcast. Yeah, just listen to

16:08

our show every weekday morning on WNCI. And you can

16:10

also listen on the iHeart app at Dave and

16:12

Jimmy. We're not going to steal your car. And

16:16

that's it for today. TED Tech

16:18

is part of the TED Audio Collective. This

16:20

episode was produced by Nina Bird Lawrence,

16:23

edited by Alejandra Salazar, and

16:25

fact -checked by Julia Dickerson. Special

16:28

thanks to Maria Latias, Farah

16:30

DeGrange, Daniela Belarezzo,

16:33

and Roxanne Heilish. I'm

16:35

Cheryl Dorsey. Thanks for listening in.

16:55

Plus, you the fans, you're part of the show.

16:57

And you can get a chance to jump in,

16:59

share your opinions, and be part of the conversation

17:01

like never before. And trust me, you never

17:03

know where we might pop them next. So

17:05

listen to the K -Factor starting on April

17:07

16 on iHeartRadio App, Apple Podcast, or

17:09

wherever you get your podcasts. This isn't

17:11

just a podcast. It's a K -pop

17:14

experience. Are you in? Let's go. In

17:18

a world of economic uncertainty

17:20

and workplace transformation, learn to lead

17:22

by example from visionary C -suite

17:24

executives like Shannon Schuyler of

17:27

PWC and Will Pearson of iHeart

17:29

Media. The good teacher

17:31

explains, the great teacher

17:33

inspires. Don't always leave

17:35

your team to do the work. That's

17:37

been the most important part of

17:39

how to lead by example. Listen

17:42

to, leading by example, executives

17:44

making an impact on the iHeartRadio

17:46

app, Apple podcasts, or wherever

17:48

you get your podcasts. Hey,

17:51

I'm Dr. Maya Schunker. I

17:53

host a podcast called A Slight

17:55

Change of Plans that combines

17:57

behavioral science and storytelling to help

18:00

us navigate the big changes

18:02

in our lives. I get so

18:04

choked up because I feel

18:06

like your show and the conversations

18:08

are what the world needs,

18:10

encouraging, empowering, counter that

18:12

acts like a lighthouse

18:14

when the world feels

18:16

dark. Listen to a slight

18:18

change of plans on the iHeart Radio

18:20

app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you

18:22

get your podcasts. Hi.

18:27

I'm Sam Allens and got a

18:29

new podcast coming out called go

18:31

boy the gritty true story of

18:33

how one man fought his way

18:35

out of some of the darkest

18:37

places imaginable. Roger Karen was 16

18:39

first convicted. I spent 24 of

18:41

those years in jail. But when

18:43

Roger Caron picked up a pen

18:45

and paper, he went from an

18:47

ex -con to a literary darling.

18:49

From campsite media and I podcasts

18:51

listen to Go Boy on iHeart

18:53

app Apple podcasts or wherever you

18:55

get your podcasts.