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00:08Music
00:28The way humans make sense of the world is through stories.
00:32They help us figure out what happened in the past
00:35and give us a sense of place and community and belonging.
00:40They can totally expand our imagination and guide our future actions.
00:46There's a reason the hippocampus at the base of our brain
00:49is both responsible for emotions and memory and images,
00:53because the two work hand in hand to help us move throughout the world.
00:58This has been part of who we are,
01:00and most importantly, how we transmit knowledge from generation to generation.
01:04It's cold and growing colder as the world slowly dies.
01:10One in 12 people on the planet will contract the disease.
01:15Even if they discovered the cure for infertility, it doesn't matter. Too late.
01:21Here's the thing, almost every movie that takes place in the future is a story about the world gone bad.
01:29The future, the polar ice caps have melted, and the earth lies beneath a watery grave.
01:35This mad max way of thinking about tomorrow.
01:38A man reduced to a single instinct.
01:42Survive.
01:43What happens when all we see, all the stories of tomorrow are dystopian,
01:49you start forgetting what it is that you actually do want.
01:52Are the stories that we're putting out circumscribing and in some ways creating artificial boundaries
01:58in terms of what kind of futures and worlds that we want?
02:01Good morning. This is your wake-up call.
02:03Okay, let's go.
02:33I put the end of you, when someone could break your back
02:37I'm in your behind, you're always coming and you never have a clue
02:40And now I look behind all the lines
02:44I will wait forever, always looking straight
02:49Thinking, counting, all the odds you wait
03:09Alright, so we're going to spread this out
03:14And split it into four even pieces
03:18I know it's hard
03:19I feel like you're going to have to like
03:21Yeah, you're going to have to
03:21What do you mean?
03:24Yours is a little fat
03:26It's okay if you're doing too much
03:28Our lives are a collection of stories
03:30Stories about who we are, where we come from
03:34Stories that help us make sense of today
03:36And stories about what comes next
03:39But how do our stories about the past shape our future?
03:43What stories do we need to hold on to?
03:46And which ones should we leave behind?
03:48What stories will lead us to create better tomorrows
03:51For our kids and grandkids?
03:53And which ones are simply holding us back?
03:55There you go, all right
03:57Wherever I go, I always enjoy talking to people about the stories they love
04:01And today, stopping by my son's classroom
04:04I'm reminded just how foundational these stories really are
04:08I wanted to introduce you guys to my friend Ari
04:10I love your purple shoes
04:11Oh, thank you
04:12You're welcome
04:13Here's a question
04:14Who here likes to watch movies?
04:17Raise your hand
04:18Okay, all right
04:20I'm just
04:21What's a movie that you saw lately that you really liked?
04:25It's Lyle Lyle Crocodile
04:26Lyle Lyle Crocodile
04:27Harry Potter
04:28Harry Potter
04:28Um, I watched It
04:30You watched It?
04:31Oh my gosh
04:32I don't see like WALL-E
04:34Because it shows like emotion in a robot
04:39Which is kind of like AI
04:40What do you love about movies?
04:43Yes
04:44I like how they're scary
04:46The actors show feelings
04:49Sometimes they're very sad and I cry
04:51What makes a great story?
04:55Yes
04:56The emotion
04:58The connection to reality
05:00Charlotte
05:01Um, like if it has a good plot
05:04And there are things that like change it up in the story
05:07And it's not just one thing
05:09Where you can predict what's gonna happen
05:11Beautiful
05:11When you think about a movie that takes place in the future
05:15What does it have to have in it for it to be a great movie?
05:19Um, I kind of think if I was making a movie in the future
05:22I would kind of, um, add, like, things that we're planning on trying to make
05:29Like what?
05:31Like flying cars
05:32Flying cars
05:35Get in
05:35Let's play it hard
05:39Hold on, Anakin
05:40Hold on
05:45Nice shot, Doc
05:47Stories are the shortcut we use to navigate the world
05:52And the world is just too complicated to understand
05:55There's too much data coming at us
05:57And we can't notice and process all that data
06:01The human mind does not have that capacity
06:04So we need shortcuts
06:06We need to be able to make leaps over the data
06:08And we say, what am I broadly seeing here?
06:10How can I make sense of this?
06:13And the story is what makes sense of it
06:16There's a quote by Alistair McIntyre
06:18The great Catholic philosopher at Notre Dame University
06:20Who says, I cannot tell you who I am
06:23Or what I'm going to do
06:25Until I tell you the story or stories that I'm a part of
06:30All of us believe in a certain kind of the future
06:34That seems almost inevitable
06:37And actually, if we interrogate that
06:40If we trace that thread back
06:42The origins of those are in the first few
06:46Very attractive, shiny images of the future
06:49That we witnessed, that we consumed
06:52And somehow, they end up shaping the boundary
06:56Or the contours of what we think it's going to look like
06:59But who owns those images of the future?
07:03Who shaped them?
07:05Who's missing from the story?
07:07And why?
07:14For years, Hollywood has attracted the best and brightest storytellers
07:19Yet only recently have we begun to understand
07:21Just how limited our stories have been
07:23In large part, because of who's been able to tell them
07:27But what would it look like
07:29If more people began to see themselves as storytellers
07:31Helping to shape new narratives
07:33New futures they can actually see themselves in
07:37That's led me here to meet Raphael Augustine
07:40An award-winning screenwriter and author
07:43Focused on broadening the boundaries of what stories are told
07:46And who gets to tell them
07:49Tell me a little bit more about you
07:51It's like a first date, right?
07:53So, like, we just sat down
07:54Scorpio, long walks on the beach
07:55Long walks on the beach
07:56I just ordered two glasses of Pinot Noir
07:57And we're going to know each other
07:59All right, so, born in Ecuador, South America
08:02Came to the United States when I was, like, seven years old
08:05And it wasn't until high school
08:07When I applied to go to college
08:08And I applied to get my driver's license
08:10That I discovered that we were undocumented
08:12Growing up until that point
08:14Did you feel different anyway?
08:16Did you always feel kind of aligned
08:17Within the communities that you were in?
08:19The funny thing is, in Ecuador
08:21We watched a lot of American movies
08:25And TV shows and pop culture
08:26Hollywood is the greatest export we have
08:32And not only me, I think it's influenced an entire globe
08:35I remember, well, the first movies that I fell in love with
08:38Was, like, this
08:39I don't want to say bad, because I loved it
08:41But it was a B-action movie called American Ninja
08:43Yeah
08:44Which starred
08:45I've watched all three American Ninjas
08:46Very influential
08:47So you already know how important this movie is
08:49It's extremely important on many levels
08:51But I'll let you go into why
08:52Heartthrob Michael Dudikoff changed my life
08:54Because since that moment
08:56I wanted to be only two things in my life
08:59One was a ninja
09:00And the other one was American
09:02I get to public school in the United States
09:05When I show up to my first day of class
09:07And I'm like, wait a minute
09:08What are all these, like, Asian American kids?
09:10What are all these African American kids?
09:12This doesn't look like the movies I watch
09:14There's too much diversity
09:15And then I saw, like, the Mexican American
09:17And Central American kids
09:19And realized I look more like them
09:21Than the white kids
09:22And then, so I was, like, seven years old
09:25When I realized, oh my god, I'm not white
09:28Raphael fell in love with storytelling at an early age
09:31But after only seeing his community represented by cliché stereotypes
09:34He decided to write himself into a future he didn't see around him
09:38First as a screenwriter
09:40And now by enabling others to do the same thing for themselves
09:44Scene five, cat, take two
09:47Filmmaking has been around
09:48So what we do is not, like, revolutionary
09:51It's the age that we do it at
09:53And the communities that we do it at
09:55That is so revolutionary
09:57We essentially bring filmmaking mentors
10:00Into the classroom twice a week
10:01For 90-minute blocks
10:03For an entire school year
10:04So we guide the students through the filmmaking process
10:07From the development of a concept
10:09All the way into their premieres
10:12And we have their premieres
10:13At the Los Angeles Latino International Film Festival
10:18If every student learns
10:21Not only that they can tell their story
10:23But that they should
10:24What kind of self-advocacy and self-respect is built into them
10:30How empowered are they when they realize
10:33That they can't actually tell their own stories
10:35That's what's so critical about the work
10:38It's the social-emotional empowerment that's being built
10:43I went to a historically marginalized, low-performing school
10:47And I watched 9- and 10-year-olds look like me
10:51Do the work that I couldn't do
10:53And I nearly started crying
10:55So tell me what it starts to look like on the other side
10:59I think the stories that we tell are going to be limitless
11:03I think our imagination is going to be even more exciting
11:07Because we're seeing one another for the first time
11:10And we're seeing each other's humanities finally
11:19We have an amazing opportunity in this moment
11:21To rewrite the stories that define our time
11:24To be so much bigger and more inclusive
11:26For the world we actually live in
11:27And the one we want to create
11:30But who wrote the stories that came before us?
11:32And how far back does this essential human trait of storytelling really go?
11:38That's led me to Spain
11:39I'm here to visit the Cave of Ardales
11:41Where until recently
11:42It was believed to contain some of the world's oldest recordings ever made by humans
11:47Thanks to a new discovery here
11:50Some of the markings in this cave now date back much, much further
11:54¿Dónde estamos ahora?
11:56Estamos ahora en la Cueva de Ardales
11:58Ok
11:58Es una gran cavidad natural
12:01Que tiene millones de años
12:03Y que contuvo los restos y aquà vivieron
12:07Tanto los últimos neardentales como los primeros homo sapiens que llegaron a Europa
12:13Pedro led me further into the cave
12:15Explaining that while animal bones were discovered outside
12:18Human bones were buried deep inside the heart of the cave
12:22They believe these early burial sites were a way of marking this cave as belonging to a clan
12:26And connecting them to their ancestors who came before
12:30But the most amazing thing
12:32Is the discovery of markings on the walls
12:34That point to the very earliest forms of communication
12:39Estas marcas se conocÃan desde hace muchos años
12:43Pero no sabÃamos la antigüedad de la realización
12:47Están realizadas siempre con óxido de hierro
12:51Siempre son marcas probablemente horizontales hechas con los dedos
12:57Pero no lo sabemos
12:58Es un código que no sabemos
12:59No hay Google para eso
13:00No, no, no
13:01Es una información que siempre repiten de la misma forma
13:05Con los dedos
13:06Cada vez
13:07Cada vez
13:08Y al final de la cueva siempre con puntuaciones realizadas por pequeños, por adolescentes
13:15Siempre empieza igual y más o menos siempre termina igual
13:19Cuando en 2018 hicimos los análisis cronológicos
13:24Fue una gran sorpresa
13:26Las fechas se remontaron
13:28Llegaron hasta 65.000 años
13:3165.000 años
13:33No es la época de los homo sapiens
13:36Es la época de los neandertales
13:38Y eso es lo que convierte a este lugar de la cueva
13:41En uno de los sitios pintados más antiguos del mundo
13:45Es arte, pero también es información
13:48Claro
13:48Porque nosotros creemos
13:51What began as information
13:53Ways to communicate threats or danger
13:55Soon gave way to myth-making
13:58Art, early religion
14:00And the very first recorded human stories
14:13Over the many centuries since
14:15Our methods of storytelling have continued to evolve
14:18But the primal importance they serve to our sense of knowing who we are
14:23Where we belong
14:24And where we are going
14:26Is as strong now as it's ever been
14:30In Los Angeles
14:31A team of artists and engineers
14:33Are continuing to push these methods forward
14:35Using AI-enhanced gaming engines
14:38To create the digital worlds of tomorrow
14:40We are at Lux
14:43Lux is one of the frontrunners
14:45In LED volume virtual production
14:48They were early developers
14:49Early adopters
14:50In this tech
14:51In this information
14:53What exactly is this?
14:55So this is called an LED volume
14:57These are all motion capture cameras
14:59That are used to track that camera in 3D space
15:02It's projecting in a 3D environment
15:05From a video game engine
15:07Give me an idea of how you actually use this
15:09A good use case
15:11Mandalorian was a huge one
15:12That kind of brought it to the world
15:14But there's been versions of this
15:16For the last 90 years
15:18Back in 1930
15:19They started using rear projection
15:21Just Imagine and Lilium were the big ones
15:25Just imagine the New York of 1980s
15:29They just started pushing it forward
15:30And those were called motion special effects
15:33At that time
15:34From that process
15:35They kept iterating on it
15:37Now, instead of shooting on a blue screen
15:39You have that environment
15:40That you can see in camera
15:42So it limits the compositing
15:43It limits all of those things
15:44That you need to do in post-production
15:45So what this does is
15:47You have unbelievable flexibility
15:48You're able to change this
15:49In a matter of seconds
15:50Absolutely
15:51We can do a time of day change
15:52And we can make it early morning
15:54Dusk
15:56And there we are
15:57So now it's dusk?
15:58Yep
15:59You can put crews
16:00In a different location at any time
16:03You can also shoot in this all day long
16:05And that's the beauty of it
16:08When you were growing up
16:09You obviously, you know
16:10Went to the movies like most of us
16:11But then something clicked
16:13What was it that drew you in?
16:15What was the thing that caused you
16:16To kind of fall in love?
16:17I was always a big fan of the underdog story
16:20That was my thing
16:21You know, Sandlot and Rudy
16:23Since when are you the quitting kind?
16:25Rudy!
16:26There's something about good storytelling
16:28That connects with the soul
16:30There's nothing that moves you as a human
16:32As much as storytelling
16:33And it goes back in history
16:34Thousands of years
16:35It's to help unlock and understand
16:37The expression of emotions
16:40And those are the things that open us up
16:43As humans
16:43All day long
16:44Film races through the camera
16:46At 90 feet a minute
16:47In scene after scene
16:48You know, in the beginning
16:49You had directors and directors of photography
16:52That are finding new ways to tell the story
16:54Finding new ways to immerse the audience
16:57We configured the water box
16:58So it was easy to get the water lapping the lens
17:01I really wanted this movie to be just at water level
17:03The way we are when we're treading water
17:06We go from black and white to color
17:08We go from no sound to sound
17:09If I'm a success in this show
17:11Well, we're going to move from here
17:12We'll have to think of something else
17:15And we start to see all these things build up
17:18To create what we know today
17:19And so that's what we're seeing now
17:21Is all these tools are kind of working together
17:22And expanding this universe of content creation
17:27With the adoption of game engines
17:29I think there's going to be a wide adoption
17:31Of the technology advances
17:32And giving opportunities for people
17:35To explore these worlds
17:36And that makes it immersive
17:38How might AI change storytelling as we know it?
17:42I think you can look at AI in storytelling as jet fuel
17:46It's something that can boost you
17:48To another level of creative thinking
17:50It unlocks potential
17:52We're now not thinking in this little box
17:54But we're seeing what happens when you combine
17:56All these different things that have been made over time
17:58And put it into your story
18:00So it is actually tracking
18:02As these tools continue to extend our capacity
18:05To create new worlds
18:06And immerse ourselves in alternate realities
18:09The question of what kind of worlds we choose to build
18:12What visions of tomorrow we show ourselves
18:14Is more important than ever
18:17Because stories don't just entertain or inspire us
18:20They create the basis for what we see as possible moving forward
18:24The mere act of people coming together
18:29And imagining the future
18:32That looks different from the conditions that they are born in
18:37Is a deeply political act
18:40It questions the inherent biases
18:43And power imbalances
18:46That define the systems that govern our lives
18:49When you open up the future
18:52As a thing that we can all imagine and construct
18:56Differently
18:58You're essentially putting a lot of power
19:01And agency in the hands of people
19:04Who are in the traditional system
19:07Completely left out of the equation
19:18One of the dangerous things about the stories we're born into
19:21Is that we often don't see them as stories at all
19:25Decisions people made
19:26Long before we got here
19:27Can make the world as it is today seem certain
19:30Even inevitable
19:32But what stories have we taken for granted today
19:35That are holding us back from building better tomorrows
19:38And what does it mean to examine these stories from new perspectives
19:43I came to Chicago to meet Yatasha Womack
19:46A world-renowned author
19:48Afrofuturist and dancer
19:50Working to challenge our relationship to the past
19:52As well as to the futures we can create
19:57So Yatasha, a lot of your work takes place
19:59In this space called Afrofuturism
20:01What does that mean?
20:03Afrofuturism is a way of looking at futures
20:06Or alternate realities
20:07But you're doing so through these black cultural lenses
20:12It's both an aesthetic
20:14You've seen a lot of the space imagery
20:16Reflected in our architecture
20:18Dance, music, storytelling
20:22How people gather
20:23It's also a perspective
20:26A way of knowing oneself
20:28And it's I think a good way
20:31To facilitate healing for people who have issues around the imagination
20:36It's very different than how we tell stories
20:38Like in the West
20:40Sometimes I see stories where they act as if
20:42In order to have a new beginning
20:44You have to have this incredible apocalypse
20:46And begin anew
20:48A lot of Afrofuturists kind of acknowledge
20:51That some of those apocalyptic things have already happened
20:55When you think about moments like the transatlantic slave trade
20:59Colonialism
21:01People had to think about liberating themselves
21:05Or think about claiming their own humanity
21:08We're all kind of an intersection of these histories
21:11And decisions that a lot of people made before we even showed up
21:17There's certain philosophies and ideas that shape us
21:21But it's not about them
21:23It's about you
21:24And the decisions you're going to make now
21:27And the kind of future, you know, that you ultimately want
21:32Thank you for being here and coming out today
21:36The purpose of this class is to think about our futures
21:41Think about our relationships to dance
21:45And become these joy generators
21:48Yatasha uses the ideas of Afrofuturism in her love of dance
21:52To help people come to see themselves as a part of creating better futures
21:56Bigger than and beyond their personal past
22:00She believes that our own stories
22:02Often formed by the stories we are told
22:04Too often hold us back from the futures we want to see unfold
22:08So what we're going to do quickly
22:10I'm going to give you each a sheet of paper
22:12I want you to think about the things that you want
22:17In your life, in your personal futures
22:21And just stop them now
22:23It's fun to challenge ourselves to think of other kinds of worlds
22:28If you're a person of African descent
22:30You're navigating society
22:32You contend with perspectives about who people feel you are
22:37You contend with perspectives of where they think you came from
22:43Perspectives of what people feel you can achieve or not achieve
22:48Where being yourself, you're told that that's problematic
22:53There are people who turn to dance
22:56As that space of resilience
22:59It's a little moment where you escape
23:03And it shifts your perspective enough
23:06Maybe to come out of it and see things a little differently
23:11There are people who turn to dance
23:22There are people who turn to dance
23:24There are people who turn to dance
23:24There are people who turn to dance
23:25There are people who turn to dance
23:26There are people who turn to dance
23:28There are people who turn to dance
23:29There are people who turn to dance
23:29There are people who turn to dance
23:30There are people who turn to dance
23:31There are people who turn to dance
23:32There are people who turn to dance
23:34There are people who turn to dance
23:36There are people who turn to dance
23:41what's your hope in terms of the impact how does it start to change things and what do you want
23:46to see it do in the world there are things in our society that say oh that's not a story
23:50to tell
23:51or oh that story doesn't fit so i think for some people you know you have to almost reimagine
23:58a past to connect with the past that you hadn't been told about and then you have to also imagine
24:05a future the more we engage with that the more we can sort of create futures together that benefit
24:13humanity imagining a future doesn't just happen on an individual level and what begins is simply a
24:23story can often go on to inform the kind of world we choose to create
24:37gateway to the 155 million dollar wonderland from far and near come countless visitors by every mode of
24:46travel every means of transportation they arrive to view the marvels of the greatest exposition in
24:51history so in 1939 at the world's fair general motors sponsored what was probably the most amazing
24:59and biggest exhibit in world's fair history futurama outstanding exhibits by leaders of the auto
25:05industry sensational is the futurama that projects you into 1960. now when you went to go visit
25:13futurama you saw scenes of the future an automobile whose body is made of a transparent plastic is a
25:19surefire attraction for the mechanically minded of kitchens and family rooms and the workplace and of
25:24parks and buildings where they basically laid out what the future would be this world of tomorrow is a
25:31world of beauty below us lies a superb one direction highway bearing streams of traffic at varying speeds
25:36in separate lanes now there's one thing in this exhibit that in hindsight is totally obvious
25:42everywhere you went in the futurama exhibit there was a four or an eight lane highway so embedded
25:48within the story of the future was a lot of cars now that totally made sense it was general motors
25:55exhibit
25:55after all but it allows us to see the power of stories dictating what you think is a normal progress
26:02or a
26:02normal way of being unfortunately when it comes to the future i think most of the discourse and stories are
26:11ones
26:11that inspired fear and the problem with fear is that it prohibits transformative action and so our capacity to
26:24imagine anything beyond what keeps us safe and what we're familiar with is extremely diminished it locks us
26:33in the short term hope inspires action we urgently need more stories that can bring us to that mind space
26:45when i think of the future there are so many forks in the road there are so many good paths
26:51we could take
26:52so many bad paths we could commit ourselves to extinction or we could commit ourselves to an ecological civilization
27:01one in which human beings can continue to thrive while the living planet is allowed to sustain itself
27:08and we have all the tools necessary to do that
27:16when it comes to the biggest stories of our time
27:18the challenge we face is in finding ways to communicate that can cut through the differences
27:23that divide us in a moment when these divides seem to only be growing the role of storytelling
27:30is more important than ever i came to texas to meet katherine hayhoe an evangelical christian and
27:37climate scientist who's focused on building bridges to change the story around climate action to be a whole
27:43a lot bigger and more inclusive than the one we've been telling according to pew research the united
27:48states is more politically divided today than it's been since the civil war our political ideology is
27:56often the number one predictor of what we hold as our identity and in this type of divisiveness what
28:03we see is that people start to view others who vote differently themselves as not even human as enemies
28:10rather than fellow citizens so how do we start bridging these divides that are tearing our country
28:17apart only if we start with what we have in common not if we begin with what divides us and
28:22storytelling
28:23is a huge part of that so neuroscientists have found that when we tell a story that people's brainwaves
28:28actually synchronize with each other and we empathize much more strongly because we can see
28:32ourselves in that situation in that story katherine spends a lot of her time these days speaking to
28:39people who don't traditionally see themselves as a part of the climate movement for her it's about
28:44telling a story that people can actually see themselves in all of us almost all of us i should
28:50say have two big problems when it comes to climate change we don't understand why it matters to me here
28:56and now and we don't know what we can do to fix it or we think we do know and
29:01we don't want to do it
29:02we've been told that all climate solutions involve loss sacrifice suffering something being taken away
29:10from us rather than gaining anything and our human brains are wired to be more fearful of loss than we
29:18appreciate gain and so we're working against the wiring of our brains we need the best choice to also be
29:25the easiest choice and the most affordable choice the default choice the natural choice and to make
29:31that happen we need system change the story we're missing is that of a better future climate change
29:40stands between us and a better future it's not just about avoiding the apocalypse it's about
29:46implementing changes that will clean up our air and our water and give us a safer place to live
29:51and ensure abundant food for all and improve our health and give us that safe world that we all
29:56want if we don't visualize and imagine and tell ourselves stories of what we want that world to
30:01look like how are we ever going to get there one story we tell ourselves which is perhaps the biggest
30:08fairy tale of all is the story of infinite growth on a finite planet that we can just keep growing
30:16and
30:16growing and growing the economy and somehow the world will accommodate that and people say we're
30:22not asking for the earth we only want three percent growth a year well three percent growth means a
30:29doubling of all economic activity every 24 years so in the whole of human history that then gets doubled
30:39then 24 years later it gets doubled again and again and again but of course we very quickly start to
30:47bump
30:47into environmental limits
30:56these limits raise all kinds of questions about the stories on which much of the modern world has been
31:01built and as it becomes clear just how unsustainable this all really is what kind of alternative story can
31:07we begin writing in this moment that's led me to london where a former sailor turned economist
31:13named ellen macarthur is working to prove that a new story is not only needed but possible
31:20take me on the journey from a world record holding sailor to circular economics how did you get to this
31:28point first of all i never thought i would be at this point you know when i sailed when i
31:32was four
31:32years old that was all i ever wanted to do i love being at sea i love watching all around
31:37me i love
31:38being connected to everything around me and it was like a drug i just wanted to do more and more
31:42and that very quickly actually led me to sail around the world for the first time when i was 23
31:47years
31:47old i'm looking forward to getting out there on my own and it's been a great year racing with a
31:52crew
31:52and also racing on different boats but no i still love sailing on my own this is a massive challenge
31:57this is the ultimate record the fastest around the world record when you sail around the world on a
32:01boat you take with you what you need for your survival for three months and when you start you
32:06watch those resources go down every single day there is no more what you have is all you have and
32:12you
32:12develop this overwhelming understanding of what it is to have finite resources you know what it means
32:17to have no more and i suddenly translated that to the global economy we tend to take something out
32:23to the ground make something out of it and then throw it away so that needs a continuous flow of
32:28resources
32:29that can't run in the long term when we have a growing world population and a growing economy
32:34the more i thought about it the more i was fascinated by it i asked a lot of really dumb
32:39questions to lots and lots of people in the early days just saying so how does this work and
32:43what's the solution what place are we trying to get to if we know we can't do this then we
32:48need
32:48to do something different so what is that thing i don't think linear economics ever happened
32:52because people were trying to use up all our resources it was a natural progression from
32:57the industrial revolution now we know in order to satisfy the needs of ourselves today and in the
33:02future the whole economy has to operate in that circular way what is circular economics if you think
33:08about that linear straight line if you by design turn that straight line into a circle then you look
33:15at eliminating waste and pollution you circulate products materials and you regenerate natural systems so
33:20it's not something you think about at the end but as you build the economy you design that into the
33:25economy so that it can run in the long term some of the best circular examples are carpet manufacturers
33:30they were completely tied to buying new raw materials to make their carpets with and those prices were
33:35going up and up and up and they said why do we need to buy new raw materials when we
33:39can design our
33:39carpet in a circular way so they redesigned the carpet they designed it so the base could be melted down
33:44and
33:45turned into the base of the next carpet the yarn could be extracted respond turned into the yarn of the
33:50next
33:50carpet and actually they offered it not to be sold but leased so when those trucks come in to make
33:55the carpet rather than being filled with raw materials from a mine or from an oil well they're
34:00your carpets coming back in to be reprocessed and you design them so you know what sits in them and
34:04you design them so you know how to get that out of it and that would be that perfect circular
34:07example
34:08what are some of the challenges facing us in shifting from linear to circular economics i'd say one of the
34:16biggest challenges is mindset because we've all come through a linear education system and we've
34:22inherited a linear economy it's easy to get buried in the problem but we need to lift our heads out
34:28of
34:28the sand and say where are we going where do we want to get to because life is about opportunity
34:33life
34:34is about those goals you want to know what you can do and you want to be part of that
34:43i really do believe we all want to be a part of the solution but it can be hard to
34:48know where
34:48to begin but what happens when we start to see problems as opportunities old stories waiting to
34:54be rewritten in san diego lou cooper house is using his love of seafood to create new forms of cell
35:01-based
35:01fish as one way of helping to build a more sustainable relationship with the natural world
35:07we're we're right on the coast so in theory we just go out in some boats and catch a bunch
35:11of
35:11fish and bring it in why why do it this way san diego is actually considered at one time the
35:16tuna
35:16capital of the world up out of the hole come the tuna by the crateful on their way to make
35:21a lot of
35:22tasty tuna dishes during the 30s and 40s much seafood was in fact called off these coasts what's
35:28happened in the last 100 years or so is the total supply chain of seafood has been really compromised
35:33we have an issue with microplastics and toxins and pollutants and mercury wild capture fisheries
35:39have been flat for three to four decades and many fishing communities around the world really rely on
35:44fishing as a means of their economic growth and prosperity so we need a new solution to feed the
35:49planet so give me a sense of how this actually works right you're basically growing fish so from an
35:56individual fish we are isolating the muscle the fat or the connective tissue cells and we're growing
36:02those cells in large volumes what looks like a stainless steel vessel in a microbrewery welcome to
36:08the blue nalu labs this is where we do a lot of the research so once you find like your
36:14your perfect tuna
36:16cell you just keep making more of them exactly so once you have the cells you don't have to go
36:22back
36:22to the animal they divide continuously they're actually in the food safe cell culture media and
36:28we don't have to use any animal components in nature bluefin tuna has a 20 to 50 fat content that
36:37really is the target for us to get that nice buttery mouth feel that melt in your mouth texture
36:42that's very important from a sensory perspective
36:48the supply of seafood is so fragmented so fragile so vulnerable in fact even america we're importing 70
36:55to 85 percent of our seafood so what we're able to create in the future is a secure supply of
37:01seafood
37:01made locally this is just a unique opportunity in my life really in anybody's life to do something
37:08that's so disruptive so transformative to really create something that could last for generations
37:18so robin's with uh sushi restaurant in downtown so part of this whole process for us has been
37:24looking at the conventional versus our product and how we could ultimately replicate it so this in
37:29fact is the bluefin tuna toro saku block so that saku block is something that the chef for the back
37:34of the house would actually utilize to make nigiri sashimi poke cubes what have you so this creates
37:40flexibility for the chefs based on whatever your needs might be most of us know big changes are
37:51needed in order to create the futures we want to live in and leave behind but how will that change
37:57affect our own lives what we eat and how we live lou's work is just one example of how we
38:04can and must
38:05begin telling a new story about the future one defined by creativity and possibility rather than
38:11fear sacrifice and loss it's toro awesome glad you enjoyed it
38:25one of the most hopeful things about this moment is that the natural world around us still contains an
38:31extraordinary capacity to heal itself if given the opportunity that's led me to scotland where a
38:37small community is coming together to do just that as they rewrite a new future for themselves and this
38:44land the idea of regeneration what does that mean here in this area so langham has um suffered over the
38:54past few decades a big economic decline the textiles industry was the biggest employer here as that
39:02industry declined there's so many skilled people that have lost jobs and there's been a lot of economic
39:08heartache and a lot of economic difficulty so there was an opportunity there to look at nature-based
39:13enterprises and how you could support bringing that power back into community hands is an incredibly
39:18powerful symbol here in scotland a vast amount of the land is owned by a small number of wealthy
39:25families but recently when a large piece of land went up for sale the people of langholm decided to
39:31purchase it together and place it under community ownership creating a crowdfunding effort they chipped
39:38in everything they could and soon word spread as people who never visited the town contributed making it
39:44the south of scotland's largest ever community buyout the plan is to create a nature reserve to be a
39:50center for rewilding work while also creating much needed jobs and ecotourism opportunities here as well
39:56so give me some idea of the size and scope it's ten and a half thousand acres what's amazing about
40:05it is
40:05it's continuous we've got everything from globally important peatlands ancient woodland
40:14open moorland and obviously a beautiful river that runs all the way through it
40:19we also have a lot that's sort of damaged modified and needs restoration so we've got a big job to
40:25do
40:28so where are we now so we are at our community run tree nursery so we have 50 000 trees
40:34all growing
40:35in here and these will all be used to create our new woodlands why is there such a need in
40:41scotland to
40:41plant more trees so scotland um like the rest of the uk is one of the least forested countries in
40:48the world and one of the most nature depleted countries in the world so we've got all the
40:52kind of stages of a forest growing in here those saplings right there quite possibly could be around
40:58in the year 3000 well let's hope they will be if we grow them properly keep watering them and plant
41:03them in the right places then that's what we really hope really this project is about rewilding
41:09what does it mean to rewild something like this it's been deforested it's been drained it's been burned
41:16so what we've got an opportunity to do now is rebalance our relationship with nature and show
41:22that we can get all of those sort of human benefits but also give something back and heal the land
41:27almost
41:29we're planting trees we're starting to re-wet the land put wetlands in taking out non-native species
41:34and we're already seeing nature coming back so it's kind of like giving it a helping hand
41:43you can't help but feel the new life in this community the pride that people here feel getting
41:48to take part in shaping a new story about the future of this town today tomorrow and for generations yet
41:54to
41:54come while i was in town i got to sit down with a few of the residents who have big
41:59dreams for what
42:00this means for the people of langham what has the buyout meant for the community and for the town having
42:07this kind of mission right and envision for collective ownership you get an opportunity once in a lifetime
42:15to do something that is beyond yourself it's for the future and when the land came up for sale we
42:25are
42:25recognized that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity what we're hoping to do through the buyout of the
42:33land that will provide a different offering not only to our young people but to people from outside to
42:42come and see what we have done what we've managed to achieve we're regenerating the whole town and
42:47the whole community everyone's galvanized there's a buzz about the town again people are starting to
42:52see results and it's all the small wins and the nature reserve is never going to be a quick job
42:57it's a long term but we want to secure a long-term future for people like lewis that'll be taking
43:03it on
43:04it gives me a lot of hope that langham being as strong a community as it is it will regenerate
43:10it
43:11will open up new opportunities and in 10 20 30 or even 50 years time it will be a thriving
43:17town like it
43:18once was what's happening here in scotland is part of a growing movement around the world as people
43:25discover the part they can play in healing the natural world around them rewilding a reminder of
43:32what's still possible when we come to see ourselves as authors rather than passive observers
43:40one of the things about understanding yourself as part of a story whether it's a religion
43:44or a nation or a family is you're profoundly aware of what other people have done for you
43:50we should appreciate that and we should do better for centuries a coherent ethnic group
43:57made a nation a coherent religious group made a nation so what is an american american is somebody
44:05who believes in the ideals that were enshrined in the declaration of independence and that believes
44:11in a nation that is working to achieve those ideals and what is that that's a story and we absorb
44:19this
44:19story from the past and we believe in it and we work towards it we become a character in the
44:26story
44:27and then we teach it to our children
44:33who's doing the uh what
44:35i mean it is perfect guys
44:47perfect
44:52like a nation or a people my family has a story that we're in the midst of writing
44:57and just like us all it's building on what came before while looking forward to what is still yet to
45:03come a daily reminder that we are all links in a much larger chain people playing a part in an
45:10unfinished
45:16story
45:16when we think about the future that we want sometimes it's really difficult to think about
45:20and one of the things that i've learned is we have to kind of use our imagination we have to
45:25use
45:25our artistry we have to kind of create that future drawing it or writing it down and really thinking about
45:31it
45:33so much of the work before us in this moment is in finding ways to tell better stories about the
45:38futures we want to see unfold
45:40not just those we wish to avoid because while dystopian visions of tomorrow can entertain
45:46they leave us feeling small passive and powerless in the face of a darkening world up ahead
45:53the opportunity right now is in telling new stories that can unlock all the hope
45:58imagination and creativity we're going to need moving forward
46:04i think stories give us meaning it gives us a sense of ourselves
46:10the next building community because we're all part of this race
46:16who is getting allowed to tell the stories that's where i'm at i'm trying to fight to make sure there
46:23are more creators of this american and human tapestry at the table
46:28so we have to lead with the stories to get behind an idea to make a change
46:34we are among the first generations to know what the consequences of our actions are
46:41and we're among the last generations who can do anything about it
46:46we are called upon as no generations have ever been called upon before we have heroes from previous ages
46:53the people who who stood against hitler the slave revolts the civil rights movement the anti-apartheid
47:00movement the campaign for women's suffrage the independence movements in many parts of the world
47:06in all these cases people were called upon to do something much bigger than themselves
47:12now we are called upon to do something bigger than any of that
47:17to prevent the collapse of our life support systems this is a task that calls to us for the sake
47:24of
47:25all future populations as well as all people who are on earth today it's very important and urgent
47:34for all of us to get quite creative about this and roll up our sleeves and say okay how do
47:39i apply my
47:40creativity my intelligence my skills my connections my networks towards actually addressing these
47:47challenges that is the call to action of our times we're as influenced by our ideas of the future
47:56as we are influenced by our ideas of the past we all have some story as to how we got
48:03here which
48:04influences the things that we do sometimes you have to step away from that change your story
48:12if you want to imagine new futures you have to entertain new possibilities we always say in the
48:19office we'll know when we've succeeded when the children that grow up here are like this is ours
48:23and this is ours to shape it's looking at a legacy for future generations it's looking beyond us
48:31what makes stories unbelievably powerful is they have the ability to connect us with one another
48:38to connect us to the past to connect us to the present and to connect us to the future
48:44and we have to remember that when we tell these stories about who we are and where we want to
48:49go
48:49they actually become a compass to guide our actions as individuals as members of families
48:55as nations and as a species on planet earth
48:59so
49:25so