The shocking power of tiny things

You don't need to be big and boisterous to pack a punch. This hour, TED speakers explore the surprising strength of all things minuscule and fleeting. Guests include microbiologist Anne Madden, cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky, former educator YeYoon Kim and former industrial engineer and Zen Buddhist monk Bart Weetjens. Original broadcast date: February 24, 2023. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org http://plus.npr.org/. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This message comes from Cornerpiece, a podcast from TED. If you've ever stayed up at 2 AM wondering why some friendships last while others fall apart, or whether unconditional love actually exists, this show is for you. Check out Cornerpiece wherever you listen.

• 0:14Manoush Zomorodi?

  This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks.

• 0:21Speaker 02

  Our job now is to dream big.

• 0:23Manoush Zomorodi?

  Delivered at TED conferences.

• 0:24Speaker 03

  To bring about the future we want to see.

• 0:26Manoush Zomorodi?

  Around the world. To understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.

• 0:34Speaker 04

  You just don't know what you're gonna find.

• 0:36Manoush Zomorodi?

  Challenge you.

• 0:37Speaker 05

  We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy?

• 0:39Manoush Zomorodi?

  And even change you.

• 0:41Speaker 06

  I literally feel like I'm a different person. Yes. Do you feel that way?

• 0:45Manoush Zomorodi?

  Ideas worth spreading. From TED and NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. And today on the show, small but mighty.

• 0:59Speaker 07

  So I want you to touch your face. Go on, touch it.

• 1:07Speaker 07

  What do you feel? Soft, squishy, maybe chafed? It's you, right? You're feeling you? Well, that's not quite right. You're actually feeling over 100 billion bacterial cells on your face. Those that are creating some of the aromas of body odor and stickiness. You're feeling some of fungi that have floated down from the rafters or ceiling today. Those that set off allergies. You're likely coated with some bacterial cells that came from the fecal plumes that arose out of the toilet the last time you flushed it. Oh, yeah.

• 1:51Speaker 07

  And there's at least two species of face mites that are squishing their way across your skin. And they definitely had sex on your face last night.

• 2:01Manoush Zomorodi?

  This is Anne Madden. She's a microbiologist and self-described microbrangler, who does not seem to be bothered by what she just described.

• 2:12Speaker 07

  We are an ecosystem. And so just as we expect to have lots of different creatures living in a jungle, we expect to have lots of different creatures living in our homes and on our bodies. And while that's gross, it's also pretty cool.

• 2:27Manoush Zomorodi?

  Anne hasn't always been passionate about the microscopic jungle that surrounds us. It certainly wasn't on her mind when she went to college.

• 2:36Speaker 07

  But I had this opportunity to do an internship in the rainforest of Costa Rica. And so when I arrive in the jungle, I see these trees that are taller than cathedrals. And there are these howling monkeys that sound like dying jaguars and these beautifully vibrantly colored poison dart frogs that kind of sound like a baby duck everywhere. And I am in love. And as I get to help all of these different scientists study venomous snakes and poison dart frogs and plants, I realize we know nothing about our beautiful, magnificent world.

• 3:18Speaker 07

  And that the process of research is this puzzles, adventure, and it never ends.

• 3:25Manoush Zomorodi?

  But it did end, at least for Anne. She had to go home and back to school.

• 3:29Speaker 07

  And I went back to Wellesley College in Massachusetts, and everything was beige and boring. And there were no poison dart frogs. And I was as far away from the jungle as I could imagine.

• 3:43Speaker 07

  But then I started research in a microbiology lab, and I found out that I'd never left the jungle. There were microscopic species everywhere, just beyond the line of sight. And these species, we barely uncovered what they were. Maybe we know 1 to 10% of what these species are. And if you grow them on a petri plate, they erupt in colors and aromas and very strange little behaviors. And many of them can do remarkable things and have been doing remarkable things. And yet they never get credit for it. And so I think that's when I fell in love with microbiology. I remember the first time I discovered and got to name a new species.

• 4:25Manoush Zomorodi?

  Anne Madden continues from the TED stage.

• 4:27Speaker 07

  It was a fungus that lives in the nest of a paper wasp. It's white and fluffy. And I named it Mucor niticol, meaning in Latin that it lives in the nest of another. I called up my dad, and I go, Dad, I just discovered a new microorganism species. And he laughed, and he goes, That's great. I hope you also discovered a cure for it.

• 4:51Speaker 07

  Now, my dad is my biggest fan. So in that crushing moment where he wanted to kill my new little life form, I realized that actually I'd failed him. In my years toiling away in labs and in people's backyards, investigating and cataloging the microscopic life around us, it never made clear my true mission to him. My goal is not to find technology to kill the new microscopic life around us. My goal is to find new technology from this life that will help save us.

• 5:22Speaker 07

  The diversity of life in our homes is more than a list of 100,000 new species. It is 100,000 new sources of solutions to human problems.

• 5:33Speaker 07

  I know it's hard to believe that anything that's so small or only has one cell can do anything powerful, but they can.

• 5:41Manoush Zomorodi?

  Tiny organisms with extraordinary potential. A single word that can pack a punch. A passing moment that changes everything. In a world of attention-grabbing headlines and seismic global events, we sometimes forget the little guy, the almost imperceptible but powerful forces around us. And so today on the show, small but mighty. Forget big and boisterous. We are talking about things that are minuscule or fleeting but potent, like microbes, which, of course, we learned to appreciate during the COVID pandemic.

• 6:21Speaker 07

  So I think we're all familiar with how powerful and how devastating one microbe can be, in this case, a virus. But many microbes around us are equally powerful, but they're not devastating. So there are microbes in our dust bunnies that are the source of many of our antibiotics. And they've been saving our loved ones for as long as we've known.

• 6:46Manoush Zomorodi?

  One of the first jobs that Anne Madden ever had was working in research at a pharmaceutical company.

• 6:52Speaker 07

  And our goal was to find new microbes, with the idea being that these new microbes could create novel antibiotics. And so that's where I really learned my microbrangling skills.

• 7:03Manoush Zomorodi?

  Ah.

• 7:04Speaker 07

  We were using new techniques to grow microbes from soil that had never been grown before, and no one had ever explored them in the lab. And indeed, these bizarre, slow-growing, tenacious little critters were creating novel antibiotics.

• 7:20Manoush Zomorodi?

  Huh.

• 7:21Speaker 07

  And though they haven't been commercialized yet, we were successful in finding them.

• 7:24Manoush Zomorodi?

  You knew what you were looking for then. I mean, it's not like you're like, here's a new microbe, let's see what it does. What are some of the clues that you look for when you are hunting down microbes that you think might have medicinal uses?

• 7:36Speaker 07

  Yeah, so part of it is the idea of guilty-bye association. So other microbes that live in our soil are the source of many of our antibiotics that we use today. You'll actually know if they're in the soil because they produce the smell of fresh-turned-earth. And so these microbes, you grow them in the lab, and they actually look like tiny little sheep. They're adorable and fluffy. And one strategy is to then look for species of microbes that are related, the idea being, if your cousins can do it, maybe you can too.

• 8:08Manoush Zomorodi?

  Do you give them, like, bits of disease and see how they respond? Or how do you test it?

• 8:13Speaker 07

  Yeah, so there are different ways of assessing whether a microbe can produce novel antibiotics. And one of them is a gladiator test. So you actually put them in a petri plate next to a microbe that causes disease. So say you've got a microbe that's MRSA, right? So it's a horrible staph infection. And you can slather it on a petri plate and have it grow. And then you come back the next day, and you look to see who grew and who died.

• 8:39Manoush Zomorodi?

  Oh, wow. Okay, battle to the finish.

• 8:42Speaker 07

  Yeah, and so that gives you one hint. That's not the end of the story by any means, but it gives you a clue that, all right, this fluffy microbe has something that's killing off a microbe that causes disease. So maybe we can isolate that something, extract it, and maybe it can do what no other antibiotic could do before.

• 9:03Manoush Zomorodi?

  OK, Anne, you have also been working on projects that are more about the simple pleasures in life, like a good beer, which brings us to another microbe story that involves wasps.

• 9:15Speaker 07

  Yeah, so as soon as you start talking about wasp research, people my entire life always said, oh, what's good about a wasp? Nobody likes wasps. These are stinging creatures that often create nests in our eaves. But it turns out that yeasts, microbes that we love because they make bread and beer and all sorts of lovely flavors, use wasps as airplanes. We started with a pest. Inside that wasp, we plucked out a little-known microorganism species with a unique ability. It could make beer. This is a trait that only a few species on this planet have. In fact, all commercially-produced beer you've ever had

• 9:57Speaker 07

  likely came from one of only three microorganism species. Yet our species, it could make a beer that tasted like honey. And it could also make a delightfully tart beer. In fact, this microorganism species that lives in the belly of a wasp, it could make a valuable sour beer better than any other species on this planet.

• 10:21Speaker 07

  This yeast could do what no other yeast species could do before it, which is make a sour beer in record time, just a few weeks. And so brewers could make sour beer more economically, and people could enjoy new flavors and understand the benefits of biodiversity. And with that weird little moment in time, we gave a yeast the ability to make beer for the first time in 150 million years of its existence. And so now, just a few years later, brewing with these lactic acid yeasts is now commonplace. And there's something magical about that. I'm here to tell you that the next 100 years will feature these microscopic creatures solving more of our problems. And we have a lot of problems to choose from.

• 11:05Speaker 07

  We've got the mundane, bad-smelling clothes or bland food. And we've got the monumental, disease, pollution, war. And so this is my mission, to not just catalog the microscopic life around us, but to find out what it's uniquely well-suited to help us with. These creatures are microscopic alchemists with the ability to transform their environment with an arsenal of chemical tools. This means that they can live anywhere on this planet, and they can eat whatever foods around them. This means they can eat everything from toxic waste to plastic.

• 11:44Manoush Zomorodi?

  I keep thinking about what you've mentioned a couple times now, which is plastic-eating microbes. I mean, that is, we always hear about, you know, the plastic that goes into a landfill and is going to be around for thousands and thousands of years. Is there a possibility that, that actually, maybe, that might not be true? That if we could add microbes, it would, in some fashion, break down?

• 12:08Speaker 07

  Absolutely. So scientists have already found microbes that are incredibly adept at breaking down plastics, even the plastics that seem to last forever. That's really what they were designed to do. And as we think about our future, we need to think about not just the microbes that are going to break down plastic, but those that are going to help us build materials that are more sustainable. And so right now, there are also microbes that generate PLA, or polylactic acid, which is the plastic-like filaments that a lot of people are using in 3D printers. And those, those are made by microbes.

• 12:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  Are they more biodegradable?

• 12:45Speaker 07

  They are. And there are groups that are now using AI and machine learning to enhance the activity of those microbe-made enzymes that tear apart plastic. And so it's going to be microbial skillsets and human ingenuity linked together to create that better future.

• 13:04Manoush Zomorodi?

  When we return, the most famous microbe of all? I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Stay with us.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from NPR sponsor Shopify. No idea where to sell? Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel. It is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you're a garage entrepreneur or IPO-ready, Shopify is the only tool you need to start, run, and grow your business without the struggle. Once you've reached your audience, Shopify has the internet's best-converting checkout to help you turn them from browsers to buyers. Go to Shopify.com/NPR to take your business to the next level today. This message comes from Whole Foods Market. Fall tastes better with better ingredients from Whole Foods Market. No added growth hormones or antibiotics in their meat department means slow-braised short ribs are even more satisfying.

• 14:13Speaker 00

  All seafood is wild-caught, like their vibrant sockeye salmon or verified responsibly farmed. And all sweets, including fall-themed cookies, are made without high-fructose corn syrup. Spice up fall at Whole Foods Market. This message comes from Cornerpiece, a podcast from TED. If you've ever stayed up at 2:00 AM wondering why some friendships last while others fall apart, or whether unconditional love actually exists, this show is for you. Check out Cornerpiece wherever you listen.

• 14:42Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. And today on the show, Small But Mighty. And we were just talking to microbiologist Anne Madden, who spends her days exploring the vast, colossal, positively cosmic universe of teeny-tiny microbes.

• 15:03Speaker 07

  If you were to take a sugar packets' worth of soil and you were to explore the microbe species in there, you would find more microbial species in that sugar packets' worth of soil than you would find in all of the zoos on this planet. And if you were to take just another sugar packet worth of soil, you'd find a whole nother planet's worth of species. This is the immense world that we live in at the microbial scale.

• 15:34Manoush Zomorodi?

  I do feel like the pandemic changed my relationship to microbes. Maybe it made me a little bit paranoid in many ways.

• 15:42Speaker 07

  Yeah.

• 15:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  And not just the idea that there is a virus circulating among us, but potentially many scary microbes around us. How do you feel like people's relationship with microbes has been changed by COVID?

• 15:54Speaker 07

  Yeah, so I think during the pandemic, particularly at the beginning, I watched as the word "microbe" brought chills to everyone. And I saw it in young children, too, where it was, it was a lesson that was hard-learned. You know, microbes kill, they destroy, they, they bring with them sadness and isolation. And I think as we navigate our microbial world, it's important to also teach children and students that, again, not all microbes are evil. And so while it's important that we use hand sanitizer and things like that to limit the spread of certain microbes,

• 16:37Speaker 07

  we need to remember the plurality of these species and that there are microbes that we can play with in the soil and that that brings with it health, not just kind of griminess or germiness of what we think of.

• 16:53Manoush Zomorodi?

  So when it comes to good microbes, do you worry that, you know, just as certain species are going extinct, are certain microbes also in trouble? Have we humans caused them harm?

• 17:07Speaker 07

  Oh, so what keeps me up at night sometimes is thinking about all the microbes that have gone extinct, because we have no idea what they are. We have no idea who they were or what they did. And I don't just think about that in terms of those that are in our house that we might have accidentally killed off with some kind of bleaching agent. But I think about that in the world, in terms of habitats. And as we navigate worlds where we're clear-cutting forests, we don't really know all the microbes that we've lost. And there very well might be microbes out there that are going to create the solutions to our future problems. And so one of the reasons that I know a lot of microbiologists such as myself

• 17:51Speaker 07

  love uncovering new species to science is that part of that discovery involves conservation. We are asked when we name a species or other required to put some of those cells into a deep freeze in multiple countries. So they are sitting in biobanks where they can be revived in the future. And we don't necessarily know what any of those microbes are going to be doing right now. A lot of them sit just as specimens with Latin names that no one can pronounce. But that doesn't mean that they'll always be that way. There might be a future where they are revived and those cells will help people combat a future pandemic.

• 18:35Speaker 07

  Or maybe they'll help them grow furniture in space stations or something far more mundane. But the key is that they still exist.

• 18:47Manoush Zomorodi?

  That's microbiologist Anne Madden. She's the founder and chief scientist at the Microbe Institute. You can see her full talk at TED.com.

• 19:00Manoush Zomorodi?

  On the show today, how the little things in life can make a big difference, like the words we use to express ourselves every day. Our next guest studies how small variations in language may mean big distinctions in how we experience the world. And to demonstrate, let's play a little game. Close your eyes.

• 19:21Speaker 06

  Yes, well, so if you're driving, don't close your eyes. But if you're not driving or operating another kind of motor vehicle, close your eyes and point southeast.

• 19:33Manoush Zomorodi?

  Southeast, OK.

• 19:35Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 19:35Manoush Zomorodi?

  I'm pointing, OK.

• 19:37Speaker 06

  So if you do this in a, any kind of normal room full of Westerners. I want you all to close your eyes and point southeast.

• 19:48Speaker 06

  Now, keep your eyes closed, point. And then you have people open their eyes. They will immediately see that they have pointed in every possible direction. I see you guys pointing there, there, there, there, there. I don't know which way it is myself.

• 20:04Speaker 06

  You have not been a lot of help.

• 20:07Speaker 06

  And I do this to point out that there can be really big cognitive differences between groups of people. And I've had a chance to work in an Aboriginal community in Australia, where they could do this task very easily. I could ask a five-year-old girl, "Hey, can you point southeast?" And she would point immediately and without hesitation. And that's a big difference compared to, say, a roomful of distinguished scientists. So I'll point in different directions.

• 20:38Manoush Zomorodi?

  This is cognitive scientist Lara Boroditsky.

• 20:41Speaker 06

  And I study how humans get so smart, how the languages and cultures that we have help us think the way that we do.

• 20:53Manoush Zomorodi?

  So Lara, it may not seem obvious to some of us, but what do you think this exercise of pointing southeast says about how language influences the brain?

• 21:05Speaker 06

  Well, our languages and cultures teach us to pay attention to certain things and not to other things. There's basically an infinite set of things that we could possibly take in, process, but our brains can't process all the information, can't take in all the information. So we have to make some choices. And one of the ways that we make those choices are by the things that our languages and cultures require of us. So in this Aboriginal community in Australia that I mentioned, they, instead of using words like left and right to give directions or to talk about the body, they use cardinal directions, more or less north, southeast, and west. And they use these directions at all scales. So for

• 21:48Speaker 06

  example, in some languages like this, like in Gugu Yumet here, you would even say, "There's an ant on your southwest leg." You would say, "Move your cup to the north-northeast a little bit." In Kuuk Tair, this language that I have had a chance to work on, the way you even say hello is, "Which way are you going?" And the answer should be something like, "North-northwest in the far distance. How about you?" So imagine as you're walking around your day, every person you greet, you have to report your heading direction.

• 22:21Manoush Zomorodi?

  Here's Lara Boroditsky on the TED stage.

• 22:23Speaker 06

  That would actually get you oriented pretty fast, right? Because you literally couldn't get past hello if you didn't know which way you were going. In fact, people who speak languages like this stay oriented really, really well. They stay oriented better than we used to think humans could. We used to think that humans were worse than other creatures because some biological excuse, "Oh, we don't have magnets in our beaks or in our scales." No. If your language and your culture trains you to do it, actually, you can do it.

• 22:54Speaker 06

  So for me, whenever I come across an example like this, the biggest lesson for me is to not underestimate the potential of the human mind, not just to say that the things that I can do or the things that I can imagine, that those are the limits. Language allows us to recombine elements in infinite new ways and create new ideas on the spot. So right now, I could say, "Imagine a giraffe river dancing on a pancake while solving differential equations," right? You've never had that thought before?

• 23:31Manoush Zomorodi?

  No, no, I'm glad, happy to say.

• 23:34Speaker 06

  Maybe it's not the most useful thought, but there are so many other thoughts like that that people throughout history have had. And all of a sudden, we have interesting ideas about time travel that make us engage with the future in different ways. So this ability to think beyond what is physically present and imagine and work in the realm of the abstract is one of the things that language opens the door to.

• 24:07Manoush Zomorodi?

  You are really the latest in a long, centuries-long line of people who have been asking this question, does language shape the way we think? Why, why has this been such a debated topic? Because when I, you know, I remember the first time thinking about it, I just assumed it did, but actually, this is not something that anyone agrees on, how it works.

• 24:36Speaker 06

  Well, I think often we disagree with ourselves about it, right? I think all of us have both intuitions. And so the idea that language shapes thought is very similar to the idea that physical exercises changes the way that your body looks and acts, right? When you speak a language, you're practicing paying attention, you're practicing categorizing something every day, constantly. And so it would be, in fact, the most surprising thing, that the thing that you do all day, every day, this practice of speaking language, would have no influence on your brain. And for me, as a scientist, what's interesting is to

• 25:16Speaker 06

  figure out, what are the times that language shapes thought meaningfully, and what are the times that it doesn't? And so I think one of the reasons that this idea has gotten new life in the last 20 or 30 years is because we've started using experimental methods, like real scientific experimental methods, rather than just arguing back and forth about our intuitions.

• 25:41Manoush Zomorodi?

  One of your critics, John McWhorter, the linguist, he said, "Well, the gradual consensus is becoming that language can shape thought, but it tends to be in rather darling, obscure psychological flutters. It's not a matter of giving you a different pair of glasses on the world." Is this a small discovery that you're making, or would you beg to differ?

• 26:07Speaker 06

  Obviously, I would beg to differ, because, you know, there are many different ways you could ask how deep, big, important differences are. And there are studies that reveal really big, interesting differences of different kinds. So for example, if we look at color perception, different languages have different words for colors, color boundaries in different places, we can find that language influences even these tiny perceptual decisions that are so early on and so kind of stupid, you know, like a pigeon could make these decisions. And yet, somehow, even in these smart human brains, language is making a

• 26:50Speaker 06

  difference in how you tell the difference between two patches of blue, for example. Now, that tells us that language can have an extremely early influence in cognition. And if it can influence something very early, that means it's influencing all of the other things downstream. Languages also differ in how they describe events, right? So you take an event like this, an accident, in English, it's fine to say, "He broke the vase." In a language like Spanish, you might be more likely to say, "The vase broke," or "The vase broke itself." If it's an accident, you wouldn't say that someone did it. Now, this has consequences.

• 27:31Speaker 06

  So we show the same accident to English speakers and Spanish speakers, English speakers will remember who did it, because English requires you to say, "He did it, he broke the vase," where Spanish speakers might be less likely to remember who did it if it's an accident, but they're more likely to remember that it was an accident. They're more likely to remember the intention. So two people watch the same event, witness the same crime, but end up remembering different things about that event. This has implications, of course, for eyewitness testimony. The language guides our reasoning about events.

• 28:12Manoush Zomorodi?

  So another example that's coming to mind for me, and tell me if this fits, it's the use of gendered pronouns in the US. So one of my daughter's friends uses non-binary pronouns, they, them. And my daughter and I were talking to my mother about this friend, and my mother was getting so confused every time we referred to them, because she thought we were referring to multiple people. And it made me think, like, does this come down to a generational thing? The way we change the way that we use language, the way we think about the gendered sex of someone, that is changing. Does this example fit into what you're talking about?

• 28:53Speaker 06

  Absolutely. Yeah, it's a wonderful example. And it's another wonderful example of how whatever it is that we're used to seems to be the way that things naturally should be. So for example, in English, we mark gender on third-person singular pronouns, so he, she, his, her. We don't mark gender on first-person pronouns, we only have I. We don't mark gender on second-person pronouns, we only have you. So in fact, most of English pronouns are gender neutral. It's just in a third-person singular that we mark gender. But proposing that there could be a new pronoun, or proposing that we could not mark

• 29:36Speaker 06

  gender on those pronouns, causes some people incredible pain. And they will argue, nothing will be understandable if we don't have gender. But there are languages that mark gender on first-person pronouns, or on second-person pronouns, or on plural pronouns. Some languages don't mark gender at all, right?

• 29:57Manoush Zomorodi?

  Right.

• 29:57Speaker 06

  Like, take Finnish as an example. There are no gendered third-person pronouns in Finnish. And in experiments looking at, for example, Hebrew learning kids, English learning kids, and Finnish learning kids, it turns out that kids learning Hebrew as their first language, figure out whether they themselves are a boy or a girl earlier. In Hebrew, even the second-person pronoun is gendered, so the word for "you" is gendered. English is somewhere in between. And then Finnish kids take about a year, an extra year, before they can reliably classify themselves with boys or girls. And so that's an indication

• 30:40Speaker 06

  of language forcing you to pay attention to some dimension that you may want to think about in a different way.

• 30:49Manoush Zomorodi?

  And so what may seem like a very small difference to one person might seem a really big deal to someone else.

• 30:57Speaker 06

  Of course, if it applies to you, it's going to be a lot more important. And you may feel like the language that you're being forced to speak is constantly forcing you into one category or another that doesn't fit. And that has always been the way language change comes about. People feel like the current language that they're speaking doesn't fit their thinking, doesn't fit the way that they want to be in the world. And so they start trying to change the language and inviting other people to also think in this new way. And thinking in new ways is painful.

• 31:37Manoush Zomorodi?

  So what would you say the goal then is of your research? I mean, why should someone just listening to the show know this? What do you think it does for them?

• 31:48Speaker 06

  Oh, well, I think whenever you're looking at another culture, another language, the most important thing you could learn is about yourself in your own language, in your own culture, right? So take the mirror and turn it on yourself and say, why do I think the way that I do? Why would I be surprised that someone thinks differently? Like, I have been practicing speaking in this way, thinking in this way my whole life. And often, we assume that whatever it is that we're used to is the way that things have to be. But actually, we have many more options. And so for me, it is always an invitation to, one, examine the assumptions that I have

• 32:31Speaker 06

  and why is it that I think the way that I do? How could I think differently? How do I want to think? And then you can learn a lot and you can expand your own thinking.

• 32:45Manoush Zomorodi?

  That's Lara Boroditsky. She's a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego. You can see her full talk at ted.com. On the show today, small but mighty. I'm Manoush Zamirodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We'll be right back.

• 33:15Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from NPR sponsor Shopify. No idea where to sell? Shopify puts you in control of every sales channel. It is the commerce platform revolutionizing millions of businesses worldwide. Whether you're a garage entrepreneur or IPO-ready, Shopify is the only tool you need to start, run, and grow your business without the struggle. Once you've reached your audience, Shopify has the internet's best converting checkout to help you turn them from browsers to buyers. Go to Shopify.com/NPR to take your business to the next level today. This message comes from Whole Foods Market. Fall tastes better with better ingredients from Whole Foods Market. No added growth hormones or antibiotics in their meat department

• 33:58Speaker 00

  means slow-braised short ribs are even more satisfying. All seafood is wild-caught, like their vibrant sockeye salmon or verified responsibly farmed. And all sweets, including fall-themed cookies, are made without high-fructose corn syrup. Spice up fall at Whole Foods Market.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  This message comes from TED Talks Daily, the podcast that brings you a new idea every day. Learn what's transforming humanity, from balancing AI in your critical thinking to surpassing discoveries about the adolescent brain. Find TED Talks Daily wherever you listen.

• 34:31Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's the TED Radio Hour from NPR. I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Today on the show, small but mighty.

• 34:41Manoush Zomorodi?

  And now, a story for you about the simple, but often difficult, act of asking for help. And we'll start with a precocious kindergartner named Sam, who was very independent.

• 34:56Speaker 03

  I just remember him being very responsible and someone who you can really almost count on, if you can imagine counting on a five-year-old.

• 35:06Manoush Zomorodi?

  This is Ye Yoon Kim. She was Sam's kindergarten teacher.

• 35:11Speaker 03

  As a five-year-old, tying your shoelaces can come as a big challenge. But Sam was able to even help other kids tie their shoelaces. He was a leader, and a lot of the other students would go to him for help all the time.

• 35:25Manoush Zomorodi?

  And what about Sam? What would he do if he needed help? Like, let's say he spilled something or he had an accident.

• 35:32Speaker 03

  Yes, so parents of young children would usually bring one or two extra change of clothes, just in case you spill something. And when that happens, they would oftentimes tell the teacher. But what I noticed about Sam was he would never come to me for help. But all of a sudden, maybe after lunchtime or after he'd been to the bathroom, he would have different shorts on, for example. So later, when I started paying more attention, then I could really see just how much he was doing things on his own.

• 36:07Manoush Zomorodi?

  Were you like, I don't even need to think about Sam. I can concentrate on the other kids because he's got this. He's gonna be just fine.

• 36:15Speaker 03

  Strangely, I think the opposite happened. You know, other kids who were very vocal about not being able to do something, it's very easy to catch and help them. But for a kid like Sam, I didn't want to miss those little subtle signs.

• 36:33Manoush Zomorodi?

  Ye Yoon was always trying to pick up on those signs, those moments when a child needed help, like if they fell down.

• 36:41Speaker 03

  Yes, when a kid would fall down, they wouldn't start crying immediately. There was a few seconds of buffering that was happening, where the kid would stand up kind of confused as to what just happened before he or she would have an emotional reaction to it. And most of the time, it wasn't because they were injured. It was more because of the shock and that kind of sense of reassurance that they could get from the teacher or please console me, that kind of a feeling, almost.

• 37:16Manoush Zomorodi?

  And as a new teacher, Ye Yoon really wanted to be that person to reassure them. She was just waiting to share one of those moments with a student.

• 37:26Speaker 03

  Yes, so I kind of felt bad. But when I saw that happening over and over to other teachers, but never happening to me, that kind of became something that I really wanted for me to achieve, in a way.

• 37:40Manoush Zomorodi?

  And then, one day...

• 37:42Speaker 03

  I heard one of the students calling me, saying, "Teacher, Sam fell down." So I rushed to the indoor playground. There, Sam was looking puzzled and kind of confused. And he turned around and looked at me, and his lips started trembling and just burst out crying. So I rushed to him and gave him a hug. And I said, "Oh, Sam, it's OK. What happened? Does it hurt?" And it lasted only a few seconds, but that moment kind of imprinted in me as that feeling of, wow, this connection finally happened.

• 38:20Manoush Zomorodi?

  You felt needed.

• 38:22Speaker 03

  Yes, I felt needed. I think the fact that it was also Sam made it a bit more special.

• 38:36Manoush Zomorodi?

  After that year, Ye Yoon moved on from teaching, and she didn't really think about Sam that much. Eventually, she landed a job managing volunteers for a nonprofit, and she loved it.

• 38:48Speaker 03

  I found the work very enjoyable, and it was so much fun. And I think that was the beginning of me justifying to myself that, hey, 14, 16-hour days are fine, as long as I'm having fun. And if you're actually having fun, is it work? So I started losing time that would help me be me outside of work.

• 39:14Manoush Zomorodi?

  And kind of like Sam, Ye Yoon did not want to ask for help. Instead, after a long day, she would blow off steam by going out.

• 39:24Speaker 03

  Exactly. And that's how it kind of started. At the end of a very long workday, look for other friends who've had long days and have a drink. And that would lead to a few more drinks and a few more drinks. Eventually, it got to a point where I didn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't working or if I wasn't out drinking with friends. I really thought that I was doing it all. I was kicking butt at work. I was the entertainer in my friend groups. Even if there was a big work day tomorrow, I would go and still be able to perform well at work.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  At that time, I really didn't see it as a problem. I should have.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Now I know that I was a very high-functioning alcoholic.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  A sign that should have told me you should seek help was that I would often have blackouts.

• 40:26Manoush Zomorodi?

  One morning, after one of her blackouts, Ye Yoon woke up with a big cut on her foot and no idea how it happened. She could only remember the previous night in brief flashes.

• 40:39Speaker 03

  The flashes that I did remember were horrifying. I was extremely frustrated and afraid, almost in a state of paranoia, and crying for help, I don't know what, but crying and yelling for help.

• 41:00Manoush Zomorodi?

  So did you have a person in your world, then, like Sam found in you? This person who you could be vulnerable with, who you could ask for help?

• 41:13Speaker 03

  I think when that moment happened, I couldn't see the help. I had friends who were around me. We had gone to dinner, but I was still in that buffering phase, like Sam. I was just kind of standing up for what had happened. And I think I was trying to figure out how to get myself out of this mess. So when my friend noticed that I was not really participating in conversation or answering questions, he removed me from the place. We went outside.

• 41:46Manoush Zomorodi?

  Of the restaurant, that's where he had to shake me, shake me and said, can you do this? And I had to say, no, I can't. Then can I please help you? And can I please get the other people around you to help you as well? And when I was finally able to say, yes, I do need the help, it really felt like almost like an out of body experience where I could see myself being bubble wrapped by all the people around me. And it just felt so light. There were so many people ready and already helping me that I just didn't notice beforehand.

• 42:33Manoush Zomorodi?

  I think for some of us who see ourselves as very independent, and you'll notice I'm including myself in this question, admitting vulnerability feels weak. It does. Did that change for you? Yes, I wasn't really sure if I wanted to so openly talk about this because it was really me admitting to people that I work with on a daily basis to say, I have struggled with alcohol abuse and have burned out. So I really didn't know how it would come across. I didn't want this to be a way for other people to think of me differently. But after sharing this story,

• 43:16Manoush Zomorodi?

  I'm kind of relieved that people don't look at me the same way that they did before. I'm not just this bubbly, you know, independent person that has everything together. Yes, I am all of that, but also I'm deeply flawed and I'm struggling. So when I felt like, oh, yes, I do need to get professional help, I sought out a therapist. And after sharing the story, so many people were coming to me asking for advice on how did I look out for my therapist? How is therapy? That really made me feel like, oh, I did the right thing of being a little courageous to share this story

• 43:58Manoush Zomorodi?

  because so many people came asking me for help afterwards. I mean, that's huge. Yeah, especially from the Asian context where going to therapy is still very taboo. It was really encouraging to see people be more open about it with me. To me, this tiny little moment of you and Sam locking eyes, it's like a tiny little push of a domino. It sets off this cascade. And then to see the tables turned as an adult, it sounds like this moment of accepting the offer of help from your friend was also a huge turning point for you.

• 44:43Manoush Zomorodi?

  Yes. You would imagine that if someone comes to you for help and looks to you and cries and looks very hopeless, that somehow you are the person in the position with the power. But very weirdly, in that moment, when Sam looked at me, it didn't feel that way. But rather, this is such a privilege. He had something so powerful and he was willing to give it to me by asking me to be the one to help him.

• 45:16Manoush Zomorodi?

  It's really just a four letter word, help. But when you say it, it's powerful.

• 45:26Manoush Zomorodi?

  That was Ye Yoon Kim. You can watch her talk at ted.com.

• 45:33Manoush Zomorodi?

  On the show today, Small But Mighty. And we started off the episode with the tiniest organisms, microbes. And now we want to end with another critter, rats. Over some three decades, rats have been crucial to helping sniff out landmines in former war zones. But where on earth did the idea come to recruit lowly rodents to do this lifesaving work? Industrial engineer Bart Weetjens explained on the TED stage in 2010.

• 46:07Speaker 05

  I'm here today to share with you an extraordinary journey, extraordinary rewarding journey, actually, which brought me into training rats to save human lives by detecting landmines. As a child, I had a passion for rodents. I had all kinds of rats, mice, hamsters, gerbils, squirrels. You name it, I bred it and I sold them to pet shops.

• 46:37Speaker 05

  I became an industrial engineer, engineer in product development, and I focused on appropriate detection technologies. Actually, first, appropriate technologies for developing countries. I started working in the industry, but I wasn't really happy to contribute to a material consumer society. I quit my job to focus on a real world problem, landmines.

• 47:00Speaker 03

  Two thousand people every month are killed or maimed by mines around the world. That's one person.

• 47:06Speaker 05

  We're talking 95 now. Princess Diana is announcing on TV that landmines form a structural barrier to any development.

• 47:15Speaker 03

  It is my sincere hope that by working together, we shall focus world attention on this vital, but until now largely neglected issue.

• 47:26Speaker 05

  As long as these devices are there or there is suspicion of landmines, you can't really enter into the land. Actually, there was an appeal worldwide for new detectors, sustainable in the environment where they needed to produce, which is mainly in the developing world. We chose rats.

• 47:47Speaker 05

  Now, why would you use rats? Rats have been used since the 50s, last century, in all kinds of experiments. Rats have more genetic material allocated to olfaction than any other mammal species. They're extremely sensitive to smell. Moreover, they have the mechanisms to map all these smells and to communicate about it. Now, how do we communicate with rats? Well, we don't talk rats, but we have a clicker, a standard method for animal training, with which we can reinforce particular behaviors. First of all, we associate the click sound with a food reward, which is mashed banana and peanuts together in a syringe.

• 48:30Speaker 05

  Once the animal knows click, food, click, food, click, food, so click is food, we bring it in a cage with a hole. And actually, the animal learns to stick the nose in the hole under which a target scent is placed and to do that for five seconds. Five seconds, which is long for a rat. Once the animal knows this, we make the task a bit more difficult. It learns now to find the target smell in a cage with several holes, up to 10 holes. Then the animal learns to walk on a leash in the open and find targets. The next step, animals learn to find real mines in real minefields. They are tested and accredited according to international mine action standards,

• 49:13Speaker 05

  just like dogs have to pass a test. There's a number of mines placed blindly and team of trainer and their rats have to find back all the targets. If the animal does that, it gets a license as an accredited animal to be operational in the field.

• 49:33Speaker 05

  Just like dogs, by the way. Maybe one slight difference. We can train rats at a fifth of the price of a trained demining dog. This is our team in Mozambique. They have a skill which makes them much less dependent on foreign aid. With this small investment in a rat capacity, we have demonstrated in Mozambique that we can reduce the cost price per square meter. If we can bring in more rats, we can actually make the output even bigger. We have a demonstration site in Mozambique. 11 African governments have seen that they can become less dependent by using this technology. They have signed a pact for peace and treaty in the Great Lakes region.

• 50:15Speaker 05

  And they endorse hero rats to clear their common borders of landmines. To conclude, I would actually like to say, you may think this is about rats, this project, but in the end, it is about people. It is about empowering vulnerable communities to tackle difficult, expensive and dangerous humanitarian detection tasks and doing that with a local resource plenty available. So something completely different is to keep on challenging your perception about the resources surrounding you, whether they are environmental, technological, animal or human.

• 50:57Speaker 05

  And to respectfully harmonize with them in order to foster a sustainable world. Thank you very much.

• 51:10Manoush Zomorodi?

  That was Bart Weetjens. He is an industrial engineer and he founded the organization Apopo, which is still clearing landmines with help from rats in Angola, Zimbabwe and Cambodia. And they are also training rats to detect tuberculosis. You can find Bart's full talk at ted.com.

• 51:34Manoush Zomorodi?

  Thank you so much for listening to our show today, Small But Mighty. This episode was produced by James Delahoussaye, Katie Monteleone, Fiona Guerin and Susanna Brown. It was edited by Sanaz Meshkhanpour, Andrea Gutierrez and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes Rachel Faulkner White, Matthew Cloutier and Hersha Nahata. Our fellow is Malvika Dang. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our audio engineers were Ko Takasugi Chernovin, Josh Newell and Joby Tenseko. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Colin Helms, Anna Phelan, Michelle Quint, Jimmy Gutierrez and Daniela Balorezo.

• 52:16Manoush Zomorodi?

  I'm Manoush Zamirodi and you've been listening to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

• 52:21Speaker 00

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. The following message comes from NPR sponsor Henry Ford Health. Dr. Scott Dolchewski, chairman of Surgery and CEO of their Innovation Institute, shares how their partnership with NASA pushed him to think of new ways to apply medical technology.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  What people don't realize is when you're in that space suit, it's a tiny spaceship in that poses some challenges to the people in them. We were really worried about having a collapsed lung. How do you diagnose that? Well, here, if it happened at my ER, we'd do a chest X-ray. Well, we don't have an X-ray up there. Okay, well, we'd have a professional listen to the chest. Well, it's really noisy up in space because of the fans and the power systems and things like that. Golly, that doesn't work. Would ultrasound work? Nobody had done that before. The Atom Project is advanced diagnostic ultrasound in microgravity. It's a simple 10 second solution. So now that's a capability on the space station.

• 53:23Speaker 02

  We do it regularly.

• 53:24Speaker 00

  Learn more at henryford.com/scienceforthewin. This message comes from Cornerpiece, a podcast from TED. If you've ever stayed up at 2 AM wondering why some friendships last while others fall apart? Or whether unconditional love actually exists? This show is for you. Check out Cornerpiece wherever you listen.