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TED Radio Hour

The future of our memories

1/30/202650 min

From creating “synthetic” memories to reviving ruined monuments, tech no longer simply stores the past — it can enhance it. This hour, we explore new ways to capture, share and even recreate our past. Guests include technologist Pau Aleikum Garcia, cartoonist Amy Kurzweil and digital archaeologist Chance Coughenour.

(Original broadcast date: January 24, 2025)

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Clips

Grandmother’s fear of endless exile
Blurry beats hyperreal for truth
Carmen’s balcony to the prison
From memory to therapy
Drawing red lines with AI
Not truth, but testimony
Bias in the machine, solved locally
Redefining immortality as living well
We are patterns, not binaries

Transcript preview

First 90 seconds

  1. Speaker 00:00

    [music] This week on Consider This, NPR investigates a Republican lawmaker from New Hampshire. He officially proposed a known Holocaust denier join a state commission overseeing history lessons in public schools, a story about extremism normalized and creeping into mainstream politics. This week on Consider This. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

  2. Manoush Zomorodi· Host0:23

    This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks- Our job now is to dream big ... delivered at TED Conferences- To bring about the future we want to see ... around the world.

  3. Speaker 00:37

    To understand who we are.

  4. Manoush Zomorodi· Host0:38

    From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you- You just don't know what you're gonna find ... challenge you- We truly have to ask ourself, like, why is it noteworthy? ... and even change you. I literally feel like I'm a different person. [laughs] Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading from TED and NPR. I'm Anush Zomorodi. On the show today, the future of our memories.

  5. Pau Alarcón Garcia· Guest1:07

    So it was 2014, and it was during one of the biggest refugee crisis, uh, from the last decades here in Europe.

  6. Manoush Zomorodi· Host1:18

    This is Pau Alarcón Garcia. Pau lives in Barcelona, but a decade ago he was in Greece helping relocate Syrian refugees

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