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What's driving generations apart—and ideas to bring them together

What's driving generations apart—and ideas to bring them together

Released Friday, 21st June 2024
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What's driving generations apart—and ideas to bring them together

What's driving generations apart—and ideas to bring them together

What's driving generations apart—and ideas to bring them together

What's driving generations apart—and ideas to bring them together

Friday, 21st June 2024
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6:00

of household income versus people under the age

6:02

of 40, used to control

6:04

12, their wealth has been cut in

6:07

half. This isn't by accident, it's purposeful.

6:11

Consciously purposeful, or how did this

6:14

happen? Well,

6:16

the demo in democracy is working really well,

6:19

and that is old people vote for even

6:21

older people who vote themselves more money.

6:24

So the child tax credit, which would

6:26

positively benefit not only children, but working-age

6:28

mothers, say in their 20s or 30s, gets

6:32

stripped out of the infrastructure bill. It would have cost somewhere

6:34

between, probably about $30 billion, but

6:38

the $145 billion per year fixed increase cost

6:42

of living adjustment in social security flies right

6:45

through. So we now spend

6:47

about 40% of our total government

6:49

spending on programs for seniors, that's the

6:51

greatest it's been in history. But

6:54

way to get worse, in 10 years at the current

6:56

rate, it's gonna be over 50%, meaning

6:58

the majority of our government spending and tax

7:01

revenues will go to programs supporting seniors. And

7:04

this crowds out investments in technology and

7:06

in education and things that are a little bit

7:08

more forward leaning show a greater return on investment

7:10

and quite frankly benefit younger people. So our democracy,

7:13

if you will, is working

7:15

well, but it's a series of older people

7:17

voting themselves more money. Old people vote. I

7:20

guess what I find confusing

7:22

about this is I recently read in

7:24

The New Yorker that since 2020, US

7:27

growth per person has been

7:29

more than 2% and that actually people in their 20s

7:32

are richer than prior US generations

7:34

were at their age. So

7:36

why doesn't it feel that way for younger

7:39

people? So I think the

7:41

study you're referring to is the following, there's some

7:43

nuance here. And that is we

7:46

have basically kind of the zeitgeist and this

7:48

goes to cultural mores. We

7:50

have decided to embrace a winners and

7:52

losers economy or a hunger games like

7:54

economy. And that is the good

7:56

news is, if you think it's good news, is that

7:59

there are now millionaires. in their 30s. When

8:01

I was growing up, and I imagine when you were growing up, you

8:03

didn't really hear about that. So

8:06

the actual number of people

8:08

in the top 10%, that

8:10

number's gotten much higher. But

8:12

if you look at the quote-unquote bottom

8:14

90, the vast majority of these individuals,

8:16

two things have happened. Their

8:18

purchasing power has gone down. Inflation in housing,

8:21

inflation in education, two things

8:23

that young people save for and need

8:25

to get ahead have skyrocketed. And their

8:27

wages on an inflation adjusted basis

8:31

have consistently gone down. I

8:33

used to make, on an inflation adjusted basis, people my

8:35

generation made 85,000, then 20 years ago,

8:37

65,000. This is at the age of 25.

8:41

Now it's about $55,000. And

8:43

so you have a lot of young people who've

8:45

essentially given up on buying a home. The travel

8:47

industry is booming. And my thesis is that people

8:49

have just given up on saving for a house,

8:51

and so they pick up and

8:53

head to Thailand for a month, and they go

8:55

to Coachella. So live events and travel

8:57

have never been stronger. But people are

9:00

struggling to kind of cover, I think, the

9:02

basics or the essentials, whether it's getting a

9:04

college degree, paying off their

9:06

student debt, saving for a home, or deciding to

9:08

have a child. The

9:12

great intergenerational theft took place under the

9:14

auspices of a virus. I know, let's

9:16

use the greatest health crisis in the

9:18

century to really speedball the transfer. This

9:20

is the NASDAQ from 2008 to 2012.

9:25

We let the markets crash. And

9:27

by the way, you need churn, you need disruption, because

9:29

it seeds and recalibrates the advantage in

9:31

wealth from the incumbents to the entrants.

9:33

It's a natural part of the cycle.

9:36

But wait, lately, no,

9:38

a million people would, dying would

9:40

be bad, but what would be tragic is if

9:42

we let the NASDAQ go down, and guys like me

9:45

lost wealth. So we pumped the

9:47

economy, which again, increased

9:49

the massive transfer of wealth. The best two

9:51

years of my life, COVID, more time with

9:53

my kids, more time with Netflix, and

9:56

my value of my stocks

9:58

absolutely exploded. And who

10:00

has to pay for my prosperity? Not

10:02

me. Future generations who

10:05

will have to deal with an unprecedented

10:07

level of debt. Key

10:10

to getting wealthy or establishing some wealth

10:12

as a younger person is that in

10:14

2008, as an example, we

10:17

allowed the markets to fall. We

10:19

bailed out banks, but we didn't bail out the

10:21

economy. And guys like me who were coming into

10:23

the prime income earning years got to

10:25

buy Netflix at $12. It's at $600

10:27

now. Got to buy Amazon at $8.

10:30

It's at $180 now. So

10:33

when you bail out the boomer

10:35

owner of a restaurant, all you're

10:37

doing is robbing opportunity from the

10:39

26-year-old recent graduate of a culinary

10:41

academy who wants her shot to

10:43

buy a restaurant on

10:45

the cheap. Disruption is a cycle

10:47

and a churn that seeds advantage

10:49

from incumbents to entrants. And what

10:51

we've decided is to

10:54

borrow young people's credit cards to

10:56

ensure that the incumbents stay rich.

10:59

And so it seems like my generation of

11:01

the people in power have lost a

11:04

general view that it's their responsibility to invest

11:07

in the future and invest in the middle

11:09

class. I think politics have become

11:11

very much, I need to get mine. This

11:14

happens across the entire ecosystem. In my

11:16

industry, every year we take pride in

11:18

rejecting more and more applicants,

11:21

meaning that the incumbents who already have degrees see the

11:23

value of their degrees go up. When I applied to

11:25

UCLA, it was a 76% admissions rate. This

11:28

year it'll be nine. When you own

11:30

a home, you get very concerned with traffic

11:32

and you show up to the local review

11:34

board and make sure no new housing permits

11:37

are approved. We have one and a

11:39

half million fewer homes than we need

11:41

for household formation, which again has taken

11:43

the value of homes way up. So

11:45

we have embraced this

11:48

rejectionist exclusionary culture that

11:50

crowds out the opportunity for entrance.

11:54

But at some point, all the old rich people are

11:56

going to die. Is there going to

11:58

be a redistribution? of wealth happening

12:01

then? So

12:03

a lot of people will say, but Scott, you're

12:05

about to see the most massive transfer back to

12:07

young people in the form of inheritance. I

12:10

would argue that's a really unhealthy way to

12:12

live life and build a society. What you're

12:15

talking about is Downton Abbey. That,

12:17

oh, you don't need to work or worry because

12:19

you're going to inherit this estate. Waiting

12:21

around for your mother and father to die so you

12:24

can buy a home and have a family

12:26

is just not a way to live a life. Two

12:29

thirds of billionaires are

12:31

self-made. 78% of

12:33

new millionaires are self-made, and that's one of the wonderful

12:36

things about America. So this notion

12:38

that, oh, don't worry, that I'm getting my

12:40

undue spoils, that I've gotten wealthier on your

12:42

credit card as at some point you will

12:45

get it, I just think

12:47

that's a terrible excuse, does not build

12:49

a healthy society, and quite frankly doesn't

12:51

work, and just results in dynastic dynamics

12:54

that the American culture has tried

12:56

to avoid. When

12:59

we come back, Gen Z

13:01

protests online and across college

13:04

campuses. Scott Galloway

13:06

claims they're ultimately fueled by

13:08

deep economic uncertainty, and

13:11

he has solutions. On the show

13:13

today, Generation Gaps. I'm

13:16

Manoush Zomorodi, and you're listening to the TED

13:18

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16:18

Manoush Zomorodi. On the show

16:20

today, generation gaps. What older

16:22

and younger generations can learn

16:24

from each other and

16:27

what seems to be tearing them apart.

16:30

We were just talking to NYU

16:32

professor Scott Galloway. Scott

16:34

says younger generations can't afford

16:36

to pay off their debt,

16:38

buy a home, invest in

16:40

retirement. And he

16:42

blames older generations for withholding

16:44

financial opportunities from them. The

16:47

effects, he says, are more than

16:49

just economic. Well,

16:51

the repercussions are, at a

16:53

very basic level, disappointment and rage.

16:57

A lot of these folks are living at home. A lot of

16:59

them have been told their whole life they can do anything. And

17:02

then that 210 times a day, they

17:04

get a reminder of their failure

17:07

on their phones with a series

17:09

of notifications where people vomit their

17:11

personal possessions and amazing lives that

17:13

they're supposedly leading. And

17:15

they're reminded every day that they're not doing well.

17:17

And also there's a false impression out there that

17:20

everyone is vacationing at the Amman Hotel and owns

17:22

a Ferrari. And if you don't have all of

17:24

those things that you're somehow

17:26

failing, it creates incendiary that is poured

17:28

over every issue. So I would

17:31

argue in large part, what's happened on campuses

17:33

in the United States isn't about the Middle

17:35

East, it's about America. Whether

17:38

it's the Me Too movement, whether it's

17:40

Black Lives Matter, all of these movements

17:42

have righteous justification for concern and engagement

17:45

among our youth. But

17:47

what turns every cut into an

17:49

opportunistic infection and then gangrene is

17:51

the fact that young people aren't doing as well. And

17:55

I think it just creates a general level of rage. I'm

17:58

curious, you know what young.

18:00

people think when you link

18:03

their dissatisfaction with life and

18:06

what feels like really big gaps

18:08

between the generations, how do

18:10

they respond when they hear these things? I

18:13

get a lot of support for young people. I'm

18:16

not sure they appreciate me telling them that

18:18

the reason you're protesting is you're angry about

18:20

your economic situation. I

18:22

think that sometimes that feels like I'm

18:24

infantilizing or patronizing them. But

18:26

what I've generally the feedback is, thank

18:28

you, you said the quiet part out

18:30

loud. And who I really hear

18:33

from is parents. If you're a

18:35

boomer or if you're say, not even boomer, you're

18:37

Gen X and you've done well, and you see

18:39

your kid, your kid's a good kid. She's

18:42

worked hard. She's graduated from the right schools and

18:45

her and her fiance had been saving for

18:47

a house for 10 years and

18:50

they just have given up. They can't buy a house.

18:53

They're thinking about not having kids. It's

18:55

just not viable for them. I

18:57

mean, this is what you want. The whole

18:59

point of an economy is to create a middle class.

19:01

The whole point of a middle class is

19:03

to create a thriving society, a democratic society

19:05

that's prosperous. But the reason we all

19:07

want prosperity at the end of the day, when we get a

19:10

little bit older, is we want our kids to do well. What

19:13

can we do? Nothing wrong with America that can't be

19:15

fixed with what's right with it. We got the hard

19:18

stuff figured out. We have the money. Things

19:20

are doable. We increase minimum wage to

19:22

25 bucks an hour. It goes into

19:24

the economy. The wonderful things about

19:26

low and middle income households is they spend

19:28

all their money. We have to have a

19:30

restore or a progressive tax structure with alternative

19:32

minimum tax on corporations and wealthy individuals. We

19:35

need to refund the IRS. We need to

19:37

reform social security. It should be based on

19:39

whether you need the money, not on how

19:41

old you are. We need a negative income

19:43

tax. My friend Andrew Yang screwed up a

19:45

great idea, but he branded it incorrectly. Instead

19:47

of calling it UBI, she got Republicans on

19:49

board by calling it a negative income tax.

19:54

We need to eliminate the capital gains tax

19:56

deduction. When did we decide that the money the

19:58

capital earns is more than $1 billion? more noble

20:00

than the money that sweat earns. Shouldn't

20:02

it be flicked? We

20:05

need universal pre-K. We need to reinstate

20:08

the expanded child tax credit. We need

20:10

income-based affirmative action. Expand college enrollment of

20:12

vocational programs, mental health, band phones in

20:14

schools, investment in third places, big brothers

20:16

and sisters programs. We need national service.

20:18

We need to tell people in the

20:21

United States and Canada that they live

20:23

in the greatest countries in the world,

20:25

and we need to remind them of

20:27

that every day by exposing them to

20:29

other great Americans where they feel connected

20:31

tissue. We

20:36

can do all of this. We can

20:38

do all of it. We have the resources. The question

20:40

is, do we have the will? This is my last

20:43

slide. It is an emotionally manipulative slide to

20:45

try and get you to like me more. There's

20:48

a moment in your TED Talk when you

20:50

put up a slide of yourself and one

20:52

of your boys at a sporting event. But

20:55

it does have a message. This

20:57

is the whole shooting match. Anybody

20:59

here without kids, ask someone with kids.

21:02

Your whole world shrinks to this. And

21:05

you got pretty emotional up on stage.

21:09

And you laid a lot of guilt

21:11

on the people in the theater. You

21:13

asked them, do we love our children,

21:15

implying that if

21:17

we do, they need to make

21:20

changes. Well,

21:22

Manus, you have children? I do. So

21:25

without knowing you or your children, I'm fairly confident

21:27

that you love your children. I

21:29

bet you are fairly confident I love mine.

21:31

The question I asked is, do we love

21:33

our children? And that

21:35

is, have we entered an economy where it's sort

21:37

of a winner take most attitude and everyone's grabbing

21:39

for their own? We ignore

21:42

because we're all believe we're gonna be in the

21:44

top 10% that's never done

21:46

better than previous top deciles that

21:49

we'll be in that top 10%. And we're not

21:51

willing to make the sacrifices and the hard decisions

21:54

such that other people's children who might be in the

21:56

bottom 90 do better. I

22:00

think that America has kind of lost the script

22:02

and that is what is the point of any

22:04

of this? You know, on your

22:06

radio hour, you're gonna talk about AI, you're

22:09

gonna talk about the environment, you're gonna talk about

22:11

the climate. Anyone who has kids, something

22:13

comes off the tracks with one of your kids, you're

22:15

not thinking about the climate, you're not thinking about AI,

22:19

you're thinking about that kid. And

22:22

economic anxiety is someone who went through economic

22:24

anxiety as a kid. I can tell you,

22:28

we aren't treating our children well, we aren't

22:30

treating other kids well. The

22:32

resting blood pressure of kids in low-income

22:34

homes is tangibly higher than

22:36

kids in middle and upper-income homes. There

22:39

are more kids depressed, more admissions

22:42

of self-harm, more anxiety. So

22:44

the question is, what is the point of

22:47

any of this? If your kid is

22:49

anxious or depressed, and people have

22:51

this feeling, well, I'm gonna be

22:53

successful, I can take care of my kids. Okay, I

22:55

know you love your kids, but do we love our

22:57

kids? That

23:00

was Scott Galloway. He's a professor of

23:02

marketing at New York University and the

23:04

host of Pivot and the

23:07

Professor G. Pod. His latest

23:09

book is called The Algebra

23:11

of Wealth, a simple formula

23:13

for financial security. On

23:16

the show today, Generation Gaps. We

23:18

wanna go now to another problem

23:20

that younger generations are inheriting, climate

23:23

change. In many places,

23:25

a warming planet means finding new

23:28

ways to grow food that can

23:30

survive extreme weather. So

23:32

our next speaker assumed that today's farmer

23:34

has little use for the agricultural wisdom

23:36

of old, until

23:38

the science proved her wrong. Our

23:41

story starts in a kitchen in the

23:43

Philippines. My grandma, she

23:45

is an incredible cook, and we treat the

23:48

kitchen like it's a living room. That's where

23:50

we talk, and that's why I fell in

23:52

love with cooking. Louise Mabulo

23:54

is 25 and an award-winning

23:57

chef and entrepreneur. She

23:59

grew up in a- small farming town

24:01

and started learning about cooking and food

24:03

at a young age. My

24:06

grandparents would serve me a nice steaming cup

24:09

of hot chocolate that they'd grown from their

24:11

farms and my dad would be

24:13

like, well it came from this gorgeous bright red

24:15

pod and then your grandmother sucks on

24:18

the seeds individually and dries them in the sun

24:20

and then we would roast it and turn that

24:22

into chocolate. So my grandparents

24:24

grew things intuitively in how they've learned

24:26

from their own grandparents and all that

24:28

ancestral knowledge that's been passed down to

24:31

them. Some of the

24:33

things she learned struck her as kind

24:35

of ridiculous. My

24:38

grandfather would be in a

24:40

rice field and be whistling because it's a hot

24:42

day and he would say, you know, the whistle

24:44

attracts a good breeze or they

24:46

grow like, wow, you have so many

24:48

harvests of cacao today and they'd be

24:50

like, yes, it's because, you know, we

24:52

planted this tree during the full moon

24:55

and that makes a lot more fruit.

24:58

Another odd piece of advice was planting a

25:00

rock under your root crops and sweet potatoes

25:03

or even under your trees. Over

25:05

the years I was like, why do we do that?

25:07

It makes no scientific sense. And

25:10

they'd just be like, I don't know, every time

25:12

I just do that it's sweeter. And

25:15

at the time when I heard these things, it

25:17

was always, oh, this is just something that my

25:19

grandma or grandpa would say, you know, it's, well,

25:22

grandma's just crazy, some other wives'

25:24

tale. At the age

25:26

of 12, Louise didn't care much about

25:28

farming, but she started entering cooking competitions

25:31

and winning. She went on TV

25:33

cooking shows. By 17,

25:35

she was a trained chef hosting

25:38

dinners in cities around Asia and

25:40

building an online following. I

25:43

became a farm to table type of chef where I

25:45

would highlight where these ingredients came from and the stories

25:47

of the people who brought them to your tables. And

25:50

then after some time I started growing ingredients

25:52

myself. And that was when

25:54

I started really getting into farming and caring

25:56

about how food was grown. But

25:59

in 2016, I was a chef. In

26:01

2015, Louise learned how unpredictable the life

26:03

of her fellow local farmers was when

26:06

a typhoon struck the Philippines and

26:08

her hometown. The

26:10

family was safe, but

26:13

the farmlands surrounding them were

26:15

desperate. We lost 80% of

26:17

our agricultural lands and its

26:19

productivity. The

26:23

farmers that I've been working with, most of them

26:25

were impacted. And I

26:28

thought to myself, this is a

26:30

huge, disastrous existential crisis for my

26:32

community and for so many people

26:34

across the Philippines. How can

26:36

we address this? And I had a platform and

26:38

the ability to do something. So

26:41

first it was providing seeds

26:43

and vegetables and plants that

26:46

the farmers could use to start making an

26:48

income again and rebuild their farms. But

26:51

over time I thought, this kind of aid

26:53

system is just very temporary. Louise

26:56

wondered if she could turn this emergency

26:59

into an opportunity for herself and

27:01

those farmers. There's a

27:03

root cause of this and it's climate

27:05

change and weather disasters. How

27:07

can we build resilience within these livelihoods so

27:09

that they're not experiencing storms every year and

27:12

recovering from them every year? They

27:15

noticed some native plants, like

27:17

cacao, had no trouble recovering.

27:20

They were also very resilient to these storms. And

27:23

so she wondered whether doubling down

27:25

on cacao as a crop was

27:27

a longer-term solution. There were

27:29

so many pathways and opportunities for people

27:32

to build resilient livelihoods from

27:34

different steps of growing cocoa.

27:37

Wild cacao trees grow easily in

27:39

this region. Local

27:41

people, like Louise's grandma, harvested them

27:44

to make hot cocoa and chocolate.

27:47

But no one there was making money off of

27:49

cacao. These farmers were

27:51

selling more fragile crops like rice,

27:53

coconut and corn. farmers

28:00

were just growing these because that's what they knew how to

28:02

grow. And they hadn't thought

28:04

of maybe expanding or

28:06

trying other things. And so

28:08

that's when I built the cacao project

28:10

to build sustainable and resilient livelihoods for

28:12

farmers in the Philippines. The

28:15

cacao project's goal was to help

28:18

local farmers integrate cacao into their

28:20

usual crop rotation. The first step,

28:23

giving farmers cacao tree saplings

28:26

and convincing them to be part of

28:28

her idea for a cacao business. So

28:31

we created farmer field schools where we

28:33

train farmers on building resilience. And

28:36

so far we've worked with over 200 farmers and have

28:39

planted more than 250,000 trees across our municipality. What

28:44

did local people, farmers,

28:46

think when you started getting

28:49

into this whole agricultural

28:52

thing? Were they like, you know, who's

28:54

this young hotshot? Or

28:57

are they like, great,

28:59

let's have some fresh blood in this? I'm

29:01

so curious. Well, people were very skeptical.

29:03

I came in. No one wanted

29:05

to believe a young person getting into the agricultural

29:07

field. I didn't have the type of agricultural background

29:09

that would give me the credibility to be like,

29:12

you need to start changing the way you farm.

29:14

It was a slow process. I started

29:17

a little bit egotistical thinking. I think I know

29:19

a thing or two and I might know a

29:21

little better. And then we

29:23

made a lot of mistakes along the way where

29:25

it doesn't grow as productive as it could be.

29:27

But then that's when we started talking to farmers

29:29

like, how would you normally farm these things? And

29:31

they were like, OK, these are the practices that

29:34

I know. And a lot of these practices that

29:36

my grandparents were teaching me were coming up over

29:38

and over. They were like, yeah, no, no, we

29:40

just just do these things. It'll work out. Louise

29:43

Mabulo continues from the Ted stage.

29:46

And as I was talking

29:48

to these farmers, these crazy

29:50

stories started resurfacing. And

29:53

I said, OK, hang on, hang on. Maybe they're

29:55

onto something here. So together with our

29:58

farmers, we started trying. it

30:00

out. Okay, let's plant some rocks here and

30:02

see what happens. Okay,

30:04

let's plant according to the lunar cycles. And

30:07

for some reason, every single time that

30:09

we would do that, it would work.

30:11

When we plant rocks under sweet potatoes,

30:13

they were better, sweeter, just more delicious.

30:15

Every time we planted according to lunar

30:18

cycles, we'd have delicious harvest. And

30:20

I thought, maybe what if all

30:23

of these weird stories are

30:25

just kind of decades of

30:27

peer review that is

30:29

passed down from grandmother to grandson, from

30:31

father to daughter, in the ways that

30:33

they best knew how. And

30:36

maybe grandma wasn't so crazy

30:38

after all. Now,

30:41

over the years, I've trained with

30:43

farmers, and we make sure that

30:45

learning is a two-way street, where

30:48

we look at the ways that

30:50

we can marry practical traditional knowledge

30:52

techniques with modern science and know-how,

30:54

so that we could put a

30:56

spotlight on those simple practical solutions

30:59

that react effectively to climate change.

31:02

And so I like to say I'm more

31:04

of an intermediary, translating the way that our

31:06

farmers have grown to the modern world, and

31:08

also translating the modern world, all these policies

31:10

and science and ideas to farmers in a

31:12

way that they understand. So

31:14

did you get the science

31:16

behind the these ancestral methods?

31:19

For the most part, yes. So when

31:21

we were doing these farmer field schools

31:23

and these trial and errors, sometimes we

31:25

would have visitors from universities and agricultural

31:27

schools, and some of them

31:29

would explain to us why, like planting

31:32

seeds during lunar cycles at a full

31:34

moon would give you better harvests, because

31:36

insects that were mating during those times

31:39

are also our pollinators for cocoa plants.

31:42

And in terms of the sweet potatoes, it

31:44

would be because the rocks were

31:46

moist wet environments, attracted worms, and

31:48

all of these little critters and

31:50

biodiversity that were beneficial to our

31:52

soil. And it was just natural

31:54

fertilizer. And we would just

31:57

talk about this in circles over what

31:59

was the correct way. And sure enough,

32:01

the aunties and the elderly ladies had

32:04

the best outcomes every single time

32:06

and proved us wrong. So

32:09

they weren't surprised when you came back to them

32:11

and said, actually, you were right. No,

32:13

they were not surprised at all. And they were

32:15

very smug about it. And I never stopped hearing

32:18

it for months. You

32:21

know, it's interesting. When we started talking,

32:23

I thought that we were mostly going

32:25

to discuss how ancestral knowledge gets passed

32:27

down through generations. But

32:30

really what I've learned also is

32:32

that younger people are

32:35

carving out roles that didn't exist. Like

32:37

you, for example, are on

32:39

the global stage telling the story of

32:42

how climate change is affecting these farmers

32:45

and how they are surviving,

32:47

building businesses in innovative ways.

32:50

That feels very new. Absolutely.

32:52

That's exactly what I'm trying to do,

32:55

is be this person that tells the

32:57

stories of on the ground, but also

32:59

be able to crack that system for

33:01

our farmers. And it's looking

33:04

back at that knowledge of how we

33:06

used to farm circularly in a way

33:08

that was good for the community, but

33:10

also marrying it with modern day technology

33:13

and science and understanding. There

33:15

seems to always be a gap between high

33:17

level policies or the concepts of

33:20

climate change and what we know

33:22

inherently on the ground. I

33:24

was wondering, why does that gap exist? And

33:26

I realized maybe it's my role to start connecting those

33:29

two parts. All

33:31

of this knowledge exists in countries

33:33

and communities and traditions and stories

33:35

within our families. And

33:38

as a young person who works in

33:40

the environmental field, I think it is

33:42

so cool to have that kind of

33:44

responsibility to carry this knowledge onto the

33:46

next generation. Because

33:48

maybe the solutions to our climate

33:50

crisis, maybe the next big fix

33:52

all, maybe it

33:54

exists in the soils under our feet, or

33:57

maybe it exists in the

33:59

crazy. wild stories of our grandmothers. And

34:03

it is such an honor

34:05

to build something that embodies the

34:08

wisdom of our communities,

34:10

of our families, and of our

34:12

landscapes over years and generations. That

34:17

was the founder of The Cacao

34:19

Project, Louise Mabulo. You can

34:21

see her full talk at ted.com. On

34:25

the show today, Generation Gaps, I'm

34:28

Manu Shahzomorodi, and you're listening to the

34:30

Ted Radio Hour from NPR. We'll

34:32

be right back. This

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