Finite

TED Radio Hour

NPR

Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Science, Technology

4.4 • 21.3K Ratings

🗓️ 8 February 2019

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Original broadcast date: July 17, 2015. In a world with limited resources, can we find ways to salvage what's disappearing? Can we innovate our way out of a finite landscape? This hour, TED speakers explore ideas about living with less. Guests include ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin, ecologist Jon Foley, economist Ramanan Laxminarayan, community organizer Rob Hopkins, and researcher Navi Radjou.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's Guy here. So as of this month, there are roughly 7.7 billion people living here on planet Earth.
0:08.0	And all those people are using resources like food and oil and water and medicine faster than ever before.
0:15.6	So today on the show, we're going to explore our finite world and if it's even possible to innovate,
0:21.6	our way out of it. This episode is called Finite and it originally aired in July of 2015.
0:27.2	This is the Ted Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking Ted Talks. Ted. Ted. Technology. Entertainment. Design.
0:41.2	Design. Is that really what's 10 for us? I've never known that. Delivered at Ted Conferences around the world.
0:46.2	To the gift of the human imagination. We've had to believe in impossible things.
0:50.2	The true nature of reality beckons from just beyond those talks, those ideas adapted for radio.
0:58.2	From NPR. I'm Guy Ross. So like a lot of people back in the late 70s, Mark Placan had a really bad trip.
1:12.2	The worst experience of my life was taking Ayahuasca with a shaman from the Columbia Amazon. And in that, I witnessed my death.
1:22.2	Mark Placan is an ethno-botnist, which means he studies plants, specifically plants that grow in the Amazon.
1:30.2	And because he's interested in the medicinal power of those plants to heal, Mark will spend a lot of time
1:36.2	communing with the native tribes who use those plants to brew things like a tea called Ayahuasca.
1:42.2	Well, we would describe it as a hallucinogen, a term the Indians don't like they call it remedial.
1:46.2	A medicine. It's the original medicine, the most important medicine.
1:50.2	A medicine used to welcome guests. A medicine only the rudest guest would refuse.
1:56.2	And a medicine that Mark was offered that day in the Columbia Amazon.
2:00.2	And I drank the first cup and I felt pretty good. And then a couple hours later they will either say to you,
2:08.2	you should drink another cup or do you want another cup or don't drink another cup.
2:12.2	And I recalled he offered it to me or I asked for it and I took it and it just went downhill from there.
2:18.2	Like right away? Yeah, right away.
2:20.2	What do you remember? Just crying and screaming and wishing I was dead.
	...

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