It does excite me to see that people wanna use this tool to push their industry forward and try new things that they couldn't do before.

Up next, TED Fellows program director Lily James Olds sits down with Skendy Kerezen to talk about the childhood that made him a maker, what it takes to build something no one's built before, and where a technology like this can take us from the factory floor to maybe someday another planet.

Don't go away.

Hi, Skendy.

Welcome.

... components, at least not yet.

It can seem so inevitable when you're speaking to someone in an industry that it seems like, "Oh, this is a brilliant idea, and of course it worked." I'm wondering if you could take us kind of behind the curtain.

When you were building this with your co-founders, was there a moment that you genuinely doubted it could be successful, a kind of a moment of failure or something that made you wanna walk away? I'd love to hear kinda what was overcome to get to where you are now.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

.... to a, you used the word community center instead, but I think what was interesting to me that I wanted to go a little deeper on is when you were explaining to me kind of what you mean by community center.

You said that there's a bit of a different definition in Japanese that doesn't quite mean a general purpose space or a recreation center.

So I'd love if you could tell us what is the word in, for those of us who don't speak Japanese, what is the word in Japanese, and how would you describe that kind of space at that redirection, right, of funds from individuals into that community-

Yes, exactly.

I wanted to ask one last question, which I think is important given the terrain that we've covered of politics as process and how do you create trust between politicians and citizens.

So for someone listening right now who has never spoken up about something in their own town or city and maybe doesn't even know where to start What would you recommend? How would you say they might start to advocate for things that are important to them in their community?

So this works successfully across the world, including half of Europe.

Well, it's interesting, you know, one of my team members on the TED Fellows team is German, and when we were first speaking to you, I remember she sort of was saying, "Wait, why is this such a radical notion? This is true of all banks in Germany." [laughs] How do you see models like that possible to work in the United States? How might the work that you're doing in California scale to the state, to the country?

It's really, the tool is what's missing.

What do you see on the horizon as AI becomes more prevalent in banking and finance? Obviously, that's both on a municipal level but on individuals as well.

What kind of role do you think technology will play, does play in the work that you're doing and the change that you're trying to make?

But me, I like to eat it, I can eat it every day.

That sounds great.

I just wanna go back to, 'cause I think it's a really kind of powerful example of expanding one's learning, when you talk about the grandmother school.

Why is this kind of cross-generational learning so important to you?

And so that why I so teach to our student, the young people we teach, really invite grandmother sometime to come to teach them, because for personally, it's very important to understand more about the product and the environment, and this we learn it by grandmother.

And I wanna describe for people for a second, Molonga, what it's like to come visit the Culinary Innovation Village, which is also where Meza Malonga, your amazing restaurant, is now based.

So from Kigali, it's a-

Mm-hmm

...

I guess get comfortable in a different kind of way.

What do you think that approach allows that maybe, you know, more sort of traditional sitting down to, you know, write down someone's story or to film them on video or audio? What, what do you think happens in that process when you're drawing that is a bit different than the way sort of, let's just say, kind of usual journalism would work?

Um-

No, I think that's a...

Yeah, that's a beautiful answer.

And, and there's that it makes it more valuable as well, the human-to-human connection.

[laughs]

And going a little bit on a different track here, I love how you urge us all to think about the people in our lives and who has helped us each succeed and to really remember all of those shoulders that we stand on.

I'd love to ask, how do you think each of us can work to cultivate this way of thinking about people, about opportunity, about ambition, and how can we be the shoulders that others can stand on?

And when you spoke about shoulders of the giants, we like saying, oh, it's because we like talking about notable figures, but there is those silent giants that we don't normally talk about because they might not perhaps have gotten to where I was, but they played a critical role for me to get to where I am.

I take a lot of inspiration from this idea of just looking at something from a different perspective, right? And I think just that sort of continual expansion of imagination and what is possible for yourself, for the communities that you're within and that you work with, for the society that you live in, for the world.

I think this ability to sort of meet each moment with this widening perspective is something-

And so-Being able to come from what we measure and predict and learn over time, and connecting it to, we should have irrigation infrastructure here, and that irrigation instruct- infrastructure arrives, whole different story.

Yeah.

I mean, it's interesting.

It almost feels like part of what you're describing is that last mile of translation, as you're saying.

It's like there's the specificity on the ground, and there's the specificity, you know, from building the data sets, but not from the right places.

So as you said, where does that connect? And I think one of the things that I was...

that I think is so kind of fascinating about where you are and that some of our conversations have revolved around is you wear so many hats.

I wouldn't, I wouldn't be able to see that, so.

But fortunately, there have been different approaches from governments and also from companies to try to assess, uh, the risk of these models with different evaluations.And try then to make sense of what will be, like, the risk that we can have, uh, when releasing these models to the public.

Just to go a step further, how do we regulate it? You know? I mean, obviously regulation always lags behind innovation, but I'm just curious, can you speak to the current relationship between your work and the policy and protections in place? And, you know, what do you hope this relationship will look like as this technology continues to grow that both allows for the innovation that is obviously creating the possibilities for incredible problem-solving for humanity, and also those dangers that you're touching on.

And so they, they have these, like, different thresholds for determining, uh, whether it's a very high risk and we have to do something about it, or it's, like, very low and then we do have to keep an eye on it, but without oversight.

Yeah, I mean, obviously so much work still to be done, but it's always comforting to hear [laughs] the things that are in place in terms of that kind of thinking and rigor.

I guess that leads me to think also, you know, things are shifting so much, obviously, right now in the global landscape of science.

You know, recent policy changes in the US around climate science and otherwise, the example that you just gave of, you know, who needs to be doing this work in terms of regulation around AI.

Do you see this as an opportunity for other countries to kind of step in?

What up, Lily? How you feeling?

I'm feeling great.

I'm excited to talk to you today.

So I'm gonna jump right in and ask, you talk about the traditional food pantry model as being unchanged for decades and, you know, really not prioritizing the experience of the person using it.

What is missing or outdated in those traditional pantry models that made you do things differently?

Yeah

... from a grocery store.

In your kind of systems mind, what are the ways that we could start to connect the dots overall on that in terms of both of those issues? How can we think about still giving the user the best possible experience of food, no matter their ZIP Code, and then simultaneously, how do we think about scaling back on food waste or utilizing that food that could be donated in certain contexts?

It just needed the ability to revision what the future of those industries could look like.

Right.

That makes sense.

So really, those roots that you talked about were sort of already in place, and you [chuckles] decided to start from there.

So when you talked about starting the Carolina Textile Network and now the Industrial Commons, you mentioned that you aimed to be big by being small together.

I really love this, and I feel like it's an important way to reconsider how we're approaching collaboration and mutual support in our communities today.

I'm curious, how did you get everyone to come together for this approach, and how do you deal with competition between companies in this model? How do you kinda get at that, you know, all boats rise mentality and get everybody to understand that that's what's best?

And so we've taken a lot of our blueprint from other regions of the world that have used this model.

It's hard to express how impactful that voyage was in changing the nature and the understanding and identity of people who shared that canoe heritage.

That's so fascinating, and what an incredible foundational experience from a school perspective.

I'm so fascinated really by how you as a navigator rely solely on nature's signs and patterns as your guide on these journeys, you know, the stars, the currents, the scents you talk about.

Can you explain more specifically how you do this?

[laughs]

... know you actually are more connected, right? We use the word disconnected when you leave your phone at home or something, but you're actually so much more, obviously, connected to all these everything happening around you, all of life, than you would be in a way.

I think it's so moving to hear you mention also, when we've talked before, how you and your team are very mindful of your presence in places, really recognizing that we all leave an impact, right, everywhere we travel, both on the environment and the people.

Can you share a bit more about how this influences the work you do and maybe even the relationships you build in your life? How does this sense of awareness change how you move through the world?

It's so good to be with you today.

It's so powerful to hear you talk about how smell can transport us into so many different dimensions, but as you say, it's also the sense that people are most willing to give up if you ask them.

Why do you think smell is often undervalued in comparison to, to our other senses?

It is a fundamental part of who we are and how we navigate the world around us.

Yeah.

It's so interesting that you say that because today I had my boiler replaced, and it gives this really chemically smell, and I was doing some, you know, of course, Googling on it.

But just as you said, just walking in, in the house and that immediate smell of something, something's off, you know, something's wrong here, so...

Um, I also think it's, it's so fascinating that you say that smell is the only sense that's directly connected to our brain's limbic system, and I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the connection between smell and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and dementia, which you mentioned.

I'm so excited to be here.

Me too.

I just have to start by saying that I never thought I'd hear macrophages described as cute, but [laughs] there you are, TED Fellows, always full of innovation.

Um, can you tell us a bit more what new equitable initiatives and efforts and technologies your lab has underway right now? There's so much that you all are working on.

I'd love to hear a little bit more of the details.

And so those are two of the kind of new, uh, adventures we're on as a lab, and hopefully making waves and changing the innovation of how we conduct bench science.

That's amazing.

I'm wondering if there are any discoveries from your work that you find really particularly illuminating when it comes to understanding healthcare from a more inclusive perspective, and any maybe specific examples that really underscore how different people's bodies and healthcare needs are.

It's also about inclusion, and that's kind of what we, um, try to keep in mind, um, as we operate and, and build these solutions.

I love that you give the example, you know, that others have brought up of data really being the new oil in the data economy, and you speak about how important it is that we're including the full spectrum of humanity in these data sets that AI models are built on.

How do you think we do this? I think the example you just gave with your company, um, is apt, right? Like, how do we also make sure that these AI frameworks', um, models are really built on ethical human frameworks?

Thanks, Lillian.

[outro music] That was Mohammed Aburiai, a 2024 TED Fellow.

To learn more about the TED Fellows program and watch all the TED Fellows films, go to fellows.ted.com. And that's it for today.

TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective.

This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estafanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Autumn Thompson, and Alejandra Salazar.