Behind the TED talk - it's live!
Some thoughts on the experience
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Today is the day! I had the immense privilege of speaking at TED2023 in Vancouver in April and my talk is finally live. I hope you enjoy it and share it widely. Here’s a peek behind the curtain.
These talks are tough to write. They’re for a general audience, not experts, and they’re short, so they lack context. I wanted to use this newsletter to talk a bit more about why I framed my TED talk the way I did and expand on some of the points. I’ll be doing even more of that on Oct 12th in a webinar hosted by the Population Reference Bureau. We’ll watch the talk together and then I, alongside three other panelists, will discuss what a roadmap for resilience in an aging world really means. RSVP here.
First, the question you really want answered
How did I get a TED talk in the first place? When I say that anyone could theoretically land a TED talk I really mean it. They are always looking for suggestions. (And if you have one, drop it in the comments.) I was introduced to one of their “curators” by my book publicist, but when we first talked in January 2022 I was framing population issues too broadly, trying to cram info on all 8 billion people into 10 minutes. That wasn’t right for TED. We connected a year later when I pitched a much narrower idea about global aging. I still find it extremely painful to have reduced an incredibly complex topic into a ten-minute talk but I accomplished my two goals. Which were…
What did I hope to accomplish?
Goal #1 was to raise awareness about how radically global demographics have shifted in the last few decades and how population aging is the trend that will shape the 21st century. Global fertility rates (the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime) have fallen so far and so fast that many people still think we’re living in the 1960s. Trends change, but our thinking doesn’t always keep up. My favorite fact from the talk: There are so many people between the ages of 65 and 74 right now that together they’d be the third most populous country in the world, a far higher number than the total number of migrants in the world today. Immigration will be part of making our societies more resilient, but extending healthspan and working lives will be even more important.
Goal #2 was to change the rhetoric around this shift from one of alarm to one of resilience by starting a conversation about how we can successfully navigate an older world without leaving people behind. We have to act now to brainstorm and implement ideas for thriving in an older world. I believe we can, but I also think we are far behind.
Some words on the three potential worlds
As I say in the talk, we’re on track for there to be more people over age 60 than under 14 by the middle of this century. That radical change in modern human society presents us with a world of possibilities, which I organize as three potential worlds: a status quo world, a fearful world, and a resilient world. My key point, always: Our demography is our destiny, but how we react to our demography is not preordained.
In a status quo world, we basically act as if this huge change isn’t happening. The biggest red flag is when we spend the same. The most powerful countries continue to increase military spending and try to project power beyond their borders, even as their national budgets strain and the number of potential soldiers shrinks. That’s how Russia has acted as they’ve started a protracted war with Ukraine, even though Putin called Russia’s demographic problem the worst problem facing the country. A shrinking China challenges an aging United States for the top of the global order. And because it feels threatened by other powers in the region, Japan proposes to raise its defense spending to a level that would be the third highest in the world, even as they scramble to fund care for the world’s oldest population.
A fearful world looks too much like The Handmaid’s Tale. When governments don’t accept that birth rates have shifted and spend all of their time trying to raise them, we know we’re in that world. A key point here: non-democracies are aging, too, and I worry that we will see more coercive policies to raise birth rates in the future.
I hope we can borrow language from climate change and think creatively about resilience and adaptation to population aging.
In a resilient world we reimagine good health as the key to success. We recognize that people are living longer so they have to work longer, but they can work longer because they’re healthier. Instead of inefficient and ineffective health care systems, we get smart about where our money goes to maximize healthy and productive lives. Right now, women in Greece, Cyprus, France, and Spain can expect to live more than 20 years in good health after retirement. Such a long time in good health after retirement means the opportunity to build household savings, stay active and engaged, and pay into pay-as-you go entitlements systems. On the other end of the spectrum, men in the US, Russia, Romania, Mexico, and China can expect to live only about 10 to 11 years in good health after retirement, but that’s not because these societies have achieved a perfect match between time for leisure in good health at the end of life and appropriate retirement age. Rather, their health situation is bleak. In Russia, 60-year-old males can only expect to live to age 72 in good health, Romanian men age 73, and American, Mexican, and Chinese men age 75. Investing in both sound retirement structures and health is key to resilience.
In a resilient world, we strategically leverage technology to increase our productivity. White-collar workers are willing to stay on longer because they can work from home. Blue-collar workers aren’t as run down because they use technology to alleviate backbreaking labor. In Japan, wearable exoskeletons, like this one from Innophys, already help older workers safely lift heavy loads on farms and in factories. They’re also used to help nursing care workers of all ages lift elderly people to and from wheelchairs, beds, and baths.
In a resilient world, we will work longer, but in this world we’ve rethought what work looks like in old age and it’s to the benefit of both employees and employers. It’s more flexible and creative because we’ve tossed out the old model where people retire at their peak then spend down their savings over decades. That rigid model of either full-time work or full-time retirement is a thing of the past. Instead, people near the end of their working lives downgrade their responsibilities in exchange for less pay and less stress. They consult, they work part-time. Individual companies can lead the way, and there’s real benefit to their leadership, as companies can be nimble and experiment to see what works best.
But was the TED talk fun?
Yes and No. Writing the talk was the hardest professional thing I’ve ever done and I didn’t pull my draft together until two weeks before the talk—it should have been more like two months. I’m still not exactly sure what was so hard about it, but I think that when you’ve studied something so deeply for 20 years it’s hard to distill it down to a 10-minute talk (TED talks are much shorter than they used to be). I also think that since I’ve painted myself as a non-alarmist, someone who points out nuance and emphasizes that context matters, I’d find writing a talk like this difficult no matter what. Still, twenty minutes would have been ideal. Also, you truly have to memorize it, verbatim. There is no teleprompter; you can’t have notes. You can’t even seen your next slide. The on-stage experience would have been much more pleasant with at least a crutch!
But the experience itself was amazing and I’m immensely grateful to David, my curator, to TED, and to everyone who supported me (especially my husband, Paul, who had to listen to 100 versions of the talk). I got to be in the “Science Pod” with Shane Campbell-Staton, who looks at how human activity is driving rapid evolutionary change in animals (and debuted a show on PBS this summer); Hannah Ritchie, who is using data to tell a more optimistic story about how we’re tackling our environmental issues (and whose new book is out soon); Ali Hajimiri, who is working to wirelessly transmit energy from space to Earth; Amy Baxter, who is going to revolutionize pain management; George Whitesides, who is solving extreme wildfires; Piyachart Phiromswad, who is looking at on-the-ground ways to maximize the power of a graying population (talk not posted yet); Anna Greka, who is unlocking treatments for genetic diseases that affect millions; and Stephen Long, who is hacking photosynthesis to feed our 8 billion people (talk not posted yet).
Although I presented in the Science Pod, my session included some of the most provocative talks of the conference. I opened our session, and Ian Bremmer closed it. Barbara Walter and Keyu Jin spoke in my session as well. I could hear people discussing their talks in the hallways for days.
I met tons of great people, many of whom I’m still in touch with.
Finally, I had a “eureka” moment for my next book…stay tuned as I work out the ideas via this newsletter over the next year. Maybe I’ll even get the chance to give a talk on that project in a few years.