01x05 - Together

[bunniefuu]

The most important

thing for any human being

is to be with

other human beings.

We are not solitary creatures.

We are not

individuals in the way

that we think of it

or the stories that we tell.

Evidence shows us that we

have been traveling and moving

in groups as far back

as we can actually find

skeletons and bones in caves.

Humans feel the most

in themselves, the most happy,

the most joyful when they're

actually in large groups

together.

We're all kind of

focused and aligned.

We're actually

having a sense of awe

at whatever is happening.

We find that when people are

at certain events together,

that eventually their hearts are

actually beating in unison.

What we are meant to be

is to be in groups together.

It's who and what we are.

So there's

two things that h*m* sapiens do

fundamentally better

than almost any other species

on Planet Earth.

It's to work together,

to cooperate,

and also a sense of prospection,

actually,

to think about the future.

And those are

inextricably linked.

As my journey continues,

everywhere I go,

I'm struck by how similar

we all really are.

We want to connect, to belong,

and to see ourselves

as a part of a team or a tribe.

Why is this sense of

togetherness so central

to who we are,

and what does it mean

in a moment when

that's often not reflected

in the world around us?

How can we build on

the best parts of who we are

in order to create

the future we want to see

and leave behind?

That's led me to Japan,

headed out to a small island

I've read about for years.

Coming here

is a dream come true,

as this quiet, distant place is

home to a troupe of

world-renowned drummers,

who've always struck me

as a beautiful picture

of what's possible

when individuals come together

to create something they could

never achieve on their own.

My name is Leo Ikenaga,

and I'm a performer for Kodo.

Kodo is a Japanese

drumming ensemble.

Japanese drumming

is called taiko.

And we are a group

that uses the taiko,

but we try to incorporate

different traditional,

cultural elements

that are native to Japan.

And we try to kind of create

something new out of it.

We travel all over the world

and perform and work with

a lot of different artists.

And we're just trying

to create something new

from this Japanese tradition.

What does it take

for someone to join Kodo?

So, to join Kodo, you

first have to complete

a two-year apprenticeship.

And then you become

a junior member,

and then you become

a full-time member.

And the two-year

apprenticeship is

a very, very rigorous

process.

You're living

in an abandoned

70-year-old middle school

with 15 to 20 other people.

You have no privacy.

You have no phones,

no TV, no Internet.

And you wake up

at 5:00 in the morning.

You run every day.

You plant your own rice.

You harvest your own food,

and then you practice all day.

And you do that

for two years.

So it's

a pretty crazy process,

but it's a great opportunity

to get in touch with

yourself,

because you're constantly

under pressure

and you're constantly

under stress.

Right now there are

about 15 apprentices.

Maybe one or two will

make it into the troupe,

so it's very,

very selective.

But the beautiful thing

is, these apprentices,

even though maybe one or

two make it into the group,

they have to work together.

They have to cook

for each other.

They have to perform

with each other,

because we're never looking

at them individually.

We're evaluating them

based on how well

they work with others,

how much they

improve others.

It's hard to see that when

you're in the apprenticeship,

but once you become

a member, it's very apparent,

because, you know,

when we're performing,

you have to be in sync with

everyone without a conductor.

So these apprentices,

they're constantly

fighting and competing

with each other.

But at the same time,

they have to be,

like, very, very close-knit

with each other.

So it's difficult,

but a very, very

rewarding journey.

What's possible

when you move

from being kind of

a solo player

to being an ensemble?

What is it that

you're able to do

that you couldn't

do alone?

You're able to

create something that you

could never do by yourself.

You are able to put

yourself into a situation

where you strive

to be better

and you strive

to make others better.

And it's this process that

we go through every day.

It's really hard

to do that alone.

It's possible.

But when you have

someone next to you

that's drumming

their heart out

and they're doing the best

that they can

and they're

doing it every day,

you want to be

like that person.

Yeah, it's

pretty incredible.

Wallach, voice-over: Being here

and experiencing

how the drummers live

and work together is moving.

And it makes me wonder

just how much we've lost

in the pursuit of seeing

ourselves as individuals

above all else.

In a time when distrust

feels more common than trust,

what kind of

collective price are we paying?

And what type of

futures are waiting

on the other side of us coming

to see ourselves as connected,

not alone?

We are the only species

in the animal kingdom

with the ability to blush,

which is, I think,

a telling fact.

We involuntarily give

away our feelings

to other members of our species

in order to establish trust.

We are the only species

among primates

with white eyes, right?

So that means people can see--

I'm looking in the camera

right now.

If I was a chimpanzee,

that would have been much more

difficult.

I'm looking to the left.

Now I'm looking to the right.

So I'm involuntarily giving

away my gaze,

which, again,

helps to establish trust.

So it's in our biology.

It's in our DNA that

we've been optimized for trust.

You want to feel like the

social system of which you're

a member and a participant

has something

legitimate, fair,

desirable, good,

something worthy about it.

We want to feel like

our sports team is

better than

the other sports teams.

We want to feel our town or

our city is better than others

or our university or college

is better than others.

It could also be

a racial or ethnic group

or other kinds of social groups.

That's where

the tribalism comes in.

We have created systems

that increase the distance

between people, right,

increases the distance between

people on the work floor

and the managers,

between the citizens

and the politicians.

The longer the distance becomes,

both physical distance

and psychological distance,

the more difficult

it becomes to trust one another.

So that's what we have.

We have a deepening

crisis of trust.

Listen, why must we divide?

Why are we dividing people?

You're completely

destroying our city!

You come down--

Things got so heated that

the board members

eventually walked out,

leaving the police

to deal with the unruly crowd.

I was so disgusted, like,

that people

would do this.

Close the border!

Close the border!

Close the border!

for 20 years.

You're just screaming

I was screaming

Come on.

No one's giving me free food.

No one's giving me

free housing.

We do a tax--

I need order.

Right?

This is what everyone does.

OK. Time-out. Time-out.

We've always

had disagreements,

but something more serious is

happening here.

The ideas and institutions

that govern our societies--

long taken for granted--

have begun being challenged

in new and unsettling ways.

Here at Stanford University,

Alice Siu

is working with her team at

the Deliberative Democracy Lab

to better understand

where we are right now

and what we can do to create

lasting change moving forward.

What is the state

of democracy today?

Many will say

democracy is in crisis.

A lot of democracies around

the world are backsliding,

and we have trouble

trying to figure out

what a lot of people

actually want,

what kind of system

of government

people want to live in.

But I think, as of today,

a lot of people

are concerned about whether

their voices are being heard

and if people are

really representing

their likes and dislikes.

But Alice also sees

an opportunity here,

a chance

for new and needed ideas

around how to improve

our democracies

in order to better

face the future

and engage directly

with the citizens they serve.

A growing set of ideas known

as deliberative democracy

are beginning to take hold in

countries around the world

like here in France,

where they've started holding

citizen conventions--forums

designed to better engage

their citizens in addressing

the major challenges

and opportunities before them.

So how did this

all first come about

here in France?

Look, I mean, first, we had

this yellow vest crisis

in France,

a crisis of

working classes in France.

You have a lot of

fears and anxieties,

climate change,

digitalization, geopolitics.

And a lot of people in

small cities and so on

having this feeling not to

be respected by our policies,

not to have a place anymore

in this world,

and not to be prepared

for this change.

So I made this tour,

and I launched a series

of citizen conventions.

On a random basis, you

take 100, 200 citizens

and you formulate a question.

You put them in

a situation to have

a lot of interactions

with experts.

They propose a solution,

which is based on a consensus

and collective intelligence

and ability to understand

the complexity of the problem.

So I did it on climate change.

It worked because we passed

a law after that

largely inspired

by the citizen convention,

and the feedback

was very positive.

They learned.

They were very committed,

but they respected each other.

But for me, this is

a constant work in progress

because it's never perfect.

But where

I'm really optimistic

is that you can have emotions,

positive and negative,

and argumentation

and rational discussion

to be merged together

regarding

our collective future.

Wallach, voice-over: Back

in the U.S., Alice and her team

have pioneered something

with similar ideas in mind.

Your team

put together an event

called

America in One Room.

What was that?

It was a four-day-long

deliberative poll,

where we gathered a nationally

representative sample.

We flew them in

to Dallas, Texas,

from across the country.

There were 523 people that

came from all walks of life,

and they gathered

together in small groups.

They deliberated

about immigration,

economy, foreign policy.

And for four days,

they discussed

in their small groups

about these topics,

and then they had

panels of experts.

And, actually, five

then-presidential candidates

answer their questions.

What we learned

from 500-plus people is

that people can and will

change their minds

after just four days of

being with each other.

We learned that those that

may have had extreme positions

on either side of the spectrum

actually moderated

and became

closer to each other.

We learned that after

deliberation together,

they liked each other more.

They came to understand

why the other

person held certain views.

I think,

especially on a local basis,

we have to find a way

to involve citizens,

make them much more

player of the game

and doer of

our democracies.

Paint a picture

for me of the democracy

that you want to see.

We don't have

to live like this today.

We can change it now, and we

can have those conversations

that build empathy.

We can have those

structured conversations.

We can build those skills.

And if we just start

somewhere and not wait,

then we can really

get to that future

where everyone actually

listens to each other

and our democracy

is held together

by everyone that's involved.

It's the organization

of humanity,

the self-organization

of humanity

which is the key change

that needs to happen.

Now, we live in this

extraordinary situation

where a tiny number

of people,

which calls itself

a government,

claims

to be able to control

this complex system that we

call society from the center.

There is no complex system

on Earth

that can be controlled

from the center.

It can't possibly work.

And yet at the same time, we

have this tremendous capacity

for participatory,

for deliberative democracy,

where we can come together

and make decisions together

for the good of all.

And where we've been

allowed to do this,

if only on a small scale,

or a partial scale,

the results have

been extraordinary.

I think it's

quite clear that we are living

through probably

the most dangerous century

in the history of our species.

It could also be

the most prosperous century

and the most exciting century

to be alive.

What we need are people

who are willing and able

to look forward to a future

that could be

so, so much better than

the world we live in today.

In some ways right now,

that can feel naive,

even impossible.

But this idea of

building on our desire

for connection and cooperation

can begin anywhere.

And that's what's led me

to Nashville,

where Reverend Jennifer Bailey

is working to create

new forms of community

to reach across what feels

like a growing divide.

It used to be, you know,

we kind of find

some common ground.

We kind of live together.

We broke bread together.

Now it just seems

ripped apart.

What do you attribute

that to?

It's feeling--it feels

very strong right now.

Yeah.

People are experiencing,

in the U.S. context at least,

higher rates of loneliness and

isolation than ever before.

And where they find

community can often be

in these online pockets,

where they're getting

talked to by the same folks.

And, see,

the world becomes--

rather than becoming bigger

and having spaces

where people can hear more

in the marketplace of ideas,

it becomes

smaller and more rigid.

And then you, like, make

the fool's errand

of believing everybody

thinks like you.

And the person who doesn't,

then, must be my enemy.

Tell me about the work

that you're doing

and how you kind of

got started in it.

Yeah, so the People's Supper

was a project

that I co-founded

with two friends

after the 2016

U.S. presidential election.

We wanted to create spaces

around dinner tables

for people to begin

having conversations

across lines of difference,

whether that be political,

ideological, religious,

racial difference.

We've hosted thousands

of suppers around the country.

And I think at the core

of those suppers

and our time together

is really an ability

for people to hear each other

and not just deeper speech,

but deeper personhood,

to be reminded of the fact

that we are not

just how we vote

or how we look, but that we

are a collection of stories

and that our story

is not individual

but the continuation

of other stories

and prologue to the stories

that are to come,

even if it's just

for one meal.

Wallach, voice-over: While I was

in town, Jennifer invited me

to one of these dinner parties,

joining a small group

of people

from various walks of life

and different backgrounds

to sit down together

for a shared meal.

We're gonna have a fun

conversation tonight.

I like to say

you all are joining,

whether you knew it or not,

a movement of people

who've been gathering

around the country

over the past six years

almost.

Well, just to toast you all,

thank you for being here.

So grateful

for this time together.

Wallach, voice-over: That night,

I experienced something

so simple and yet profound.

I witnessed a group of

strangers,

who in some ways

have nothing in common,

come to see the common

humanity they all share.

Our past and our stories

are unique,

and yet what we want to see

unfold in the future,

for ourselves

and for those we love,

is so much more alike than what

we often stop to consider.

I really feel like we're

at a period of rebirthing

and remaking the world.

And we see that

with the intensity

of the climate crisis.

We see that

with threats to the notion

of democracy globally.

We're at a real inflection

point in global history.

I find myself asking,

What does it mean

to be human in the future?

What are the things

that aren't replaceable?

And care for one another

feels like something

that we will never be

able to fully replace.

For tens of thousands

of years, even for centuries,

we would live

kind of collectively

in relatively dense

accommodation.

Even just in

the past 150 years,

many of us

began living in cities,

but something happened,

especially

in America after World w*r II.

We had returning GIs and

a rapidly expanding population

with not enough housing.

A lot of these people

needed to be close

to cities for jobs,

and so the cities gave way

to surrounding suburbs.

You and I live in a period

of tremendous growth

with many problems.

Across the United States,

new homes are springing up

by the thousands

for our rapidly growing

population.

Modern shopping centers

satisfy most

of the material needs of

suburban dwellers

who no longer depend on

the city as a retail center.

Now, the suburbs

could only happen in America

with the advent

of the vehicle.

We needed vehicles to live in

these new kind of communities.

And as they continued

to expand,

the newly needed roads

did as well,

in some cases paving roads

right through the heart

of existing neighborhoods,

separating what had been

thriving communities.

American suburbs

were held up as a symbol

of a thriving middle class,

but they had a distancing

effect on people as well.

Common areas

for human connection

were replaced

by individual spaces

and separated by greater

and greater distances.

What ends up happening

is a sense of separation

between people

right in the midst

of their own communities.

How does architecture,

how does urban planning,

and how do the neighborhoods

we live in today

impact how we relate

to each other?

How can we build

futures where we design

for more human connectedness?

And is that

even possible in a moment

that feels more deeply divided

than anything in our lifetimes?

I came to Washington

to sit down with the Secretary

of Transportation,

Pete Buttigieg,

someone who thinks a lot

about how we are shaping

not only the social fabric

but the actual infrastructure

of America.

You're leading the Department

of Transportation.

That's real infrastructure.

It's bridges. It's tunnels.

It's airports. It's roads.

That being said, what are

the takeaways to build

other types of kind of

social infrastructure,

in a sense more of that

human connective tissue?

Well, there's

a very real relationship

between how we connect

to each other physically

through transportation

and how we connect

to each other socially.

Even in an era where we

are discovering

remote and hybrid

and virtual interaction,

we're also seeing

how important it can be

to just be

around each other

or to literally

walk the streets

of one another's

communities,

to travel and understand

through travel

how other societies work.

One finding that I think

is very powerful

is when people get to

know each other better,

they tend to trust

each other more, not less.

It's 30 years from now,

and you're talking to your

children about this era,

this moment in human history.

How do you describe it?

Well, I'm gonna tell them

that this was a moment

when a lot of changes

happened in our society,

certainly in transportation,

and those changes led to

their lives getting better.

I think that we need to be

in a season of building,

not just because

we have a backlog

and there's a bunch of stuff

we should have been doing

the whole time

but because the projects

that are ahead

in this century--

the big shared national

and human projects--

like confronting

climate change,

staying a step ahead

of the next pandemic,

preventing

nuclear conflict--

will require levels

of cooperation

that, in turn, require

a lot of good

infrastructure.

Are we able to rebuild

to that kind of golden era

of community

that we once had?

Yeah, I believe we can,

and I believe we must.

This is not

just important

because of some vague

and romantic conception

of neighborhoods

and communities.

It's also got

life-and-death consequences.

There's evidence,

for example,

that the survivability

of tornadoes--

all other things

being equal--

goes up in neighborhoods

or communities

where neighbors

know each other.

So a simple principle

or test,

whether you're designing

a suburban subdivision

or a dense city block,

would be, Does

this design encourage

or discourage people

from knowing

who their neighbors are?

I really believe in so many

of these dimensions--

political, social,

even technological--

our salvation

will come from the local.

And we need processes

that empower

local decision making.

Wallach, voice-over: We spend

a lot of time these days

separating ourselves

into groups

based on ideas and identity.

But I wanted to see

what's possible

when a local community

decides to build together

around a shared sense

of belief and belonging.

In Amsterdam,

Marjan de Blok decided

to do just that,

when she helped create

a floating village right

here in the heart of the city.

Usually when I

show up to a village,

I just take, like, a path,

and I just, you know, start

walking among the homes.

But here I

immediately walked

onto a dock on the water.

So tell me where we are.

You are in the north

of Amsterdam

in Johan van Hasseltkanaal.

And I'm the founder

of this village

that you are in right now.

One school--one school

is here, very near

Marjan de Blok, voice-over:

So we have a big jetty

connecting all the houses.

There are actually

46 households living here.

We are a community,

so we share a lot together.

And we try to live

as sustainable as possible.

All our houses

have solar panels.

All our houses

have a heat pump.

We have a green roof,

and all the houses are built

with sustainable materials.

All houses are

really well-insulated.

And we have a smart grid,

which is quite special.

By the smart grid,

we are all connected,

so we can exchange

the surpluses of

the energy we generated.

And all the houses

have a battery.

And in this battery,

we can also save energy

that we don't need

at that moment.

If one house generates

more electricity

and another house

needs more electricity,

you can share electricity

among the homes?

Yeah.

That's how it goes.

So what was the motivation

for starting

a community like this?

Well, it actually

started 15 years ago.

At that time, I was living

in a small house in Amsterdam.

I hardly knew my neighbors,

and it was all really kind of

lonely and individualistic.

And I just completely

fell in love

with the concept of living

sustainable on the water,

but also to live

a more social life,

because that was something

that I was really missing

at that time.

I had this idea of

starting a group.

Build a couple of

houseboats together,

make them sustainable.

And living on the water makes

you feel closer to nature.

And the fact that you would

generate your own electricity

gave me this really

great sense of freedom,

a feeling that I would

never have

in the house that

I was living in.

Whoo.

So tell me more about

what it's like

living in community.

Yeah.

It's uncomparable.

It's uncomparable.

It's a feeling

You are never alone.

You have like-minded

people around you.

If you have to do everything

by yourself, it's not fun.

And so then

the community makes it nice

to try all these new

sustainable technologies.

So I really think that

the community is needed

for a transition to

a more sustainable society.

Hi.

Hello.

De Blok, voice-over:

When I started this

or when I had

this initial idea,

I had no idea how important

it was, what we were doing.

And that it's also

about, what can you do,

instead of what

you can't do or what is--

you can't eat meat,

you can't drive a car,

you can't fly.

It's all, like, negative.

And, of course, those things

are important to keep in mind

and to adjust your behavior,

but there's

also another side to it.

And I think that's

the side that we touched

and realized here

with this community,

because it's all positive.

It's all about connection--

connection to your neighbors

but also connection

to your environment.

If you are connected

to your environment,

you will think twice

before polluting it.

There's a lot of respect

for one another,

and I think everybody

realizes that it's

not just a jetty

with some houses.

I feel that it's an organism

that is still growing,

and it's almost

an organism in itself,

like, a live thing.

It's not just a project.

And I think people

realize that.

So they know it's special,

what we have.

And that's a really

nice feeling

if you have that

in your daily life.

Wallach, voice-over:

It's so exciting to think about

the futures we can create

when we design

with human connectedness

in mind.

Collaboration and cooperation

is how we got to this point,

and it's

our only path forward.

And yet, in so many ways

right now,

it feels like we're

moving further away

from these

primary human traits.

What makes us special?

Why have we humans

conquered the globe?

Why not the Neanderthals,

you know?

The Neanderthals

were pretty smart as well.

Actually, they had

bigger brains than us.

Why not the bonobos?

Why not the chimpanzees?

What distinguishes us

as a species?

All of us

are individuals.

And we have

individual needs, wishes,

wants, desires, and so on.

But we also are

part of social groups

that can mean a lot to us.

Being human

is this team sport,

is this collective,

collaborative

endeavor that we actually

have to bring ourselves to.

This whole story of evolution,

that may the best man win--

that's not

what Darwin was saying at all.

Page after page,

what he's actually doing

is marveling at

the way different species

communicate and collaborate

for mutual survival.

There's a really

old idea that's deeply embedded

in our culture

and in our history,

which says that human beings

are fundamentally selfish.

So what scientists

now believe is

that the secret of our success

is not our intelligence,

it's not our strength.

No, it's our ability

to work together.

It's our friendliness.

So this is what they call

survival of the friendliest,

and it's basically the secret

of our whole story.

Wallach, voice-over: These ideas

matter more than ever

because we have important,

unfinished things

to do right now that we

can only do together.

One of these things is

creating enough housing

for everyone who needs it.

In Austin, Melodie Yashar

and her team at ICON

are working on ways

to meet this challenge

by building 3-D-printed homes

that can be printed

in a matter of weeks.

OK, so tell me,

Where are we right now?

We are in House Zero.

House Zero is a project that

we both designed and built

in collaboration with

the architect Lake Flato.

And it is intended

to showcase

what is possible

using 3D printing.

It is a project

that we took on

as a research-and-development

effort to show what's possible

and to introduce

to the general public

what it's like

to live on the inside

and be on the inside

of a 3-D-printed home.

Give me a sense

of the problem.

Like, how many people are

we talking are unhoused

in the U.S. and globally?

It's close

to a billion people,

a billion homes that

we need to deliver

to address

the global housing crisis.

The way that we've

been building--

using sticks and bricks

of the past, and steel--

is just not getting

us there fast enough.

And so, to really address

and make a true impact

in this problem,

automated technologies

can get us there.

And 3-D printing, of course,

is one of them.

Take me through what

actually happened here

and in general, right?

We'll start off

with a concrete slab.

So you have level ground.

Now what happens?

Once a slab is poured,

we deploy our 3-D printer,

which is a 9,600-pound

Gantry-based robot.

We deploy it on rails

adjacent to that slab,

so the Y rails run back

and forth and parallel

to the slab.

And then we have two towers,

as well as an X beam,

that goes across

those towers,

which essentially comprise

the overall Gantry system.

We have

a material-handling system

that travels

through a very long hose

and gets deposited

at the nozzle of the printer.

And layer by layer,

the structure is fabricated.

We are at

the Wolf Ranch development.

This is a 100-home community.

This represents the largest

3-D-printed community

that we're aware of

in the world.

And as you can see,

it's well underway.

We have multiple printers

printing simultaneously,

adjacent to slabs that

have been poured by Lennar.

And we're delivering

the vertical-wall system,

which is the 3-D-printed

walls of these houses.

And how long

does it usually take

for one of these homes

to go up?

Roughly, two weeks

on average,

assuming that we have

continuous

24-hour-a-day printing.

But that's

essentially the idea,

is that we deploy

the printer within a day,

the printer prints

the home,

and the home

is finished traditionally.

You put on

a traditional roof.

Your plumbing and all

of that--electrical--

happens still traditionally.

I also know in your bio,

you're an architect

for both on-world

and off-world architecture.

So the on-world I get.

We're here.

Tell me more about

the off-world work.

3-D printing is

a leading contender

in in-space construction

because the premise for

3-D printing in space is

that we would use local

and indigenous materials

on the surface of the planet

rather than bringing

anything with us from Earth.

That's a really

high-impact concept

because it is

prohibitively expensive

to launch heavy materials

from Earth to space.

And it's not going to

enable us to create

the kinds of infrastructure,

small cities, and settlements

that we've seen

in science-fiction images

for decades in the past.

So NASA is really interested,

and other aerospace companies

are really interested,

in this idea of using

the soil that is local

to the moon and Mars

and sending up a single

3D-printing robot

that can leverage that soil

and those materials

to 3-D print, really,

any kind of infrastructure or

any kind of surface element

that would be beneficial

to the crew.

Wallach, voice-over:

The collaboration and innovation

at work here is beautiful.

And it's inspiring

to see how solving problems

with creativity and concern

for the here and now

is the same work as building

far-off futures as well.

Our story

is about you and me

and why we are alike

in some ways

and yet why each person

is different from every other.

Cynicism is

another word for laziness,

because if things

are lost anyway,

then you don't have

to do anything.

You can just sit back

and, I don't know,

make the best of

your own life, and that's it.

If things are not lost,

if we can do so much better

as a species,

then that gives

you a certain responsibility.

If you want

to call human beings

the most evolved species,

it's because we've evolved

the most elaborate means

of collaboration

and communication,

letting us do stuff together.

When you start

to understand that nature is

a collaborative dance

of different things,

you start to understand, Oh,

well, being human is that, too.

We are not alone.

We are in one big,

connected nervous system.

We become the stories

that we tell ourselves.

What kind of society

are you gonna create?

So, for example,

I think we should get into

that problem-solving mind-set

and think about, like, What

are the really big challenges

that we face

as a species today,

and what are the most

effective solutions?

I'm often asked

how new tools will enable us

to solve these challenges,

but the truth is

that all too often,

what we lack are not

the technologies

but, rather, the collective

will to act together

on behalf of our

neighbors and communities

rather than just ourselves.

One of these challenges is

around food,

a constant source of

unnecessary suffering

all over the world,

including right here

in this country,

where a shocking amount of

us are still hungry

and food insecure.

In Upstate New York, a farmer

named Karen Washington

has spent her life fighting

for a different future,

one in which healthy,

affordable food for everyone

is seen as

an essential human right.

Here we are--

beautiful, kind of,

Upstate New York.

Tell me,

did you grow up here?

No.

Believe it or not, I grew

up in the concrete jungle

of New York City.

As a matter of fact,

I grew up in the projects,

Lower East Side,

so those were my roots.

I started really growing

food back in the city,

back in the 1980s.

And then came a time where

my friends and I decided,

Let's try something

bigger.

And so we landed

here back in 2014.

You're here

at Rise & Root Farm,

which is in Chester,

New York, Orange County.

We are in the Black Dirt

Region of Orange County.

So what does that mean,

the Black Dirt Region?

Well, if you look at soil,

normally, it's between 1%,

maybe 2% of organic matter.

But here, the soil is 40%.

Wow.

So GreenThumb is

the organization

in New York City that runs

the community gardens.

So we grow for them.

There are over 400 community

gardens in New York City.

And so we've been asked

the task

of growing their starts.

And so each

community garden will get

a tray of flowers and herbs

and a tray of vegetables.

And so yesterday we did

all the flowers and herbs.

And today we're doing

all of the vegetables.

Wallach, voice-over:

When they leave the farm,

these plants are sent out

to community gardens

across New York City that

are working

to fight hunger and food poverty

by equipping local communities

in underserved neighborhoods

to grow their own food.

What's the role of

food in America today?

I think it has

been co-opted.

If you think of food,

food is the essence

of nourishment

for human beings.

But I think that has

now been made

more of a profit

sort of thing.

And it has divided

the human race

for the haves

and have-nots.

You know, people in

low-income neighborhoods

have food that is cheap.

It's processed food.

It's fast food, junk food.

And people who

are more affluent have

"healthy, organic foods."

Back in the day,

it was the small farmers.

It has been

industrialized.

And so what happened is

that this sort of

commercialization

of farmers

started swallowing up

small farmers.

The emphasis was

on that mighty dollar,

you know,

on a capitalistic system

to produce food

at a rate

that we wind up

producing so much food

and wasting so much food,

yet that food is not

getting

down to the people

that need it the most.

Why is that?

Why is it that just

the healthiest stuff

goes to one group

and the overly processed

goes to another group?

I think for so long,

we have been complacent

as a society.

We have gone home

in our nice houses

with our nice cars

and closed the door

and said, you know,

"That's not my problem.

That's someone else's

problem."

Why, in the greatest

country in the world,

where we grow enough food

and we waste enough food,

yet that food is not

getting

down to the people

that need it the most?

Why is it it's based

on race,

the color of your skin?

Why is it based

on where you live?

Why is it based on

how much money you have?

And start having

those hard conversations

that we don't have.

Wallach, voice-over:

The challenges in food systems

here and around the world

can easily feel insurmountable,

but Karen's work reminds me that

real, scalable,

and lasting change

is going to

start in our own communities.

What can it look like,

from where we are right now

to where we want to be?

Tell me, Where

do we want to be?

I think

where we want to be is

that everybody,

everybody--

and not only here

in the United States

but globally--

but everybody

has to understand

that food, clean water,

and shelter

are human rights.

And we're not

there yet.

Wallach, voice-over:

To create a future

where all people have access to

good, nutritious food

isn't just going to happen.

Better futures are not

easy or inevitable.

But together,

we can look around

at the systems

across our societies

and decide they are not

sufficient for the world

we're building.

That's the story of all progress

throughout our history--

people coming together to

decide the injustices of today

have no place

in our tomorrows.

I think of history as

essentially two steps forward,

one step back.

Resistance to change is

part of what it means to be

human, for better and worse.

We grow up in a world,

and we're socialized to see

the way things are

as essentially

the way things should be.

And most of the adults in

our lives are telling us this.

Literally, our teachers,

our parents, and so on

are all doing things

that make us experience

the reality that we're

growing into as natural,

perhaps even inevitable.

We want to feel good

about the social, economic,

political institutions

and arrangements

on which we all depend for

our livelihoods, for our lives.

And it's painful to

believe that you're living in

and operating in

an unjust social system.

Every single milestone

of civilization

that we are used to right now,

whether it's democracy

or the welfare state

or equal rights

for men and women,

all these milestones

were fantasies once.

It's ideas that really govern

and determine

our trajectory as a species.

And that idea in itself,

that progress is possible,

is probably one of the most

powerful ideas we've ever had.

Being here, you see,

on the one hand,

just kind of cutting-edge

infrastructure--

high-speed rail--just things

that are just so amazing.

And on the other hand,

you see folks

who are carrying

drinking water on their heads

back to their homes.

They don't have indoor plumbing.

And so when I think about,

What does it mean

to live sustainably

and regeneratively,

it can't just be

for the richest countries.

We won't have the futures

we want for everyone

until we can run basic

electrical lines into homes

and allow for indoor plumbing.

The project of moving forward

to a more kind of sustainable

way of living on Planet Earth

is going to require

electrification of everything

for everyone.

I'm here to visit a community

that made news around the world

by becoming the first village

in India

to become completely powered

by solar energy.

Thank you

for inviting me

to your village today.

So I thought we would

start by you letting me know,

like, who you are

and what your role here

is in the village.

What is the kind of historical

and spiritual significance

of the sun here in India?

Wallach, voice-over:

Safir explained to me

how this new form of energy is

especially meaningful,

here in a place

with such a long,

rich history with the sun.

So what were the challenges

that you were facing

as a village that led you

to have to and want to take

on a project like this?

How many panels are there

here in this entire village?

How does it feel

to see children playing

in a community that isn't

using dirty energy sources,

that's using the sun

to power, you know,

their homes and their schools

and their way of life?

What does that feel like?

When you think

about the future of India

potentially moving

to all solar,

how do you feel being such

a kind of pioneer village

for the entire country?

Wallach, voice-over: Seeing

countries take very small steps,

like you see in

a very small village,

saying, "You know what?

"Here's how we're gonna

contribute to the solution.

"We're not gonna

wait for something

"to come from Brussels

or from Washington,

"even, necessarily,

just from Delhi.

We're gonna do

it here locally."

And, you know, they say

all politics are local.

All energy is local.

All everything is local.

Even a sense

of community, right?

We talk about the need for

there to be more community.

And it's sometimes

talked about

almost at a national

or a nation-state level.

But you come to a village like

this, and I walk the town.

And that's community.

That's how futures are made,

really, at this

much more ground level,

be it about how you're gonna

make your electricity

and how

you're gonna power your homes

or how you're just

gonna act as a community

towards one another.

And it's beautiful to see that

happening in a place

that, to be honest,

has been getting,

really, just the exhaust

from all these other countries

who have been contributing

to the problem.

They're actually showing us

another way forward.

What must we do as

active and informed citizens?

We must decide now,

for how well we live tomorrow

will depend

on the action we take today.

I do want people 50 years,

100 years, 200 years from now

to know that people were really

trying hard

to leave the world

in a better place for them.

And I don't know

whether it will succeed,

but we have to try.

In order for us

to look at the future,

you got to understand

the past.

I have real hope that

these young people

are looking for

a more just system.

If we're not tapping

into shared humanity,

then we're not gonna be

finding the best answers.

The best answers

are the ones

that allow everybody

to prosper

and to succeed

and to belong.

We all have

to have a common goal.

We all have to know what

the other person wants.

It's a collective

experience.

It's a state of mind.

How can we take what

we see as some of the worst

of humanity's propensity

towards violence,

isolation, and exclusion

and transform that

into an opportunity

but also cast

a new way forward?

This distrust is hurting us

as a society.

Humans have evolved

to connect with one another.

We need to connect.

We need our friends.

We need our family members.

We need our coworkers.

We need the strangers

in the streets, right?

But if society keeps telling us

that we can't trust them,

that they're dangerous,

that we should be

wary of one another,

then that's tearing us apart.

We are not

supposed to be alone.

You have to be connected,

and happiness

comes from connection.

People don't realize

that enough, I think.

I thought people would

want to talk about the future

through a kind of

almost individualized lens,

they would want to talk about

the careers

that they're gonna have

or they're worried

about artificial intelligence

is gonna come for their job

or for their children's job.

But what I keep hearing is

a desire

and a hope for community.

Everyone I'm speaking to,

when I ask them,

"What do you want the future

to look like,"

inevitably, the idea or

just the term of community

comes up--this idea

of human connection.

And sometimes it's more

deeply with their friends,

and sometimes it's more deeply

as a town or a village

or as a state

or, really,

just as a kind of human family,

you know, as almost something

post-nation-state,

something bigger.

And that's both been surprising

and unbelievably delightful.

As we move forward,

as we kind of rethink

these baseline assumptions

about how we order the world,

there can no longer be

an "I win, you lose" mind-set

or mentality.

No one flourishes

until everyone flourishes.

As we move forward, we

have an amazing opportunity

to do that for ourselves

and for our species.