It’s June, just after a heavy rainfall, and the sky is filling with creatures we wouldn’t normally expect to find there. At first glance, this might be a disturbing sight. But for the lucky males and females of Solenopsis invicta, otherwise known as fire ants, it’s a day of romance. This is the nuptial flight, when thousands of reproduction-capable male and female ants, called alates, take wing for the first and last time. But even for successful males who manage to avoid winged predators, this mating frenzy will prove lethal. And for a successfully mated female, her work is only beginning. Having secured a lifetime supply of sperm from her departed mate, our new queen must now single-handedly start an entire colony. Descending to the ground, she searches for a suitable spot to build her nest. Ideally, she can find somewhere with loose, easy-to-dig soil— like farmland already disturbed by human activity. Once she finds the perfect spot, she breaks off her wings— creating the stubs that establish her royal status. Then, she starts digging a descending tunnel ending in a chamber. Here the queen begins laying her eggs, about ten per day, and the first larvae hatch within a week. Over the next three weeks, the new queen relies on a separate batch of unfertilized eggs to nourish both herself and her brood, losing half her body weight in the process. Thankfully, after about 20 days, these larvae grow into the first generation of workers, ready to forage for food and sustain their shrunken queen. Her daughters will have to work quickly though— returning their mother to good health is urgent. In the surrounding area, dozens of neighboring queens are building their own ant armies. These colonies have peacefully coexisted so far, but once workers appear, a phenomenon known as brood-raiding begins. Workers from nests up to several meters away begin to steal offspring from our queen. Our colony retaliates, but new waves of raiders from even further away overwhelm the workers. Within hours, the raiders have taken our queen’s entire brood supply to the largest nearby nest— and the queen’s surviving daughters abandon her. Chasing her last chance of survival, the queen follows the raiding trail to the winning nest. She fends off other losing queens and the defending nest’s workers, fighting her way to the top of the brood pile. Her daughters help their mother succeed where other queens fail— defeating the reigning monarch, and usurping the brood pile. Eventually, all the remaining challengers fail, until only one queen— and one brood pile— remains. Now presiding over several hundred workers in the neighborhood’s largest nest, our victorious queen begins aiding her colony in its primary goal: reproduction. For the next several years, the colony only produces sterile workers. But once their population exceeds about 23,000, it changes course. From now on, every spring, the colony will produce fertile alate males and females. The colony spawns these larger ants throughout the early summer, and returns to worker production in the fall. After heavy rainfalls, these alates take to the skies, and spread their queen’s genes up to a couple hundred meters downwind. But to contribute to this annual mating frenzy, the colony must continue to thrive as one massive super-organism. Every day, younger ants feed the queen and tend to the brood, while older workers forage for food and defend the nest. When intruders strike, these older warriors fend them off using poisonous venom. After rainfalls, the colony comes together, using the wet dirt to expand their nest. And when a disastrous flood drowns their home, the sisters band together into a massive living raft— carrying their queen to safety. But no matter how resilient, the life of a colony must come to an end. After about 8 years, our queen runs out of sperm and can no longer replace dying workers. The nest’s population dwindles, and eventually, they’re taken over by a neighboring colony. Our queen’s reign is over, but her genetic legacy lives on. Chris Anderson: I get now to introduce one of the most powerful women in the world. I mean, if we are to escape from the mess that we're in right now, she is going to play a major part in helping us do that. She's the head of the International Monetary Fund, a delight to welcome here Kristalina Georgieva. Kristalina, welcome. Kristalina Georgieva: Great to be with you, Chris. Thank you for having me. CA: So you just took on this role late last year, and within four months, boom, COVID arrives. That is one heck of an introduction to a new job. How are you doing? KG: Well, I find strength in action. And at the Fund, we have been, from day one on this crisis, leaning forward with everything we have to provide lifelines to countries, and that means to people and businesses. Already, we have received over 90 requests and we have offered, to 56 countries, critical financial packages. CA: You've described this pandemic as a crisis like no other. In what way a crisis like no other? KG: Truly like no other. First, never before we will inflict on the economy consciously so much pain to fight a virus and save lives. We are asking businesses not to produce and consumers not to go out and consume. At the Fund, we labeled this "the Great Lockdown." Second, never before there would be such a rapid change of fortunes practically for everybody around the world. In January, I was in Davos, talking about "anemic growth," growth of three percent. In April, during our spring meetings, it was already minus three percent. In January, we predicted 160 countries to have positive income per capita growth. Now it is 170 countries with negative income per capita growth. Now this, we call "the Great Reversal." Very painful. And three, uncertainty. We always live with uncertainty, Chris, but this time, it is the uncertainty of a novel coronavirus that policymakers have to integrate. We at the Fund combine epidemiological projections with our traditional macroeconomic modeling to see through that uncertainty. I must add to this, I very much hope that when we go on the other side in the recovery, we can use a new term and call it "the Great Transformation." Make the world a better place. CA: Well, I'll be excited to come on to that in a bit. But in this moment of responding to the crisis, the main tool that seems to have been executed, at least by the rich countries, has been this massive economic stimulus, to the tune of trillions of dollars. Is that a wise response? KG: It is a necessity. And you don't hear the Fund often telling countries, "Please, spend. Spend as much as you can." And that is what we do now. We do add to that, "And keep the receipts. Don't lose accountability to the citizens, to the tax payers." The reason financial injection is necessary, these fiscal measures of almost nine trillion dollars are necessary, is because when the economy is standing still, unless there is help, unless there is monetary policy stimulus, firms are going to go massively bankrupt, people would be unemployed, the economy would be scarred. When we go to the other side, this scarring is going to make the recovery much more difficult. So that is a wise thing to do, and it helps the fact that central banks in major economies have been acting in a synchronized manner and that fiscal stimulus came really, really fast. This is how we see people being able to go through this very, very tough time. CA: But how far can it go? Because it's been described, in a sense, as "printing money" -- governments are issuing more and more bonds that have to paid back at some point. There's this term, in economics, of the Minsky moment, where things can go very well for a while, as everyone believes that, you know, that the train can keep running, the cycle can keep turning, you know, that governments have all this money. At some point, though, doesn't that break down? Do you worry that we may be nearing a Minsky moment, where, like Michael in Mary Poppins grabs his tuppence and starts a run on the bank. Is there stress in the international financial system now that concerns you, that makes you feel that we may be running out of headroom? KG: Of course, this cannot go on forever. I, for one, have trust in our scientists, I think we will see breakthroughs, and we will see also people in businesses getting accustomed to social distancing, to micromeasures that protect from spreading the disease. We have seen very massive injection in health systems, so hospitals can actually treat people that are coming for help. Obviously, if it is to go for a very long time, we would be worried. For now, what we are projecting is that there would be a gradual reopening -- we see it already happening in a number of countries. And we project for next year, 2021, a partial recovery. Not a full recovery, unfortunately, but coming to a better place. Now, what helps us is something that I don't particularly love, but I see it as a positive feature -- very low interest rates, in some cases, negative -- that allows this injection of fiscal measures and liquidity to be sustained over a number of years. And for now, we do not see on the horizon any return to increase in interest rates. So low for longer, and that is, in that environment, a helpful feature. CA: I mean, the financial crisis of 2008 came perilously close to breaking the entire financial system -- arguably, it did that. By most people's calculation, this is a far worse impact to the economy overall. Did the world learn something from 2008 that has helped us so far be resilient this time? KG: What the world learned is that the financial system has to be tested and then strengthened to withstand shocks. And that is helping us tremendously today. The banking system is resilient, and even in the nonbanking financial institutions, there is more attention paid to how far can you go without running into trouble. I would say, if you look around the world, the most important lesson then was "build resilience to shocks." Those who have done it cope now better. And those who have not done it are in a much tougher spot. And actually, for the Fund, what we are praying is that we will come out of this crisis with this lesson about resilience being spread beyond the banking system, so we actually have this crisis-management mindset for a world that is inevitably going to be more shock-prone, because of climate and also because of the sheer density of economic and social life on our planet. CA: In your role, you're paying special attention to the situation in developing countries. And it does seem that they're facing a really terrible situation right now. Many of them have significant debt denominated in dollars. In the current crisis, their currencies are depreciating against the dollar, making it nigh impossible for them to execute the kind of injection, stimulus injections, that the rich countries are doing and seems to be the only way out. So that seems like a really dangerous cycle. Is there any way to break that cycle? KG: Well, let me first separate countries that have built strong fundamentals. And now in this crisis, as we are receiving incoming data, not very many, but there are still some positive surprises, and they come from countries that have built stronger buffers, stronger fundamentals, have been more disciplined during good times. But indeed, we do see quite a number of emerging markets, developing countries, faced with multiple pressures. They had the hit from the coronavirus, many of them with weak health systems. Then, they have the high level of indebtedness, from before the crisis, which creates a much more difficult environment for them. Then, many of them are commodity exporters. Commodity prices, oil price, they went down very dramatically, that hits them again. Many rely on remittances. Remittances shrunk some 20 to 30 percent. And then you have a number of countries that are highly dependent on tourism. Tourism is the hardest hit sector, or one of the hardest hit. So, very tough for these countries, but this is why institutions like mine have been wisely created. The IMF, the World Bank, the regional development banks, we work very closely together in this crisis. The IMF, fortunately, that was one of the lessons from the 2008-2009 crisis -- make sure that in the center of the financial safety net is an IMF with financial strength. We have four times more money to lend today than we had then. From 250 billion to one trillion dollars. And of course, we are deploying these funds exactly for the countries that need us the most. And we did one more thing. With David Malpass, the president of the World Bank, we called for a debt moratorium for the poorest countries to their official bilateral creditors. And people tend to say, "Oh, we don't work together, it's not good enough." But here is an area where we made this call in late March, and in mid-April, the G20 agreed on this moratorium. Amazing, we had the Paris Club, China, the Gulf countries, all agreeing that we should not suffocate the poorest countries by asking them to pay their debts when their economies are standing still. CA: Is it possible that some developing countries are overdoing the lockdown policy? I mean, if large numbers of your citizens are already struggling to stay alive, isn't it almost like a death sentence to order them not to leave their homes? KG: Well, Chris, one of the most heartbreaking conversations I would have is with leaders of countries where they have to stare in the face a choice of people dying from the virus or dying from hunger. And it is a very dramatic situation for them. Where you have a very large part of your economy being informal, where people live hand-to-mouth every day, the lockdowns we have in advanced economies are not quite applicable, but even there, countries are doing really well in social distancing to the extent it is possible. Many of the countries in Africa were very early to step up preventive measures. Why? They learned from the Ebola, they learned from prior crises that hygiene, taking any measure you can really helps. So again, I cannot stress enough how important is solidarity with these countries. How important it is for my institution to be there for them in a timely manner. And we do it. CA: Whitney. Whitney Pennington Rogers: Hi there, thank you, this is a wonderful conversation, and we're starting to see some questions coming from the community. The first one we have is from Bill Elkus, and it's a follow-up to something you were mentioning earlier, related to the stimulus, Kristalina. What are the prospects for inflation from such a large stimulus? KG: At this point, we are not worried about inflation in advanced economies and in the majority of emerging market economies. We do worry about inflation in countries that have weak fundamentals, no access to foreign exchange easily, where the only way to address the crisis is our help or their central banks printing more money. And sometimes it's a combination of those two. Why I don't worry about inflation in advanced economies? Because countries that have their hard currency are putting liquidity in place, but at the same time, they're not seeing a big expansion of demand and prices being pushed up. So for these countries, at least for the observable future, we don't see a way of going, like after the Second World War, in inflation jumping up. The consumers are not consuming so aggressively, demand is not that strong, and these are societies where there is a lot of maturity in how they exercise their policy options. But if you are a poor country, that out of desperation, with no access to markets, no access to hard currency, ought to somehow put money supply enough, then inflation is going to be there. A very extreme case is Zimbabwe, and I do worry there may be other countries. So this is why we are so determined to engage with these countries early. And also look at some of the high-debt countries. Would it be necessary, on a country-by-country basis, to restructure debts to prevent that moving in a desperate direction? WPR: Thank you. And we have one more question that I wanted to share from our community. This is from Keith Yamashita, and it's about how we all can be involved in some of this change. "You are tasked with macro-economic and funding efforts. What should we do as citizens to help renewal and recovery?" KG: Well, it is incredibly important for all of us citizens -- and aside of being the head of the IMF, I am also a global citizen -- that we are to bring that notion of solidarity in a moment of crisis. I loved the way this segment was musically backed, and it was "Lean on Me." It is very important that we do create that sense -- "we are in this together, we will get through it together." And please, speak up on that. I was, for many years, crisis commissioner, and one thing I learned is that the majority of people are positive, good people. You can lean on them. And there is a minority that is hateful and fearful and also very loud. So, good people, speak up. Spread that sense of "we are in this together, we'll get through it together." WPR: Thank you. I'll come back later with other questions. CA: Kristalina, I'd love to expand on that and just ask you a bit more about leadership, actually. You know, when people think of the nations that have performed best, they often refer to -- when I say best, best in response to the current pandemic -- they often refer to Germany, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, Denmark and Norway. When they think of those that have performed worst, they often think of Spain, Italy, the UK, Belgium, Sweden, Iran, Brazil, Russia and the United States. All of that second group are run by men, all but one of the first group are run by women. Is that a coincidence? KG: Well, now, speaking a bit subjectively as a woman, I do believe that women are great to lead in a crisis. They are more likely to show empathy, to care about the most vulnerable people and to be able to speak about that. They are decisive. I can say that for myself, we take energy from action. And we don't tend to, kind of, mourn and complain too much. So there is perhaps something to be said about the value of gender equality for the future. Bring more women for this world of more crisis ahead of us. CA: It's obviously hard to make generalizations about gender of any kind, but I mean, is there also, almost, something about the embracing of nuance, that women might be better at that than men? Men are often, it's like, "let's win, let's conquer," and in a situation like this, where it's all probabilities, it's like, there are so many complex dials to turn on this dangerous pandemic machine that we're trying to wrestle. I mean, are women better at handling nuance? KG: Let me say something, Chris. We need everybody, and we need this mixture of experience, knowledge and predisposition. Men and women coming together. I find it that it is great to have different perspectives when we make decisions. Then, the chances of making a good decision are higher. So we need each other, but we also need to recognize is that yes, there are certain things, I have seen it time and again, women are more willing to find a pathway to compromise, they're more willing to be corrected if they're wrong. Say, "Oh, OK, that's a good point, let me integrate it in the way I think about it." And when you are in uncertainty, that is a huge advantage in decision-making. CA: So perhaps talk a bit more about your own leadership in this moment. I mentioned you've only recently come to this job. Before that, you were European Commissioner, you dealt with humanitarian crises in more than one part of the world. And in your own country, Bulgaria, you witnessed the wholesale transformation of the country, both politically and economically. What lessons can you bring from your past experience to this moment? KG: Well, there are many things I learned. I was very fortunate to have these multiple experiences for the job I have now. But let me highlight three. First, how critically important it is to prepare for a crisis. Kind of, think of the unthinkable, and then act with some foresight when a shock hits you. You have a title for this series called "Build Back Better." I actually would like to modify it, if I may, and I would talk about "Build Better Before." Preparedness, prevention, pay off big time. The second -- and not necessarily in priority, it is as important -- is collective action, working together. Seeking help, offering help. Makes a huge difference in an emergency. And the third is something I learned time and again. We don't know our internal strength until we are hit. We are so resilient, we are so able to withstand shocks, especially when we come together, that this always gives me this sense of optimism that, as hard as it is, we can overcome it. From the days when my country collapsed, the economy collapsed, I would get up at four o'clock in the morning, queue to buy milk for my daughter, to the days when I would see Syrian refugees in terrible situations helping each other, to today, when I'm the head of the IMF, that internal strength, our power of resilience, the more we are together, the more it is amplified. CA: Actually, could you talk a bit more about the role of the IMF, especially as we look forward to trying to recover from this? What specifically can your organization do to take us forward? KG: So there are three things that are quite unique for the IMF, and they're really so important in a time of crisis. The first one is to give a good diagnostic of what is happening and what is the way forward. Let me just say, in this crisis, in the very first weeks, we put together, we call it policy action tracker, for 193 countries. What actions are countries taking, how they can learn from each other, so we can be more effective together. We are adding to it, now, actions for responsible reopening of the economies exactly with that purpose. What we are known best for, we are the financial first responder. We are coming in this incredible shock with very significant financial firepower. And what people don't know is that the Fund has multiple instruments. Emergency financing is the one we doubled for this crisis. And it is no conditionalities. We are asking one thing, Chris. Pay your doctors and your nurses, your hospitals, protect your most vulnerable people and parts of the economy. That's it, this is the condition. And the third thing we do at the Fund is to help countries have the capacity for good policies. After the financial crisis, we helped many countries to have good debt management, good fiscal management, transparency and accountability to improve the performance of public finance. So the Fund is not a very big organization by any standard, we are some 3,000 people. Highly professional, incredibly committed. When you use the expression "all hands on deck," that's us. And it is a digital deck, it is a digital deck these days. CA: I mean, this is a global crisis. A lot of people are worried that unlike perhaps even in 2008, where it really did seem there was a lot of global cooperation, there's actually, in some worrying ways, less this time? Are you worried about how crucial is that to getting us through this? KG: I mean, my preoccupation is, in our mandate, in my area of responsibility, bring the membership together. We have almost the whole world, 189 countries are our members, and so far, I am very impressed by how responsive the membership has been. I put in front of them in the spring a package, very strong package of measures to expand the role of the IMF in the crisis. Everything that we ask for -- we ask for doubling emergency financing, we got it. Very interesting. We ask for tripling concession of financing. Exactly because, you know, like the virus hits people with a weak system the hardest, the crisis hits weak economies the hardest. So we wanted to triple concession of financing. Within one month, we got it. We asked for grants for debt relief, we got it. So what I'm trying to say here is that we need to focus on ways in which we bring the world together. And then act on that. Rather than complaining that maybe not everything is the way it should be, do your duty to the global community. CA: Well, indeed. And the IMF is dependent on the financing from its members, its key members. KG: Yes. CA: I mean, you spoke of the trillion dollars that you are looking to make available to nations that need it. As I read it, that comes from -- you've got these units called Special Drawing Rights. You basically draw a currency from members. And hasn't there been pushback, though, from the US, to block that effort of raising all that money? KG: So the one trillion dollars is from our quotas and also from our ability to move money from well-to-do members from the advanced economies and lend it at very low or zero interest to the developing emerging markets. And we had this one trillion and what was very interesting, not everybody noticed that -- the US, in their two trillion dollars stimulus package, included the support for the IMF. The Special Drawing Rights is something that we, indeed, don't have yet consensus among the membership to do. It was done during the 2009 crisis, issuing liquidity, and it goes to everybody. And there are many voices, including mine -- I spoke to the G20 about that -- that are saying, well, that may be a good thing to do now. It is not being supported for reasons. It is not just capriciously. The problem with Special Drawing Rights is that when we issue them, they go to all members, and the advanced economies get 62 percent of the new allocation, and there are some that are saying, "Can we think of something that is more directed, or exclusively directed to those who need it?" But, Chris, everything is on the table for us. As the crisis unfolds, we need to do more, we bring the membership to do more. CA: Whitney. WPR: We actually have a question from the community that builds on what you're discussing right now. Yavnika Khanna asks, "Which countries will prove to be resilient in the Great Transformation: those with popular leaders or those with sound financial systems?" KG: You know, they both matter. Countries with strong fundamentals are clearly going through this crisis with less trauma than those that had weak fundamentals to begin with. And of course, leadership matters. How you mobilize a country for action matters. In my view, what we would see on the other side, the winners would be those who think today of this crisis also as an opportunity. Clearly, digital transformation is a huge opportunity. Moving to e-learning, e-government, e-payments, e-commerce, linking small and medium-sized enterprises through digital to consumers, big winner. Secondly, I very much hope that we would come on the other side with a low carbon footprint and a more climate-resilient economy. Those who move in this direction, they would reduce the risk for themselves and the world. From this other crisis, that we are not talking so much about these days, but it hasn't gone anywhere. And you know, if you don't like pandemic, you are not going to like the climate heather68@example.net. And also, countries that are thinking of how to make the economy in the future a fairer economy. In other words, we have been seeing inequality building up before this crisis. My colleagues who have researched pandemics have a very bitter lesson for us. After pandemics, after H1N1, after SARS, after Zika, inequality goes up. Well, are we going to let inequality to go up, up, after this crisis? And if we do, we are damaging the fabric of our societies, and my sense is that hundreds of millions of people in this crisis would much prefer to have a simpler, fairer, more equitable world to live in, and definitely, a more sustainable world. CA: Mm. KG: Those would be the winners. WPR: Definitely. And just one more question from our community, before turning it back to Chris for some final questions here. You know, this one is from Sarah Rugheimer. And the question is, "What do you see as the main potential positive shifts / changes in this world from this pandemic, say, two to 10 years from now?" KG: Well, I touched upon it a little bit. First, I hope to see fiscal policy to help us recover to be geared towards green recovery and more equitable recovery. And that is something that is in the hands of policymakers. It can be done. Secondly, I very much hope to see us integrating what we have learned from the crisis, in terms of virtual work. My organization, the IMF, well, we can shrink our carbon footprint dramatically just by sustaining the practices we are developing now, and we will. I certainly hope to see, in the future, much more attention to two things that we saw in this crisis are essential. Universal access to health in some form, strong health systems, as well as strong social safety nets, built as automatic stabilizers in a time of shock. And by the way, it is cheaper if we do it in this way. The bill for everyone is going to be smaller. And also, I very much hope that this notion of investing in people, recognizing that now that we see this horrible tragedy, the loss of lives, that investing in people is the very best investment we can make. CA: Mm. WPR: That's great. CA: So, see you again in a minute, Whitney. Kristalina, it's so -- It's so inspiring, actually, hearing the energy and stuff, the energy that you're bringing to this. I don't think many people coming into this would have expected to hear, from the head of the IMF, this emphasis on, you know, "Let's solve the climate crisis, let's tackle inequality and injustice." Do you really believe that this moment, this crisis could help lead us into a great transformation? People will feel it's your job to sound positive, you have to do that. Do you really see the path forward that we can get through this, and what sort of timescale are we talking about here, Kristalina? KG: Well, you know, one thing I learned from the transition I lived through, the transition from central planning to markets, is it is tough, it is long, it is painful and it is a road that takes turns. So I don't have an expectation of miracle from here to there. But I genuinely believe that we are now in a point of our history when people demand from their leaders safety and security and a society that is not torn apart by conflicts. And that is actually not unusual to see. So, I would turn the table a little bit on you, Chris. After a war, we see the world coming together and building a better world. Why not after a pandemic? And yes, we can make mistakes and not take the right road to travel. But we certainly have an obligation to try to get on that road. CA: So if you could just inject -- KG: And everybody matters for that. CA: So if you could inject one idea into the mind of everybody, or into to the world leaders who listen to you, what would that idea be at this moment? KG: Optimism. Build a better world. Possible, desirable, we must do it. CA: That sounds like optimism as the stance, not just a naive belief that it will happen, but a determination to make it so. That's what you're calling for. To use that as the motivation to pull us all forward together. KG: Chris, do I have one minute, or I'm done, I need to go? CA: If you want to say one last thing in one minute, alright, go. KG: I want to say one thing. To recommend to the audience to watch the movie "Bridge of Spies." There is a part in the movie in which the two main actors, the lawyer and the Russian spy, talk to each other. The lawyer says, "Things are very bad, it looks like you may hang." The spy is very calm. Lawyer says, "Aren't you worried?" The spy answers, "Would it help?" So my message is, it is tough, but worries won't help. Positive action will. Positive, stay positive, so that's my message. CA: Well, I have to say thank you. It's incredibly inspiring, actually, to see your energy and your determined optimism, let's call it that. I think we wish you the very best as you use your position to help get us out of this mess. Thank you so much, Kristalina, for spending time heather68@example.net. Thank you. WPR: Thank you, Kristalina. (Guitar music starts) I've been looking Several days now Where did they go? Where did they go? My mama told me long ago I've lost so many precious things, I know They won't be back Where did they go? My mama told me long ago Ain't nobody's ever gonna tell me to abandon my old friend Happy days, walking on the shore Happy days, walking on the shore Happy days, walking on the shore Ain't nobody's ever gonna tell me to abandon my good memories at all I've seen so many pretty things They don't mean a thing now Listen to the song My mama told me long ago Ain't nobody's ever gonna tell me to doubt my good old days Happy days, walking on the shore Happy days, walking on the shore Happy days, walking on the shore Ain't nobody's ever gonna tell me to abandon my good memories at all Abandon my good memories at all Abandon my good memories at all (Music ends) (Applause) Thank you. (Applause) Thank you for giving me the opportunity to perform tonight at TED New York. I've been a dedicated TED fan and viewer, and also, I actually used to live in Manhattan when I was younger, so New York is like a second home to me, and it's great to be back. The song I just performed was called "my mama," and the next song I'm going to perform is another original song of mine called "BLACK BANANA." This song I wrote about the importance of being patient with your dreams. Because I think commitment will always be rewarded. Just like fruit ripens when the time is right. So it's my interpretation of building the future. (Guitar music starts) Clap your hands. One! Two! One, two, one, two, three, four. Sitting here, killing time, I've been doing it all day I've been always smart when it comes to gettin' away Got a soda pop fizzin' hard in my empty brain When the time is right I'll move alright so don't get too uptight Silly girls in bathing suits cleaning cars on Sundays They're living a lie don't make as fool of yourself too soon Lining my bananas on the window sill to ripen When the time is right I'll move alright so don't get too uptight Bananananana sekasanaide Bananananana-ri yuki makase Bananananana mō ato chotto dake jukusu made Black Banana Black Banana Banananananana Remember last December when we went to get some pizza Was a brat, was running fast to get home by my curfew Silly me, tripping quick, I was almost killed by a honker When the time is right I'll move alright so don't get too uptight Bananananana isoganaide Bananananana-ri yuki makase Bananananana mō ato chotto dake jukusu made Black Banana Black Banana Banananananana Bananananana Don't push me baby Bananananana All I want is leeway Bananananana You gotta be patient for the fruit to ripen Black Banana Black Banana Banananana Bananananana isoganaide Bananananana-naru yoni nare Bananananana wagamamana mi ga jukusu made Black Banana Black Banana Bananananana Bananananana Banananananana (Music ends) Thank you. (Applause) (Guitar music) (Music ends) (Applause) 18 minutes is an absolutely brutal time limit, so I'm going to dive straight in, right at the point where I get this thing to work. Here we go. I'm going to talk about five different things. I'm going to talk about why defeating aging is desirable. I'm going to talk about why we have to get our shit together, and actually talk about this a bit more than we do. I'm going to talk about feasibility as well, of course. I'm going to talk about why we are so fatalistic about doing anything about aging. And then I'm going spend perhaps the second half of the talk talking about, you know, how we might actually be able to prove that fatalism is wrong, namely, by actually doing something about it. I'm going to do that in two steps. The first one I'm going to talk about is how to get from a relatively modest amount of life extension -- which I'm going to define as 30 years, applied to people who are already in middle-age when you start -- to a point which can genuinely be called defeating aging. Namely, essentially an elimination of the relationship between how old you are and how likely you are to die in the next year -- or indeed, to get sick in the first place. And of course, the last thing I'm going to talk about is how to reach that intermediate step, that point of maybe 30 years life extension. So I'm going to start with why we should. Now, I want to ask a question. Hands up: anyone in the audience who is in favor of malaria? That was easy. OK. OK. Hands up: anyone in the audience who's not sure whether malaria is a good thing or a bad thing? OK. So we all think malaria is a bad thing. That's very good news, because I thought that was what the answer would be. Now the thing is, I would like to put it to you that the main reason why we think that malaria is a bad thing is because of a characteristic of malaria that it shares with aging. And here is that characteristic. The only real difference is that aging kills considerably more people than malaria does. Now, I like in an audience, in Britain especially, to talk about the comparison with foxhunting, which is something that was banned after a long struggle, by the government not very many months ago. I mean, I know I'm with a sympathetic audience here, but, as we know, a lot of people are not entirely persuaded by this logic. And this is actually a rather good comparison, it seems to me. You know, a lot of people said, "Well, you know, city boys have no business telling us rural types what to do with our time. It's a traditional part of the way of life, and we should be allowed to carry on doing it. It's ecologically sound; it stops the population explosion of foxes." But ultimately, the government prevailed in the end, because the majority of the British public, and certainly the majority of members of Parliament, came to the conclusion that it was really something that should not be tolerated in a civilized society. And I think that human aging shares all of these characteristics in spades. What part of this do people not understand? It's not just about life, of course -- (Laughter) -- it's about healthy life, you know -- getting frail and miserable and dependent is no fun, whether or not dying may be fun. So really, this is how I would like to describe it. It's a global trance. These are the sorts of unbelievable excuses that people give for aging. And, I mean, OK, I'm not actually saying that these excuses are completely valueless. There are some good points to be made here, things that we ought to be thinking about, forward planning so that nothing goes too -- well, so that we minimize the turbulence when we actually figure out how to fix aging. But these are completely crazy, when you actually remember your sense of proportion. You know, these are arguments; these are things that would be legitimate to be concerned about. But the question is, are they so dangerous -- these risks of doing something about aging -- that they outweigh the downside of doing the opposite, namely, leaving aging as it is? Are these so bad that they outweigh condemning 100,000 people a day to an unnecessarily early death? You know, if you haven't got an argument that's that strong, then just don't waste my time, is what I say. (Laughter) Now, there is one argument that some people do think really is that strong, and here it is. People worry about overpopulation; they say, "Well, if we fix aging, no one's going to die to speak of, or at least the death toll is going to be much lower, only from crossing St. Giles carelessly. And therefore, we're not going to be able to have many kids, and kids are really important to most people." And that's true. And you know, a lot of people try to fudge this question, and give answers like this. I don't agree with those answers. I think they basically don't work. I think it's true, that we will face a dilemma in this respect. We will have to decide whether to have a low birth rate, or a high death rate. A high death rate will, of course, arise from simply rejecting these therapies, in favor of carrying on having a lot of kids. And, I say that that's fine -- the future of humanity is entitled to make that choice. What's not fine is for us to make that choice on behalf of the future. If we vacillate, hesitate, and do not actually develop these therapies, then we are condemning a whole cohort of people -- who would have been young enough and healthy enough to benefit from those therapies, but will not be, because we haven't developed them as quickly as we could -- we'll be denying those people an indefinite life span, and I consider that that is immoral. That's my answer to the overpopulation question. Right. So the next thing is, now why should we get a little bit more active on this? And the fundamental answer is that the pro-aging trance is not as dumb as it looks. It's actually a sensible way of coping with the inevitability of aging. Aging is ghastly, but it's inevitable, so, you know, we've got to find some way to put it out of our minds, and it's rational to do anything that we might want to do, to do that. Like, for example, making up these ridiculous reasons why aging is actually a good thing after all. But of course, that only works when we have both of these components. And as soon as the inevitability bit becomes a little bit unclear -- and we might be in range of doing something about aging -- this becomes part of the problem. This pro-aging trance is what stops us from agitating about these things. And that's why we have to really talk about this a lot -- evangelize, I will go so far as to say, quite a lot -- in order to get people's attention, and make people realize that they are in a trance in this regard. So that's all I'm going to say about that. I'm now going to talk about feasibility. And the fundamental reason, I think, why we feel that aging is inevitable is summed up in a definition of aging that I'm giving here. A very simple definition. Aging is a side effect of being alive in the first place, which is to say, metabolism. This is not a completely tautological statement; it's a reasonable statement. Aging is basically a process that happens to inanimate objects like cars, and it also happens to us, despite the fact that we have a lot of clever self-repair mechanisms, because those self-repair mechanisms are not perfect. So basically, metabolism, which is defined as basically everything that keeps us alive from one day to the next, has side effects. Those side effects accumulate and eventually cause pathology. That's a fine definition. So we can put it this way: we can say that, you know, we have this chain of events. And there are really two games in town, according to most people, with regard to postponing aging. They're what I'm calling here the "gerontology approach" and the "geriatrics approach." The geriatrician will intervene late in the day, when pathology is becoming evident, and the geriatrician will try and hold back the sands of time, and stop the accumulation of side effects from causing the pathology quite so soon. Of course, it's a very short-term-ist strategy; it's a losing battle, because the things that are causing the pathology are becoming more abundant as time goes on. The gerontology approach looks much more promising on the surface, because, you know, prevention is better than cure. But unfortunately the thing is that we don't understand metabolism very well. In fact, we have a pitifully poor understanding of how organisms work -- even cells we're not really too good on yet. We've discovered things like, for example, RNA interference only a few years ago, and this is a really fundamental component of how cells work. Basically, gerontology is a fine approach in the end, but it is not an approach whose time has come when we're talking about intervention. So then, what do we do about that? I mean, that's a fine logic, that sounds pretty convincing, pretty ironclad, doesn't it? But it isn't. Before I tell you why it isn't, I'm going to go a little bit into what I'm calling step two. Just suppose, as I said, that we do acquire -- let's say we do it today for the sake of argument -- the ability to confer 30 extra years of healthy life on people who are already in middle age, let's say 55. I'm going to call that "robust human rejuvenation." OK. What would that actually mean for how long people of various ages today -- or equivalently, of various ages at the time that these therapies arrive -- would actually live? In order to answer that question -- you might think it's simple, but it's not simple. We can't just say, "Well, if they're young enough to benefit from these therapies, then they'll live 30 years longer." That's the wrong answer. And the reason it's the wrong answer is because of progress. There are two sorts of technological progress really, for this purpose. There are fundamental, major breakthroughs, and there are incremental refinements of those breakthroughs. Now, they differ a great deal in terms of the predictability of time frames. Fundamental breakthroughs: very hard to predict how long it's going to take to make a fundamental breakthrough. It was a very long time ago that we decided that flying would be fun, and it took us until 1903 to actually work out how to do it. But after that, things were pretty steady and pretty uniform. I think this is a reasonable sequence of events that happened in the progression of the technology of powered flight. We can think, really, that each one is sort of beyond the imagination of the inventor of the previous one, if you like. The incremental advances have added up to something which is not incremental anymore. This is the sort of thing you see after a fundamental breakthrough. And you see it in all