Far Flung with Saleem Reshamwala

Traveling is tricky right now and, for most, the boundaries of our worlds have shrunk dramatically. So a lot of people are spending a lot more time in virtual places, like Sea of Thieves, Fortnite, Ultima Online and more. Explore how these online worlds help us push past real-world boundaries and have vastly new experiences, even become new versions of ourselves—all without leaving the comfort of home.Check out guest Wes Locher’s book, Braving Britannia: Tales of Melancholy, Malice, and Peril in Ultima Online. You can learn more about Russell Quinn’s computer game, Linda & Joan, at lindajoan.com. Huge thanks to Lee Yancy, whose conversations were invaluable for contextualizing the world of video games, and to Raph Koster for his insight into the virtual world. The computer-y music in this episode was created by musician Phil Cook. Our unsung hero for this episode is Emma Taubner, our super-star encoder who makes episodes of Pindrop available to listen on TED.com.Pindrop is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Nuzum of Magnificent Noise. This episode was produced by Kim Nederveen Pieterse along with Elyse Blennerhassett, Hiwote Getaneh and Sabrina Farhi, Angela Cheng and Michelle Quint and with the guidance of Roxanne Hai Lash and Colin Helms. Our fact checkers are Nicole Bode, Abbey White and Paul Durbin. This episode was mixed and sound designed by Kristin Mueller.We're doing a survey! If you have a minute, please take it at surveynerds.com/farflung. It really helps make the show better. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Imagine a view with almost perfect visibility, a near edgeless, perfectly black night sky. That’s the Painted Desert. Join us on a field trip with architect Wanda Dalla Costa, who will take us through the desert to explore the architectural practices of several indigenous tribes and reveal how light and design influence the way we move through the world. Oh, and we might just get a peek inside one of the most secretive, highly anticipated art projects in modern history. Want to talk more about this episode? Chat with host Saleem Reshamwala on Twitter: @KidEthnic.Special thanks to Lemon Guo whose music was featured on this episode, as well as Byron Crenshaw of The Growth Eternal for sharing his music and video footage with us. You can stream his new album mentioned on the episode, Bass Tone Paintings, wherever you get your music. Abundant gratitude to Wanda Dalla Costa, Brian Skeet, Dr. Fowler, Richard Begay, Joseph Kunkel, Selina Martinez, Shenise Bryant, Neda Mohaved, Jessica Yu, Patrick Young and Edward Krupp for your time, guidance, and expertise in creating this episode.Pindrop is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Nuzum of Magnificent Noise for TED. Our production staff includes Elyse Blennerhassett, Kim Nederveen Pieterse, Hiwote Getaneh, Sabrina Farhi, Angela Cheng, and Michelle Quint, with the guidance of Roxanne Hai Lash and Colin Helms. Our fact-checkers are Paul Durbin and Nicole Bode. This episode was mixed and sound designed by Kristin Mueller.We're doing a survey! If you have a minute, please take it at surveynerds.com/farflung. It really helps make the show better. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Meet Liberato Kani, a hip hop artist in Lima, Peru—or as he says, “the Andean Bronx”. At his concerts, a typical call and response you hear is "Quechua es resistencia": Quechua is resistance. Though Quechua is spoken by nearly ten million people, Peru's native language is at risk of dying off because of anti-indigenous prejudice. Liberato and other musicians like Renata Flores are here to save it—and restore a country's pride while they're at it. Want to talk more about the show? Share your favorite artist from this episode with host Saleem Reshamwala (@Kidethnic) on Twitter.This episode features music and interviews from Liberato Kani, Renata Flores, Kayfex, and Uchpa's guitarist and songwriter Marcos Maizel. Listen to more from these artists on TED's Spotify playlist, "Quechua es Resistencia”Pindrop is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Nuzum of Magnificent Noise for TED. Our production staff includes Elyse Blennerhassett, Oscar Durand, Kim Nederveen Pieterse, Sabrina Farhi, Hiwote Getaneh, Angela Cheng, and Michelle Quint, with the guidance of Roxanne Hai Lash and Colin Helms. Additional recordings by Whitney Henry-Lester and Hernando Suarez. Translation and transcription by Hernando Suárez, Eilis O’Neill, and Oscar Durand. This episode was mixed and sound designed by Kristin Mueller.We're doing a survey! If you have a minute, please take it at surveynerds.com/farflung. It really helps make the show better. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

What happens to a tourist paradise when no one shows up to visit? Rapa Nui, known to many as Easter Island, typically welcomes more than 120,000 visitors each year—which is a lot for a place with only 10,000 residents. After COVID-19 shuts down flights to this remote island, citizens reimagine what their lives, their livelihood, and their home can be without tourism — and dream of what a post-pandemic paradise economy might look like.Want to talk more about this episode? Chat with host Saleem Reshamwala on Twitter at @kidethnic.To learn more, check out guest Sergio Rapu Haoa's TEDx talk on "The Mysteries of Easter Island."Special thanks to Mario Tuki (and Amahiro), Erity Teave for sharing their music with us and to Sergio Matau Rapu for sharing his wisdom about the island and connecting us to everyone you heard in today’s episode.Pindrop is produced by Jesse Baker and Eric Nuzum of Magnificent Noise for TED. Our production staff includes Sabrina Farhi, Hiwote Getaneh, Kim Nederveen Pieterse, Elyse Blennerhassett, Angela Cheng, and Michelle Quint, with the guidance of Roxanne Hai Lash and Colin Helms. This episode was mixed and sound designed by Kristin Mueller, and our fact-checker is Abbey White.We're doing a survey! If you have a minute, please take it at surveynerds.com/farflung. It really helps make the show better. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nearly 400 years ago, a tiny town in Germany made a bargain with God: spare its people from the Black Plague and we'll put on a play in your honor... forever. And it worked! Now every decade, the entire town comes together to stage the play, drawing massive crowds to one of the largest religious spectacles in the world. But problematic parts of the play have been challenged, and tensions rise when a new voice tries to update a 2,000 year old story with help from some unexpected allies Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Harnessing the creativity of a megalopolis isn't easy, but Mexico City shows us how it's done. Follow a real-life superhero who dons a luchador mask and cape to protect his fellow residents from speeding cars, learn how citizens are hacking their way to a better public transport system, and see what it takes to crowd-source a constitution from a city with 21 million minds. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

With each step, you slide 400,000 years back in time. Where are you? Behind a hardware store in New Jersey — which also happens to be a massive prehistoric graveyard. The only thing that can save it from turning into an apartment complex is geologist Ken Lacovara, a Leslie Knope-type local government official, and a community effort unlike any attempted before. Hear how this town of 15,000 tapped into a 66 million year old murder mystery, and learn why solving it is so important to our own future on earth.We're doing a survey! If you have a minute, please take it at surveynerds.com/farflung. It really helps make the show better. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Fun, fierce and frivolous: AfroBubbleGum is an art movement from Nairobi, Kenya, that challenges the narratives often seen about Africa as limited to war, poverty and devastation. But sharing this joyous art is no frivolous task — it can even mean having your work banned. See why AfroBubbleGum faces opposition and what artists, like filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu, are willing to do to fight for it. Also featuring an interview and music from "Blinky" Bill Sellanga.We're doing a survey! If you have a minute, please take it at surveynerds.com/farflung. It really helps make the show better. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Let's say you go into labor in the back of a taxi. The traffic is so bad you don't know if you'll make it to the hospital on time. You make the obvious call to the local radio station—which serves as an emergency hotline, lost and found, and community noticeboard all at once. Now a team of motorcycle police (trained as midwives!) is on the way, weaving through the streets of this sinking city. Adaptability, connectivity, creativity in Bangkok, Thailand. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on Far Flung we’re excited to introduce TED’s newest podcast, Good Sport, hosted by veteran sports producer Jody Avirgan. What can sports teach us about life – and each other? Good Sport brings you invigorating stories from on and off the field to argue that sports are as powerful and compelling a lens as any to understand the world – from what happens when you age out of a sport, to how we do or don't nurture talent, to analyzing how sports arguments have become the mode for all arguments. Good Sport launched on February 8th and you can find it anywhere you’re listening to this. TED Audio Collective+ subscribers on Apple Podcasts can hear the whole season early and ad-free.“Muck City”, Florida. Kinston, North Carolina. The courts of New York City in the 80s and 90s. These places share one unique trait: they found a way to produce a particular kind of great athlete, over and over. Is there something in the water – or is it something else? In our first episode, Jody talks to sports journalist Bomani Jones and Olympic table tennis coach Rajul Sheth about talent “hotbeds”, the role opportunity and access play in crafting success and the important distinction between having talent and achieving greatness. Transcripts for Good Sport are available at go.ted.com/GStranscripts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In 2017, Alex Honnold did what even the world’s best rock climbers thought was impossible. He climbed to the top of El Capitan– a granite rock mountain more than 3,000 feet high– without a rope, harness, or net. His audacious feat was the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary “Free Solo." On this episode of ReThinking, another podcast in the TED Audio Collective, host Adam Grant explores with Alex what we can learn from his unique approach to managing fear. He opens up about how he regulates his emotions when he’s hanging on by just a few fingers, what still scares him, and how he stays motivated to pursue ambitious goals. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/RWAG2. For more conversations on the science of what makes us tick, follow ReThinking with Adam Grant wherever you're listening to this. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Where do you go to feel a sense of community? On the outskirts of Istanbul, one refugee community gathers to recreate a sense of home and empower themselves at a boxing gym. Listen to how the Uyghur community in Turkey is fighting in and outside of the ring to preserve their culture and identity, and to heal trauma at a time when their very existence is at stake. And hear how boxing has turned into a tool of resilience and connection that's helping Uyghurs forge a new home and future. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Bean needs to move over—there’s a new art movement in Chicago, and it’s led by artists who are completely reimagining how residents think about the spaces around them. From an artist who turned abandoned homes into art by painting them in colors rooted in Black culture, to another who used a multimedia exhibit to examine segregation by connecting people who live on opposite sides of the city and more. Join Saleem on a bold, creative, and winding road trip to witness the power of place-based art, and the ideas that flow from the heartland. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Where do you go when you sleep? An enchanted forest…or haunted woods? Flying over a breathtaking mountain top… or in a crowd, wearing just your underwear?! According to the Bön Tibetan Buddhist tradition, wherever you “go” in your dreams matters, and dreams can tell you a lot about yourself–if you know how to listen. From “dream yoga,” to dream journals, to lucid dreaming, journey into a realm where the conscious and unconscious blend and the hazy border between reality and illusion can lead you on a wild adventure of self-discovery—without ever leaving your bed. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Barcelona is a city that can’t be separated from its art–you might picture Gaudí architecture, Picasso paintings, or flamenco and jazz spilling onto the streets and into the night. But there’s another art scene that’s breaking into the mainstream from the margins–led by the city’s street vendors, known as manteros. Listen to how this group of people, often immigrants without legal protections or rights to work in Spain, fought to form a union to gain the voice they needed, and ended up creating a global and people-centered fashion-label that highlights human rights in the process. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.