[Music]
[Applause]
there’s obviously been a lot of very
interesting people talking about a lot
of very interesting things today I’d
like to take a minute and talk about a
stick that I found in a hole in the
ground but I think that that stick
actually says something pretty profound
about human curiosity I map and explore
caves and most the time nobody’s ever
been in those spaces before but in a
cave in the Grand Canyon a group of
people on myself found that stick a
single split twig made to you know used
to make figurines like these placed
deliberately in a crack in the wall of a
cave 3,000 years ago by a person who
scaled 200 feet to get into that space
why would you do that
I mean why would you risk your life to
put a stick in a cave standing there
looking at that stick is actually a
really good way to feel pretty small and
ephemeral but it also makes you think a
lot about why you and that person and
the group of people you’re with all
we’re so driven to this inaccessible
place I mean why are humans so drawn to
the unknown these caves are fascinating
places there’s actually thousands of
miles of cliff face in the Grand Canyon
and in some of these cliffs we find
these cave entrances that are millions
of years old they actually predate the
canyon itself and the only reason that
we can even get into them is because
millions of years ago when the Colorado
River down cut through the ground to
form the Grand Canyon it exposed these
entrances the surface and we can see the
entrances but we have no idea what’s in
them you can’t fly an airplane over
these spaces ahead of time GPS doesn’t
work underground the only way to know
what’s down there is to actually go in
person so a couple times a year a group
of people on myself fly from all over
the country and head out to the Grand
Canyon under a research permit through
the National
service and we put everything we need
for nine days on our backs tents
sleeping bags rope food grappling hooks
pirate flags
don’t forget your fire flag and we
bushwhack down through thousand
thousands of feet of cliff face through
yucca and agave and cask law and
manzanita and all these great names for
desert plants that are really just spiky
and stabby and make you bleed just so we
can camp in this wash that’s overrun by
fearless desert mice that will almost
literally steal the food out of your
mouth if you give them the chance and
after all that we tie our ropes to giant
rocks and rappel off a 600 foot cliff
unlike the mice we are not fearless mom
I know you’re in the audience more close
your eyes we call this an air bath and
even after all the time I spent on rope
it’s still terrified but it’s the only
way to get into these spaces so if we
want to map and explore these caves we
have to do this crazy vertical work to
do it but once we’re there it what gives
us access so how do you map a cave again
can’t fly an airplane over the space GPS
doesn’t work it’s surprisingly
old-fashioned we actually take laser
rangefinders and we collect data point
to point to point throughout the entire
cave compass bearing inclination
distance and and we do that because we
don’t know where the cave is going and
sometimes they’re miles and miles we
have to do that for the entire space
that involves going down every hole on
the floor up every single hole in the
ceiling under rocks that look like they
might have passage underneath and into
cracks in the walls that are so tight
that sometimes you have to put one arm
above your head like this and one on the
side and kind of wiggle in until you can
feel the rock on your chest and your
back at the same time and the only way
to make forward progress is actually
just to push with your toes and most of
the time that goes nowhere but every
once in a while it goes to some pretty
cool stuff like these giant underground
rooms that you know again nobody’s ever
been in these places before or this I
mean these are called gypsum flowers
they’re actually an extrusion out of the
rock bore that’s caused by capillary
action
you know you can just be going through
the space and just run into a room like
this
these are a gunite chandeliers again
just a strange geological formation I
like this one this is actually the cross
section or end of a stalagmite that’s
tipped over and what you’re looking at
is actually the rings that formed as the
precipitation that was filtering down
into the cave changed over years and
years and years so it’s a lot like tree
rings but each one of those rings
represents way more time than a tree so
we take all this data and we record it
and again it’s surprisingly rudimentary
I mean we’re literally writing it down
on pieces of paper these are not old
sheets of paper this is just mud and on
the left is the data and on the right is
sort of a hand-drawn sketch and we
collect that data for these for all of
these places and plug it into a piece of
software called compass that does a
whole bunch of trigonometry for us and
we end up with this kind of rudimentary
three-dimensional line plot of the cave
you can take that and combine it with
that sketch to form this sort of
finalized map and this is a ton of work
I mean some of these caves it’s taken
decades for people to create accurate
maps of them and there’s cavers doing
this all over the world all the time
Bly
I’ll tell you a quick story I I signed
up for a pretty hard cave trip a woman I
know it was diving a sump at the bottom
of a really cold cave and so a sump is
essentially just a water filled section
of passage that that we were trying to
see what was on the other side and I
signed up for this trip and I’m telling
a friend of mine that I’m going a fellow
cave ER and he kind of gives me this
sideways look and I say Andy what’s that
look for are you telling me that I’m the
only idiot stupid enough to do this and
without missing a beat he looks at me
and says oh no there’ll be plenty of
other idiots I mean this story is sort
of my confession right I wonder all the
time if this is crazy I mean to
structure so much of my life around
something that’s literally most people’s
nightmare to crawl into these
claustrophobic cracks – hang on rope to
sleep underground for days at a time you
know – just just to produce this map I
mean why would you do that why would
that person 3,000 years ago scale that
cliff just to put that stick in a crack
each of those things in isolation seems
pretty insignificant you know you’re
just mapping and exploring a little bit
of cave but when you add up those
thousands of thousands of feet and those
hours spent exploring you get a map and
all of that has helped humans to to
better understand geology for cavers to
make discoveries in biology in in the
way that human circadian rhythms work in
the absence of sunlight the psychology
of group dynamics and adverse conditions
all because somebody just wanted to see
what was in a hole in the ground it’s a
slow slow accumulation of knowledge and
and you know it’s certainly my
contributions are pretty insignificant
but when you add all of that up you
start to see the difference between us
and I mean all of us and that person
3,000 years ago this is actually one of
the photographers whose photos you’re
looking at today and I’d like the
fixture because if you look at that
camera that camera is just like a cave
map I mean yes Nikon built that camera
but Nikon didn’t figure out how to turn
petroleum products into plastic Nikon
didn’t develop the circuitry that’s used
to get those images
off that camera onto your computer look
at that rope I trust my life to that
rope all the time I don’t understand
that details of how its woven I don’t
understand the way that the industrial
machines that manufacture at work but I
put my faith in that collective
knowledge
and I can guarantee you that when the
chemist a DuPont that sat down to
understand the molecular structure of
nylon did so he never imagined that this
is how it would be used you know as a
way to explore caves the process is so
collective right and it takes all of
this time when you see that stick
underground the reason it feels so
profound is it because it immediately
compresses all of that time that person
is me I mean their urge is the same just
to explore the unknown the difference is
that I’ve been given this gift and that
gift is a thousand and thousands of
years of collective human knowledge that
all just came from people trying to
follow their curiosity that gift is in a
way like all of our collective
inheritance and if we lose that we go
back to just being a single individual
scaling an impossible cliff hoping that
history finds our extinguish torch these
things don’t need to be scientific I
mean to be involved in this process you
don’t literally need to be filling in
blank spots on a map in a way we’re all
doing it right now
I mean this sharing and refining of
information is so central to what Ted is
when somebody first asked me to speak I
had a lot of doubts I mean what do I
have to say that’s important that
actually matters but but I realized that
in order to support this project you had
to I had to engage in it even if it
meant risking failure the first time
somebody spoke at Ted was actually 33
years ago I to look this up and and the
amazing thing about that is if if you go
back and watch those early speeches
those people actually predict devices
that we all now carry around in her
pockets all because people followed that
curiosity and and tried to fill in those
blank spots in human knowledge one
really big blank spot in caving
is the deepest cave in America we don’t
know where it is we don’t even know if
it’s been discovered yet because again
you can’t fly an airplane over these
places ahead of time but the deepest
known cave right now is a thousand miles
from the Grand Canyon in Montana and at
the bottom of it it just keeps going
because so far human willpower has
failed I mean we have to pack all our
gear in on mules you still the same
thing you’re putting all this vertical
gear on and going into these awful
spaces rigging all of these ropes most
of the passage looks like this it’s
tight it’s freezing cold it’s not quite
literally it’s 38 degrees I believe and
and at the bottom you just end up
sleeping in a pile of mud and eating
freeze-dried food out of ziplock bags
everybody who has gone hates it I’ve
been literally they hate it and I wonder
why bother going back I mean why don’t I
just go sit on my couch and drink a beer
it’s probably just a crack in the mud at
the bottom and yet I’m gonna go back you
don’t need to crawl down you know a
crazy crack in the mud in order to be
part of this process human existence
moves forward in a lot of different ways
but there’s a couple of things you can
do to help I mean if you see somebody
engaging in something with a high risk
of failure don’t judge that failure
support them if you feel that curiosity
in yourself to do something new or to
try something new even if you’re not
really sure why don’t be ashamed of that
follow it and when you learn interesting
things share them because that’s how we
carry that collective inheritance
forward even if we have to do it foot by
foot pushing with our toes thank you
[Applause]
[Applause]
there’s obviously been a lot of very
interesting people talking about a lot
of very interesting things today I’d
like to take a minute and talk about a
stick that I found in a hole in the
ground but I think that that stick
actually says something pretty profound
about human curiosity I map and explore
caves and most the time nobody’s ever
been in those spaces before but in a
cave in the Grand Canyon a group of
people on myself found that stick a
single split twig made to you know used
to make figurines like these placed
deliberately in a crack in the wall of a
cave 3,000 years ago by a person who
scaled 200 feet to get into that space
why would you do that
I mean why would you risk your life to
put a stick in a cave standing there
looking at that stick is actually a
really good way to feel pretty small and
ephemeral but it also makes you think a
lot about why you and that person and
the group of people you’re with all
we’re so driven to this inaccessible
place I mean why are humans so drawn to
the unknown these caves are fascinating
places there’s actually thousands of
miles of cliff face in the Grand Canyon
and in some of these cliffs we find
these cave entrances that are millions
of years old they actually predate the
canyon itself and the only reason that
we can even get into them is because
millions of years ago when the Colorado
River down cut through the ground to
form the Grand Canyon it exposed these
entrances the surface and we can see the
entrances but we have no idea what’s in
them you can’t fly an airplane over
these spaces ahead of time GPS doesn’t
work underground the only way to know
what’s down there is to actually go in
person so a couple times a year a group
of people on myself fly from all over
the country and head out to the Grand
Canyon under a research permit through
the National
service and we put everything we need
for nine days on our backs tents
sleeping bags rope food grappling hooks
pirate flags
don’t forget your fire flag and we
bushwhack down through thousand
thousands of feet of cliff face through
yucca and agave and cask law and
manzanita and all these great names for
desert plants that are really just spiky
and stabby and make you bleed just so we
can camp in this wash that’s overrun by
fearless desert mice that will almost
literally steal the food out of your
mouth if you give them the chance and
after all that we tie our ropes to giant
rocks and rappel off a 600 foot cliff
unlike the mice we are not fearless mom
I know you’re in the audience more close
your eyes we call this an air bath and
even after all the time I spent on rope
it’s still terrified but it’s the only
way to get into these spaces so if we
want to map and explore these caves we
have to do this crazy vertical work to
do it but once we’re there it what gives
us access so how do you map a cave again
can’t fly an airplane over the space GPS
doesn’t work it’s surprisingly
old-fashioned we actually take laser
rangefinders and we collect data point
to point to point throughout the entire
cave compass bearing inclination
distance and and we do that because we
don’t know where the cave is going and
sometimes they’re miles and miles we
have to do that for the entire space
that involves going down every hole on
the floor up every single hole in the
ceiling under rocks that look like they
might have passage underneath and into
cracks in the walls that are so tight
that sometimes you have to put one arm
above your head like this and one on the
side and kind of wiggle in until you can
feel the rock on your chest and your
back at the same time and the only way
to make forward progress is actually
just to push with your toes and most of
the time that goes nowhere but every
once in a while it goes to some pretty
cool stuff like these giant underground
rooms that you know again nobody’s ever
been in these places before or this I
mean these are called gypsum flowers
they’re actually an extrusion out of the
rock bore that’s caused by capillary
action
you know you can just be going through
the space and just run into a room like
this
these are a gunite chandeliers again
just a strange geological formation I
like this one this is actually the cross
section or end of a stalagmite that’s
tipped over and what you’re looking at
is actually the rings that formed as the
precipitation that was filtering down
into the cave changed over years and
years and years so it’s a lot like tree
rings but each one of those rings
represents way more time than a tree so
we take all this data and we record it
and again it’s surprisingly rudimentary
I mean we’re literally writing it down
on pieces of paper these are not old
sheets of paper this is just mud and on
the left is the data and on the right is
sort of a hand-drawn sketch and we
collect that data for these for all of
these places and plug it into a piece of
software called compass that does a
whole bunch of trigonometry for us and
we end up with this kind of rudimentary
three-dimensional line plot of the cave
you can take that and combine it with
that sketch to form this sort of
finalized map and this is a ton of work
I mean some of these caves it’s taken
decades for people to create accurate
maps of them and there’s cavers doing
this all over the world all the time
Bly
I’ll tell you a quick story I I signed
up for a pretty hard cave trip a woman I
know it was diving a sump at the bottom
of a really cold cave and so a sump is
essentially just a water filled section
of passage that that we were trying to
see what was on the other side and I
signed up for this trip and I’m telling
a friend of mine that I’m going a fellow
cave ER and he kind of gives me this
sideways look and I say Andy what’s that
look for are you telling me that I’m the
only idiot stupid enough to do this and
without missing a beat he looks at me
and says oh no there’ll be plenty of
other idiots I mean this story is sort
of my confession right I wonder all the
time if this is crazy I mean to
structure so much of my life around
something that’s literally most people’s
nightmare to crawl into these
claustrophobic cracks – hang on rope to
sleep underground for days at a time you
know – just just to produce this map I
mean why would you do that why would
that person 3,000 years ago scale that
cliff just to put that stick in a crack
each of those things in isolation seems
pretty insignificant you know you’re
just mapping and exploring a little bit
of cave but when you add up those
thousands of thousands of feet and those
hours spent exploring you get a map and
all of that has helped humans to to
better understand geology for cavers to
make discoveries in biology in in the
way that human circadian rhythms work in
the absence of sunlight the psychology
of group dynamics and adverse conditions
all because somebody just wanted to see
what was in a hole in the ground it’s a
slow slow accumulation of knowledge and
and you know it’s certainly my
contributions are pretty insignificant
but when you add all of that up you
start to see the difference between us
and I mean all of us and that person
3,000 years ago this is actually one of
the photographers whose photos you’re
looking at today and I’d like the
fixture because if you look at that
camera that camera is just like a cave
map I mean yes Nikon built that camera
but Nikon didn’t figure out how to turn
petroleum products into plastic Nikon
didn’t develop the circuitry that’s used
to get those images
off that camera onto your computer look
at that rope I trust my life to that
rope all the time I don’t understand
that details of how its woven I don’t
understand the way that the industrial
machines that manufacture at work but I
put my faith in that collective
knowledge
and I can guarantee you that when the
chemist a DuPont that sat down to
understand the molecular structure of
nylon did so he never imagined that this
is how it would be used you know as a
way to explore caves the process is so
collective right and it takes all of
this time when you see that stick
underground the reason it feels so
profound is it because it immediately
compresses all of that time that person
is me I mean their urge is the same just
to explore the unknown the difference is
that I’ve been given this gift and that
gift is a thousand and thousands of
years of collective human knowledge that
all just came from people trying to
follow their curiosity that gift is in a
way like all of our collective
inheritance and if we lose that we go
back to just being a single individual
scaling an impossible cliff hoping that
history finds our extinguish torch these
things don’t need to be scientific I
mean to be involved in this process you
don’t literally need to be filling in
blank spots on a map in a way we’re all
doing it right now
I mean this sharing and refining of
information is so central to what Ted is
when somebody first asked me to speak I
had a lot of doubts I mean what do I
have to say that’s important that
actually matters but but I realized that
in order to support this project you had
to I had to engage in it even if it
meant risking failure the first time
somebody spoke at Ted was actually 33
years ago I to look this up and and the
amazing thing about that is if if you go
back and watch those early speeches
those people actually predict devices
that we all now carry around in her
pockets all because people followed that
curiosity and and tried to fill in those
blank spots in human knowledge one
really big blank spot in caving
is the deepest cave in America we don’t
know where it is we don’t even know if
it’s been discovered yet because again
you can’t fly an airplane over these
places ahead of time but the deepest
known cave right now is a thousand miles
from the Grand Canyon in Montana and at
the bottom of it it just keeps going
because so far human willpower has
failed I mean we have to pack all our
gear in on mules you still the same
thing you’re putting all this vertical
gear on and going into these awful
spaces rigging all of these ropes most
of the passage looks like this it’s
tight it’s freezing cold it’s not quite
literally it’s 38 degrees I believe and
and at the bottom you just end up
sleeping in a pile of mud and eating
freeze-dried food out of ziplock bags
everybody who has gone hates it I’ve
been literally they hate it and I wonder
why bother going back I mean why don’t I
just go sit on my couch and drink a beer
it’s probably just a crack in the mud at
the bottom and yet I’m gonna go back you
don’t need to crawl down you know a
crazy crack in the mud in order to be
part of this process human existence
moves forward in a lot of different ways
but there’s a couple of things you can
do to help I mean if you see somebody
engaging in something with a high risk
of failure don’t judge that failure
support them if you feel that curiosity
in yourself to do something new or to
try something new even if you’re not
really sure why don’t be ashamed of that
follow it and when you learn interesting
things share them because that’s how we
carry that collective inheritance
forward even if we have to do it foot by
foot pushing with our toes thank you
[Applause]
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