The case for merging human bodies with machines

Summary

TED Radio Hour – "The Case for Merging Human Bodies with Machines"

Host: Manoush Zomorodi, NPR
Air Date: June 5, 2026

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Overview

This episode explores the evolving interface between human bodies and machines. Host Manoush Zomorodi interviews leading scientists, technologists, and individuals whose lives have been transformed by advances in robotics, prosthetics, artificial skin, and gene editing. The central theme: How can technology augment human bodies and experiences without diminishing our sense of self, safety, or delight? Listeners are guided through stories of personal transformation, scientific ingenuity, and ethical inquiry around the integration of technology into the human experience.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Humanizing Robotic Technology

Guest: Katie Kwan, Robot Choreographer & Engineer

• Experiential Spark:
  Katie Kwan recalls her father's hospitalization and his alienation around cold, impersonal medical machines, sparking questions about “the wrong relationship between humans and our technologies.” (01:49)
• Crossroads of Dance & Robotics:
  Kwan shifted from being a professional dancer to studying engineering at Stanford, merging artistic movement with robotics. She aims to design robots that move naturally and make people feel empowered and safe (03:22–05:00).
• Emotional Impact of Movement:
  “You can express so much through simply the way that your body moves… The way a robot performs that motion is deeply impactful if it’s done near humans.” —Katie Kwan (05:29)
• Choreographing Flocks of Robots:
  At Google’s Everyday Robots, Kwan used AI to teach robots to move in coordinated, fluid formations—like a flock of birds—so humans and robots could coexist smoothly (07:36).
  “We imagined a world where you could walk down a hallway filled with robots and they would part to make space for you, like a flock of doves…” —Katie Kwan (08:07)
• Design for Safety and Joy:
  Incorporating beauty, playfulness, and anticipation into robot movement makes interactions feel natural and even fun. Kwan recounts her mother smiling and laughing when encountering the robots (09:43).
• Beyond Utility:
  “We can also imbue character, artistry, creativity. That’s…taking a robot from simply being a utilitarian tool and into an evocative social agent.” —Katie Kwan (11:10)

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2. Prosthetics and Neural Integration

Guests: Jim Ewing, Climber & Amputee; Hugh Herr, MIT Biophysicist & Double Amputee

• A Life-Altering Decision:
  Jim Ewing, after a climbing fall and severe ankle injury, decided on amputation, inspired by his friend Hugh Herr—himself a double amputee and prosthetics expert (16:01–18:48).
• New Surgical Paradigm:
  Herr’s team pioneered the Agonist Antagonist Myoneural Interface (AMI), preserving muscle pairing and link to the nervous system after amputation. This enables not only movement, but also proprioception—a sense of where the limb is in space (20:27–22:12).
• Reclaiming Embodiment:
  With this new procedure, Ewing describes how his nervous system “embodies” the prosthetic; it feels truly part of him, to the point where losing the connection (e.g., robot turned off) is emotionally jarring (25:31, 26:41).
  • “The robot became part of me.” —Jim Ewing (25:26)
• Scalability and Cost:
  Over 100 people have had the procedure, and in a few years, full bionic reconstructions may become standard. The cost, estimated at $100,000, is comparable to other major surgeries (27:36–29:32).
  • “What is the value of being able to walk? …It’s pretty nice to be able to walk across the room.” —Hugh Herr (29:32)
• Cultural & Aesthetic Shifts:
  Herr sees a future where prosthetics and bionics are not just functional, but aesthetically desirable—“sexy,” as with eyeglasses as fashion (30:35).
  • “Will these new bodies express themselves in terms of good design and aesthetics? Absolutely.” —Hugh Herr (30:35)
• The Cyborg Future:
  Herr predicts that within 10–20 years, humans routinely wear augmentative bionics—exoskeletons to walk, run, or lift better (32:05–33:16).

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3. Smart Skin: Replicating Touch and Sensation

Guest: Anamaria Coclita, Material Scientist

• Complexity of Human Skin:
  Replicating the sensory functions of skin (touch, temperature, humidity) is extraordinarily challenging, as natural skin is packed with millions of varied sensory receptors (36:26–37:34).
• Breakthrough — Artificial “Smart” Skin:
  Coclita’s team developed ultra-thin patches, invisible to the eye, that sense force, temperature, and humidity—sometimes at resolutions beyond human skin (38:14).
• Nanoscopic Engineering:
  The skin is made up of cylinders with polymers and a piezoelectric layer; touch or heat causes tiny electrical signals, mimicking the way natural skin signals the brain (39:45–41:11).
• Applications:
  Possible use for burn victims via patch or tattoo-like applications that restore sensation (44:13). For prosthetics, the skin could let wearers feel heat, texture, and more, and make robots more sensitive and safer (42:20–43:59).

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4. Gene Editing the Human Microbiome

Guest: Jennifer Doudna, Nobel Prize-Winning Biochemist

• Precision Microbiome Editing:
  Doudna describes a new frontier: editing the genes of entire populations of microbes in our guts, using CRISPR. The goal is to treat or prevent diseases linked to the microbiome (obesity, asthma, Alzheimer’s) (46:29–52:53).
• Breakthroughs & Prospects:
  • CRISPR has already cured certain genetic diseases and improved crop resilience.
  • Precision editing can target harmful bacteria without wiping out entire populations, unlike antibiotics.
• Beyond Human Health:
  Editing livestock gut microbiomes could dramatically reduce methane emissions, helping slow climate change.
• Vision:
  “We can now use CRISPR to edit the same tiny organisms that gave us CRISPR…collaborating with the ultimate partner, nature.” —Jennifer Doudna (52:38)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the emotional impact of robots:
  “When she [Kwan’s mother] wandered through this group of robots, the smile that she had on her face. I don’t think I’ve seen my mom grin like that, interacting with any piece of technology in her whole life.” —Katie Kwan (09:43)
• On embodiment and prosthetics:
  “Your nervous system, your body, your brain recognizes this piece of equipment as being part of you. You have embodied this thing, and it just adopts it and starts using it as if it belongs there.” —Jim Ewing (25:31)
• On the cyborg horizon:
  “It’s part of humanity’s natural progression to go from developing and using tools that are separate from our body to a more profound integration.” —Hugh Herr (32:05)
• On blending biology and technology:
  “Together we can use CRISPR power precision microbiome editing to build a more resilient future for all of us.” —Jennifer Doudna (52:38)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Katie Kwan: Personal Story & Dance-Driven Robotics – 01:03–13:05
• Designing Robot Movement & Flocking Project – 05:29–09:43
• Philosophy of Empowering, Fun Robots – 11:10–13:05
• Jim Ewing’s Injury, Amputation, and New Prosthetic Procedure – 15:42–25:31
• Neural Embodiment & Bionic Integration, Discussion with Hugh Herr – 25:31–32:05
• The Future of Exoskeletons & Cyborgs – 32:05–33:16
• Artificial "Smart" Skin and Future Applications – 35:53–44:13
• CRISPR and Microbiome Editing with Jennifer Doudna – 46:29–52:53

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Conclusion

This episode offers a dynamic look at the merging frontier of human and machine, from caring robots and bionic limbs to synthetic skin and editable microbiomes. Its underlying message: The future of augmentation is not about replacing humanity, but about carefully and creatively enhancing it—making life safer, more expressive, and maybe, even, more fun.

Transcript

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[Anoush Zamarodi]

This is the TED Radio Hour. Each week, groundbreaking TED Talks.

[Hugh Herr]

Our job now is to dream big.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Delivered at TED conferences to bring about

[Katie Kwan]

the future we want to see around

[Anoush Zamarodi]

the world to understand who we are. From those talks, we bring you speakers and ideas that will surprise you.

[Hugh Herr]

You just don't know what you're going

[Anoush Zamarodi]

to find challenge you.

[Sponsor/Advertisement Voice]

We truly have to ask ourselves, like, why is it noteworthy and even change you.

[Katie Kwan]

I literally feel like I'm a different person.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Yes. Do you feel that way? Ideas worth spreading From Ted and NPR. I'm Minouche Zumarod. In 2014, Katie Kwan was a professional dancer in New York City living her dream.

[Katie Kwan]

Taking the train to Lincoln center and dancing at the Metropolitan Opera Ballet and traveling all over the United States to be in various shows. I did the King and I at the Lyric Opera of Chicago. I did Cinderella at the Gateway Theater. I had my own dance company, actually. And we did something between like six to ten shows a year.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

But then her father got sick.

[Katie Kwan]

Yeah, it was very scary for our family. He had a stroke. And my dad, you know, English is his third language. He was in his mid-60s at the time.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Katie found herself there with her dad in his hospital room surrounded by medical equipment.

[Katie Kwan]

So he had a heart monitor, you know, the thing that blips and bloops on the screen. And he also had quite a few issues with his lungs. And so there was something that was helping to track his breathing. You know, seeing my dad so small and surrounded by all of these machines, I thought these things are meant to help assist him and empower him. But he feels very alienated and afraid of them. And that struck me as such the wrong relationship between humans and our technologies.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

She wondered, was there a way these machines could keep someone alive without being so terrifying? Maybe they could even come across as nurturing.

[Katie Kwan]

And it started to open the door to so many questions about how we could live with our technologies in a way that we weren't living with them.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Katie's dad made a full recovery, but these questions continued to nag at her. She'd always been good at math and science, so she decided to go back to school to try and find some answers.

[Katie Kwan]

So even though there were lots of valid assertions that grad school was going to be very hard for me, I kind of did it anyway. And I did my master's, my Ph.D. and then my postdoc, all at Stanford in mechanical engineering and computer science.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

At Stanford, people were building technology to change the way we live with machines well beyond hospitals, designing robots to do everything from cleaning our homes to offering companionship. So just imagine what's it going to

[Katie Kwan]

be like when not only you have autonomous vehicles on the road, but then you have autonomous robots who are showing up to deliver your burrito, and you have an autonomous robot that might fly in to drop off a package, and then you go to your doctor's office and there's an autonomous robot that takes your temperature. Like, this is a completely different way of living and working. I think we're about to undergo one of the most consequential shifts to our built environment in a long time. So the question for me is, how can we then build robots that make people feel empowered, inspired, legible, and clear that they feel safe around and know how to control? Because it's not a question for me of whether or not the robots are coming. It's simply a question of how quickly and what are those robots going to look like when they do show up.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Forget sitting down at a laptop or tapping on a screen. Technology is being woven into our physical world in all kinds of new ways, from robot helpers to smart body parts that turn us into cyborgs. But what are the challenges with creating devices that feel less robotic and dystopian and more organic and useful today on the show, augmenting humans ideas about designing tech that enhances us physically without diminishing or even hurting humanity. Where do we draw the line between improving a human life and augmenting it beyond recognition?

[Katie Kwan]

We are arguably the first generation at mass scale to be interacting with robots. That is a huge, impactful difference.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

So back to Katie Kwan. She ended up merging her love for dance with her interest in technology and is now a robot choreographer. Because even though countless engineers are building machines to act intelligently, she says, we also need to consider how they move.

[Katie Kwan]

We know that movement is incredibly impactful to us. We've created all of these adaptations to very quickly experience and observe emotion and then to categorize, is this safe? Is this unsafe? Is this welcoming? You know, what does it mean? And this is why when people talk about nonverbal communication, you can express so much through simply the way that your body moves. Okay, why is that relevant for robots? Because robots will often perform motions that are, quote, utilitarian, right? That are picking up a cup, moving it to a different part of a table, screwing a bolt into a piece of equipment. But the way that the robot performs that motion is deeply impactful if it's done near humans.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

You ended up working at a place called Everyday Robots. At the time, this was Google's Robot AI Moonshot Lab, as they called it. And the idea there was to design robots that could help people in their everyday lives. So how did you bring your perspective as a choreographer and a dancer to making that a reality?

[Katie Kwan]

It was such an ambitious moonshot because we really did want to bring robots into people's everyday lives at the same scale that people are used to with all different kinds of technologies, whether that's a smartphone or a car. And so it was not only about, can we get robots to do things that are useful, like sort trash or wipe tables, but also, can we build robots that are welcomed in these environments? So that if you have a robot inside of an office or a shopping mall, or many years in the future inside of a school or a nursing home, what are the levers that we can push and pull to make these robots evoke sensations that are positive instead of negative? If a robot slides politely out of a doorway to let you pass might make you feel seen and acknowledged.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Here's Katie Kwan on the TED stage.

[Katie Kwan]

If a robot marches quickly towards you and avoids you at the last second, it might cause revulsion and fear. Robots are beginning to show up in our everyday environments, from sidewalks to offices, backyards to hospitals. And they will be threatening and confusing to us if we do not carefully examine how they move. Before, AI programmers needed hours to script a simple dance sequence for a robot to perform, just like they needed hours to script the robot to open a single door. With AI, you can teach the robot to open just a few specific doors, and it will learn to open all of them, even ones it hasn't seen before. It's also true for dance. You can teach the robot to dance with a specific person, and it will learn how to dance and move with many others in many different environments and circumstances. This is what I did at Everyday Robots at Google. Rather than teaching one robot, I used AI to teach 15 robots how to move together as a flock. We imagined a world where you could walk down a hallway filled with robots and they would part to make space for you, like a flock of doves or a crowd of people on a city street where a robot could navigate seamlessly and even beautifully through a busy, chaotic times Square.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Just so people can picture these robots, they kind of look like factory arms attached to platforms that wheel around and sway. And they're strangely kind of cute. But I think the idea of walking through a hallway of robots, I mean, it sounds pretty intimidating. Are you envisioning that someday it will feel totally normal and comfortable to live with robots? Because the way they move around us will be so fluid and, I guess, gentle that it won't feel scary.

[Katie Kwan]

I hear you on the. Walking down a hallway filled with robots. It's fascinating because my mom actually came and saw the flocking project at Google X. She was watching me from the side and thinking, oh, I don't know, these robots are following Katie around and they're moving according to her commands. And she was a little bit skeptical. But when she wandered through this group of robots, the smile that she had on her face. I don't think I've seen my mom grin like that, interacting with any piece of technology in her whole life. And I asked her, you know, what was that for you? Why did you notice yourself smiling and laughing? And she said, well, it felt like I was interacting with a bunch of puppies or sort of this alien species that I wasn't afraid of. That kind of opened my eyes and opened my imagination to a different way of being with robots. And Mom's like, it was fun and different and unexpected.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Is the goal, you know, we always hear with technology, the goal is to remove friction so that you're not even thinking about. The technology that you're using is part of adding grace and choreography and smooth movement to these robots. Is it part of letting them recede into the background so that it does feel sort of seamless, our interaction with them?

[Katie Kwan]

I would say that removing friction is certainly a way of describing it. You know, I tend to describe it also through the lens of safety. You know, if you feel safer around these tools because you can anticipate and understand how they're going to move, then that's always an A plus. I do think it's possible that we see a world in which people like my dad, who's now in his mid-70s, can live at home for longer with some assistance from technology that allows him to continue to be safe and independent. A robot that's going to be inside of my dad's house might do a lot of simplistic things, like remind him to drink a glass of water or to notify me if my dad has fallen, or to remind him that the mail has arrived. These are the kinds of tasks that a robot might do in an environment with my dad. And I want that robot to be safe, legible, clear, and empowering. Empowering to him. But even more than that, and this is where I like to nudge my fellow roboticists and my fellow engineers. I also like to think about it through the lens of fun. I'm like, we get to choose the kind of world that we want to live in. Is that future going to include robots that play beautiful music when they wander by us while they're wiping tables and sorting trash that makes you feel like your environment is fun and exciting? Or are we going to choose robots that give you a sense of fear, confusion and fatigue? Right. So it's very much for me, not only about the removing friction, making things safe, having more legible communication, but it's like we can also imbue character, you know, artistry, creativity. And that's for me, taking a robot from simply being a utilitarian tool and into an evocative social agent.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

That was robot choreographer Katie Kwan. You can see her full [e-mail] on the show today. Augmenting Humans. I'm Anoush Zumarodi, and you're listening to the TED Radio Hour from npr. We'll be right back.

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[Anoush Zamarodi]

If you've been hanging out with us here on the TED Radio Hour for a while but haven't hit the follow button, take a quick second, follow us. You'll have our newest episodes waiting for you every week. We really appreciate it. Now back to the show. It's the TED Radio Hour from npr. I'm Minouche Zamorodi. On the show today, augmenting humans.

[Jim Ewing]

So the day of my accident was December 26, 2014, and I was rock climbing in the Cayman Islands with my daughter and some other friends from Maine who just happened to be there, coincidentally.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

This is Jim Ewing.

[Jim Ewing]

And it was, I don't know, kind of an ordinary day. It was a climbing area that I hadn't been to before at a cliff called Dixon's.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

The climb wasn't particularly difficult, and Jim had been climbing for 30 years in much more dangerous and remote conditions. But that day, they only had time for one more ascent, and Jim says he was distracted.

[Jim Ewing]

We were kind of in a hurry, and I wasn't really paying great attention to how things all got set up. And on this one last climb, I was actually standing on a ledge almost completely what we call a no hands rest. And I don't know, I just lost my focus and I stepped off the ledge and just started falling. So I fell about 60ft to the ground. Originally, I thought I sort of felt like I hadn't hit the ground all that hard. I would just, I would just lay there on the ground until I could catch my breath. I made eye contact with another climber, and I noticed my wrist was at a funny angle. And I said to him, just so you know, I think my wrist is broken. And he, he said something along the lines of, well, I hate to tell you this, but your ankle is looking pretty broken, too.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Jim was helicoptered to a local hospital where he found out that, yes, his wrist and ankle were both shattered. He'd also dislocated his shoulder, crushed several

[Jim Ewing]

vertebrae, fractured his pelvis, separated my ribs from my sternum. Just a huge laundry list of injuries that you might expect from falling that kind of distance.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Amazingly, within a year, after a lot of surgeries and a lot of rehab, most of those injuries had healed, all except that ankle.

[Jim Ewing]

The CT showed that the main fracture was still there but also, most of the bone was dead. It's a condition called avascular necrosis, and that occurs when the blood supply to a bone is cut off or damaged, and then the bone slowly dies.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Walking was difficult. The pain was excruciating.

[Jim Ewing]

I was in a lot of pain, a lot of painkillers, that the doctors just like, there's nothing we can really do for you. Let's just give you more pain meds.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

So Jim began to wonder if he needed to do something drastic.

[Jim Ewing]

Ultimately, my research in ankle injuries and ankle rebuilding kind of led me down the path of, well, I really probably ought to be looking at amputation. And it just so happens that Hugh her and I were roommates back in the mid-80s.

[Hugh Herr]

That's correct, yeah. Jim and I go way back. We were climbing buddies in our early twenties.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

This is MIT Professor Hugh Her.

[Hugh Herr]

And he came to me and said, hugh, I'm in so much pain. My quality of life is. Is so poor. Does it make sense for, you know, me to consider amputating that leg?

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Hugh is one of the top experts in prosthetics and a double amputee himself who lost both of his legs in a climbing accident as a teenager.

[Jim Ewing]

So I knew from having known Hugh that amputation isn't the end of an active life and that you can still do a lot of things as an amputee. You know, life isn't necessarily over.

[Hugh Herr]

So we chatted about it, and Jim's timing was quite insightful because we had just invented a new surgical paradigm called the agonist antagonist myelin interface in 2014. And when Jim called me, we were actually prepared to do the first human surgery with this new technique. And Jim volunteered to be that first, first human subject.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

What exactly was Jim volunteering for? A new way to do amputation that keeps the brain body connection intact. So a quick anatomy lesson. In a healthy leg, when you flex your ankle muscles in the front contract and stretch the muscles in the back extend your ankle and the reverse happens. The movement keeps muscles strong and registers in the brain, helping you understand where your limbs are in space.

[Hugh Herr]

So that's called proprioception.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Proprioception. But with a traditional amputation, that connection between the muscles, nerves, and the brain is severed.

[Hugh Herr]

The current amputation paradigm hasn't changed fundamentally since the U.S. civil War and breaks these dynamic muscle relationships and in so doing, eliminates normal proprioceptive sensations.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Hugh Herr explains on the TED stage.

[Hugh Herr]

Consequently, a standard artificial limb cannot feed back information into the nervous system about where the prosthesis is in space. The Patient therefore cannot sense and feel the positions and movements of the prosthetic joint without seeing it with their eyes. My legs were amputated using this Civil War era methodology. I can feel my feet. I can feel them right now as a phantom awareness. But when I try to move them, I cannot. It feels like they're stuck inside rigid ski boots.

The limbs are not directly controlled by my nervous system. I can't think and move them, nor can I feel my limbs. It feels like I'm walking on powerful robots that I'm. It feels like I'm being walked. It feels like I'm in the backseat of the car.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

The procedure that Hugh and his team developed preserves the feeling of being connected to the amputated limb again. It's called agonist antagonist myoneural interface, or AMY for short. Which brings us back to Jim and the first time the procedure was done in 2016.

[Hugh Herr]

The surgery was done at Brigham Women's Hospital in Boston under the direction of Matthew Carty, a critical colleague and collaborator. And what we did in Jim's leg is we connected his muscles within his amputated residuum in natural ways, the calf muscle to the muscle in the front of the leg called the tibialis interior, so that when Jim thinks after the surgery, those muscles move dynamically in a similar way to how they moved when he had an intact leg. So what that does is it tells the brain how the ankle should move. Now, it's not a physical ankle after the amputation, it's a phantom ankle. But when Jim closes his eyes and moves his phantom ankle, he feels the full dynamics of that sensation. He can point his toes, he can go the other way. And from pointing his toes down like a ballerina to pointing his toes to the ceiling, and he actually feels it as if his foot ankle were intact and biological.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Did you know that that was gonna work? Like. Do you remember after the surgery, the first time that he came to be fitted and what happened, what it was like when he stood up.

[Hugh Herr]

We hypothesized that he would have those sensations and he would be better able to control the prosthesis because of those muscle dynamics. But it was a hypothesis, and when we actually saw it with our own eyes, it was a remarkable day.

In the laboratory, we electrically linked Jim's AMI muscles via the electrodes to a bionic limb. And Jim quickly learned how to move the bionic limb in four distinct ankle foot movement directions. We were excited by these results, but then Jim stood up, and what occurred was truly remarkable. All the natural Biomechanics, mediated by the central nervous system, emerged via the synthetic limb as an involuntary reflexive action. Here's Jim descending steps, reaching with his bionic toe to the next stair tread, automatically exhibiting natural motions without him even trying to move his limb. Because Jim's central nervous system is receiving the proprioceptive signals, it knows exactly how to control the synthetic limb in a natural way. Now, Jim moves and behaves as if the synthetic limb is part of him. For example, one day in lab, he accidentally stepped on a roll of electrical tape. Now, what do you do when something's stuck to your shoe? You don't reach down like this. It's way too awkward. Instead, you shake it off. And that's exactly what Jim did after being neurally connected to the limb for just a few hours. What was most interesting to me is what Jim was telling us he was experiencing. He said, the robot became part of me.

[Jim Ewing]

The first few movements were like, oh,

[Anoush Zamarodi]

wow, again, here's Jim Ewing.

[Jim Ewing]

My brain got all excited. My muscles in my leg kind of got all excited, like, hey, there's something happening. And this phenomenon that Hugh later called neural embodiment occurs. Your nervous system, your body, your brain recognizes this piece of equipment as being part of you. You have embodied this thing, and it just adopts it and starts using it as if it belongs there. And actually, it got to the point where, while we were doing a bunch of tests, they would occasionally have to turn the robot off to reset things. And it got to be kind of a. Not a physically painful. It was like an emotionally painful experience every time they turned it off. And I asked them, I said, you have to warn me when you're going to turn it off, because it's like, jarring to all of a sudden lose my foot again. That's how much my body had become accustomed to it, and it did not like it when it turned.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

I don't know if it's just because I was getting ready to talk to you, Hugh, but I suddenly noticed that many people were amputees in my neighborhood. And I read a statistic that kind of astounded me that something like 200,000Americans have a limb amputated each year.

[Hugh Herr]

Well, because of the precipitous increase, sadly, of diabetes. Ah. Extreme diabetes, sadly, often leads to the need to amputate a limb, typically a leg. So the numbers are climbing higher and higher because of the increase in diabetes.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

So presumably, you expect demand for this procedure to skyrocket for sure. It's been about a decade since the procedure was first performed since then. How many people have had the surgery?

[Hugh Herr]

The surgery itself, over 100 people to date. And at all levels, you know, below the knee, above the knee, below the elbow, above the elbow. The electromechanical integration into those new surgically constructed tissues will take longer. But I think in about five years from now, from a commercial setting, the full bionic reconstruction can be happening clinically, which is quite exciting.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

So. So how many people could qualify for this kind of a prosthetic?

[Hugh Herr]

A lot of people qualify. We can apply the surgical technique in an acute case at the time when the limb is amputated. We can also pursue these regenerative and surgical and electromechanical strategies as a revision. So it is possible for someone like myself that already has an amputation to undergo this reconstruction surgery to go from the past to the future.

[Anamaria Coclita]

Wow.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

I mean, in your TED Talk, you said that you, because of the surgery that you received, you were not a good candidate for this technology. Has that changed?

[Hugh Herr]

It has changed. And I'm actually, wow. Thinking carefully about when to go under the knife, when to receive these interfaces for. For myself.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

And right now, if one chose to do this, how much would they have to pay?

[Anamaria Coclita]

They. They.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Let's say they had the surgery covered, but for the limb and the technology, how much would that cost?

[Hugh Herr]

So in five years, when this entire bionic reconstruction is made available clinically, commercially, you know, for a bionic, say, foot, ankle, with the magnets and the surgery and whatnot, it's on the order of $100,000, including the surgery and the. The robotic components and the sensing components and the computer components.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

So expensive?

[Hugh Herr]

Well, it's. It's on par with other surgeries. The bionic legs that I'm. That I'm now wearing cost about $40,000, about the cost of a. Of a car. You know, just what is the value of being able to walk, Right? So, you know, $40,000 sounds like a lot, but it's pretty nice to be able to walk across the room.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

I listened to a podcast that you did with someone who received, who has been part of one of your research projects, and the two of you were talking about how much fun it is to have a prosthetic and this idea that we have normalized the, quote, unquote, normal body, and that we hopefully are entering an era where this merging of bodies and machines is not only functional, but, like, sexy even.

[Hugh Herr]

You know, people often talk about the example of eyeglasses, right? The glasses are a prosthesis, but now, you know, it's a fashion Accessory. So yeah, I mean, when technology really works, when we're able to rebuild bodies and give people back their freedom, give people back their ability to dance and to run and with the expression that they want to put out into the world, will these new bodies express themselves in terms of good design and aesthetics? Absolutely.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Hmm. It's going to be an interesting era when part of our bodies begin to age and deteriorate and another part can be potentially continuously upgraded.

[Hugh Herr]

Correct. My own body, my bionic legs are upgraded every five years and my biological body continues to get worse and worse due to age related degeneration.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Due to age related. We're getting old, aren't we?

[Hugh Herr]

That's right. So that, that you're right. That is very interesting. In a sense, the bionic part of my body is immortal, but my biological body, you know, obviously won't be able to keep up unless there's major breakthroughs in aging.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

I mean, this speaks to your philosophy that we should, and this is the word you use, if I'm correct, become cyborgs. Right?

[Hugh Herr]

Well, I, I, I don't know about good, but I do think it's part of humanity's natural progression to go from developing and using tools that are separate from our body to a more profound integration. Half of my lab is focused on technology to augment human capability beyond innate physiological level. So were building exoskeletons that if I gave you one of our exoskeletons, you'd be able to jump higher, run faster, walk better. So that type of technological power, if you will, will be very popular and will become quite pervasive in society. I predict 10 years, certainly 20 years from now. When you walk down the streets of major cities in the world, you'll routinely see people wearing bionics that are augmenting their capabilities.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

So like the UPS guy is gonna be flinging packages with no problem?

[Hugh Herr]

Absolutely. If we don't have humanoids delivering packages. Right. Or aerial vehicles, if it's still humans, the humans will definitely be augmented. Absolutely.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

That was Hugh Herr. He is an engineer and biophysicist at MIT where he co leads the Yang center for Bionics. Hugh and his team published a study of patients who have received this new procedure. We will link to the study and Hugh's [e-mail] Special thanks also to Jim Ewing for sharing his story. Jim and Hugh, by the way, are both still climbing on the show today. Augmenting humans. I'm Anoush Zamarodi and you are listening to the TED radio hour from from npr. We'll be back in a minute.

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[Anoush Zamarodi]

it's the TED Radio Hour from npr. I'm Anoush Zamorodi. On the show today, Augmenting Humans, we heard how Hugh her is taking prosthetics and integrating them into the body in new ways. Now we want to turn to technology being developed to mimic another part of our anatomy, our skin. This research is in its early days because replicating the sensations that the body's largest organ sends to our brains is incredibly difficult.

[Anamaria Coclita]

So the skin is a complex system where there are a lot of things that are actually all working together at the same time.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

This is Anamaria Cochlita. She is a material scientist who has spent the past decade trying to replicate science skin artificially. This idea isn't new. Artificial skin has been around since the 1980s. It's often used for burn victims. But there's something missing from today's artificial skin.

[Anamaria Coclita]

There Is the possibility to reconstruct the skin more or less that it kind of looks similar to before the burn, but still the sensation is lost.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

The warmth of your coffee cup in the morning, water running through your hands as you wash them, or all the different textures you touch, smooth, rough, soft or sharp. All of those sensations are captured by your skin's receptors.

[Anamaria Coclita]

We have receptors that are for strong touch, light touch, that is for the temperature. We have millions of receptors.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

And all day long, those millions of receptors are bombarded with all kinds of information.

[Anamaria Coclita]

And then they transmit this information through electrical stimuli to the brain, thanks to the nerves, nerve connections. So it's a very complex system.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

And because the skin is so complex, replicating all those sensations has been really difficult until now.

[Anamaria Coclita]

This is a piece of skin of artificial skin.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Here's Anamaria Coclita on the TED stage where she unveiled Smart Skin.

[Anamaria Coclita]

We have for the first time produced an artificial skin that can respond at the same time to three stimuli. Touch, so force, temperature and humidity. And it can do this also at an unprecedented resolution. So it's a very tiny device. And so this means that it can sense objects that are actually smaller than the objects that can be sensed with our skin. So first of all, imagine burns victims. If the burn is very deep, this burns up until the lower level of the epidermis. And this makes patients lose sensation. If one could make completely artificial skin, then, you know, the skin, this artificial skin could be applied as a patch in the area where there is the burn and give back the sensation to the people who have lost it.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

So let's talk about what you're doing in your lab. You know, if I came into your lab and I and you showed it to me, what would I see?

[Anamaria Coclita]

This artificial skin is actually thinner than the cross section of a hair. So it's basically impossible to see and impossible to really feel it when you touch it. So it takes the properties and the characteristics of the support material. So if we deposited on top of a glove, it will look like a glove. We have even deposited on top of this transferable tattoos, you know, the type that kids use. And then what you see is just really the tattoo paper. So it's so tiny that you don't see it and you don't feel it, but it takes the shape of the support material.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

The artificial skin is made of a bunch of nanoscopic cylinders.

[Anamaria Coclita]

This is the architecture of the artificial skin. So we are really able to control the thickness and the chemical components, composition of a material at an atomic level.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

The inner core of each cylinder is filled with a polymer that gets bigger when exposed to a stimuli.

[Anamaria Coclita]

Laura.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

And the outer part of the cylinder is made of something called piezoelectric material.

[Anamaria Coclita]

A piezoelectric material is a material that, when it is compressed, produces electricity.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

So when the cylinder is touched or exposed to heat, for example, the polymer on the inside kind of puffs up and compresses the material on the outside and boom.

[Anamaria Coclita]

This produces an electric current from there. Each of these cylinders could be connected to a series of electrodes. And then we measure the electricity at each of these locations.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

And similar to how our own skin sends information about out what it's feeling

[Anamaria Coclita]

to our brains, the artificial skin sends information to a computer. And that's where we read this electric signal. But then, you know, this signal can also be transmitted wirelessly to, for example, a neuroprosthetic. And this is how we actually intend to transmit it to the brain. But that will be a future development.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

You mentioned prosthetics earlier in this episode we talked to Hugh Herr at mit. I'm sure you're familiar with his prosthetics work. How would smart skin be an added value, I guess, or be important to someone who needs to wear a prosthetic?

[Anamaria Coclita]

Yeah. So with this type of artificial skin, when this would be added to a prosthetic processes, then we could produce electrical signals that could send directly the information, could either stimulate the rest of the arm or of the leg, or they could transmit the information to a neuroprocesses in the brain and then help the patient recognize also the characteristics of the objects that they are touching.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

So if they had a prosthetic foot, they would know if they were walking on hot gravel or.

[Anamaria Coclita]

Yes, exactly. So a prosthetic hand, for example, would fill a hot cup or a cold bottle of beer and would feel the difference. Another interesting field of application would be robotics. Nowadays, humanoid robots are used in many fields, for example, in medicine, but also in household. And these robots are exposed to several stimuli, several interaction with the environment and with the humans. And sometimes they have too many inputs at the same time. And this is the reason, number one, for robot failure. So imagine a future where actually a robot could be a bit more sensitive, a bit smarter. This would lead also to a higher safety of this technology.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

I mean, would that be. This sounds kind of like science fiction, but in the future that you have a burn and you just put on like a temporary tattoo over that burn part and it connects to your body?

[Anamaria Coclita]

Something like that, yes. It could be a temporary tattoo or a Patch, you know, that can be applied on the body, and then there could be different way of detecting the electrical signals. Could be even that it is just connected to an app on the smartphone. And then maybe the app is, I don't know, sending a message, a warning sound. If the temperature goes above a certain level, there could be different options.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

In terms of the drawbacks to this, I can only imagine this is expensive.

[Anamaria Coclita]

Well, yes and no, actually, in the sense that the instruments to deposit these materials are expensive at the beginning, but then the amount of material that is produced is so tiny that when you do a calculation per centimeter squared, the price is not that high.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

Oh, interesting. Okay, so this could be something that is accessible to people.

[Anamaria Coclita]

Yes, that's where we would like really, to keep it accessible to people. It's a challenge, and therefore it's an interesting project, you know, from also the scientific point of view, from the technological point of view. And, yeah, this is what keeps me going.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

That's Ana Maria Cochlita. She's a materials scientist and a professor in the Department of physics at the University of Bari in Italy. You can see her full [e-mail]. so we've talked about adding technology to our lives in the form of robots and prosthetics and smart skin. But technology is also being used to enhance and alter organisms that live inside the human body. The biochemist Jennifer Doudna won the Nobel Prize for discovering the gene editing technology crispr. Now she's using that technology to find a cure for diseases like asthma and Alzheimer's by manipulating the microbiome that live inside our guts. Here she is explaining how on the TED stage in 2023, the essence of

[Jennifer Doudna]

being human is that we solve problems. And when we're faced with enormous problems like disease and climate change, we need to solve them by collaboration. I'm excited to tell you about a new kind of collaboration that will absolutely create solutions to these big problems. It's a collaboration that's unexpected because it's between humans and the tiniest organism organisms that populate our planet, the bacteria and other microbes that live in, on, and around us. Bacteria may be small and unseen, but they often have inspired transformative innovations, including the one that has become the cornerstone of my own research. Over the past decade, I've been at the forefront of developing a revolutionary technology called CRISPR that has come from the study of how bacteria fight viral infection. CRISPR is amazing because it allows us to precisely edit the DNA in living organisms, including in people and plants. With crispr, we can Change, remove, or replace the genes that govern the function of cells. This means that we now have the ability to use CRISPR like a word processor to find, cut, and paste text. Crispr, amazingly, has already cured people of devastating disorders like sickle cell disease. And it's created rice plants that are resistant to both diseases and drought. Incredible, right? But the next world changing advance with CRISPR will actually come from editing genes beyond just in individual organisms. We now have the ability to use CRISPR to edit entire populations of tiny microbes, called microbiomes, that live in and on our bodies. For decades, scientists studied bacteria one organism at a time, as if each type of bacteria behaved independently. But we now know that bacterial behaviors, both good and bad, result from their interactions with within complex microbiomes. In humans, dysfunctional gut microbiomes are associated with diseases as diverse as Alzheimer's and asthma. And in farm animals, microbiomes produce methane, a powerful contributor to climate change. But when they're healthy, both human and animal microbiomes can actually prevent disease and reduce methane emissions. So to harness these benefits, we need a way to, to precisely and reproducibly control these microbial communities. So why have microbiomes been difficult to control in the past? It turns out that microbiomes are very complex, and they're difficult to manipulate. Antibiotics affect the entire microbiome, and their overuse can lead to drug resistance. Diet and probiotics are nonspecific, and they're often ineffective. Fecal transplants face various challenges to both effectiveness and acceptance. But with crispr, we have a tool that works like a scalpel. It allows us to target a particular gene in a particular kind of cell. With crispr, we can change one kind of bacterium without affecting all the others. Another challenge is that less than 1% of the world's microbial species have been grown and studied in the lab. Fortunately, we can now access the other 99%, due to the pioneering research of my colleague Jill Banfield and her breakthrough technology, metagenomics, which is a tool that allows us to figure out what species are present and what they're doing in a microbial community. Metagenomics creates a detailed blueprint of a complex microbiome, and that means that we can use it to figure out how to use gene editing tools in the right gene, in the right organism. You might be wondering how we can take this new knowledge and harness it to solve real world problems. Well, we're bringing together these two breakthrough technologies, metagenomics and crispr, to create a brand new field of science called precision microbiome editing. This will allow us to discover links between dysfunctional microbiomes and disease or greenhouse gas emissions. We can develop modified and improved microbiome editors and show that they're safe and effective. And then we can then begin to deploy these optimized solutions that will be transformative in the future. So how does this affect our health and the health of our planet? Specific microbiome compositions in livestock can actually reduce methane emissions by up to 80%. But doing that today currently requires daily interventions at enormous expense. And it just doesn't scale. But with precision microbiome editing, we have an opportunity to modify a calf's microbiome at birth, limiting that animal's impact on the climate for its entire lifetime. In human health, asthma affects up to 300 million people around the world, a number that grows by 50% each decade. And at disruption disproportionately affects lower income children. Our team has identified a promising link between a molecule produced in the gut microbiome and asthma development. With precision microbiome editing, we could offer a child at risk for asthma a non invasive therapy that would eliminate asthma inducing molecules, changing her life trajectory. And what's really exciting is that these same approaches in the future could help us treat or even prevent human diseases that are linked to the gut microbiome, including obesity, diabetes and Alzheimer's. I think it's fascinating that we can now use CRISPR to edit the same tiny organisms that gave us crispr. In doing so, we're collaborating with the ultimate partner, nature. Together we can use CRISPR power precision microbiome editing to build a more resilient future for all of us. Thank you very much.

[Anoush Zamarodi]

That was Nobel Prize winning biochemist Jennifer Doudna. You can watch all of her [e-mail] thank you so much for listening to our episode, Augmenting Humans. It was produced by Katie Monteleone, Rachel Faulkner White, James Delahousy and Fiona Guerin. It was edited by Sanaz Meshkinpour and me. Our production staff at NPR also includes Hersha Nahada and Matthew Cloutier. Our audio engineers were Patrick Murray and David Greenberg. Our theme music was written by Ramtin Arablouei. Our partners at TED are Chris Anderson, Roxanne Hylash, Alejandra Salazar and Daniela Balarezzo. I'm Manouch Zamarodi and you've been listening to the TED Radio hour from npr.

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[Anoush Zamarodi]

It's June and another big week in

[Katie Kwan]

the run up to the midterms primaries in half a dozen states, including California, where new congressional maps are in place and a chaotic race for governor is wide open. We're also following gas prices and Iran. So far, talk of a peace deal is just talk. We'll keep you posted. Listen every morning up first on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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