#E67 The Future Should Adapt to Us, Not the Other Way Around, With Phnam Bagley
Read the HYPERSCALE transcript
[00:00] Briar Prestidge: Hi everybody and welcome to another episode of Hyperscale. It's your host Briar Prestidge Prestidge here and I've got the wonderful Phnam Bagley here visiting us all the way from France, US. You're a bit of a global jet setter really but we are here in our studio in Dubai and it is an absolute pleasure to have her on the show. Welcome.
[00:20] Phnam Bagley: Well thank you so much for the warm welcome. Dubai is always full of wonderful people who know how to be hospitable, always smiling and always ready for crazy stories.
[00:32] Briar Prestidge: Oh yeah and Phnam Bagley's got some amazing stories to be sharing with us. We met at the Dubai Future Forum a couple of days ago didn't we?
[00:41] Phnam Bagley: Correct, yeah from a common friend Tina Woods, who works a lot on the human exposome.
[00:47] Briar Prestidge: Was actually just on my podcast as well.
[00:49] Phnam Bagley: Yeah Tina is such a genius, very articulate in how she cares deeply about the environment and how humans can stay healthy and live long healthy lives and I met her actually at Xprize where both of us were working to figure out what big problems we should invest a lot of money in, in the near future.
[01:16] Briar Prestidge: And through your company you've been doing some amazing research and development of products. And I was hearing that if you don't think that a product is going to bring good or really help give back to society, then it's not something you give any airtime to at all.
[01:33] Phnam Bagley: Zero, yeah.
[01:34] Briar Prestidge: Tell us about your organization and the kind of things that you've been working on.
[01:38] Phnam Bagley: Sure, so about 10 years ago I founded a company called Nonfiction and I did that with my husband who's also a designer. And at first Nonfiction was a typical industrial design firm and industrial design is the field of designing hardware products. So think of your phone, your laptop, your shoes, your eyewear, your car, all of these things are designed by industrial designers. So we're doing our business and it was fine and then we started getting to a field called transformative technology. So it's basically technology in support of health, wellness, performance, and longevity, a lot of work in neuroscience, wearables. And being in San Francisco right next to Silicon Valley you are exposed to a lot of that because people care and want to invest in it. So when we realized that we loved working on projects like this we're like how do we do more of it? So after years of working on projects like this we realized the positive impact that had on people. Like when you invest two, three hundred dollars in a wearable that collects data or stimulates your brain in a very specific way and you get all of these beautiful transformations happening on your body and your mental health and the way you relate to others.
[03:01] It really felt good as a designer. So from there we expanded to other industries like energy for example, working in east and west Africa for example. Providing reliable renewable energy in villages. People who don't necessarily know how to read certainly don't have a lot of money and as a standard only have access to one or two days of electricity from the grid a month. So nobody can live or thrive that way, so we're working with this company called Jazza, which is based in both Halifax Canada and Dar es Salaam Tanzania. And basically they came up with the idea of rentable batteries for up to like I think three or four dollars a month that are extremely accessible, extremely reliable and also employ a lot of people from those villages. So this positive impact kind of became a driving force of like what kind of projects we want to attract and what kind of change we want to put in this world because I truly believe that being a designer, the designer of the kind that we are, is quite a powerful and responsible job. We could make the decision to create more plastic products to throw away in the world or we can choose to create positive impact for humans or the environment.
[04:32] Briar Prestidge: Wow and honestly the work that they've been doing in non-fiction that I saw has been incredible, from across all kinds of industries, from space through to neurotech, through to biotech, like as you said anything that ultimately helps humans and prepare them into these superhumans I think.
[04:54] Phnam Bagley: Exactly, yeah and another aspect of positive impact that's also important the way we practice design at non-fiction, is the business aspect of it. Because I think there's a lot of people out there who have very noble endeavours and goals in life, values but they're not necessarily like either putting in the work or invested in enough to transform all of these beautiful ideas into reality. So the name non-fiction comes from that. It's like how do we make all of these great goals a reality. And in order to do that one you have to have transparency and clarity on what you're doing, which is one is positive impact, two is doing hardware. We also have this love for innovation, everything that's new, exciting never been done before. They came out of like research labs at universities that like cutting-edge technology, that brings a lot of excitement in the blood of us designers.
[06:02] And then the last thing that's important to us really to business is how do we work with companies or individuals that have a very clear path to execution and success? I'm glad that a lot of people have great goals in life but if you don't have the money, the team and the technology or the R&D in place to make that happen, it's just not going to happen. So yeah, I think as a company, as a consulting firm, having a very clear understanding of where you want to be and what you don't want to be is extremely important for the success of a company.
[06:43] Briar Prestidge: Were you into science fiction growing up?
[06:46] Phnam Bagley: I wouldn't say growing up, I mean a little bit like movies but I think I got in it a little bit later in life. Very interestingly I was quite a naive child.
[06:59] Briar Prestidge: In what way?
[07:00] Phnam Bagley: Very unexposed to the world.
[07:02] Briar Prestidge: Where did you grow up by the way?
[07:03] Phnam Bagley: I grew up right outside of Paris in France. I lived in France for about 22 years, the first 23 years of my life. I lived in Denmark for a little bit less than a year and I moved to the US 20 years ago. So sci-fi to me, especially in movies because I have developed an eye for beautiful cinematography and how the visual, the dynamic, the sound quality of effects, as well as the score of a movie work together. I think the emotional side of science fiction is something that I resonate very much with. So every time I design something, whether it's an experience or a physical product or an architecture in an extreme environment, that dynamic between all the sensory experiences of a story is very much part of it.
[07:55] Briar Prestidge: What are some of the most favorite projects that you've been working on recently that you could tell us about?
[08:03] Phnam Bagley: Oh wow. How do I pick? I mean honestly that's kind of like a testament to how much I love my job and the privilege of being able to work on these insane projects that we get to be a part of. I mean just to give you a taste of what we're working on and some of it is on our website and some of it is not, is we're working on a brain implant system that helps people who are suffering from treatment resistant depression.
[08:34] Briar Prestidge: Are these non-invasive or invasive.
[08:36] Phnam Bagley: So it is invasive but it's basically a brain implant that sits in the thickness of the skull. So it's a 30 minute in and out patient system and then we designed this hat and this controller that powers the brain implant. So it stimulates the brain in a very specific way, in a very specific spot and it basically makes the technology that for years has been available in the hospital, but make it available outside, like in the comfort of your home and as you walk outside. Because what's very interesting in the realm of medical technology right now is how do we make everything more practical. Because when you suffer from treatment resistant depression, which is depression that does not react to talk therapy or medication or anything else. People are at the end of the road basically, a lot of suicidal thoughts and attempts, it's very hard to ask them to come to the hospital for like five straight days and sit in a chair for eight hours and underneath a machine. So that's asking a lot and a lot of the patients might drop the care that might actually save their lives. So working with companies like this, like Motif Neurotech which actually stemmed out of Rice University in Houston, we were able to develop this incredible simple to use product ecosystem that really is changing lives and we're still in development.
[10:09] Briar Prestidge: What kind of like impact have you seen, so these people have gone from very severe clinical depression as you say, I imagine they're really probably struggling to get out of bed even in some instances. What kind of impact does this have on their lives?
[10:22] Phnam Bagley: So this project is actually still under clinical trial but the type of results that we're seeing is life-saving. People who literally think of a suicide everyday have their thoughts and their lifestyle change over five days. And then the maintenance is just a mere 20 minutes of stimulation a month.
[10:45] Briar Prestidge: They like turn it on and it might? Interesting. It's under the skull so it's not visible.
[10:52] Phnam Bagley: It's not visible yeah, it's in the thickness of the skull and literally it's 30 minutes in and out of the hospital, then you close it. You can keep your hair and you don't even have to shave it. So that was very important like really thinking about how many steps do patients have to go through, are they willing to go through this and how does it impact their dignity and how do we encourage them to take the first step so they can be okay with the rest of the of the process of healing. Another aspect that was very important in this program as well was making sure that nothing that we designed screamed, I have a mental illness. Because if we design medical devices like this that have weird shapes or obnoxiously big and people would stay home or not want to go outside and that might be a problem.
[11:49] Another aspect that I found really, really powerful when I worked on this project with my team, is the advisory board, lived experience advisory board of Motif Neurotech. So they are all made of people who actually suffer from treatment resistant depression. So everytime we had a new design review, which happens every time the board meets. They were bluntly honest with us, like this will work this will not work. Because as designers we always start with assumptions, we assume that people want this, we assume that they'll be okay if it's this big, this heavy, this color. But until you talk to the people it's designed for and these people are brutally honest about what is going to work for them and what is not, even like these small details that's really what's the difference between a good and a great product, is how much you listen to the people you design for.
[12:45] Briar Prestidge: Wow what other projects have you been working on?
[12:50] Phnam Bagley: So I mentioned earlier the Jazza project which is African Renewable Energy. So we worked a couple years ago with a company called StemScience and we develop a product with them called Somni. So basically it's professors in psychology and neuroscience at UC Berkeley in California, who have discovered that if you stimulate your prefrontal cortex with electricity non-invasively, 15 minutes before bed you can actually tell your brain how to fall asleep and how to stay asleep all night.
[13:32] Briar Prestidge: I did see some people using this and they were like.
[13:36] Phnam Bagley: Yeah and sometimes you're exposed to technologies like this sounds too real to be true because if you google, I can't sleep what do I do? You always see the same 20 types of advice, like buy an expensive mattress and fancy sheets and close your shades. Make sure there's no noise, like buy this expensive like heavy blanket or whatever it is. But all of these might make your sleeping environment more comfortable but from a neurological standpoint they do not fix sleep. So that's the revolution of this product, is that it actually fixes sleep.
[14:20] Briar Prestidge: How does it fix it?
[14:21] Phnam Bagley: So it's a band that you put on your forehead and it has simulators and readers, electroencephalographic readers. So basically the stimulators apply just a little tingle of electricity to your brain. So the brain has different levels of brain waves, alpha, beta, theta etc and then the electricity basically tells the brain hey you should follow this pattern. So the brain follows this pattern and this pattern for this 15 minutes basically forces your brain to go into a state of drowsiness, which is when your eyes and eyelids are starting to get heavy and you're preparing your body and your brain to go to sleep. And the magical thing about this technology is that you don't have to simulate your brain the whole night which can be uncomfortable if you're the kind of person who cannot sleep with anything on their forehead.
[15:21] So what it does is I stimulate for 15 minutes and then the brain, once it ends those 15 minutes, knows what to do the rest of the night. So a healthy sleep pattern is in four phases we'll call them n1, n2, n3 and deep sleep. And a healthy cycle of sleep is going through these four phases four to five times a night. And usually after that, your body is refreshed and you wake up ready to take on the day. The best way to know if you are well rested from the night before, is if I think around 9 or 10 a.m, if you feel that your focus is at it's optimal state, that's when you know you were rested.
[16:07] Briar Prestidge: It's amazing how important sleep is.
[16:09] Phnam Bagley: Oh it's everything.
[16:10] Briar Prestidge: It's everything it's it?
[16:12] Phnam Bagley: Yeah I mean I'm at an age, I'm in my mid-40s now where if I don't sleep I see it on my face. It's a mix of sleep and hydration and making sure diet is fine and if I'm moving my body. And it's not only the vanity of it, it's also a mirror of what's going on in the inside.
[16:31] Briar Prestidge: Yes and you talk about creating these super humans. And obviously we are going through a period of exponential change in this world, like there is a possibility in the future that we may be living on space for instance, like what ultimately do we need to do to prepare like physically, psychologically, spiritually, all of the lly's. You've been doing some work in preparing humans for space travel.
[17:03] Phnam Bagley: Yeah and that's actually informed a lot by the work we're doing on earth. So one thing that's very exciting about the work that we do is really that bridge between those two worlds because there are a lot more opportunities and projects obviously on earth because markets are much bigger. When you design for space you're designing for one to six people. And also the constraints are quite different but all the work that we've done in medical technology or neurotechnology or biotechnology really informs us on like how the body functions and really collecting that data or feeding back that data into the body with ultra customized stimulation, is something that we're starting to transition into space. So we're doing that, as I just talked about we're doing that with sleep which is essential to health and recovery.
[18:00] I think we've designed like four or five sleep products so far, like we're becoming a little bit of experts in that we worked in mental health like I mentioned with the brain implant. We're working in physical performance, that was with a company called herald neuroscience where we designed this device that simulate the primary mortal cortex which happens to be on top of your head. And that was specifically designed for athletes and turns out anybody who moves their body even parts of their body in a very specific way like musicians or dancers get benefits from this kind of technology. And another thing that's very important about the technology most of the technology I'm talking about, is that it's attainable. A lot of these technologies that come out R&D, like athletes at the olympics might spend ten thousand dollars, a hundred thousand dollars on them without blinking an eye because that's the difference between a gold medal and a silver medal, unless you're like a phelps or like one of those like exceptional athletes.
[19:03] Honestly the difference between a gold and silver medal is technology, it's not talent because everybody at that point is so on top of their game that the difference is like a hundredth of a second. So all of these aspects of life and how they support performance and longevity and health and wellness and awareness of one's health and how our health evolves over time because we're not the same people at 45 or 60 or 12 years old. And technology and data collection allows us to see the differences and adapt accordingly. So all of this information that has been collected with the work that we've done on earth really informs how to best design for astronauts because living in space is so incredibly bizarre, like the fact that we as humans have evolved over millions of years with earth's gravity and all of a sudden you take it out, is traumatizing. It's traumatizing to our physiology, it's traumatizing to our mental health, to our social health, to all the familiarity of it.
[20:08] Briar Prestidge: What kind of things does it do?
[20:10] Phnam Bagley: So when you are on orbit, for example when you're on the international space station, the reason why you float is because you're essentially falling constantly. You're orbiting the earth means falling around the earth. So I don't know if you've ever like jumped out of an airplane but imagine doing this for like six months.
[20:33] Briar Prestidge: Is that's actually what it feels like when you're in space?
[20:36] Phnam Bagley: It feels a little different but just to give you an idea of like how traumatizing it is, pretty much every astronaut that goes up there get sick for like about three days. It's like a puke fest.
[20:49] Briar Prestidge: Oh wow so they're vomiting?
[20:52] Phnam Bagley: Yeah it's a lot of vomiting and as a space architect, which is a specialty that I work in, I have to anticipate a lot of that when we design venting systems because the air is recycled all the time, we need to make sure that if, not to sound disgusting here but when vomits get stuck in there we need to be able to wipe it off, things like that. So there's that going on. Also when you look at pictures of astronauts in space, you realize that their face is very blown up and they have very skinny legs. And the reason for that is because when you are standing on earth, the bottom half of your body has more blood because gravity, it's attracting towards the center of the planet. When you are up in space everything is even.
[21:47] Briar Prestidge: I forever try and have like a nice like skinny face. This is not something I thought of when it came to space travel, interesting.
[21:57] Phnam Bagley: There are certain things as well that can be quite dangerous. For example, you can experience space blindness when your optical nervous system is a little bit traumatized or there's too much blood in the head, it can lead to that.
[22:13] Briar Prestidge: Is that like an actual, like is that permanent the space blindness?
[22:18] Phnam Bagley: It hasn't been permanent so far but it can be quite debilitating and uncomfortable. So there's a fun fact, so you can do this at home, if you stand up and you measure yourself measure your height and then you lie down and you measure your height they're two different heights. There's about like an inch or two difference because what's happening is when you stand your spine is compressing and when you lie down on the ground it's relaxed, so it takes more space. So when you're up in space it's more similar to while you're lying down. So as you're moving around, as you're living your life and doing all your work in space, your spine is not compressed and it's not experiencing the normal amount of stress that it takes for you to walk. So that can actually have long-term negative effects on the body especially if you're going to stay in space longer than six months, which happens every once in a while.
[23:20] So yeah so physiologically a lot of things are quite difficult. And now if you want to talk about beyond low earth orbit, we can talk about mars. Mars is going to be, as a lot of unknown, actually the moon and mars both because they have partial gravity. So the moon has about one-sixth of the earth's gravity, meaning that your mass on the surface is one-sixth of what it is here on earth. So that's why when you see videos of polar astronauts on the surface of the moon, they're bouncing at much higher heights. And that actually has implicational architecture. If you design architecture for the surface of the moon, the ceilings have to be higher. So on mars is one-third and obviously humans have never been there yet, so there's a lot of unknowns. We haven't stayed on the moon long enough to know if partial gravity is even better than microgravity, which is when you float.
[24:23] So I'm very excited about the next few decades, where we're going back to the moon permanently, creating a base there and we're going to mars which not only is like very, very far away but also has a lot of unknown. The only things we send to mars are a handful of rovers and a couple probes that orbit it. So really understanding the health and wellness implication of all this from a physiological stndpoint, from a mental health standpoint, from a social health standpoint it's going to be so important. And I didn't even talk about stress or isolation, being away from your family for three years at a time. It's all a lot.
[25:06] Briar Prestidge: I remember when we had a conversation at the divine future forum a couple of days ago. You were even pointing out. This was something I had not thought about at all. But the colors of earth, we've gotten so used to this vibrant colorful earth as humans and then to go stay on mars or the moon, like obviously it's very dusty and bland. And even that you were telling me has an impact on mental health.
[25:33] Phnam Bagley: Yeah so colors from the environment you're talking about. The moon is basically grayscale. It's dark gray or light gray. There's no atmosphere, which means that the sky is black black. There's no sunsets and sunrises. On mars everything is very orange because the regolith, which is like the rocky powdery part of the surface is very rich in iron. The atmosphere is very thin on mars and the sunsets on mars are blue. So we don't know what that's going to do to our circadian rhythm, which is our biological mechanism that tells us that this is the morning versus this is the evening and helps us regulate our hormones in a way that supports.
[26:28] Briar Prestidge: Yes very important.
[26:30] Phnam Bagley: So we don't know a lot about those things. But there's another aspect of color that's very interesting as well besides the circadian rhythm and the time of the day. So there's a field called neuroaesthetics. So neuroaesthetics is basically the study of how the physical environment around you, like the shape of things, the color of things, the energy of things is interpreted by the brain and how the brain then turns that into healthy or unhealthy states of being. So it's very interesting to study that and to apply certain principles to design. If i enter a room that is well designed and the light is very hugging and it feels like home, it smells like home. It feels like a relaxing morning on a Sunday or something like that your brain and your entire body will react to that. If I enter another room where everything is like very aggressive and dark and unwelcoming and all that, like your body will also do the same.
[27:44] So the same way we design space habitats whether it's like lunar or martian. Surface habitats or orbital habitats like a space station, it's important to think about those things, what kind of colors, what kind of shapes, what kind of environments, what kind of technology, what kind of interactions we're going to integrate into all of this. I think there's a lot of like low-hanging fruits we can look into, like for example, when you live in microgravity you have to work out at least two hours a day in order to keep your.
[28:19] Briar Prestidge: That's quite a bit isn't it?
[28:20] Phnam Bagley: It's quite a bit. You have to keep your bone mass and your muscle mass at optimal level because it's just deteriorating over time very, very quickly actually. I talked to an astronaut one day and he said that he was feeling a little cocky and he says oh I don't need to work out. He didn't work out for like three weeks. He went to space, I want to say 20 years ago and he told me that he still feels the consequences of not working out during those weeks.
[28:50] Briar Prestidge: How does he feel?
[28:51] Phnam Bagley: Like there are certain aspects of his like bone density and muscle recovery that is just not optimal.
[29:01] Briar Prestidge: Wow would you go to space?
[29:03] Phnam Bagley: So it's funny I get asked this question a lot.
[29:06] Briar Prestidge: I'm sure you do.
[29:08] Phnam Bagley: So the answer is quite interesting. I think I have to like come back to childhood because a lot of people think I got into the space industry because I dreamt of being an astronaut as a kid. I actually didn't. I saw a lot of the space shuttle era, videos of launches of astronauts, like heroically, walking onto a station and then living and working there. And I thought the environment in which they live was terrible. I'm like, why are you paying these people to risk their lives and doing all these experiments in an environment that was like very harsh light, like no personal space, apparently smells terrible. And they have to stay up there isolated from the rest of humanity for like six months at a time. It's pretty terrible. So I got into the space industry out of frustration. I'm like, this could be much, much better. So to answer your question, I would go to space if I'm given the opportunity to fix the environments in which astronauts live in real time.
[30:15] So that's something that I actually did in a much smaller scale when I went on what's called an analog astronaut mission. So this summer, I had a crew of four people. I was a commanding officer of a crew of four people that flew to a very remote island called Devon Island. And I believe Devon Island is about 800 miles away from the North Pole. It's the largest uninhabited island on this planet. And the four of us were the only humans on that entire island. So we were dropped there at a research station called the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station or FMARS. And we were trained to go there to take care of like power systems and water systems. We were completely independent from the rest of the Earth, really. Even our communication system was modified, because of the distance. So basically, we're trying to simulate how it is to live on Mars.
[31:22] And the reason why Devon Island is chosen is because there's a massive crater there. I can't remember the diameter. I think it's 24 kilometers in diameter crater that made the geology, the surface geology of Devon Island very similar to the surface of Mars. So anyway, all four of us go there with our equipment. And the research that I wanted to do personally was to bring a suitcase of equipment and then change the environment to make it infinitely more comfortable than it was before. I very distinctly remember when I arrived at the research station, we opened the doors kind of like stuffy in there and realized that there was like stuff everywhere, very much like a space station because the station itself has been there for about 25 years. Every summer it's used by like different crews. And I remember distinctly like the interior was white and there was stuff everywhere. It was like sort of organized, but not in a way that was conducive to productivity or anything inspiring, at least to me as a designer. So I immediately opened my suitcase. I'm like, we need to fix this.
[32:36] Briar Prestidge: You're like Mary Poppins.
[32:37] Phnam Bagley: Pretty much. Pretty much. Yeah. Except my bag was like not as deep. But really changing the colors and really, I insisted on cooking all the meals because food to me is not only sustenance. Food is also pleasure. It's culture, it's where do the spices come from? What kind of childhood memory does each dish bring up to you? So I had asked my crew before, what their favorite dishes were, what kind of spices they like. So I made sure that in the menu that was presented to them during our mission, they had this kind of comfort presented to them.
[33:22] Briar Prestidge: What kind of things did you put up and change?
[33:26] Phnam Bagley: So there was the food, there were some lights. So I had like this series of light, there were candle lights that were like electric candle lights that really created this like evening, very like sensual type of lighting, completely the opposite of what was there before. Surprisingly, very low hanging fruit, like putting lights in the bathroom, was just not a thing because we turn off the electricity most of the day to like conserve it. And so I'm like, hey, we could just use like battery operated like candle lights, a little bit everywhere to create that. I also had like colored lights. I had purchased this like very specific colored light projector that helped simulate morning lights and evening lights, just to like inform a circadian rhythm that this is when you should relax and this is when you should get a little bit more excited about what's up in the day.So we had the lights. We also had sounds. So I brought like a pretty nice speaker, like a pretty compact one that I hung on one of the walls of the main common area.
[34:37] And I started playing very specific music with very specific frequencies. There are certain frequencies that calm you down. There are certain frequencies that help you focus throughout the day. And so I was playing off of Spotify, like different playlists of specific frequencies and people really, really enjoy those. I didn't tell them that I was doing that. I was just like playing in the background. And then I remember distinctly some of the crew members saying, oh, I feel so relaxed right now, like candle lights and this little sound in the background. I'm like, yeah, this is all by design.
[35:08] Briar Prestidge: Yes. Interesting.
[35:10] Phnam Bagley: And then also, the tactile, my suitcase was very small, very much like space you can't bring like massive amounts of weight and volume. So I brought these like beautifully soft blankets and like faux furs and I would put them on the walls. I also added some thick plants. So back to the idea of colors, we are used to being surrounded by plants, by different manifestation of nature. And when you're in a research station, besides what's going on, on the outside, everything is quite artificial. And so bringing a little bit of nature in that environment really supports people's mental health on a daily basis, even though you might not know that you need it. But once you take that away, people start missing it.
[36:01] Briar Prestidge: Do you think that in the future we are going to be like space fearing creatures?
[36:07] Phnam Bagley: Yes. I mean, that's one of the many ambitions that we have. I think by nature, humanity is quite explorative and very ambitious. And it's very hard to think that we will stop exploring. I think every generation of humans ever is made of 95 plus percent people who think that the way we live is fine. But I would like to remind everyone that a mere hundred years ago, flying the sky was brand new. And now, if in, let's say, 1925, I told you, hey, you know what, in a hundred years from now, people from all over the world are going to fly to Dubai. They're going to go into this futurist conference and they're going to talk about going to space. I mean, you're probably locked up. And that was just a hundred years ago. And now we're always all very aware that technology innovation is accelerating by the minute with A.I. and with biotechnology and all of that. It's very, very difficult to anticipate what's going to happen in the next 10, 20, 30 years. We can probably do it for two to five years, but who knows what's going to come up and really enrich everybody's relationship with innovation.
[37:27] Briar Prestidge: So thinking far into the future and preparing for this space travel, becoming space-faring creatures, like what kind of things do you think humans would need to do, whether it's like biologically, some kind of like gene therapy or maybe even some kind of like technological enhancement or augmentation in order to prepare for this kind of future.
[37:51] Phnam Bagley: And I wouldn't say what I'm about to talk about is that far in the future. That's what's very exciting about it.
[37:56] Briar Prestidge: Oh, how far are we thinking?
[37:58] Phnam Bagley: I mean, 10 years, 20 at most, which is going to be like pretty incredible. So 3D printing organs. So we know that there's a huge shortage of organs, hearts and livers and kidneys on this earth, and it's killing many, many people. And here we're just talking about people who even know that's an option. And so being able to create factories for organs that not only help your body function, but also match your genetics so you don't reject it is really on the horizon right now, which is pretty incredible.
[38:43] Briar Prestidge: It would be amazing for all of these people who are on these waiting lists for many years.
[38:49] Phnam Bagley: And what's very interesting about the idea of 3D printing in space specifically is because of microgravity you don't have to 3D print living cells with scaffolds, for example. Because if you cut those scaffolds, you might kill the tissue. So in space, you just 3D print wherever it is, which is like a very, very interesting way of thinking about the future of how we manufacture things. Also, if we're thinking about the far future, when we go to Mars or when we do intergalactic travel for multiple generations, for example, one thing is our organs evolve to work with Earth's gravity. So the heart has its shape because it works with Earth's gravity and you can have that many healthy heartbeats in a lifetime. But in space, because the pressure needs to be quite even everywhere, which is why most space habitats are either cylindrical or spherical It's the same principle for organs. If you want to fill the heart with blood and then pump it in a way that's more efficient, the heart might have to be redesigned to be a little bit rounder.
[40:15] And perhaps we can do the same thing with other organs that might be too stressed to function normally when you're living in space. So really thinking about things like that. Another thing that's a little bit closer to the present, even though it sounds like complete science fiction, is the generating custom proteins. So a lot of pharmaceuticals that are very customized to people's needs are proteins. The problem with proteins when they are fabricated on Earth with Earth's gravity, is that they might twist the wrong way. If there's one thing you need to know about proteins, is if they twist the wrong way, like a mirrored protein, they can actually be extremely dangerous. So in order to almost guarantee the quality of the protein that comes out of these machines, we might have factories, protein factories or customized pharmaceuticals in space. And yeah, I think there's quite a few companies that are working on that right now.
[41:23] The research is becoming more and more accessible to reality. There's a lot of work done in stem cells in space as well, for the same reason as proteins, like creating them and maintaining them, keeping them alive seems to be possible in space. And there's a lot of opportunities in creating new pharmaceuticals this way, like Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles actually specifically working on that. So yeah, lots of pretty incredible things. And if we're talking about the outside, there are companies that are doing humanoid robotics. Perhaps you can replace a limb or replace a spine or replace part of your body to essentially optimize your body while retaining your nervous system in a way that makes you more powerful, stronger and be able to live longer.
[42:23] Briar Prestidge: It's interesting to think that we almost might end up with these subspecies of humans based on the augmentations or biological changes that we might choose.
[42:34] Phnam Bagley: Yeah. I mean, in many ways, we're already doing this. Like this, let's be real, there's not much natural going on with us because of the food that we eat, because of the medication that we take, we live a lot longer than, let's say 100 years ago. And so that's in many ways modification, whether it's genetic or epigenetic or in any other way. We also have a lot more understanding of how the body works and optimize workout routines to help with longevity and all that. We also have an understanding of genetics. There are certain genes that may say, hey, you are more prone to Alzheimer's. Perhaps there's something you can do in your early age that can prevent that from happening too early. So all of this knowledge and innovation in medicine, as well as biotechnology and all that, informs us on all the different ways humans can not only survive but also thrive in an environment that's literally designed to kill them.
[43:33] Briar Prestidge: What kind of other things do you think we could be doing as humans in order to create these, like this super human strength, resilience, like the most optimal human species we could possibly be?
[43:50] Phnam Bagley: So your question really reminds me of a science fiction movie called Gattaca. I don't know if you remember. I think it was like the late nineties.
[43:56] Briar Prestidge: No, I haven't seen it.
[43:57] Phnam Bagley: With Ethan Hawke and what's her name? Uma Thurman.
[44:07] Briar Prestidge: Great actress.
[44:08] Phnam Bagley: Yeah. Fantastic. And so basically it's a future in which humans are engineered to be perfect, perfectly beautiful.
[44:17] Briar Prestidge: I think I have seen this.
[44:19] Phnam Bagley: Yeah. Perfectly athletic and a society at peace and all that. And so it's like pushing away people who are normal, genetically just coming out the way they were. And it's very interesting because you see this like beautiful land of beautiful people and there's like a coldness to it. And I think what's beautiful about humanity is the fact that we come in all different sizes and shapes and personalities and backgrounds and cultures and all those things. And so I'm less inclined to see a kind of like homogenic future culture of humans as a positive thing. So from a philosophical standpoint and from a societal standpoint, I think it's important to, instead of homogenizing everybody to create technology, to adapt to each and every one of us. If I am short and I have a heart condition, and if I have a missing limb, I too should be able to go to space and that space architecture and the technology that surrounds me should adapt to me instead of me adapting to it.
[45:33] And so that's kind of like a fundamental kind of like guideline as to how we design the future. And I'm not only talking about space here. I'm really talking about how we design this earth. For a long time, we have designed for the mass. We have designed for the elites in space, people that we train to, to survive. But I think thinking about a future of space where any single person from someone with disability to an elderly person to a child, maybe babies, can go to space, stay healthy and thrive up there. That's the biggest challenge and I think that's very, very exciting.
[46:15] Briar Prestidge: And we obviously speak about, well, you speak a lot about creating impact in this world. How can we ultimately, with all of this diversity that you very rightly point out that we have, how can we be creating impact in a world that essentially we all thrive in?
[46:34] Phnam Bagley: I think impact can be global and impact can be individual as well. I think this awareness and understanding of what is health, what is not, how my health is impacting the relationships that I have with the people around me, whether it's family, significant others, friendships, work, work colleagues, really the fact that we're not just ego bodies walking around and waiting to die. We're a lot more complex than that. And I think, it's important to create that awareness and to create technology to help us be more aware. And sometimes it's technology and sometimes it's other things, like meditation, for example costs nothing. It's a practice that's like incredibly difficult to get into, but once you start seeing the benefits of it, how it calms your nervous system and how it builds a sense of compassion with yourself and with others, all of these changes in your body turn you into someone who's wiser and more patient with the rest of the world.
[47:43] And I think, we talk a lot about world peace and all those things and they're not going to happen just because someone says so. They're going to happen because we are aware of the consequences of not doing it. And so that's why I very much care about impact because I truly believe that on an individual level, on a collective level, we're all aware of it. We are all capable of it. It's kind of hard to see it in this day and age because there's so much cynicism going on with social media, with the language changing, with people's opinion being anonymous online. It's very, very difficult for people to discern what they need and what they want out of this life and how it's being perceived by people who only react to the negative stuff.
[48:36] Briar Prestidge: Yeah, hugely with you there on that. It's crazy sometimes I think you get in the social media bubble and you just see almost the negativity maybe and lose track of all the other different nuances and good and stuff like this about the world.
[48:52] Phnam Bagley: And I don't see anything as good or bad, as a hundred percent. I think we live in a world where everything is just grayscale and I think people's mindsets is what determines whether it's going to be more on the dark side or the light side. Are you building a level of resilience that is high enough that when you receive all of that negative energy coming from the outside, are you reacting or are you absorbing and then giving it back to the world? And really evolving from a reactive society to a society that is aware, that is kind, that knows how science works and respects the long-term effect of the concept of the technology that we introduce into our lives. That's so incredibly important. And as technology goes along so quickly, it's very easy to lose grasp of this. I work in high technology and sometimes I'm like, whoa, this is going a little bit too fast. Like the world is requiring a lot of us. We need to know a lot of things and use more tools and be aware of this and that and international everything.
[50:12] I cannot imagine how hard it is for the elderly, who grew up with like basically no technology, all of a sudden was this technological era and now their brain for absolutely natural reasons cannot keep up. And that's going to be us in the future. Like the young generation today is going, technology is second nature to them. So they're going to evolve a little bit differently, but that's kind of like the nature of generational change. I'm very excited about the next generation. There's a lot of things they do that don't make any sense to me today, but I know that in the end.
[50:49] Briar Prestidge: Like what in particular?
[50:51] Phnam Bagley: I mean, the fact that, just coming back to social media, this like obsession with technology and with this like weird inability to connect emotionally with another person, if there's no filter of technology, it's just bizarre to me. I grew up or my formative years, like teenage years and early 20s was done very analogly. If I wanted to meet someone, I met them in person. If I wanted to know someone, I asked questions. I didn't go on google and started like spying on them. Now it's completely normal to behave that way. There's nothing wrong with it. But maybe I'm putting my old person cap on, but I find it very, very harmful in many ways.
[51:39] Briar Prestidge: I wonder if we're going to start to see a bit more of a shift where we actually start to go back to some of that more sort of in-person and community, especially since we've realized now about how important it is for longevity and health and wellness.
[51:53] Phnam Bagley: Yeah. And I mean, there's been a lot of studies, for example, in multi-generational exposure and how it relates to longevity. Like the cognitive exposure, I mean, the cognitive health maintenance of grandparents being surrounded by children, for example. The grandparents develop a sense of compassion towards this more helpless human being that's growing up and really developing this like heart towards that fact of their life. And also being an adult has changed a lot over time. So being an adult in the 1950s, you had the responsibility of the home, the responsibility of work and all those long hours and this and that. And now people have hobbies and they have time to dedicate to discovering the life purpose. And they are really dedicate, time to nurture their children, which is something that's like relatively new in the history of humans.
[52:56] And we tend to forget all those things. We think that nurturing your own children is like something people have been doing forever. Like, no, 1920s, people used to put their kids to work at seven and that was completely normal. And so understanding history, respecting the slow evolution of how humans have treated each other and how fortunate we are to have the life that we have today and also understanding what's wrong with today. And instead of being cynical about it, do something about it. Do you have knowledge in technology? Do you have knowledge in science? Do you have knowledge in psychology and anthropology and politics and whatever, in order to make things a little bit better for you and a little bit better for your neighbor?
[53:41] Briar Prestidge: I love that. Yeah, I really do love that. Atlas, have you been following Atlas in the world and all of the talk about the comet? And do you think that it does mean anything different or what do you think it actually is? What's your thoughts as someone who's in the space architecture space?
[54:02] Phnam Bagley: I mean, it's just like an extra what's the word? It's just an object from the outside the solar system that comes in and out. It just has a funny shape. I mean, there's a lot of conspiracy theory going on. That's what you're talking about, right?
[54:20] Briar Prestidge: Yes.
[54:22] Phnam Bagley: I mean, until we have more knowledge on like where it came from, why it has this shape and so on. I mean, I'm not the kind of person who has like opinions about those things. But yeah, it's good to know that it exists. I mean, not to be like all like conspiracy theory, but if you ask a lot of people who work in like more secret service, they'll tell you, yeah, there are certain things in the solar system and beyond the solar system we cannot explain. And I think Atlas is one of those things. And I don't want to jump to conclusions just because we saw a tiny image of it moving through the solar system. I'm not qualified to say anything about it.
[55:04] Briar Prestidge: Regarding the space mission that went up with the likes of Katy Perry and lots of other women who were in it. Do you feel that it inspired a lot of young girls and people who perhaps hadn't been interested in STEM before to perhaps be an astronaut one day or do you feel like it achieved what the overall mission was meant to achieve?
[55:28] Phnam Bagley: I think it had the potential of doing better and it did some. I'm sure there's definitely girls around the world who didn't think that a women only mission would happen like this. And to be fair, this is like a very short mission. It's not like they spent months up in space. It was just a matter of minutes. But it's the beginning of something. One thing I would like to point out, I kind of feel bad for Katy Perry because she had a dream of going to space and now everybody put.
[56:00] Briar Prestidge: Their own bag on it.
[56:01] Phnam Bagley: Yeah. I mean, it's quite unfair and also unfair to the other women who are on that mission, because some of them worked like quite hard to earn that seat. And I really blame a lot of the messaging, marketing, PR and all that. They could have been much kinder, much more understanding of someone's dream and talk less about how this is just about sexy women with like curves and very tight flight suits going up in space for like three minutes. It's not helping anyone.
[56:40] Briar Prestidge: Do you think it may be say something about like the media or like society at large, is that here we have this almost like opportunity and we have these powerhouse women in their own rights going up and then we can't help but be negative about it in terms of the media?
[56:58] Phnam Bagley: Yeah. I mean, and there's a reason why they did this to a group of women, because people have been going on those short missions for a few years now. It happened before. It happened since. But that one was particularly targeted. And the elephant in the room is misogyny. That's like straight up display of misogyny, not only coming from the media that portrayed in a very certain way, but specifically coming from the people who just absorbed that message and just flew with it. I mean, I gave a talk in Paris, I think two weeks after it happened, a flight happened and I was giving a talk about luxury and aerospace and all that. And half of the students in the room couldn't stop talking about Katy Perry and I just taught them. I'm like, do you realize that was her dream, do you realize that she worked very hard to earn that dream? Like this is not something that you just like purchase.
You kind of have to like sort of qualify for it and making sure that there's alignment with what Blue Origin is trying to do. And yeah, they try to do something symbolic with sending women together, women only crew together. Could it have been done better? Sure. But you can't blame women for being women and having dreams, because that is just completely unfair. If it was a group of dudes or a group of like mixed men and women or older people or just like youngsters, I guarantee you, nobody would have been so cruel as they were with women.
[58:39] Briar Prestidge: Do you think there's anything we can be doing to encourage like young females to get more into STEM? Because quite often it is still such a male dominated arena, this whole technology space. Have you found that or are you seeing a lot more women at the top these days?
[58:58] Phnam Bagley: Yeah. And younger and younger women and women from like many different regions of the world. I remember going to Saudi Arabia like two or three years ago and seeing all these young girls 13 to 16 in Abaya, like all together asking questions, they spoke perfect English. I was so shocked. And just asking those like such pertinent questions that level curiosity, that glimmer in the eye and just wanting to be part of it. There was no question in their mind that they had to be part of it. And I love that, because again, there was like no amount of cynicism in the way they saw the world, whereas in perhaps other parts of the world, United States where I live, there are so many people there. So the range of people can be quite large. But we're dreaming of being a scientist or a mathematician or anybody working in STEM and let alone working in space, seems out of reach for a lot of them or the scientific or space environment is not conducive to them kind of flourishing. So it can be quite difficult. I don't know if you ever heard of what's called the Scully Effect.
[1:00:16] Briar Prestidge: No, I haven't.
[1:00:17] Phnam Bagley: So in the 1990s, there was a show, very popular show called The X-Files with David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson. They played this like very interesting duo. So he was the alien searching, loving FBI agent. And she was the pragmatic, I think she was a scientist or researcher and they were both FBI agents. And she had this stance about her. She was serious, but also she was kind and compassionate. And she had a way of interviewing people, of like showing professionalism and understanding science and being curious and all this thing, like great qualities. And there has been studies. I can't remember the numbers, but there has been studies that said that young girls who saw the X-Files and saw Scully acting like this, the rate of women who ended up in cars in STEM, like shot up. And so that's really a testament to representation, because not everybody functions like this. Actually, I'm the kind of person who doesn't function like this, like I don't need representation to have the dream but a lot of people do.
[1:01:34] That means that if I'm a black woman and I see a black woman in space, I will like Mae Jemison was the first black woman in space. [1:01:42 inaudible] Proctor, I had breakfast with her this morning, is the first black mission pilot of a space mission for Inspiration 4. They are the North Star. They are the people that tell me I could be that person. Until then, it's very difficult, I think, for the average person to have the imagination to say, I could do, I could do it. I could be the first. There are some people who have the personality to be the first and some people who don't. And there's nothing wrong with being one or the other. But that's why representation matters.
[1:02:18] Briar Prestidge: Is there anything else that you want people who are listening to this podcast to maybe take away in regards to the kind of impact that they could make on the world or some interesting piece of tech that's happening that maybe we aren't quite aware of?
[1:02:33] Phnam Bagley: I think it's really coming back to something quite simple. In order to change the world, you probably have to change yourself first. And to change yourself, you have to understand where you are. I'm very glad that there are certain people, including my husband, who's funny, very funny. My husband is the kind of person who's content. Like, it doesn't matter if there's a flood or he's on a beach and having a good time with friends or whatever, he's always content. So part of me is extremely jealous, whereas my personality is like, we can always do more. And that's probably why we work very well together. It's like this balance. And so having that curiosity about yourself, working on figuring out what your life purpose is and also understanding that your life purpose might change in your 20s, your 30s, your 40s. Surrounding yourself with people you admire. They don't need to have fancy degrees or be rich or anything like that. I think those are very superfluous. But like people you trust, friendships of quality, people you look up to because they're doing something that shows courage. I think these are great places to start because they are going to build a foundation that is strong enough for you to believe that this crazy idea you're going to have in your 30s can become a reality.
[1:03:55] Briar Prestidge: I think we all need that bit of delusion a little bit when it comes, because if we're not going to believe in ourselves, who the hell is going to believe in us.
[1:04:03] Phnam Bagley: So I'm going to tell you a very interesting story. So I was in Bali and I was talking to this executive coach. She's someone who gets paid pretty healthy money by C level people to basically tell them that they're going to be okay. These are the tools that will make you believe and feel that you're going to be okay. And at one point, I think she traveled to, I believe, Uganda. And she met this boy who was, I think, 18, 19. Smile ear to ear. And then she started talking to him and learning about his past. Child soldier, violence, drugs and all these things. But now was out of this kind of life. And again, like just beaming of hope and beauty about the future. And she looked at him and asked him, so what is your secret? Like, why do you have such a beautiful outlook on life? And apparently this boy looked at her again with this big smile and say, that's because I believe in myself.
[1:05:16] And so when she came back to Canada to talk to her CEOs again, and then all these people who are on paper successful in every way, went to the fancy school, had a fancy jobs and had a fancy paycheck, but were miserable on the inside. She had this like gut reaction. I can't remember what it's called. It's like, when she was, she's like, you don't understand, there are so many people in this world that have gone through like much worse things than you and were able to see the light at the end of the tunnel and you can't even wake up in the morning feeling grateful about what you have. So that's really a testament to the power of believing in yourself. And I find that so incredibly powerful and beautiful.
[1:06:00] Briar Prestidge: I think that's such a nice place to end. What an amazing message. And it's been fascinating listening to you today, actually. I could talk for another three hours or something. I'm sure we would always find some cool things to talk about. But the work that you've been doing is is fascinating. And may you always be doing all these cool, exciting things, because there is so much I think that we can be doing in today's world, isn't there? And so much opportunity and potential and everything. So thank you so, so much for coming on the show. It's been very interesting.
[1:06:34] Phnam Bagley: Thank you so much for having me and shout out to the team and to the wonderful questions. There is definitely a lot of curiousity and openness about your questions. I appreciate that.
[1:06:44] Briar Prestidge: Thank you, yeah, I'm very curious about you so it was very easy. It was great. Thank you so much.
[1:06:51] Phnam Bagley: Thank you so much.
About Phnam Bagley
Phnam Bagley is an industrial designer, futurist, and space architect renowned for her transformative contributions to design and innovation.
As co-founder and creative director of Nonfiction, a design and innovation firm, she has dedicated her career to bringing science fiction concepts to life, fostering a better and more sustainable future for humanity.
Born and raised in France and based in San Francisco, Phnam’s fascination with design and the cosmos led her to study industrial design at Strate and earn a Master’s in Space Architecture from the University of Houston’s Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture. Over a 20-year career, she has designed across multiple sectors including wearables, biotechnology, luxury, robotics, transportation, sports, and aerospace, holding creative roles at IDEO, Lunar/McKinsey, Matter, and Lifestyledesign.
In 2016, she co-founded Nonfiction to transform speculative ideas into real-world solutions, from neurotech wearables with startups out of UC Berkeley, Yale and Rice University, to renewable energy systems for rural Africa, to deep space food systems and orbital habitats with NASA and Sierra Space. Her projects exemplify impact-driven innovation aligned with the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, contributing to over $750 million in fundraising, sales, and acquisitions.
Beyond Nonfiction, Phnam is a dedicated educator and advocate for expanding access to design knowledge. She co-produces and co-hosts Future Future, an educational video series exploring design and the future of everything, and has taught industrial design at the California College of the Arts, mentoring emerging designers. She also teaches creativity and innovation to NASA centers, law enforcement, military, and veteran organizations, and speaks internationally at events including TED, SXSW, and COP on space architecture, innovation, and human-centered design.
Phnam also serves as Project Lead at Orbital Hospital under OSMED, where she leads a multidisciplinary team of space medicine, science, engineering, design, and policy experts to develop a concept for a space hospital. The design features gradual artificial gravity and functions as a medical, training, and rehabilitation hub supporting missions between Earth, the Moon, and Mars.
