Who's In This Podcast
Helen Todd is co-founder and CEO of Sociality Squared and the human behind Creativity Squared.
Yemi A.D. is a Czech-Nigerian artist, entrepreneur, and crew member of the dearMoon mission.
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Ep49. This Artist is Going to the Moon! From Training Humanoid Robots to Dance to Being a #dearMoon Crew Member, Meet Yemi A.D.
Yemi A.D. (Yemi Akinyemi Dele) is a multidisciplinary creative force and entrepreneur dedicated to helping people unlock their artistic potential. The lifelong dancer is preparing for his biggest mission yet: a trip around the Moon!
In this week’s episode of Creativity Squared, the multi-hyphenate Czech-Nigerian artist tells us how he scored a literal one-in-a-million chance to spend a week in space and what he’ll be doing while he’s up there.
Yemi is the Founder and CEO of Moonshot Platform, an international organization dedicated to accelerating young leaders’ work towards solutions for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. This year, Moonshot Platform is launching the Moonshot Awards, which will distribute $100,000 to young social innovators and provide mentorship opportunities.
“For the first time in history, we don’t know what the world will look like in 10-20 years. This is a unique opportunity to allow young people to have a seat at the table.”
Yemi A.D.
With over 20 years of experience across entertainment, the arts, and technology, his long list of titles has included founder, CEO, actor, TV host, UN Ambassador, most influential personality in the Czech Republic, director, and, more recently, astronaut-in-training.
His portfolio includes collaborations with pop culture icons like the late fashion designer Virgil Abloh and directing choreography for Grammy-winning hip-hop musician, Kanye West. Yemi also works with brands like Google, Apple, Coca-Cola, and T-Mobile, and he speaks frequently on the future of creativity and space exploration at venues like TEDx, Texas Eclipse Festival, and South by Southwest (SXSW).
As a choreographer, Yemi was chosen from more than one million applicants for the dearMoon mission, which will be the first all-civilian flight around the moon. Once ready, he and seven other artists, along with Yusaku Maezawa (known as MZ), will blast off in a brand-new SpaceX Starship specially designed for commercial space travel. This journey around the Moon is made possible by MZ, the eccentric Japanese billionaire, e-commerce mogul, and art collector who’s sponsoring the mission in an effort to unite our global imagination around innovation and ambition.
Yemi’s love of movement and finding freedom in movement are intertwined into all aspects of his life, which you’ll hear in the conversation.
In this episode, listen to Yemi’s incredible journey from growing up as the only Black child where he was raised in Czechoslovakia to his rise as a creative powerhouse and to traveling into space. We also dive into how Yemi’s studies of indigenous cultures worldwide gave him insight into the intelligence of movement. He also shares the importance of representation in the tech industry to ensure a more inclusive and human-centered approach to A.I. and robotics — the humanoid robot Apollo was trained on his dance videos!
Yemi believes that the best way to predict the future is to create it, and he’s doing just that. Tune in to discover his vision for the future he’s working to create.
Busting Moves and Breaking Barriers: How Yemi A.D. Danced His Way to The Top
Yemi has loved dance since his childhood in 1980s communist Czechoslovakia. He says his relationship with it has changed throughout his life, but as somebody who’s spent years observing and learning from indigenous dance rituals around the world, he asserts that there is intelligence in movement. Like how we express our mental intelligence through conscious actions and behaviors, Yemi says that movement is how we communicate our body’s intelligence. Unlike our minds, the intelligence of the body is rooted in our genetic heritage, separate from the social constructs we invent. For Yemi, accessing the body’s intelligence through movement is a chance to reconnect with the inner creative self, free from social expectations.
“Creativity is connected to freedom and the ability to get away from the patterns of the past…If you’re not free, you’re just using creativity to recycle the past.”
Yemi A.D.
Born to a Czech mother and Nigerian father in a country populated 95% by white people, Yemi had to work harder to fit in from the start. At only four years old, he lost his only external connection to his African heritage when his father became trapped in Nigeria during a military coup. It took 23 years until Yemi and his father eventually reconnected. Yemi’s mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother raised him through his remaining childhood. He wouldn’t meet another Black child until he was fifteen years old.
Despite the confusing circumstances of his social reality, Yemi found connection and community through dance.
“I found dance and movement to be my language, [a way] to connect with people around me . . . it was the opportunity where I could create some value, or just make people happy.”
Yemi A.D.
His passion for dance led him to study in Prague, teach in the Netherlands and Sweden, and then move to Los Angeles, where he studied street dance. He returned to Prague in 1999 to found his first business, JAD Dance Company, which quickly gained widespread acclaim for Yemi’s original dance style, called Street Fusion.
JAD’s success eventually reached Kanye West, who in 2010 started commissioning Yemi to choreograph, direct, and produce performances like Saturday Night Live, the VMAs, Coachella, and West’s international Yeezus tour.
Yemi often shares his story with young people emphasizing how dreaming big and cultivating self-efficacy helped propel himself from a Central European ghetto to the world’s biggest and brightest stages.
“For a big portion of my life, I had to work twice as much for half as much. But it didn’t stop me . . . I think today is the age where it’s worth it to work, and it’s worth it to be creative and to really open your mind. Because I think you can really achieve unimaginable things.”
Yemi A.D.
Throughout his career, Yemi has demonstrated time and again how passion and work ethic can be life-changing.
The Art of Reinventing Yourself
From dancer to choreographer, director, producer, and entrepreneur, Yemi’s career has been marked by constant reinvention. He’s founded multiple companies, including a talent agency, a production agency, a creative studio, and a dance academy. He says that his willingness to step out of his comfort zone and embrace new challenges is what helped him get where he is today.
“Starting from scratch is very liberating. Just building on top of your previous things can be limiting, but starting a new story on a [blank] paper is beautiful to me. It’s also very grounding because I’m a dreamer, but saying, ‘Hey, I don’t know how to do that, I have to learn it.’ I think it keeps my mind very flexible.”
Yemi A.D.
Yemi was in this position around 2015, after five years of working with Kanye. Being on stage in front of tens of thousands of fans often felt like a drug, he says, especially when you know someone else might wait a lifetime for the same opportunity. While he describes that part of his career as a “beautiful experience” that afforded him unrestricted creative freedom, he’d often find himself answering more questions about Kim Kardashian than about his own work. He knew he wanted to build something that would stand on its own legs and, even better, create value for the world.
Yet the question remained: What next? In his 30s, with years of invaluable experience at the height of the entertainment industry, Yemi set out to redefine himself.
He returned to Europe and soon started applying to U.S. fellowship programs for professional growth and leadership. After four years of sending applications, Yemi was accepted into the Aspen Institute’s Henry Crown Fellowship program, which only accepts 20 fellows per year. According to Yemi, the support he gained from his star-studded cohort of high-achievers helped him find the confidence he needed when the opportunity of a lifetime presented itself.
That opportunity arose in MZ’s 2018 social media post announcing his plan to take eight creative professionals on a journey around the Moon. Despite his immediate excitement at the idea of space travel, Yemi says he almost let his self-doubt get the best of him. But when he shared the idea with his fellowship class, he found that they believed in him more than he believed in himself.
“That’s what I love about the U.S., a lot of people encourage each other here. They are positive about other people’s prospects. It makes a big difference if you have people who believe in you.”
Yemi A.D.
The support from his fellowship class was instrumental in Yemi’s decision to apply for the dearMoon mission. The class even adopted the name “Moonshot” to signify their collective belief in dreaming big.
dearMoon’s Crew Member and Its Mission
MZ, who believes art has the power to promote world peace, announced the dearMoon crew roster in 2022. He shared his hope that members would use what they learned and experienced on the mission to contribute positively to Earth and humanity.
Yemi says he’s excited about collaborating with his fellow passengers and experiencing weightlessness inside Starship, the biggest and most powerful spacecraft to ever fly.
“Selfishly, I really am looking forward to dancing in space. But the second best thing is the people who are flying with me . . . I’m really looking forward to co-create and co-design with all of these people.”
Yemi A.D.
The rest of the crew members are artists and professionals from all across the creative spectrum. They include the cake-throwing American DJ, Steve Aoki; the multitalented K-pop sensation TOP; the film photographer and social documentarian Rhiannon Adam of Ireland; an American space and science Youtuber, Tim Dodd, aka the Everyday Astronaut; British adventurer and nature photographer, Karim Iliya; American documentary filmmaker, Brendan Hall; and Dev D. Joshi, a 23-year-old Bollywood actor who’s set to become the youngest person to ever visit space.
Yemi says that the crew is already like his family. Listen to the episode to hear his wild story about getting a little too close for comfort during a Soyuz rocket launch at the Russian Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan!
While awaiting Starship’s clearance for manned flights, Yemi is preparing himself for the mental and physical demands of space travel. The mission was originally scheduled to launch last year, but liftoff has been postponed indefinitely since power failures forced the first version of Starship to self-destruct during an April 2023 test flight.
SpaceX has launched two test flights since then (in November and March), both of which performed better than their predecessors before also self-destructing due to unexpected failures. In the rocket-building business, though, they say that failure is another step toward success. SpaceX CEO Elon Musk announced recently that they’re planning the next flight test for late June.
In the meantime, Yemi’s taking extra care of his health and seeking advice from seasoned astronauts like Tim Kopra, former Commander of the International Space Station. While Yemi and his fellow creatives won’t be navigating Starship, once a new launch date is scheduled, they’ll start training on how to use the ship’s life-support systems and how to live (and dance!) in zero gravity. After witnessing two SpaceX launches in person, Yemi says he has a new appreciation for his mission.
“Seeing the ignition, seeing the cloud and the force, the shockwave through the ground; it completely changed the information about going to space into a visceral sensation . . . Before it was an idea, but after witnessing the launch, it gives you a different level of respect to the decision you’ve made.”
Yemi A.D.
After they return, the dearMoon crew will present their work so the world can see space through their eyes. But if their astronaut predecessors are to be believed, in the weeks and months after they touch down, the crew may come to see Earth in a new light.
Does Space Change You? Discussing The Overview Effect Theory
The Overview Effect is a psychological phenomenon describing the profound mindset shift that some astronauts have experienced after viewing Earth from space. After returning from the Apollo 9 mission, Astronaut Russell Schweickart described the overview effect as an expanding feeling of interconnectedness with the people and places outside his normal life in Houston, TX.
As a self-described dreamer and somebody who’s seen more of our Earth than most people, we asked Yemi if he thinks he’ll feel any different upon his return. He says he doesn’t fully subscribe to the theory, suggesting instead that the feelings of connectedness are a downstream effect of realizing how uncomfortably close we are to death at any given moment.
“There is this very tiny barrier between the death of space and this fertile ground. All this you’re realizing while being in a can flying really fast through the darkness and . . . wherever you are close to death, you’re experiencing life very viscerally. So I think this space journey brings you closer to more universal truth, not your own.”
Yemi A.D.
He also doesn’t think the mindset shift occurs as immediately as advertised. From his personal conversations with veteran astronauts, he believes that the change is much more gradual, like hair growth – you can only see the changes after enough time has passed.
We’ve already invited Yemi to return to the show after he completes his mission so we can find out if he’s right about the overview effect!
Courage to Dream Big & Envision a Better Future
Yemi’s vision for the future of creativity is a world where people feel safe to take risks and try out bold new ideas. As the future unfolds faster than we can process it, Yemi also says we need more creatives in the room with tech leaders in order to prevent the mistakes of the past, such as social media.
In fact, Yemi’s number one wish for the future is that we all learn how to heal our corroded relationships at every level — internally, interpersonally, interculturally, internationally, and maybe one day soon, interplanetary.
Spaceflight isn’t the only futurist trend he’s bringing his artistic flair to. At SXSW 2024, Yemi headlined a keynote speech with the start-up robot Apollo, Apptronik’s humanoid robot trained on Yemi’s dance moves (which is featured in our top SXSW 2024 session blog post). He’s working with the company to develop human-centered body language for robots.
Above all, Yemi encourages creatives to enjoy the journey just as much, if not more, than the outcome and to be careful about starting a journey trying to achieve somebody else’s outcome. He also encourages us to trust ourselves to take that leap of faith when we lose forward momentum, even if it feels like we’ll crash and burn before we land.
“The recipe that you use to succeed when you are between 20 and 30 is a very different recipe than the one between 30 and 40. And I think the stagnation comes from us holding on too hard to all the recipes. But I think it’s necessary for you to let go of the old one for you to discover the new one.”
Yemi A.D.
Big thanks to Yemi for coming on the show and giving us a glimpse inside the exciting dearMoon project and his optimistic outlook on life. We’ll be rooting for a safe journey and can’t wait to see what the great expanse of space inspires him to create next.
Links Mentioned in this Podcast
- Moonshot Platform
- UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
- dearMoon
- dearMoon Crew Announcement – YouTube
- Aspen Institute’s Henry Crown Fellowship
- SpaceX Starship
- Everyday Astronaut – YouTube
- Crew Introduction Video – Steve Aoki
- Crew Introduction Video – TOP
- Crew introduction Video – Rhiannon Adam
- Crew Introduction Video – Tim Dodd
- Crew Introduction Video – Karim Iliya
- Crew Introduction Video – Brendan Hall
- Crew Introduction Video -Dev D. Joshi
- dearMoon Project Postponement Announcement
Continue the Conversation
Thank you, Yemi, for joining us on this special episode of Creativity Squared.
This show is produced and made possible by the team at PLAY Audio Agency: https://playaudioagency.com.
Creativity Squared is brought to you by Sociality Squared, a social media agency who understands the magic of bringing people together around what they value and love: http://socialitysquared.com.
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TRANSCRIPT
Yemi A.D.: We can either shoot rockets at each other or we can shoot rockets to space. And space mission is known for one thing in particular. We need it to unite, to be able to overcome gravity. Space travel is uniting and we need to be united.
Helen: Yemi A.D. is a multidisciplinary creative force, dedicated to helping people unlock their creative potential.
Helen: He’s also preparing for his biggest mission yet, a trip around the moon. As a Czech Nigerian artist, entrepreneur, and crew member of the dearMoon Mission, Yemi exemplifies a pioneering spirit and profound passion for social innovation and youth empowerment. Yemi is the founder and CEO of Moonshot Platform, an organization dedicated to accelerating young leaders working towards solutions for the sustainable development goals.
Helen: His 20 years of experience across the industries of entertainment, arts, and technology includes collaborating with Grammy award winning artist Kanye West for five years to create and execute his global concerts, tours, and music videos. Yemi also works with brands like Google, Apple, Coca Cola, and T Mobile and speaks on stages like TEDx, Texas Eclipse Festival, and South by Southwest on the future of creativity and space exploration.
Helen: As a choreographer, Yemi was chosen from among 1 million candidates to be a crew member of dearMoon, marking the first civilian space trip around the moon. He’s one of the eight artists chosen to join Japanese entrepreneur and art collector, Yusaku Maezawa, who believes art has the power to promote world peace.
Helen: I first met Yemi at the Austrian Trade Commission’s BOLD networking event at South by Southwest, but it wasn’t until he was on stage revealing the humanoid robot Apollo that I learned he was selected to be on the dearMoon mission. Yemi’s got an amazing, infectious energy, optimism, and outlook. His love of movement and finding freedom in movement are intertwined into all aspects of his life, which you’ll hear in our conversation.
Helen: In this episode, listen to Yemi’s incredible journey from growing up as the only black child where he was raised in Czechoslovakia to his rise as a creative powerhouse and to traveling into space.
Helen: We also dive into how Yemi’s studies of indigenous cultures worldwide gave him insight into the intelligence of movement. He also shares the importance of representation in the tech industry to ensure a more inclusive and human centered approach to AI and robotics. Yemi believes that the best way to predict the future is to create it, and he’s doing just that.
Helen: Discover his vision for the future he’s working to create. Enjoy.
Helen: Welcome to Creativity Squared. Discover how creatives are collaborating with artificial intelligence in your inbox, on YouTube, and on your preferred podcast platform. Hi, I’m Helen Todd, your host, and I’m so excited to have you join the weekly conversations I’m having with amazing pioneers in this space.
Helen: The intention of these conversations is to ignite our collective imagination at the intersection of AI and creativity to envision a world where artists thrive.
Helen: So Yemi, welcome to Creativity Squared. It is so wonderful to have you on the show.
Yemi A.D.: Thank you. Hi, how are you?
Helen: I am so excited to have you on the show. I’ve been lucky enough to see Yemi a couple of different times earlier this year, the first time when we met was at South by Southwest and it was a BOLD community networking event where we were at a glass factory that was super cool.
Helen: And I remember you had this Basquiat hat and was like great energy. I was like, “Oh, this guy is cool.” And then I go to South by Southwest and see a keynote on a humanoid robot. And you’re on stage doing a keynote and sharing that you’re going to the moon. And I was like, “What!? This guy I just met at this networking event is going to the moon!?”
Helen: So, I’m just like super excited to have you on the show and dive deeper into all facets of your life right now.
Yemi A.D.: Thank you.
Helen: Well, and I know I’ve got to get to know you both at SXSW and you were on stage at the Texas Eclipse Festival as well, because they had a whole space stage. But for people who are meeting you for the first time, you have a really fascinating origin story. And I was hoping that you could introduce yourself and your origin story.
Yemi A.D.: It’s a big question for the beginning. So I was born in the eighties in Czechoslovakia. It’s a country that neighbors with Germany in the Middle Eastern Europe. It was communism. It was under the Soviet rule.
Yemi A.D.: And for those who are listening to us, I am a black kid. My mother is Czech. My father is Nigerian. And when I was growing up, it was kind of… but now that I look back, of course, when I was young, I didn’t think this way. But when I look back at it, it was a little bit strange because I was growing up in a really, really, very monochromatic white community.
Yemi A.D.: And my dad, when I was four, he was visiting his family in Nigeria and there was a revolution and he lost freedom because he couldn’t come back. The borders got closed and he couldn’t come back to [the] Czech Republic. So, it was my mom, my grandma, and my grand grandma who were raising me. Three white women who was my family and who is my family.
Yemi A.D.: And I was like the only black child in the city. And I saw another black kid when I was 15, maybe. And I found dance and movement to be my language, how to connect with people around me. And because it was like the cool thing where kids would come and they would ask me to teach them some moves.
Yemi A.D.: And I was always very happy about it because it was the opportunity where I could create some value or I could just make people happy. So I did it a lot and I love to do it. And I just like grew into a dancer and was able to travel around the world and spend time at some of the biggest stages of the world.
Yemi A.D.: And then moved from dancing to choreographing to work with big names. I [worked] five years with Kanye West, with Virgil Abloh. I did big shows like Saturday Night Live, VMAs, Coachella. I directed the Yeezus tour for Kanye and so much more. So it was really like – I shared this story, especially when I travel around the schools when I’m working with young people, because I feel like in the United States, you have a lot of this narrative that you know, you can be born in the wrong zip code.
Yemi A.D.: You can have the wrong color. You can have parents that cannot provide and you become the victim of the system, you know? And I always try to just like enhance the self efficacy of young people that is really, it’s really… I know there is like some physical bar, like limits and boundaries that make it hard for you.
Yemi A.D.: And I don’t say they don’t exist. Yes. For a big portion of my life, I had to work twice as much for half as much. Yeah. And it’s true, but it didn’t stop me [from dreaming] big and to just go from like [a] Middle Eastern small town, like a little ghetto, into Hollywood and do great things.
Yemi A.D.: And I think today is the time, is the age where it’s worth it to work and it’s worth it to be creative and to really like open your mind because I think you can really achieve like unimaginable things and the space mission is just like one of the many, many things that are accessible to all of us.
Helen: I find you so inspiring and I’m sure our listeners will too. You mentioned the space mission, but let’s rewind just a little bit. So you had this amazing career as a dancer and a choreographer. At what point in time, I think you were a fellow at the Aspen Institute, where you saw a specific video about the dearMoon project.
Helen: So tell us, cause I’m assuming maybe not everyone who’s listening or watching knows about dearMoon. So let’s talk about dearMoon in this video and what happened after that and this amazing moment in time that you find yourself in.
Yemi A.D.: Yeah, it was actually – so when I, you know, when I was growing up, I went through many different professions. I went from dancer to choreographer to director to producer. I founded different companies, I had a talent agency, event production agency, a creative studio, dance academy, and every time when I was kind of reinventing myself, and I like, I love that actually, because starting from scratch, like starting again from nothing, and it’s very liberating because like just building on top of your previous things, it can be limiting, you know, but starting to write a new [00:10:40] story on a white paper is beautiful to me.
Yemi A.D.: And it’s also very grounding because you know, I’m dreamer, so I like to fly up, but this like starting and saying, “Hey, I don’t know, I don’t know how to do that. I have to learn it.” I think it’s, it keeps my mind very flexible.
Yemi A.D.: But when I work with Kanye, something different also happens because you are at [these] like big stages. And for those of you who work in entertainment industry, you know, that being on a stage, you know, in front of the tens of thousands of people, it’s like a drug, right? And being doing the business, the biggest jobs, you know, that people wait, you know, for a whole lifetime to to be in that position.
Yemi A.D.: So when you decide to step down from that, going back to Czech Republic and thinking, huh. Now I’m already like in my thirties, like, what will be next? And will the next be better than the last? And it’s going to be, you know, like it’s, and also people reminding you like, Oh, you know, for some time, it, as much as it was like one of the biggest and most beautiful experiences, especially because of the freedom that Ye gave me and that I could really create with really almost no boundaries.
Yemi A.D.: At the same time, it’s also a stigma because people connect to you and then it happens to you that you travel around the world and many times, people don’t even ask me about my work. They ask me if I met Kim Kardashian, you know? So, and this happens not just one or two times. It happens hundreds of times everywhere you go, you know?
Yemi A.D.: So then when you want to step down and reinvent, this also is kind of stuck with you. And it takes more effort and a little bit longer time to really come up with. So this is a great experience. Like I’ve been in the rooms in backstages and I have such a unique experience that gives me a very unique perspective that only a few people on this planet have.
Yemi A.D.: What, how can I transform this into the next? How can I take that and make it into something that’s going to be valuable, not just for me, but for other people. And that was like that moment. And I decided that I’ll try to apply for a scholarship to study in the United States. And after four years of trying I got [accepted into the] Aspen Institute, Henry Crown Fellowship, and this was a big thing because it’s like, they only take 20 people per year.
Yemi A.D.: They have like 500 people on the waiting list and everybody in that class is like in their forties. More, more or less, plus minus five years and everybody is already very successful in their, you know, different businesses, somebody, you know, is working like there is Poppy Harlow who work in CNN for the morning news, there is deep cadence from Chicago, who was like the guy who got the first license for marijuana distribution and now is investing his money into covering tuition of young people who are underserved from Chicago.
Yemi A.D.: There is Sean Belote who worked with robotics. There is Jewel Burns who is like an amazing entrepreneur who runs a capital. It’s a VC fund that supports black owned businesses and many other people, really the whole spectrum. So, everybody’s really kind of boosting each other.
Yemi A.D.: And that was big for me. So when – that moment when I applied, I also was at a job with my friend, Peter, who is [a] great cinematographer and he showed me this video. And this video was describing Yusaku Maezawa, who is a Japanese entrepreneur, art collector, who created Zozotown, also became a billionaire.
Yemi A.D.: And he decided to offer to bring eight artists around the moon. And Peter, my friend, brought this video to me and said, “Hey, [I] see you’re doing these things here. You’re doing these events and campaigns and you should be doing this. You should fly to the moon.” And he showed it to me and I was looking at it and I couldn’t get that out of my head because I was thinking yeah, I should, I want to. You know, I always want to be playing the hardest game.
Yemi A.D.: I don’t want to just, you know, be doing something. When I learn how to do something, I’m like ready to learn something new. I don’t want to just, you know, spin the wheel and repeat, repeat stuff. So these two events, the school, the leadership, let’s say a leadership fellowship and the moon mission, where like the two things that somehow they collided.
Yemi A.D.: And the way how they collided is that when I got to know about the moon mission, I did not have the guts or the, I was not strong enough. You know, my self efficacy was not there to really say like, “Yeah, I can do it. Let me go.” But then when I shared it with my class they were like, “Hell yeah, you should definitely do this. This is a great idea.”
Yemi A.D.: And that’s something that I like about the United States because there is like – when I travel around the world, like there is, you know, everybody has [an] opinion about the United States and many people, their opinion is not really very, very nice. But what I love about the United States is that people really, a lot of people encourage each other here.
Yemi A.D.: They are like, positive about other people’s prospects and what they can do. And I like that. I think it makes, sometimes it makes a big difference. If you have people around you who believe in you, who give you those words of encouragement and it’s honest or it’s authentic.
Yemi A.D.: And that’s what I felt from my class. So, and that’s how the name of Moonshot was created because they decided; they voted that the name of the class will be Moonshot and just to support me in my mission. And also each of them have their own moonshot, right? Moonshot doesn’t have to be about space journey.
Yemi A.D.: So as I was leaving from that first seminar, it was in Colorado in Aspen mountains. I felt like, wow, these people believe in me more than I even believe in myself. And that was the moment that I decided that I want to apply.
Helen: That’s beautiful. And I know you said on one of the stages that it almost took you like six months of like the idea being planted to build the confidence to like, really apply and like, believe that it could actually happen.
Helen: So, I love that, you know, some ideas take a little bit of time to simmer as well. So dearMoon… Yusaku? Is that how you say it? Does he go by MZ?
Yemi A.D.: Yes, exactly. He goes by MZ. That’s easier.
Helen: MZ, Okay. Has said that art has the power to promote world peace. And I think that’s so beautiful.
Helen: But a gal said on stage that when the earthrise photo was taken, William Anders, who was a engineer and part of Apollo eight when asked, like to describe the experience he has this quote: “They should have sent poets and not astronauts because we couldn’t capture the grandeur of what we had seen.”
Helen: And I just love that quote. And it’s so beautiful. And that MZ is sending 8 artists. If I understand correctly, you each are tasked with creating your own art projects when you go to space. And is there a collective art project too, that you’ll all eight will be working on together?
Yemi A.D.: Yes, there is each of us and this is probably the best part right after zero gravity.
Yemi A.D.: I mean, like for me, like selfishly, I really am looking forward to dance in the space. And also Starship is such a beautiful development. It’s so generous in space, you know, how big it is. So, that’s like something I’m really looking forward to. But like the second best thing is, are the people who are flying with me and the group of people that was selected out of 1 million candidates.
Yemi A.D.: And it took two years to select. The selection process was really long. And we had to go through so many different moments and points of evaluation. So, I’m really looking forward to, to co create and co design with all of these people. And each of us, we, everybody there stands for something
Yemi A.D.: Like Yusaku, MZ is all about world peace and about, you know, stopping the war, not the war, stopping any war. Then there is Karim [Iliya] who is an amazing documentarist, who’s a free diver who dives and records and takes pictures of whales or who climbs into volcanoes.
Yemi A.D.: And, you know, he’s like on the edges of the earth where there are no people, that’s where he goes. And he is able to capture moments that are just magical. We have Rhiannon Adam, who it’s using Polaroid and this more like an old school process of taking images and she is like diving into also depths, but depths of our social structure to people who are maybe underrepresented, maybe going through a trauma, maybe who are in very unusual and unique circumstances.
Yemi A.D.: Or Brandon Hall, who just now released a movie called Out There. He just won some award. It’s about national parks. And I love the way he is able to capture documentary movies about our planet, but there is also K-pop singer, T.O.P. who is like a huge global star.
Yemi A.D.: There is Steve Aoki, the DJ or Tim Dodd who is the everyday astronaut founder of the YouTube channel or Dev Joshi who is a Bollywood star, the Indian Superman gone Baalveer. So like, all these people are really phenomenal and I can’t wait to create with them.
Helen: That’s amazing. And I don’t know where you’re at.
Helen: Cause I know we don’t know the exact date that you guys will be going on this mission, but in the preparation, have you already started any of the, like, astronaut training of any, like, underwater or? Have you had any sense of what the weightlessness might feel like already or yeah? What would it – because I know you mentioned on stage that you’ve had tons of medical tests and stuff but what has been some of the preparation so far in that regard?
Yemi A.D.: Yeah, so so far really it was all about the process of getting the ticket. As I said, lots of different types of tests and reviews. And we had to supply you know, presentations and things about us and about our art. Then the medical checkups, which were very thorough, like hundreds of tests, and then meeting each other, getting to know each other, getting to know space ads, getting to know the personal, going to the launches, understanding what happens at the launch, how it’s the feeling, you know, the starship already launched three times.
Yemi A.D.: I was there two times physically on the shore. And I have to say it’s really, it’s really like a transformative experience. If when, you know, you’re going to be in the rocket one day, launching, leaving the Earth. For us to stand there on the shore in Boca Chica in Texas, seeing the ignition, seeing the cloud and the force.
Yemi A.D.: And the shockwave through the ground, the trembling, the air, the sonic wave, it completely changed the information about going to space into visceral sensation. And also it brought a very different relationship to that, you know, before it was like an idea, it was an information, but then after witnessing the launch, it gives you a different level of respect to the decision you’ve made.
Yemi A.D.: So that was big, but when you, when it comes to trainings this happens once the launch date is set and it was not set yet, you know, so, so I myself, I’m aiming in my own calendar that I’m aiming for, because I need to kind of have some kind of deadline to, you know, to manage my life and the projects and everything towards some goal.
Yemi A.D.: But I know it’s going to be very intense because the rocket is going to be all new. So we will be able to, we will have to learn how to, you know, maneuver the equipment in the rocket. We are not interfering with the navigation itself, but the technology in the rocket to be able to eat and sleep and just like, all the life functions we’ll have to be able also to attend to each other, you know, whether medically or in any other capacity.
Yemi A.D.: So I’m really looking forward to it. I think so far the mission and the knowledge of being part of that crew just brought a lot of good things into my life. You know, one of the most important things is keeping healthy. So I went, I started like a longevity so like a system or treatments.
Yemi A.D.: I also started to study more about about the space, you know, journeys. I met a ton of astronauts, [Thomas] Pesquet from France, Richard Garriott from from US, [Timothy] Kopra, also the former commander of the ISS, and it’s been beautiful encounters. And I can say that the community of astronauts, there are some really amazing people and it’s [an] honor to be part of that group.
Helen: And how long is the mission going to be?
Yemi A.D.: It’s planned for a week. It’s about six days because it takes about three days to fly to the moon. I think the speed is around 36,000 kilometers per hour. Really fast. And I’m not sure about how long it’s going to take, you know, to get to the orbit and resupply because there is some, you know, resupplying when it comes to propeller propellant.
Yemi A.D.: So, I think this will all be fine tuned as the development of Starship will be finalized.
Helen: I know at the space stage at the Texas Eclipse Festival, where I got to hear you speak, there was also other astronauts and then lay people who have also got to go on commercial space flights, kind of talking about their different experiences.
Helen: And all of them said, whether it was like SpaceX or Blue Origins or the other ones that like the takeoff is really great. Like you could hold a drink and you know, nothing would spill, but the re-entry is very different. But one of my biggest takeaways is that space travel will be really affordable and within reach in our lifetime.
Helen: And everyone got me really excited because one of my life goals or dreams is to become a space tourist too, and it seems like, for better, for worse, you know, Elon Musk and what he’s doing with Space X is really driving the commercial space industry forward. And I guess, I think it’s the Starship too, like it’s bigger than a 747 on the inside.
Helen: Is that right?
Yemi A.D.: Yeah, it’s about the size. Yeah.
Helen: Yeah. And one thing that was said on stage a lot too, was the overview effects of like how life changing it is to see Earth from space. But it was also mentioned kind of how you were just saying that even seeing the launches has a little bit of an overview effect too.
Helen: I didn’t know if you wanted to expand on any of your conversations with the astronauts or share a little bit more about the overview effects, but I thought that was one of the things that stuck with me after the Texas Eclipse Festival.
Yemi A.D.: The overview effect is something that astronauts [have] different opinions about, you know, some feel it profoundly.
Yemi A.D.: Some say it’s exaggerated. My observation was especially looking at the experience of MZ and seeing his movie. He created a movie, why I went to space. And this is really just my personal take and I haven’t been to space yet. So, you know, take it as just like, something I believe in.
Helen: Well, we’ll get you back on this show afterwards and see if it changes.
Yemi A.D.: Please. I think that there is maybe one misconception. So what I think that happens is that when you go to space and you see all that, right, you see the planet, you don’t see the borders. You see how fragile like a little blue ball it is. And then you have this vast depth around, right? And there is this very tiny foil, like just a little barrier between the death of the space, nothingness, and then this fertile ground.
Yemi A.D.: So all this, you’re realizing while being in a can, flying really fast through the darkness. And you’re very close to death because the, between you and the death is just a very thin piece of material. And I think wherever you are close to death, you’re experiencing life very fully and very like viscerally.
Yemi A.D.: So I think all this together, it creates some kind of emotion and maybe a little override of things and concepts that we were taught, right? We are believing in certain truth just because generations and generations of people before us has believed in the same, right?
Yemi A.D.: So it’s just passed down. But I think this space journey creates some kind of an override that brings you maybe closer to the truth, to more universal truth, not your own truth or truth of your nation or ethnicity or your religion. And so this is one. But then when you come back, I think it’s still you.
Yemi A.D.: I think it’s still, you know, it’s still that one person, but I think what happens is it shifts the direction in which you are walking from that point further. So sometimes when you ask the astronaut, like what’s different from them right after they come back, some who are very honest, they say nothing like I have [had] this experience, but it’s still me.
Yemi A.D.: But then when you ask them two, three, four, six months later, one year later, they are changed because I think what happens is that you just kind of re-aim where you walk, where you had it. And then after some months you arrive to that place, right? It’s not, it doesn’t happen immediately.
Yemi A.D.: It’s like when your hair grow, when you go out and you go back, can you see that your hair grew? No, you cannot. But after a year you will see the hair grew, right? So, that’s what I mean. Like if the hair had different color, you will only know after a year; the change. And I think that’s why it’s hard for them to agree on what the overview effect is, because it’s not a point in time.
Yemi A.D.: It’s not a chemical reaction that happens, but it can only, or maybe it is, but it can also only be seen by others or observed by yourself. I think over time.
Helen: That’s very interesting. Well, I’m very curious what your experience will be on the other side. And one thing that was really evident on stage at the Texas Eclipse Festival, which is how much of a new family that you have with the other artists who are going.
Helen: And you shared a really funny story of one of the launches. I think it was in Kazakhstan. But it was just like, everyone was cracking up on stage. But I thought it would be fun to share that with our viewers to just get a glimpse into more of the, you know, maybe not the crazy aspirational aspects, but like the day to day fun that you guys have.
Yemi A.D.: Yeah, yeah. So, you’re right, the crew is like a new family and we are, even though we are so different, I think it’s so beautiful because we really add to each other’s perspective and maybe even change each other’s opinions and minds, which I always welcome.
Yemi A.D.: So, I remember I went to one of the lounges of Soyuz, you know, and Soyuz is the one of the oldest rockets used by Russians to resupply ISS. But it’s also one of the most reliable rockets ever built. It’s [been] working for decades and also what the Russians are known for; they will launch in any circumstance. It can be winter, it can be a blizzard.
Yemi A.D.: It can be, you know, cold weather, hot weather, doesn’t matter. They will launch and they will launch successfully, which is kind of interesting because when you go there and when you see the launch bed, and this is the oldest lounge bed in Kazakhstan, it’s called Baikonur. And it’s where the Gagarin you know, Yuri Gagarin went from it looks like [a] mining facility.
Yemi A.D.: It’s very old, it’s like rusty, it’s very… It looks like in Czechoslovakia in the eighties where I come from. So it feels a really familiar. And then you have these engineers and they and the people from the launching process.
Yemi A.D.: They are dressed like miners almost, right? And it’s very like heavy machinery, lots of steel and metal. So we are there and it’s about launch. We are [at] a certain distance. I don’t know if it was like two kilometers or two and a half kilometers.
Yemi A.D.: And I see like Tim Dodd from Everyday Astronaut is setting up his his gear, his tripod. And I can see he’s nervous. And so I’m asking him like, “What’s up?” He’s like, “Oh, you know, we are too close. You know, we are too close. In the United States we would have to be at least twice as far, and it’s not safe.”
Yemi A.D.: And I’m like looking at these people and there’s like a hundred people around and I can see a lot of the Russian people. I can see they’ve done this before. So I’m being cool but at the same time, he really knows, like, he is like, Tim Dodd is like the person to go to if you want to know anything about rocket science and the way the development goes or what could go wrong, you ask him, and I have done many times during this experience.
Yemi A.D.: So then this, like, big Russian guy who is a trainer of the cosmonauts comes and says, “Hey. Come with me we gonna drive.” And he brings this van and he puts us in and there is like a van for nine people, but we are like 20 people in squeeze and we are driving about 10 minutes before the launch.
Yemi A.D.: We’re driving towards the rocket. And as I understood, we were gonna see like a place that is closer but safe so we can really have the experience. So we are like driving across this like ground, it’s really wobbly. We are like banging our heads in the minivan.
Yemi A.D.: And I’m looking at Tim Dodd. Tim Dodd is sweating. He is sweating. And I asked him, what’s up Tim? And he’s like, “I don’t know maybe, we gonna bleed from our ears.”
Yemi A.D.: And I’m like, I’m starting to be really nervous. And I am like, what? So we are driving towards the rocket and we are passing the rocket just minutes before the ignition. And we are arriving a little bit further behind and stopping the car behind a heap of ground, literally just like a heap of dirt that is as high as the minivan.
Yemi A.D.: And we are just standing behind it and everybody in, I could see like everybody’s really, really freaking out. But not everybody, only the Americans and me from Czech Republic and the other nationalities who are in the car.
Yemi A.D.:And then I see the walkie talkie and he is picking the walkie talkie and there is like this voice that says, “Come back, come back, you have to. You can’t do this. You can’t do this. And or, we called you or we saw,” I don’t know, something in Russian and he is like turning it to us and he’s apologizing. He says, “Well, we can’t do this today. It’s too much press. We have to go back.”
Yemi A.D.: So we are, and because it was like a big moment, so we are driving back. As we’re driving back, this is really just like minutes before it’s already the rocket already is steaming. The cloud of steam is coming from the rocket as we are passing by, going to the original spot. And as we are walking out, shaking, putting the tripods back, the rocket is launching and the ignition happened, like, I would never forget this.
Yemi A.D.: It was the most like out of this world experience. And then when the rocket launched, like a lot of people were crying. It’s really hard not to tear up because it’s like, you see there’s people in this can that’s, that they penetrate the stratosphere and it makes this sound like, like, like a celestial sound.
Yemi A.D.: And then, you know, these people are gone and they will be back. So we went to just walk around because it takes a few hours before the rocket gets to the ISS before they connect because they touch before they touch down. And we went to this local pub, and this is a beautiful pub made of wood, like wooden pub.
Yemi A.D.: And we can see these guys. Some of the engineers, sitting down drinking moonshine and one of them speaks English. And he’s like, “We are the engineers. We are the people who are turning the key to land,” you know? So we spent a couple of hours with them. We drank with them. We laughed with them.
Yemi A.D.: We heard about the relationship between Russia and Kazakhstan. We heard about how this, you know, like just the real authentic stories of people, because sometimes it’s, it really is a privilege to be able to travel as much as I do to be proximate to people.
Yemi A.D.: To ask questions to people because being, you know, just depending on the news, whether it’s TV or internet, very often it’s echo chambers or needs of people and also being careful about not to really say something bluntly or not to discourage someone or not to move the stock exchange prices. And all that, you know, that there’s so much, it’s so much complexity before information can get to us.
Yemi A.D.: So I think it’s a great privilege to just be like sitting in the pub with people and asking them the real questions about their real life.
Helen: And I know one of my takeaways too, is I want to go see a rocket launch this year and see one for myself. And one of the things that you said at SXSW, so I saw you on stage and then you did a special smaller session where we had a round table and got to do a deeper dive, is that, you know, you’ve been kind of questioned a little bit of like, “Why are you going to the moon when there’s so much happening at back at home?”
Helen: You know, that it might not be frivolous, but like, why are you putting your energy [into] going to the moon? And you had said something really beautiful of like, the importance of dreaming despite what’s happening in the world. And you know, space is such a beautiful unifying thing, but I’m going to read what you said and then let you expand on it.
Helen: Cause it was so beautiful. “What is our future made up? If not woven from the threads of our individual dreams? If we don’t create space and time for dreaming, if we are not courageous enough to share the dreams with each other, then we can never evolve this tapestry of the future that we want to dream about. And the space journey that we are getting ready for is definitely an important dream that should be.” I thought that was just so beautiful.
Yemi A.D.: Wow. I don’t even, this is funny. I don’t even know [that] I said this. I should write it down so I can say it again. So, sometimes all these experiences are creating something that I’m not even aware [of].
Yemi A.D.: And it’s just like, just coming out. But what I believe in is, many people, it happens, you know, it happens many times because there are conflicts in the world and sometimes, you know, you are like at the reception. Yeah. And there is food, there is people chit chatting about things and, you know, you see, you can see money is spent, you know, people are indulging themselves and very often you are thinking, “Huh, how about my brothers and sisters from Africa or from Ukraine or from Israel or from Palestine.”
Yemi A.D.: How about those? Like, how can this be fair? Me being here, you know, doing these things and indulging myself while they don’t have, you know, anything to eat or shelter. And there is this space mission. I don’t think it falls. into the category of indulgence. I don’t believe it because I think one, we can either shoot rockets at each other, or we can shoot rockets to space and space mission is known for one thing in particular, we needed to unite to be able to overcome gravity.
Yemi A.D.: If we did not unite, we wouldn’t be able to build space station. We wouldn’t be able to really do something significant. Yeah, there was a space race. Yeah. But we all know how it happened, right? Well, lives were lost, things were rushed and in the end, was it sustainable? No, it happened once and then nothing, right?
Yemi A.D.: Because that was an individual effort. But now there are united efforts the partnerships between private sector and the governments, and public sector, the partnerships between countries, you know, and beautiful, inspiring people who are just, you know, showing different perspectives of how can we look at space travel and how can we look back at Earth.
Yemi A.D.: So I think space travel is uniting and we need to be united. Number two, I know that there is war and I know that we absolutely need people looking down into the depth of those wars. And aiding people, supporting people, figuring out how can we get out of this war, but at the same time, it cannot be everyone on this world looking in the same direction, because if you look, if everyone looks down, we all going to end up going down, we need to have portion of people looking up and looking in the other direction.
Yemi A.D.: And why? One because every new child that’s born into this world, I want them to be excited about things, you know? And excitement and fun and just a good, you know, positive expansive feelings. It’s important for us to just want to be alive and to want to build and connect with each other and unite again, you know? And that’s what war is not doing, war is divisive.
Yemi A.D.: So those of us who have the, you know, the strength to deal with the war, they should deal with the war. And those of us who have the strength to dream big should also dream big. And these two things can happen at the same time. I think they must happen at the same time because otherwise I think the world would be a dark place.
Helen: Beautifully said. And one of the questions that you got asked at that round table at SXSW was just does this feel surreal to you? Is the enormity of the seat that you sit in? Cause you have this kind of like, Willy Wonka golden ticket on this trip. And I remember you kind of saying something along the lines of like, I feel like my life has prepared me for everything that’s come before to where I’m at right in this moment, and you felt like just very grounded where you’re at and where you’re supposed to be.
Helen: And I wanted to just kind of, I guess, check in if that’s how you feel and how you kind of are processing this journey that you’re on. Cause I know it’s kind of a long journey between getting accepted. And then also until the actual mission goes into space too.
Yemi A.D.: I don’t think it serves us very well when we are tied up with an outcome too much. Let me just explain it. I’ll start with creativity. So creativity, because this is like my biggest topic. I’m traveling around the world and trying to teach about creativity to kids in order to step into their creative potential and to shape [the] future and to shape their environment and to shape their life.
Yemi A.D.: You don’t have to be just in that circle of how their parents were doing and how their country is doing just really create something new. And then also I do it with companies too, to speak to boards and to, you know, to infuse innovation culture and, you know, and it, and the creativity is connected to freedom and to [the] ability to really get away from the patterns of the past.
Yemi A.D.: Otherwise, we are really, really good in recycling the past and placing it ahead of us like it’s something new, but it’s nothing new. If you look [at] these [next] hundred years, it’s very similar to [the] last hundred years, right? We had the last hundred years in the 1900s. We had in the first 20 years, we had a Spanish flu.
Yemi A.D.: So 50 million people died. It was a pandemic. Then we had the first world war, you know, and now we are in a very similar spot, so I say the toys have changed, the environment may be changed a little bit, but the issues are still the same. So that’s kind of sad to me. So I think creativity and freedom and why, because if you’re not free, you are just using creativity to recycle the past.
Yemi A.D.: And if you really kind of question your freedom and step into being really open to new scenarios. That’s the way to go. It’s not good for you to be completely locked on the target, like on it, on the outcome, because and that’s how it’s connected to creativity, because I believe that.
Yemi A.D.: You have to be sensitive to how you feel at every stage of the journey. Sometimes we look on other people’s successes. We copy paste other people’s success, the outcomes of other people’s journeys, and we forgot about the journey itself. But it should always be the journey that is like expansive to you, that’s healthy, that’s enriching, it’s exciting.
Yemi A.D.: And I think that that is a relationship that you need to remind yourself of every day. Every day. And, you know, I could say, when people ask me, “Oh, so, how was the feeling when you had to sacrifice so much to be able to apply for this mission?” You know, because I had to, I kind of closed down one of my businesses.
Yemi A.D.: I decided to move to a different country. I kind of really just put everything in line for, and I didn’t know if I was going to be picked, but I knew that if 1 million people from the whole world are applying, if I don’t go full on that, I should not even try it. But when people ask me about the sacrifice, I don’t think it was actually sacrifice.
Yemi A.D.: When I look at it, it was like, I gave up something that I should have given up a long time ago. And I was just clinging on some, you know, because when you grow. You have certain recipes in your life and these recipes, they help you to, they help you to succeed. But then for example, the recipe that you use to succeed when you are between 20 and 30 is a very different recipe than the one between 30 and 40 or between 50 and 60.
Yemi A.D.: And I think the stagnation comes from us holding on too hard on all the recipes, but letting go of that equation. I think it’s necessary for you to let go of the old one for you to discover the new one. And it doesn’t always, it doesn’t happen that you first get the new one and then you can get rid of it.
Yemi A.D.: No, no, no. There’s this moment of leap of faith that you really have to let go [of] the new thing to emerge. So back to the journey of applying for the dearMoon, when I look back, I really think it just accelerated some good decisions in my life that were really healthy for me and that were great.
Yemi A.D.: So even now, when you say like how, of course, there’s this torch that’s really burning in your hands, right? But I’ve had those torches before, with Kanye West, with my company. When I was employing people, I was responsible, you know, for others in big projects. You know, we were doing global campaigns for Apple for new iPad Pro.
Yemi A.D.: I was doing campaigns for Mercedes Benz when they brought new electric cars on the market. We were doing like, many different things and every single thing, it always really mattered to me. I took my work was always very personal to me. I was, I would always give everything into it. So there was these torches that burn, but of course this is one of the hottest torches that I have ever held and it’s burning.
Yemi A.D.: But I think in order for you to be healthy, to have a healthy relationship to it, I think it’s important to check with yourself and always look under your feet. Where are you? Are you having fun? Are you learning new stuff? Are you meeting great people? Are you creating good partnerships? And I think if this is in check, if this is all like in line, then this new recipe is going to emerge.
Yemi A.D.: You just have to be present to it and aware.
Helen: Okay. So one of the things that you’ve said is that you have found freedom in movement. And I thought that was so beautiful. And also that there’s intelligence in movement. And you’ve had the great privilege of spending 20 years to travel around the world and study indigenous cultures and their movement at rituals and mournings.
Helen: And I was curious, like how you came to do that? And what is like one of your biggest lessons from getting to, to travel the world and observe people in those moments?
Yemi A.D.: Yeah. Well, I have to say that my relationship to dance and to movement has changed many times through[out] my life.
Yemi A.D.: But that’s why I know that there is intelligence in movement itself, you know, and in your body. And it’s not in your mind. It’s not in your brain. It’s just in the body. Cultivated you know, for tens of generations for thousands of years, because the fact that you are alive, so many people have died for you to be alive, right?
Yemi A.D.: When you think about genetics and how [the] body has this unique ability to heal, and then if something is wrong, you just, you die and then you don’t survive. And then. You know, and you don’t pass on, you know, the genetic material. So our body and the fact that we are the one who have survived all of the things that, that this world, you know, put on us is unique.
Yemi A.D.: So there is intelligence in it and the language of that intelligence is movement. And so, when I travel around the world and I meet indigenous tribes and people, I study their movement and their rituals and their ceremonies.
Yemi A.D.: And when I say study, I don’t mean [00:54:11] academically. I mean, like being with them, being close to them, spending time with them in their like inner circle and what I’ve learned and what was very kind of liberating, I think I found a key to unlocking my own personal freedom through that journey. And I think it was one of the most important aha moments for me.
Yemi A.D.: And I think it was a combination of things. One of the things is we are all part of the social construct, right? So we think about like, we are, we have a name, we are someone, but just the fact that we have a name like Helen, it’s limiting because you are learning things about Helen, about that character in your imagination, since you were [a] child. And people tell you what Helen is, what Helen is not, what Helen can do, what she cannot do, what she’s good at, what she’s not good at.
Yemi A.D.: So you also agree with yourself internally on those different things, thousands of things, maybe tens of thousands of things. So eventually it becomes a story that’s kind of limiting and then because when you wake up and you meet your husband, your kids and your, you know, girlfriends, and they kind of expect you to do you.
Yemi A.D.: So, it’s not just about what you think you are, but also what they think you are. And when you go and you travel to indigenous cultures and you are in such a different environment, that these people have very different expectations from you. Sometimes they have no expectations from you. And it’s very liberating because you don’t have to do you, you can just, you know, and it’s kind of shattering that social construct for you and you can be anything and that’s very liberating and when you spend enough time and when you like go back and I’ve done it for 20 years, so I go back and forth.
Yemi A.D.: It can be a little bit disorienting also, there’s lots of uncertainty, but if you go through that, it’s like going through the fire. If you go through that, that on the other side, there’s something really great that’s waiting for you that will become part of your awareness. And then for me, one of the tools I use when I create new things, an operating system that I can switch into when I want to be creative.
Yemi A.D.: So I think that was not a very speedy answer but I hope that it’s an answer that people can use for their own benefit, hopefully.
Helen: And you went from being with indigenous communities to having your dance moves train a humanoid robot as well. And when you were on stage at SXSW for the keynote one of the things that you opened that session with is what are the questions we should be asking our artists and the leaders and the people building this tech? And I wanted to ask you that question. What do you think is one of the biggest questions that we need to be asking kind of at the intersection of art and creativity is where in this crazy technological, you know, moment of change too.
Yemi A.D.: Yeah. And this is fascinating to me. So as you can see, I’m like a futurist, right? So I love space. I’m a geek. So I love science fiction. I love board games and creativity and traveling around the world. And definitely also anything to do with robots, because one, robot is a word that was created by Czech author in 1920, Karel Čapek, in his novel. And so it comes from Czech.
Yemi A.D.: I’m very proud of it. And two, I feel like it is one of the biggest shifts of paradigm that we are heading into. And because I feel like it’s full of people who are really very analytical, you know, technological people, very number driven. And I think it’s important. I think really a representation matters, not just there should be black people and queer people and women represented everywhere, but I feel like also representation in the mindset and and the way of thinking.
Yemi A.D.: And very often I see there are not many of the people that are more from the creative side. So I really enjoy it to work, and right now I developed this keynote for SXSW with Apptronik, which is an Austin based company that creates; I think they have the most beautiful humanoid robot on the market. It’s really beautiful.
Yemi A.D.: It’s very gentle. And the CEO, Jeff Cardenas is very like a human centered thinker and leader, which is great. So, I started to work with them on developing the humanoid robot, and I started to think with them about what would be the framework of human centered strategy. Because I think we have to do really just a better job than we did with the other technological advancements.
Yemi A.D.: Like you can see that. Social media and the algorithm and the way we distribute news and all of this like disinformation, it really corroded our society. It changed lives of kids. You know, it’s even shortening our lifespan, creating a pandemic of loneliness and more and more.
Yemi A.D.: And also, especially the most like, kind of critical thing is that it’s rewarding the worst in us, right? It’s rewarding us for lying, for being toxic, for being aggressive for, you know, it’s rewarding our speed over our truth. And I think we really did a bad job and now you’re trying to pick up the pieces, but I think it’s really hard because already it’s feeding so many people, the machine was built and the machine is hungry.
Yemi A.D.: So, it’s very hard to control it. [But] I think when it comes to robots, we should look at this, we should just do a better job. And I think we cannot do a better job without really, really good representation. Because if you build something this important with just people who all think alike, you know, they are all aligned.
Yemi A.D.: If you don’t really challenge yourself to disagree about things and be generous enough to bring these disagreements into uniting solutions, then I think we are heading into something much worse then what we are seeing in the age of you know, the internet. So AI is [a] big part of it, of course.
Yemi A.D.: And I just love to be on the inside and take a part in this development, because I think it’s vital for us to have a future that we want to dream of.
Helen: One question, because we talk a lot about in the show, like envisioning, you know, a future, what would be your ideal future?
Helen: You know, in the, and you’ve said, like, we need more positive stories of what we can do with this tech and, you know, break from the past patterns and stuff. In the future, according to Yemi, what would be one of your ideal scenarios that we can envision and maybe help dream together?
Yemi A.D.: I think that the future, if there should be one thing I wish for the future, it would be a future where we learn to improve and just have great relationships. I think that the relationships are corroded. I think we don’t learn enough about relationships. What I mean is the relationship to us, to ourselves.
Yemi A.D.: Relationships to each other and also relationship of countries, ethnicities and nations with each other. And I think this would be the big, big wish because if we would learn and if we would also teach our kids about all the intricacies and the differences in cultures and we really focus on the relationship, I think [the] world would be really changed and different.
Helen: I want to make sure, cause you are so youth driven and want to make sure that youth have a seat at the table, that you have an opportunity to share a little bit more about your Moonshot platform and let people know what it is and if they want to get involved.
Helen: And that will be my last question, even though I have like 20 more for you. So I’ll hold off.
Yemi A.D.: Thank you. So Moonshot platform is something where my heart is. It’s where would I spend the most time at every day. It’s a global accelerator for young social innovators. We have community across 18 countries, and this year is a very special one.
Yemi A.D.: Very soon, probably by the time this podcast is out, we will be launching Moonshot Awards, where we will distribute a hundred thousand dollars to young social innovators. We will also grant them a mentorship and we will invite 30 to a hundred of them to Moonshot camp, which is [an] accelerating program.
Yemi A.D.: It’s [a] really transformative program. It’s built in immersive classrooms. We have amazing mentors like world, top class mentors who are people who have run multi billion dollar companies, who are leaders in the governments, leaders of NGOs, who are scientists, who are professors at top Ivy league universities.
Yemi A.D.: So this is something I’m really passionate about because I believe that young people deserve to have a seat at the table. I think diversity is also about age and about having these young people because these young people are in a very special and unique position.
Yemi A.D.: This is a generation that will be teaching their kids, but also their parents. This is the generation that will inherit the world that right now we have no clue of what they will inherit as much as we have no clue on what [01:04:51] to teach young people in the schools. For the first time in history, really, we don’t know [what the world] will look like in 10, 20 years.
Yemi A.D.: So I think it’s a unique opportunity for us to also shift and allow young people to have a seat at the table. We focus on people between 15 and 30 years old, but anyone who is listening to this podcast, please go to MoonshotPlatform.org and become a part of the community. There is no age restriction.
Yemi A.D.: You can be a mentor. You can be an advisor and you can, you know, you can just be part of it. I think anybody who is rooting for the young people, and we are not just working with universities. We are working with different kinds of organizations in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America. So it’s not just the global North.
Yemi A.D.: It’s also global South. So thank you, Helen. Thank you for giving me an opportunity to also share a bit about Moonshot. It was great to talk to you. And I hope my intention before this podcast was that I want to create a space where the listener is going to have at least one aha moment during listening to us.
Yemi A.D.: So I hope that some of you will. And if you want to connect with me, I am on Instagram as @YemiAlchemist, also on Facebook, LinkedIn, and I’ll be happy to chat. Thank you.
Helen: And I’ll be sure to link to everything to make sure that you can find Yemi very easily. And Yemi, thank you so much for sharing all of your time and perspective and your just infectious, like, optimism and energy.
Helen: I just get excited being physically in your presence, but even hearing your voice, you just have this infectiousness about you that I just so appreciate and so excited for you. Congratulations. And we’ll all be cheering you on and following you. And excited to have you back on the show once, once you’re back after your trip and see what’s changed for you then too.
Helen: So, thank you. Thank you for being on the show.
Yemi A.D.: Thank you, Helen. Thanks, everyone.
Helen: Thank you for spending some time with us today. We’re just getting started and would love your support. Subscribe to Creativity Squared on your preferred podcast platform and leave a review. It really helps. And I’d love to hear your feedback.
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