An immersive record of what the LA fires left behind | Nonny de la Peña

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. The soundtrack for the apocalypse might be silent. Or at least that's how journalist Nonny de la Peña describes walking through the neighborhoods burned by the January 2025 Southern California wildfires. fires. Block after block, with no cars, no children, no birds, no sound at all. I remember back then we could hardly see because of all of the neighborhoods so destroyed and the burnt smells thick in the air, but very few sounds. I know, personally, when you're looking at what is the remains of what had been a vibrant life, you can't help but feel like everything is gone.

0:51There's a code among journalists to bear witness and write the first draft of history. For Nani, that has meant showing up with whatever technology it takes to make people feel what she sees. She is a pioneer of immersive journalism, a form of storytelling that puts you inside the story, not just in front of it. So when the fires tore through her hometown of Los Angeles and where she herself lost everything, She suited up in hazmat gear, mobilized her graduate students, and went out to document what was left. She shares what she found and how she used technology and storytelling to help the rest of the world bear witness to what happened and what's to come.

1:30Silence is not emptiness. It's a place to reflect and remember, to imagine wild ways we can rebuild, and to consider what really endures. That's coming up right after a short break.

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4:04And now our TED Talk of the day. The soundtrack for the apocalypse is silent. We felt the weight of that total absence of sound when we arrived in the devastated neighborhoods of Altadena and the Palisades after the January 2025 firestorm. Our small crew of two or three were usually alone for blocks and blocks. There was no sound of cars or children or people or pool pumps or electricity across the lines. Even the birds were gone. I'm best known for having pioneered something called immersive journalism, which uses emerging technologies to create news stories that represent our world the way it really is, fully dimensional and not flat.

4:54People then can experience stories with their whole body and not just with their eyes. Also, as a journalist, I feel that we have a moral responsibility to bear witness to injustice, to wonder, to the human condition. With immersive journalism, I am merging those new technologies with that code of ethics. I'm also founding director for the Narrative and Emerging Media Program at Arizona State University. So when the fires broke out, I mobilized my colleagues and my graduate students, and we went out to cover, using our Cronkite journalism news passes, what firemen called nuketown. When we got there, the fires were basically out, so there wasn't anything anyone could really do.

5:41But when we'd run into a fire crew, they would rush over. And we thought, wow, they're going to question our press passes. But no, they just wanted to help in any way that they could. And in our case, it was just water or granola bars. All of us were suffering from shock and sorrow as the sole witnesses for the devastation around us. It was grueling work. The air was toxic. It was incredibly hot. We were wearing hazmat suits and heavy boots and double filtered masks. We were using specialized equipment designed by Mike Corona, who's a photojournalist and the former general manager for Reuters.

6:23We had these 3D printed special parts that were clamped to the top and the middle and the bottom of a pole so we could shoot in every direction all at once. I also used my phone to make very painstaking captures. You have to use your camera like a paintbrush and get every bit, every angle and at the same time make sure that you're not stepping on upturned nails or broken glass or shards of metal. This is my graduate student Ashley Bushhorn. She was trying to capture a cactus that had been really weirdly burned only on one side. I'd often look up and see my colleague Mary Matheson and she's even taken the gear into these incredibly dangerous situations determined to get the best scan possible.

7:08We scanned fallen angels, Buddhas, melted trash cans, Teslas, surf wagons. We filmed until the light was gone every day. We even used our headlights to capture this car that was sliding down the mountain. We didn't know if we'd be there the next day. More than once, I'd have to leave the crew working and go sit in the car by myself. These weren't just places on a map. I grew up in and around these neighborhoods and often we were scanning the homes of friends of mine. They hadn't even been back yet. They didn't even know the status of their own places. Like the cello teacher. This is a home that we brought my son to for years every weekend.

7:56This is a home where I held the baby shower for my first child. This is my sister's good friend's equipment. She taught horseback riding at Will Rogers Park and when the fires broke out, she rushed over to go rescue the horses, and then her own home burned, and everything she owned was also destroyed. This was a particularly difficult moment because I was standing next to the wall that had collapsed over a bedroom where I'd said goodbye to one of my best friends about a year earlier. She had died of cancer the next day. Her partner escaped with a small suitcase and a loaf of bread from their favorite bakery.

8:32The thumbnail was completely black, which is incredibly strange because none of my other thumbnails were like that of any of my scans. There was also some incredible stories. This was a house where my son spent most weekends during high school with a bunch of his buddies. One of his buddies had been there the night before the fire and he'd left his car in front of the house and taken an Uber home because they'd been out partying. They saw on Instagram an image which seemed to indicate his car was totally intact. So I called him when we got there to describe what we were seeing. And it was extraordinary.

9:07Other than ashes on top, his car looked in perfect condition. He later got into the car and just drove it away. Then there was the Bank of America building, where a lot of people had their safe deposit boxes and they were told they'd been destroyed. They'd lost family heirlooms and Holocaust papers. But it turns out underneath all this crazy rubble, everything was safe and here we were taking these images and there was nobody there guarding it Niantic the company that makes Pokemon Go learned about the work we're doing and they used our material to try to help folks who've been impacted by the fire and as a journalist that's what you want right you want your work to be used in a way that can make an impact that can help others I also had a third motivation about why I was doing the work I was doing.

10:01I really understood personally the helplessness and just the feelings of loss because a year and a half earlier, I'd had my own fire.

10:23my home studio where I lost everything personally and professionally from pretty much my entire life during COVID I'd closed up my offices in Santa Monica and I'd brought everything here I mean no one was coming to work, so this is where I thought it would be safe. It turned out my electric bicycle battery had exploded. I lost projects and equipment. I lost photos and video, archives, diaries, family memories. I inhaled smoke, I burned my gums, I damaged my lungs, and I now have what might be a permanent neuropathy in my esophagus. And I looked at the remains of what had been decades of my life, I just thought it was all gone.

11:19But a few strange things actually survived. A photo I took in college of one of my best friends. My husband of 27 years ago, he wrote me this love letter after our first date and it said, I think I see a kindred spirit in you and if you invite me, I'll cross the country in a heartbeat. Well, I invited him and he asked me to marry him on our second date. I also used my scans with my battle with the insurance company. Like they didn't want to pay on the sofa because I didn't have a receipt and the receipt had been burned in the fire. My scans showed very clearly there was a sofa in there and they had to pay on that.

11:57And it was one of the reasons why I was out there scanning everybody's homes. I wanted them to be able to use what we had in any way that they could. Another thing strangely survived the fire. In 2009, I was at an event at the University of Southern California and Mark Hamill was at the adjacent table. Now I grew up in LA and normally I don't bug celebrities. I just let them go about their lives peacefully, right? But my son was six and I couldn't resist. I asked Mark Hamill to sign the program card. And that flammable, fragile piece of paper, it somehow survived a lithium battery fire that was so hot that the fire folks said it had to burn its course.

12:42And there it was, like it drifted right on top of the hellscape that used to be my entire life. and not only that Mark Hamill wrote a message the force will be with you always your pal Mark Hamill I can't help but take that message literally the force it's within us all and it's not what we lose that defines us it's who we love and how we take that love forward I know personally when you're looking at what is the remains of what had been a vibrant life, you can't help but feel like everything is gone. But silence is not emptiness. It's a place to reflect and remember, to imagine wild ways we can rebuild, and to consider what really endures.

13:39And now as we come to the one-year anniversary of the fires, I'm calling on everyone to feel the force, to think about that love within you and help support our friends, our neighbors, our communities. Together, we can rebuild Los Angeles better and more resilient. Thank you. Thank you.

14:09That was Nani De La Pena at TEDx Manhattan Beach in California in 2025. If you're curious about TED's curation, visit ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Taubner, and Tansika Sungmarnivong. Additional support from Daniela Ballarezzo, Christopher Faze-Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban Chang, Brian Green, and Lainey Lott. Learn more at podcasts.ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet.

14:52Thanks for listening.

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15:47On the TED Radio Hour, legendary soccer player Abby Wambach remembers exactly what was going on in her mind at a crucial moment during the 2011 World Cup. As soon as the ball came off of her foot, I knew that that ball was coming to my head. The only thing in my mind was don't screw this up. The psychology of winning. That's next time on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Subscribe or listen to the TED Radio Hour wherever you get your podcasts.