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TED Talks, Frank Warren: Half a million secrets

Frank Warren: Half a million secrets

Hi, my name is Frank, and I collect secrets. It all started with a crazy idea in November of 2004. I printed up 3,000 self-addressed postcards, just like this. They were blank on one side, and on the other side I listed some simple instructions. I asked people to anonymously share an artful secret they'd never told anyone before. And I handed out these postcards randomly on the streets of Washington, D.C., not knowing what to expect.

But soon the idea began spreading virally. People began to buy their own postcards and make their own postcards. I started receiving secrets in my home mailbox, not just with postmarks from Washington, D.C., but from Texas, California, Vancouver, New Zealand, Iraq. Soon my crazy idea didn't seem so crazy. PostSecret.com is the most visited advertisement-free blog in the world. And this is my postcard collection today. You can see my wife struggling to stack a brick of postcards on a pyramid of over a half-million secrets.

What I'd like to do now is share with you a very special handful of secrets from that collection, starting with this one. "I found these stamps as a child, and I have been waiting all my life to have someone to send them to. I never did have someone." Secrets can take many forms. They can be shocking or silly or soulful. They can connect us to our deepest humanity or with people we'll never meet. (Laughter) Maybe one of you sent this one in. I don't know. This one does a great job of demonstrating the creativity that people have when they make and mail me a postcard. This one obviously was made out of half a Starbucks cup with a stamp and my home address written on the other side.

"Dear Birthmother, I have great parents. I've found love. I'm happy." Secrets can remind us of the countless human dramas, of frailty and heroism, playing out silently in the lives of people all around us even now. "Everyone who knew me before 9/11 believes I'm dead." "I used to work with a bunch of uptight religious people, so sometimes I didn't wear panties, and just had a big smile and chuckled to myself." (Laughter)

This next one takes a little explanation before I share it with you. I love to speak on college campuses and share secrets and the stories with students. And sometimes afterwards I'll stick around and sign books and take photos with students. And this next postcard was made out of one of those photos. And I should also mention that, just like today, at that PostSecret event, I was using a wireless microphone. "Your mic wasn't off during sound check. We all heard you pee." (Laughter) This was really embarrassing when it happened, until I realized it could have been worse. Right. You know what I'm saying.

(Laughter)

"Inside this envelope is the ripped up remains of a suicide note I didn't use. I feel like the happiest person on Earth (now.)" "One of these men is the father of my son. He pays me a lot to keep it a secret." (Laughter)

"That Saturday when you wondered where I was, well, I was getting your ring. It's in my pocket right now." I had this postcard posted on the PostSecret blog two years ago on Valentine's Day. It was the very bottom, the last secret in the long column. And it hadn't been up for more than a couple hours before I received this exuberant email from the guy who mailed me this postcard.

And he said, "Frank, I've got to share with you this story that just played out in my life." He said, "My knees are still shaking." He said, "For three years, my girlfriend and I, we've made it this Sunday morning ritual to visit the PostSecret blog together and read the secrets out loud. I read some to her, she reads some to me." He says, "It's really brought us closer together through the years. And so when I discovered that you had posted my surprise proposal to my girlfriend at the very bottom, I was beside myself. And I tried to act calm, not to give anything away. And just like every Sunday, we started reading the secrets out loud to each other." He said, "But this time it seemed like it was taking her forever to get through each one." But she finally did. She got to that bottom secret, his proposal to her. And he said, "She read it once and then she read it again." And she turned to him and said, "Is that our cat?" (Laughter) And when she saw him, he was down on one knee, he had the ring out. He popped the question, she said yes. It was a very happy ending.

So I emailed him back and I said, "Please share with me an image, something, that I can share with the whole PostSecret community and let everyone know your fairy tale ending." And he emailed me this picture.

(Laughter)

"I found your camera at Lollapalooza this summer. I finally got the pictures developed and I'd love to give them to you." This picture never got returned back to the people who lost it, but this secret has impacted many lives, starting with a student up in Canada named Matty. Matty was inspired by that secret to start his own website, a website called IFoundYourCamera. Matty invites people to mail him digital cameras that they've found, memory sticks that have been lost with orphan photos. And Matty takes the pictures off these cameras and posts them on his website every week. And people come to visit to see if they can identify a picture they've lost or help somebody else get the photos back to them that they might be desperately searching for. This one's my favorite.

(Laughter)

Matty has found this ingenious way to leverage the kindness of strangers. And it might seem like a simple idea, and it is, but the impact it can have on people's lives can be huge. Matty shared with me an emotional email he received from the mother in that picture. "That's me, my husband and son. The other pictures are of my very ill grandmother. Thank you for making your site. These pictures mean more to me than you know. My son's birth is on this camera. He turns four tomorrow." Every picture that you see there and thousands of others have been returned back to the person who lost it -- sometimes crossing oceans, sometimes going through language barriers.

This is the last postcard I have to share with you today. "When people I love leave voicemails on my phone I always save them in case they die tomorrow and I have no other way of hearing their voice ever again." When I posted this secret, dozens of people sent voicemail messages from their phones, sometimes ones they'd been keeping for years, messages from family or friends who had died. They said that by preserving those voices and sharing them, it helped them keep the spirit of their loved ones alive. One young girl posted the last message she ever heard from her grandmother.

Secrets can take many forms. They can be shocking or silly or soulful. They can connect us with our deepest humanity or with people we'll never meet again.

Voicemail recording: First saved voice message. Grandma: ♫ It's somebody's birthday today ♫ ♫ Somebody's birthday today ♫ ♫ The candles are lighted ♫ ♫ on somebody's cake ♫ ♫ And we're all invited ♫ ♫ for somebody's sake ♫ You're 21 years old today. Have a real happy birthday, and I love you. I'll say bye for now.

FW: Thank you.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)

June Cohen: Frank, that was beautiful, so touching. Have you ever sent yourself a postcard? Have you ever sent in a secret to PostSecret?

FW: I have one of my own secrets in every book. I think in some ways, the reason I started the project, even though I didn't know it at the time, was because I was struggling with my own secrets. And it was through crowd-sourcing, it was through the kindness that strangers were showing me, that I could uncover parts of my past that were haunting me.

JC: And has anyone ever discovered which secret was yours in the book? Has anyone in your life been able to tell?

FW: Sometimes I share that information, yeah.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

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Frank Warren: Half a million secrets Frank Warren : Un demi-million de secrets フランク・ウォーレン:50万の秘密 Frank Warren: Meio milhão de segredos Фрэнк Уоррен: Полмиллиона секретов 弗兰克·沃伦:五十万个秘密

Hi, my name is Frank, and I collect secrets. It all started with a crazy idea in November of 2004. I printed up 3,000 self-addressed postcards, just like this. They were blank on one side, and on the other side I listed some simple instructions. Eles estavam em branco de um lado e, do outro lado, listei algumas instruções simples. I asked people to anonymously share an artful secret they’d never told anyone before. Pedi às pessoas que compartilhassem anonimamente um segredo astuto que nunca haviam contado a ninguém antes. And I handed out these postcards randomly on the streets of Washington, D.C., not knowing what to expect.

But soon the idea began spreading virally. Mas logo a idéia começou a se espalhar viralmente. People began to buy their own postcards and make their own postcards. I started receiving secrets in my home mailbox, not just with postmarks from Washington, D.C., but from Texas, California, Vancouver, New Zealand, Iraq. Soon my crazy idea didn’t seem so crazy. Logo minha ideia maluca não parecia tão louca. PostSecret.com is the most visited advertisement-free blog in the world. O PostSecret.com é o blog sem publicidade mais visitado no mundo. And this is my postcard collection today. You can see my wife struggling to stack a brick of postcards on a pyramid of over a half-million secrets. Você pode ver minha esposa lutando para empilhar um tijolo de cartões postais em uma pirâmide de mais de meio milhão de segredos.

What I’d like to do now is share with you a very special handful of secrets from that collection, starting with this one. O que eu gostaria de fazer agora é compartilhar com você um punhado muito especial de segredos dessa coleção, começando com esta. "I found these stamps as a child, and I have been waiting all my life to have someone to send them to. "Encontrei esses selos quando criança e esperei a vida toda para ter alguém para quem os enviar. I never did have someone." Eu nunca tive alguém. " Secrets can take many forms. They can be shocking or silly or soulful. Eles podem ser chocantes, tolos ou comoventes. They can connect us to our deepest humanity or with people we’ll never meet. (Laughter) Maybe one of you sent this one in. (Risos) Talvez um de vocês tenha enviado este. I don’t know. This one does a great job of demonstrating the creativity that people have when they make and mail me a postcard. This one obviously was made out of half a Starbucks cup with a stamp and my home address written on the other side.

"Dear Birthmother, I have great parents. I’ve found love. I’m happy." Secrets can remind us of the countless human dramas, of frailty and heroism, playing out silently in the lives of people all around us even now. Os segredos podem nos lembrar dos inúmeros dramas humanos, da fragilidade e do heroísmo, ocorrendo silenciosamente na vida das pessoas ao nosso redor, mesmo agora. "Everyone who knew me before 9/11 believes I’m dead." "I used to work with a bunch of uptight religious people, so sometimes I didn’t wear panties, and just had a big smile and chuckled to myself." (Laughter)

This next one takes a little explanation before I share it with you. I love to speak on college campuses and share secrets and the stories with students. Gosto de falar nos campi da faculdade e compartilhar segredos e histórias com os alunos. And sometimes afterwards I’ll stick around and sign books and take photos with students. E às vezes depois eu fico por perto, assino livros e tiro fotos com os alunos. And this next postcard was made out of one of those photos. And I should also mention that, just like today, at that PostSecret event, I was using a wireless microphone. "Your mic wasn’t off during sound check. "O seu microfone não estava desligado durante a verificação do som. We all heard you pee." Todos nós ouvimos você fazer xixi. " (Laughter) This was really embarrassing when it happened, until I realized it could have been worse. (Risos) Isso foi realmente embaraçoso quando aconteceu, até que percebi que poderia ter sido pior. Right. You know what I’m saying.

(Laughter)

"Inside this envelope is the ripped up remains of a suicide note I didn’t use. "Dentro deste envelope estão os restos rasgados de uma nota de suicídio que eu não usei. I feel like the happiest person on Earth (now.)" "One of these men is the father of my son. "Um desses homens é o pai do meu filho. He pays me a lot to keep it a secret." (Laughter)

"That Saturday when you wondered where I was, well, I was getting your ring. "Naquele sábado, quando você se perguntou onde eu estava, bem, eu estava recebendo seu anel. It’s in my pocket right now." I had this postcard posted on the PostSecret blog two years ago on Valentine’s Day. It was the very bottom, the last secret in the long column. Era o fundo, o último segredo da longa coluna. And it hadn’t been up for more than a couple hours before I received this exuberant email from the guy who mailed me this postcard. E não havia passado mais de duas horas antes de eu receber esse e-mail exuberante do cara que me enviou esse cartão postal.

And he said, "Frank, I’ve got to share with you this story that just played out in my life." He said, "My knees are still shaking." Ele disse: "Meus joelhos ainda estão tremendo". He said, "For three years, my girlfriend and I, we’ve made it this Sunday morning ritual to visit the PostSecret blog together and read the secrets out loud. Ele disse: "Durante três anos, eu e minha namorada, fizemos neste ritual de domingo pela manhã visitar o blog PostSecret juntos e ler os segredos em voz alta. I read some to her, she reads some to me." He says, "It’s really brought us closer together through the years. Ele diz: "Isso realmente nos aproximou ao longo dos anos. And so when I discovered that you had posted my surprise proposal to my girlfriend at the very bottom, I was beside myself. E então, quando descobri que você havia postado minha proposta surpresa para minha namorada bem no fundo, eu estava fora de mim. And I tried to act calm, not to give anything away. E eu tentei ficar calmo, para não revelar nada. And just like every Sunday, we started reading the secrets out loud to each other." He said, "But this time it seemed like it was taking her forever to get through each one." Ele disse: "Mas desta vez parecia que estava demorando uma eternidade para superar cada uma delas". But she finally did. She got to that bottom secret, his proposal to her. Ela chegou a esse segredo, a proposta dele para ela. And he said, "She read it once and then she read it again." And she turned to him and said, "Is that our cat?" E ela se virou para ele e disse: "Esse é o nosso gato?" (Laughter) And when she saw him, he was down on one knee, he had the ring out. (Risos) E quando ela o viu, ele estava ajoelhado e tirou o anel. He popped the question, she said yes. It was a very happy ending.

So I emailed him back and I said, "Please share with me an image, something, that I can share with the whole PostSecret community and let everyone know your fairy tale ending." Então, enviei um e-mail para ele e disse: "Por favor, compartilhe comigo uma imagem, algo que eu possa compartilhar com toda a comunidade PostSecret e que todos saibam o final do seu conto de fadas". And he emailed me this picture.

(Laughter)

"I found your camera at Lollapalooza this summer. "Encontrei sua câmera em Lollapalooza neste verão. I finally got the pictures developed and I’d love to give them to you." Finalmente desenvolvi as fotos e adoraria dar a você. " This picture never got returned back to the people who lost it, but this secret has impacted many lives, starting with a student up in Canada named Matty. Essa foto nunca foi devolvida às pessoas que a perderam, mas esse segredo impactou muitas vidas, começando com um estudante no Canadá chamado Matty. Matty was inspired by that secret to start his own website, a website called IFoundYourCamera. Matty foi inspirado por esse segredo para iniciar seu próprio site, um site chamado IFoundYourCamera. Matty invites people to mail him digital cameras that they’ve found, memory sticks that have been lost with orphan photos. Matty convida as pessoas a enviá-lo por câmeras digitais que encontraram, cartões de memória que foram perdidos com fotos órfãs. And Matty takes the pictures off these cameras and posts them on his website every week. And people come to visit to see if they can identify a picture they’ve lost or help somebody else get the photos back to them that they might be desperately searching for. This one’s my favorite.

(Laughter)

Matty has found this ingenious way to leverage the kindness of strangers. Matty encontrou essa maneira engenhosa de aproveitar a gentileza de estranhos. And it might seem like a simple idea, and it is, but the impact it can have on people’s lives can be huge. E pode parecer uma idéia simples, mas sim, mas o impacto que pode ter na vida das pessoas pode ser enorme. Matty shared with me an emotional email he received from the mother in that picture. "That’s me, my husband and son. The other pictures are of my very ill grandmother. Thank you for making your site. Obrigado por criar seu site. These pictures mean more to me than you know. My son’s birth is on this camera. He turns four tomorrow." Every picture that you see there and thousands of others have been returned back to the person who lost it -- sometimes crossing oceans, sometimes going through language barriers. Todas as fotos que você vê lá e milhares de outras foram devolvidas à pessoa que a perdeu - às vezes atravessando oceanos, às vezes atravessando barreiras linguísticas.

This is the last postcard I have to share with you today. "When people I love leave voicemails on my phone I always save them in case they die tomorrow and I have no other way of hearing their voice ever again." When I posted this secret, dozens of people sent voicemail messages from their phones, sometimes ones they’d been keeping for years, messages from family or friends who had died. Quando publiquei esse segredo, dezenas de pessoas enviaram mensagens de correio de voz de seus telefones, às vezes mantidas há anos, mensagens de familiares ou amigos que morreram. They said that by preserving those voices and sharing them, it helped them keep the spirit of their loved ones alive. Eles disseram que preservar essas vozes e compartilhá-las ajudou a manter vivo o espírito de seus entes queridos. One young girl posted the last message she ever heard from her grandmother. Uma jovem postou a última mensagem que ouviu da avó.

Secrets can take many forms. They can be shocking or silly or soulful. They can connect us with our deepest humanity or with people we’ll never meet again. Eles podem nos conectar com nossa humanidade mais profunda ou com pessoas que nunca mais encontraremos.

Voicemail recording: First saved voice message. Grandma: ♫ It’s somebody’s birthday today ♫ ♫ Somebody’s birthday today ♫ ♫ The candles are lighted ♫ ♫ on somebody’s cake ♫ ♫ And we’re all invited ♫ ♫ for somebody’s sake ♫ You’re 21 years old today. Have a real happy birthday, and I love you. I’ll say bye for now.

FW: Thank you.

(Applause)

Thank you.

(Applause)

June Cohen: Frank, that was beautiful, so touching. June Cohen: Frank, isso foi lindo, tão comovente. Have you ever sent yourself a postcard? Você já enviou um cartão postal para si mesmo? Have you ever sent in a secret to PostSecret?

FW: I have one of my own secrets in every book. I think in some ways, the reason I started the project, even though I didn’t know it at the time, was because I was struggling with my own secrets. Eu acho que, de certa forma, a razão pela qual eu iniciei o projeto, apesar de não saber na época, era porque estava lutando com meus próprios segredos. And it was through crowd-sourcing, it was through the kindness that strangers were showing me, that I could uncover parts of my past that were haunting me.

JC: And has anyone ever discovered which secret was yours in the book? Has anyone in your life been able to tell? Alguém em sua vida conseguiu dizer?

FW: Sometimes I share that information, yeah.

(Laughter)

(Applause)