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This is what enduring love looks like

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    Alec Soth: So about 10 years ago,
    I got a call from a woman in Texas,
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    Stacey Baker,
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    and she'd seen some of my photographs
    in an art exhibition
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    and was wondering if she could commission
    me to take a portrait of her parents.
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    Now, at the time I hadn't met Stacey,
    and I thought this was some sort of
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    wealthy oil tycoon and I'd struck it rich,
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    but it was only later that I found out
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    she'd actually taken out a loan
    to make this happen.
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    I took the picture of her parents,
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    but I was actually more excited
    about photographing Stacey.
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    The picture I made that day
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    ended up becoming
    one of my best-known portraits.
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    At the time I made this picture,
    Stacey was working as an attorney
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    for the State of Texas.
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    Not long after, she left her job
    to study photography in Maine,
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    and while she was there,
    she ended up meeting
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    the director of photography
    at the New York Times Magazine
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    and was actually offered a job.
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    Stacey Baker: In the years since,
    Alec and I have done
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    a number of magazine projects together,
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    and we've become friends.
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    A few months ago, I started talking
    to Alec about a fascination of mine.
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    I've always been obsessed
    with how couples meet.
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    I asked Alec how he
    and his wife Rachel met,
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    and he told me the story
    of a high school football game
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    where she was 16 and he was 15,
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    and he asked her out.
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    He liked her purple hair.
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    She said yes, and that was it.
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    I then asked Alec if he'd be interested
    in doing a photography project
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    exploring this question.
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    AS: And I was interested in the question,
    but I was actually much more interested
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    in Stacey's motivation for asking it,
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    particularly since I'd never known
    Stacey to have a boyfriend.
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    So as part of this project,
    I thought it'd be interesting
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    if she tried to meet someone.
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    So my idea was to have Stacey here
    go speed dating
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    in Las Vegas on Valentine's Day.
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    (Laughter) (Applause) (Music)
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    SB: We ended up at what was advertised
    as the world's largest speed dating event.
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    I had 19 dates
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    and each date lasted three minutes.
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    Participants were given a list of ice-
    breaker questions to get the ball rolling,
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    things like, "If you could be any kind
    of animal, what would you be?"
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    That sort of thing.
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    My first date was Colin.
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    He's from England,
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    and he once married a woman he met
    after placing an ad for a Capricorn.
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    Alec and I saw him
    at the end of the evening,
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    and he said he'd kissed a woman in line
    at one of the concession stands.
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    Zack and Chris came
    to the date-a-thon together.
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    This is Carl.
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    I asked Carl, "What's the first thing
    you notice about a woman?"
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    He said, "Tits."
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    (Laughter)
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    Matthew is attracted to women
    with muscular calves.
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    We talked about running. He does
    triathlons, I run half-marathons.
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    Alec actually liked his eyes and asked
    if I was attracted to him, but I wasn't,
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    and I don't think he was
    attracted to me either.
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    Austin and Mike came together.
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    Mike asked me a hypothetical question.
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    He said, "You're in an elevator
    running late for a meeting.
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    Someone makes a dash for the elevator.
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    Do you hold it open for them?"
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    And I said I would not.
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    (Laughter)
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    Cliff said the first thing he notices
    about a woman is her teeth,
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    and we complimented each other's teeth.
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    Because he's an open mouth sleeper,
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    he says he has to floss more
    to help prevent gum disease,
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    and so I asked him how often he flosses,
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    and he said, "Every other day."
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    (Laughter)
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    Now, as someone who flosses twice a day,
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    I wasn't really sure that
    that was flossing more
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    but I don't think I said that out loud.
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    Bill is an auditor,
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    and we talked the entire three minutes
    about auditing. (Laughter)
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    The first thing Spencer notices
    about a woman is her complexion.
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    He feels a lot of women
    wear too much makeup,
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    and that they should only wear enough
    to accentuate the features that they have.
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    I told him I didn't wear any makeup at all
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    and he seemed to think
    that that was a good thing.
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    Craig told me he didn't think
    I was willing to be vulnerable.
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    He was also frustrated when I couldn't
    remember my most embarrassing moment.
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    He thought I was lying, but I wasn't.
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    I didn't think he liked me at all,
    but at the end of the night,
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    he came back to me and he gave me
    a box of chocolates.
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    William was really difficult to talk to.
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    I think he was drunk.
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    (Laughter)
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    Actor Chris McKenna
    was the MC of the event.
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    He used to be on
    "The Young and the Restless."
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    I didn't actually go on a date with him.
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    Alec said he saw several women
    give their phone numbers to him.
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    Needless to say, I didn't fall in love.
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    I didn't feel a particular connection with
    any of the men that I went on dates with,
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    and I didn't feel like they felt
    a particular connection with me either.
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    AS: Now, the most beautiful thing to me --
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    (Laughter) -- as a photographer
    is the quality of vulnerability.
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    The physical exterior reveals a crack
    in which you can get a glimpse
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    at a more fragile interior.
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    At this date-a-thon event,
    I saw so many examples of that,
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    but as I watched Stacey's dates
    and talked to her about them,
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    I realized how different
    photographic love is from real love.
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    What is real love? How does it work?
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    In order to work on this question
    and to figure out how someone goes
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    from meeting on a date
    to having a life together,
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    Stacey and I went to Sun City Summerlin,
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    which is the largest
    retirement community in Las Vegas.
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    Our contact there was George,
    who runs the community's photography club.
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    He arranged for us to meet other couples
    in their makeshift photo studio.
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    SB: After 45 years of marriage,
    Anastasia's husband died two years ago,
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    so we asked if she had
    an old wedding picture.
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    She met her husband
    when she was a 15-year-old waitress
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    at a small barbecue place in Michigan.
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    He was 30.
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    She'd lied about her age.
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    He was the first person she'd dated.
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    Dean had been named photographer of
    the year in Las Vegas two years in a row,
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    and this caught Alec's attention,
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    as did the fact
    that he met his wife, Judy,
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    at the same age when Alec met Rachel.
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    Dean admitted that he likes
    to look at beautiful women,
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    but he's never questioned
    his decision to marry Judy.
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    AS: George met Josephine
    at a parish dance.
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    He was 18, she was 15.
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    Like a lot of the couples we met,
    they weren't especially philosophical
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    about their early choices.
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    George said something
    that really stuck with me.
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    He said, "When you get that feeling,
    you just go with it."
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    Bob and Trudy met on a blind date
    when she was still in high school.
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    They said they weren't particularly
    attracted to each other
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    when the first met.
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    Nevertheless, they were
    married soon after.
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    SB: The story that stayed with me the most
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    was that of George, the photography club
    president, and his wife, Mary.
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    This was George and Mary's
    second marriage.
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    They met at a country-western club
    in Louisville, Kentucky called the Sahara.
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    He was there alone drinking
    and she was with friends.
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    When they started dating,
    he owed the IRS 9,000 dollars in taxes,
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    and she offered to help him
    get out of debt,
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    so for the next year, he turned
    his paychecks over to Mary,
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    and she got him out of debt.
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    George was actually an alcoholic
    when they married, and Mary knew it.
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    At some point in their marriage,
    he says he consumed
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    54 beers in one day.
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    Another time, when he was drunk,
    he threatened to kill Mary
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    and her two kids,
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    but they escaped and a SWAT team
    was called to the house.
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    Amazingly, Mary took him back,
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    and eventually things got better.
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    George has been involved
    in Alcoholics Anonymous
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    and hasn't had a drink in 36 years.
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    (Music)
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    At the end of the day,
    after we left Sun City,
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    I told Alec that I didn't actually think
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    that the stories of how these couples met
    were all that interesting.
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    What was more interesting
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    was how they managed to stay together.
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    AS: They all had this beautiful
    quality of endurance,
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    but that was true of the singles, too.
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    The world is hard,
    and the singles were out there
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    trying to connect with other people,
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    and the couples
    were holding onto each other
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    after all these decades.
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    My favorite pictures on this trip
    were of Joe and Roseanne.
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    Now, by the time we met Joe and Roseanne,
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    we'd gotten in the habit of asking couples
    if they had an old wedding photograph.
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    In their case, they simultaneously
    pulled out of their wallets
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    the exact same photograph.
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    What's more beautiful,
    I thought to myself,
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    this image of a young couple
    who has just fallen in love
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    or the idea of these two people
    holding onto this image for decades?
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    Thank you.
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    (Applause)
Title:
This is what enduring love looks like
Speaker:
Alec Soth + Stacey Baker
Description:

more » « less
Video Language:
English
Team:
closed TED
Project:
TEDTalks
Duration:
10:18

English subtitles

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