This Is Us wanted to pay tribute to the "genius" who paved the way for FaceTime

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Creator Dan Fogelman "had an idea in the writers' room ... and literally all of our little writers' brains Googled computer programming and computer engineering to try to figure out who might've come up with the idea of FaceTime," writer Vera Herbert said of Tuesday's episode. "We came across the story of Nasir (Ahmed) who had invented the Discrete Cosine Transform and we didn't honestly know what it was but we did enough research to realize that it's the basis of this technology. Further Googling we discovered that he lives in La Jolla, California, with his wife (Esther Ahmed) and we reached out to set up a Zoom. We found out they've actually been quarantining in Argentina for basically a year but we were able to Zoom with them and get their life story and relationship. It's so sweet, we thought, 'Yes, this is the storyline for us.'"  Executive producer Ken Olin adds "I thought (the Ahmeds' story) was great. For me, it's strictly the challenge of taking these guest actors new to the show and make sure they feel part of it tonally, and also be authentic in terms of the period. ... It was challenging a little bit visually, just to make sure that all the elements are there, but it was fun. We had a great guest cast, it was fun to do and different."