TED Talks Daily Book Club: Talk to Me | Rich Benjamin
TED Talks Daily
TED
4.1 • 11.9K Ratings
🗓️ 23 March 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rich Benjamin is a cultural critic, anthropologist, and author of the new memoir Talk To Me: Lessons From A Family Forged By History. In this live taping for the TED Talks Daily Book Club, Elise Hu interviews Rich about the powerful role history plays in shaping generations – and how he tells the story of two nations through the intimate search for answers in his own family’s story.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Today at Center Parks, I didn't multitask. |
| 0:03.3 | I saw the gleeful look on my teenager's face as she conquered the zip wire. |
| 0:08.3 | Today, I didn't juggle meetings and pad lunches. |
| 0:11.5 | I helped my little boy paint a cute squirrel pot. |
| 0:14.6 | Today, I didn't stress about a work deadline. |
| 0:17.5 | I swam underwater aqua jetting with my 10-year-old. |
| 0:23.2 | Life moves too fast. |
| 0:45.5 | Precious moments last longer at conversations to spark your curiosity every day. |
| 0:47.2 | I'm your host, Elise Hugh. |
| 0:49.2 | Happy Sunday, y'all. |
| 0:55.4 | Today, we're bringing you a conversation between me and American cultural critic and author Rich Benjamin. |
| 1:00.5 | We got together virtually in front of a live audience of TED members a few weeks ago to speak about his new memoir, Talk to Me, Lessons from a Family Forged by History. |
| 1:05.4 | This conversation is part of our book club series where we check out new books from past TED speakers |
| 1:10.0 | that will spark your curiosity |
| 1:11.8 | all year long. We all grow up with families and stories that shape who we are and how we see the |
| 1:18.0 | world. Rich, who many know for his popular 2009 books searching for Whitopia and his 2015 TED Talk |
| 1:25.7 | on the same topic, has a particularly unique story. |
| 1:29.9 | His grandfather was Daniel Finioli, the popular Haitian leader who was president of Haiti for only |
| 1:36.8 | 19 days before a U.S.-backed coup removed him from office and changed the course of history forever. The stories that Rich |
| 1:46.1 | shares in his memoir and that we dig into in our conversation are rooted in themes we can all relate |
| 1:51.0 | to. He talks about forgiveness, history, and what it's like to grow up under the shadows of family |
| 1:56.9 | trauma and why storytelling is a powerful tool to help us bridge the growing divides |
... |
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