What to do when the truth isn’t enough to be believed (w/ Dina Nayeri)

How to Be a Better Human

TED

Self-improvement, Education

4.2 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 March 2024

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Stories are such a powerful human invention that even the fictional ones can feel completely true. Dina Nayeri is a writer of fiction and nonfiction whose work highlights just how influential the stories we tell can be – and what is at risk when the truth isn’t valued. Dina speaks from her experience as a storyteller and former refugee about the importance of shaping a society that is thoughtful about language, history, culture, and truth. Then, she suggests frameworks anyone can use to think critically about what they think they know -- and questions why certain stories are more likely to be believed. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Ted Audio Collective.
0:02.0	Audio Collective.
0:04.0	You're listening to How to Bea
0:10.0	You're listening to How to Be a Better Human.
0:12.0	I'm your host Chris Duffy.
0:14.0	Who do you believe and why do you believe them?
0:17.0	They're relatively simple questions to ask,
0:20.0	and yet figuring out and understanding your answers to them is incredibly complex work.
0:24.0	We've seen how crucial this is on a global level when it comes to things like
0:28.5	widespread denial of climate change or vaccine conspiracies or so many other issues.
0:34.2	Questions of believability are often life or death when it comes to national policies around
0:38.6	immigration, incarceration, or war.
0:41.6	But they're also personal questions too, questions that get at the core of who we see ourselves
0:46.7	as being and who we trust.
0:49.4	Today's guest, Dina Nairi, is the author of two non-fiction books, The Ungrateful Refugee, and who gets believed.
0:56.0	Dina writes and speaks about these issues and she thinks so deeply about our answers to them.
1:00.8	We're going to be talking with her about those answers today, but first here's a clip from
1:04.8	Dina's TED Talk where she explains how she first came to this work.
1:08.4	So I was born in Iran just after a big revolution that changed the country into the Islamic Republic.
1:15.0	Before that, Iran had been secular, you know, and after the Islamic Republic came to power,
1:21.0	there was a big war with Iraq. So suddenly things were very dangerous.
1:26.3	My family were Christian converts, and so it was especially dangerous for us. And soon after, I
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -302 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from TED, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of TED and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.