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Sunday Pick: How to love your hometown (w/ Hanif Abdurraqib & Sarah Kay) | How to Be a Better Human
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- [00:01]
Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer
This episode is sponsored by the new all electric Toyota bz. Have you thought about going electric but worry that charging will take forever? The myth is I'll need to charge my EV all day just to get where I'm going. The Truth with the new Toyota bz, charging is built for real life. With the included dual voltage charging cable, you can plug in overnight and wake up ready to go. And when you're on the move under ideal conditions, DC fast charging can get you from 10 to 80% in about 30 minutes. Just enough time to grab a coffee or catch up on a couple TED talks. That's power made practical. Learn more@toyota.com b z that's T O Y O-T A.com bz the new all electric bz Toyota let's go places. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. If you're a small business owner, work rarely stops. When the day ends, your business is always on. And when it's time to hire, you need a partner who's just as committed. That's where LinkedIn jobs comes in. When you clock out, LinkedIn clocks in. LinkedIn makes hiring simple. Post your job for free and share it with your network. Their new feature even helps write job descriptions and gets your posting in front of the right candidates with deep insights. Want more reach? Promoted jobs get three times more qualified applicants. Here's what matters most. Quality. Based on LinkedIn data, 72% of small businesses using LinkedIn said that it's helped them find high quality candidates. Find out why more than 2.5 million small businesses use LinkedIn for hiring and find your next great hire today. Post your job for free@LinkedIn.com TTD that's LinkedIn.com TTD to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. This episode is sponsored by Framer. If you've ever tried to build a website and felt boxed in by templates, you're not alone. Most no code tools promise flexibility but end up delivering compromise. That's where Framer comes in. Framer already built the fast, fastest way to publish beautiful production ready websites. And it's now redefining how we design for the web. With the recent launch of Design Pages, a free canvas based design tool, Framer is more than a site builder. It's a true all in one design platform. From social assets to campaign visuals to vectors and icons, all the way to a live site, Framer is where ideas go live, start to finish. Framer stands above the others because it's not just a site builder. Framer is a true design tool that also publishes professional production ready sites ready to design, iterate and publish all in one tool. Start creating for free at framer.com design and use code TED for a free month of Framer Pro. That's framer.com design promo code TED framer.com design promo code Ted rules and restrictions may apply. Foreign. TED Talks Daily Listeners I'm Elise Hu. Today we're bringing you another one of our Sunday picks where we share an episode of another podcast from the TED Audio Collective, handpicked by us for you. Up now an episode of how to Be a Better Human, hosted by comedian Chris Duffy. Loving where you live means caring for the people who make that place home, says writer and cultural critic Hanif Abdurakeeb. He invites Chris and poet Sarah Kay to his hometown of Columbus, Ohio, to show off what makes it so special. From sneaker shops and record stores to public parks, Hanif talks about how he builds community and how home, as the saying goes, really is where the heart is. This episode is part of a special series, the how to Be a Better Human bonus videos adapted for podcasts just for our TED Talks Daily listeners. To watch the entire special series, head to ted.com and if you want to hear more insights like this, listen to how to Be a Better Human wherever you get your podcasts. That's coming up.
- [04:18]
Elise Hu
What is home? Lately, I've been thinking about that question a lot. Because home isn't just a place with familiar spots and corners. It's where you feel a sense of belonging. And as the world has gotten bigger and messier and lonelier, I have been feeling like it is more urgent than ever to have people and places that I can depend on to really call a place home. When I brought this up to my friend, the poet and educator Sarah Kay.
- [04:44]
Hanif Abdurraqib
She said, we have to go to.
- [04:45]
Sarah Kay
Columbus, Ohio and hang out with my friend Hanif Abdurraqeeb. No one is a better person to show us what it means to be from a place, to love that place, and to love the people in it.
- [04:54]
Elise Hu
So today we are hanging out with Hanif Abdurqiv and learning about why he loves his hometown so much. Hanif Abdurraqib wears many hats, but I know him first as a poet and a writer, a cultural critic who writes about music in a way that makes you just want to listen to albums all day long, an essayist whose books about grief and joy in basketball make you ugly cry in public every time I think I'm gonna dodge it. And then he gets me Again, I am tearing up. Hanif spends a lot of time on the road, but he always returns to the place where he is from, the east side of Columbus, Ohio. And that is not just a place that Hanif loves. It is clearly a place that loves Hanif right back. So I sat down with Hanif in one of his favorite spots in town, a vinyl record shop called Spoonful Records, to find out why. I've been thinking a lot about the idea of, like, when the world is really overwhelming and there's so much going on, how one of the ways that we can ground ourselves is, like, to be in a specific place, to be in a community and with people we care about, taking care of them and having them take care of us.
- [06:05]
Hanif Abdurraqib
You know, we're filming this and recording this in June. It's like a massive heat wave that has script the city. And last night, my neighborhood lost power. Like, my street lost power. And it's a funny thing happens when you lose power, at least for me, where I had, like, 10 solid minutes of being like, maybe this is just affecting me, but I, like, gradually peeked out my window and saw one of my neighbors gathering in a gazebo in the middle of our street. So it was wonderful, in a sense, to go out to this gathering point and have everyone kind of like, we all don't have power. What are the most immediate needs? If I were to say I am just like a small speck in this grand universe, I would very easily and quickly fall into this individualism. Instead of me saying, well, I step outside of my house and I see either a person or I see the results of a person's living reflected directly to me.
- [06:59]
Elise Hu
Why do you love Columbus so much?
- [07:01]
Hanif Abdurraqib
I tend to think that my most joyful experiences living in Columbus are mirrored by the fact that people just talk to me in a way that is also familiar and comfortable. We're in Spoonful Records in Columbus, Ohio. It's my favorite record shop, and Columbus is a great record town. In every city I would stop on tour, I would go digging, I would go record shopping. But it's kind of isolating. I know my own tastes. Left to my own devices, I would just be delving through the crates in search of whatever would satiate and satisfy my own tastes. It requires someone, be it a friend you bring to the shop with you or a person behind the counter like Brett or Amy or Elijah. Here at Spoonful, who can say? I remember we had this talk about sliced stone. I got these sliced ob sides. You want to hear? That's so Cool. Yeah. Amy Drew. Amy Drew this. Yeah. Yeah, just the people who know you with a depth of curiosity and care. Thanks as always, y'.
- [07:56]
Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer
All.
- [07:57]
Hanif Abdurraqib
Yeah. Telling me, I said what's up? And definitely email me stuff you're working on. Hit me up. I think if I offer myself up freely and eagerly to others, it informs our collective, our shared interest in each other so that when we come across something that we think might delight the other person, we hold onto it for a while until they re enter our lives again. And that is beautiful to me. And I think that has really mapped itself out through my life in Columbus.
- [08:23]
Elise Hu
The idea of offering yourself up to people freely and eagerly, that really stuck with me. You know, as kids we're told not to talk to strangers, but to Hanif, no one in this town was a stranger, even if he had never met them before. Bye.
- [08:37]
Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer
Thank you again. Thank you.
- [08:40]
Elise Hu
After Spoonful Records, Hanif took me and Sarah to see some of his other favorite Columbus spots.
- [08:46]
Sarah Kay
My favorite thing is to be in the car with Hanif driving around Columbus, Ohio.
- [08:52]
Elise Hu
Do you have like a go to when a friend comes to Columbus of like, what do you show them?
- [08:56]
Hanif Abdurraqib
Buckeye Donuts is one of my favorite places in the world. The Buckeye donuts, like glazed on it with chocolate frosting and then a peanut butter center. It is a phenomenal experience. There's like an assortment of like cake donuts and jelly filled things.
- [09:15]
Elise Hu
Now those of you who are familiar with Hanif will already know that he absolutely loves sneakers. Of course, a trip to his hometown wouldn't be complete without a visit to his favorite sneaker shop, Heat Archive. Just like Spoonful Records, everyone knew him here.
- [09:30]
Hanif Abdurraqib
What's up, brother? How you been? Good, brother. Good to see you. Yeah, take a, take a donut. I'm a big sneaker guy and when I was coming up, sneaker boutiques were not as popular. Now they're still sneaker boutiques everywhere. And Heat Archive is interesting because they're local guys.
- [09:51]
Elise Hu
You have so many incredible shoes. What's the most Columbus sneaker you have in the store?
- [09:56]
Hanif Abdurraqib
Most Columbus sneaker, like, if you could.
- [09:58]
Elise Hu
Sum up the city in one, definitely.
- [10:00]
Hanif Abdurraqib
These scarlet and gray, these would take it every time.
- [10:03]
Elise Hu
And for those of you who are wondering why these shoes, well, scarlet and gray are the colors of Ohio State University.
- [10:08]
Hanif Abdurraqib
The Buckeyes, they're so caring and thoughtful for our young folks and they don't really talk about all that much. But like, if kids come in with a good report card, they'll give them a pair of sneakers. For free. Or if a kid comes in and doesn't have enough money for the pair that he wants, they'll, like, take care of them. It feels like as much of a community hub as a sneaker shop can be. This is what we love to do. I have a big passion for so bringing this here. Like, growing up was like, our dream.
- [10:34]
Elise Hu
I am someone who I grew up, born and raised in New York City. And I left, I moved somewhere else. You have such a deep connection to Ohio. You were raised here. You still live here. What do you think makes some people leave their hometowns and some people stay?
- [10:51]
Hanif Abdurraqib
I think the relationship with one's place of origin is, by definition, I think, a contentious one because you don't choose it. Place is something that happens to you. What keeps me here? I guess I can't speak to why people leave, but there is one woman on a street in East Columbus who has held onto her house no matter what. She's been offered so much money, been offered so much to move out of that house, because if she moves out of that house, it is the entry point to kind of raise that neighborhood and make it something else. And she refuses to leave. And her refusal, I think, is an action that my work is pointing towards. My very presence is stopping the worst designs of a city that has no idea who its population actually is. And my staying here means I'm actually keeping a history that existed before me and a history that I want to exist after me. Because what's the point of staying in a neighborhood if the neighborhood no longer feels like it's a place where you're welcome or if you cannot be translated through the new population of that neighborhood?
- [12:05]
Elise Hu
Next, we headed to one of Hanif's favorite parks. The sun was shining, the water fountains were flowing. There were flowers in bloom everywhere.
- [12:13]
Hanif Abdurraqib
I love the park of Roses because it is exactly what it sounds like. And park of Roses were like, where you took if you had no money, but you wanted to go on a date. And if it was like spring, that's where you would go on a date. Because it's like, we could just look at these pretty flowers and don't worry about the fact that we're both broken.
- [12:31]
Elise Hu
Okay, so you're both poets, and I feel like poets and flowers, right? This is the stereotypical relationship that you're supposed to have.
- [12:41]
Sarah Kay
What are you trying to say, Chris?
- [12:42]
Elise Hu
Roses are red, violets are blue. I'm with two poets. Do what you do.
- [12:49]
Hanif Abdurraqib
And there's the poetry.
- [12:50]
Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer
Poetry.
- [12:50]
Elise Hu
Oh, there's a flower named poetry.
- [12:52]
Hanif Abdurraqib
Yeah.
- [12:55]
Elise Hu
When you are walking around a place like this that's full of natural beauty, is this, like, ripe possibility for poetic inspiration? Or do you. Is that not how it works for you?
- [13:05]
Hanif Abdurraqib
For me, it doesn't work that way. Like, I don't look at that bush of flowers and say, I'm gonna write a poem about that bush of flowers. I think that's maybe not my brand of brain function. I think what is more useful to me is to, like, find out the history of the flower and what it might tell me about the land it originally came from. Or there's something beyond the surface thing that my brain is consuming. And I think just because something is beautiful doesn't mean that it has to be reworked into something else beyond what it's already offering us. I tend to just kind of think that this is a cool place to sit in gratitude. Like, we're here. We're here in late July in the middle of the heat wave, and yet these flowers have survived a little bit longer than they normally would.
- [13:48]
Sarah Kay
You know, what is it like gilding the lily, Right? Literally, that is about a flower, because it's like, when something is already beautiful in the form that it's in, it doesn't need your messy human poetry traipsing about.
- [14:03]
Elise Hu
Speaking of which, as much as we wanted to stay and smell the roses, there was a poetry reading that we had to catch at one of the great local bookstores in town, $2 radio headquarters. Funny enough, it wasn't actually a read for Hanif, but one that he had put together for Sarah, whose book had just come out, which really hit something home for me. Like Hanif said, place may be something that happens to you, but community, that's something you build with care and generosity.
- [14:35]
Hanif Abdurraqib
Thank you all for coming out tonight. It's great to be in here and not be expected to do anything other than introduce poets that I want to hear. Yesterday, Sarah got into Columbus, and we were driving around, and she was looking up at the sky, and she was like, look at, like, how round and, like, beautiful the clouds are. Like, the edges of the clouds are so puffy and round. And, you know, as someone who lives here, I was kind of like, oh, yeah, sure, sure. And the whole function of this was, like, Sarah lives in New York, and so, like, the clouds are often obscured by the skyline is the show, and the sky is not as much the show. I think that oftentimes the function of the entire project of Sarah Kay's living, if I could boil it down to one thing, is look at this thing, look at this thing. Look at this thing. But not in an annoying way. It is a way that says, I am checking to see if your heart's still working and your ability to pay close attention to that which you have become intimately and deeply familiar with. Because if you can pay deep and close attention to the clouds that you walk underneath, like, literally every day in this city, you might be able to pay close attention to someone in your life who may be hurting or in need of something or deeply just need you to sit in front of them and be silent for a while. And so I am thankful to be a fan of Sarah's work. But more than that, I am thankful to have a life where Sarah is always challenging me to question repeatedly, how well is my heart still working? Please give a hand to Sarah K.
- [16:16]
Sarah Kay
It's not very charitable to make someone cry before they go on stage. Hi, $2 radio. Hi, Columbus. Gosh, you look good.
- [16:31]
Elise Hu
As I sat and listened to some beautiful poetry with this lovely group of people, I realized that building a community doesn't have to be this big, intimidating thing. It can start small. It reminded me of something that Hanef said earlier. How do you decide who is in your circle of care and who is not?
- [16:49]
Hanif Abdurraqib
So I was unhoused for a stretch. I was, like, sleeping in a storage unit for a while. And then just like, very much on the streets, right? There's this very large church, and every morning I would walk by it, and there was a person who, you know, was like a maintenance person at the church who would notice me. And after a while, again, without a lot of language or a lot of intention, he would start unlocking the door at 6:00am you know, and let me and a couple other people come in and sleep in the pews for three hours. It was saying, like, I have a key. The key opens a door inside. On the other side of the door is a place where you'll be safe for three hours. And so I tend to think that for me, I've been lucky enough in my life where I feel like I've been in community with elders and younger folks. And I've also been in, of course, like, just a broad swath of people who I'm in community with. And oftentimes it does not feel like to give of myself in a way that serves or feeds others. Is that difficult or challenging? It feels instead like this very simple thing of I have a key to something, I am going to unlock something, and we are going to sit in a place that feels comfortable and safe. For us for as long as it takes. And in some ways, the miracle is to say I will surrender my time to you. And through the surrendering of my time, I hope to love you better. And I also hope to be renewed in a way that helps me love others better. Because if I move through the world with a very clear understanding of the fact that my time is not only my own, then I think I make the most of it in the moments where it is my own.
- [18:25]
Elise Hu
Foreign.
- [18:33]
Podcast Host / Sponsor Announcer
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- [19:48]
Elise Hu
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