Culture

Playlist: The truth about stories

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(TED is on its annual two-week vacation. During the break, we’re posting playlists from the TEDTalks archive. We’ll be back with new talks on August 29th.)

Elif and Chimamanda’s perspectives bring us to look at stories through the eyes of those who weave them and Jonathan offers his own story up as one who covets the tales of others. This collection reminds us to examine the bigger picture behind the fiction. While artists are urged to find their niche and unique point of view, it’s still just that: a single point of view.

Elif Shafak: The politics of fiction 

“If we have no connection whatsoever with the worlds beyond the one we take for granted, then we too run the risk of drying up inside. Our imagination might shrink, our hearts might dwindle and our humanness might wither if we stay for too long inside our cultural cocoons.”

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Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

“To insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and overlook the many other stories that formed me. The single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

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Jonathan Harris collects stories

“I love this idea of the partial glimpse into somebody’s life.”

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Playlist by the TEDPartnerships team.