St. Louis’ TEDx organizers invite you to change your mind

If TEDxStLouis, St. Louis’ independent TED event, were the subject of a TED talk, it might open with its origin story, which involves Maui; Bozeman, Montana; and Wired magazine. In 2011, a story in the tech monthly caught Steve Sommers’ eye. It detailed how to acquire a license to host an indie TED event, which someone in Bozeman had recently done. TED—an acronym for technology, entertainment, design—describes itself as the “ultimate brain spa.” Think: fast-paced talks on art, the economy, global issues, health, poverty. Sommers thought St. Louis needed TEDx. His brother, who lives on Maui, knew just the person he needed on his team: Mich Hancock. “Steve and I met, and we’re like, ‘Let’s do this thing,’” Hancock remembers. “It was just one of those things where we thought, ‘This is so necessary for St. Louis.’” Now Sommers and Hancock are prepping for a fall TED event at the new Kirkwood Performing Arts Center. Twenty-five to 30 people are selected from a pool of about 200 applicants and then whittled down during an audition to see whose stories are the most compelling.

This is a lot of work and a volunteer gig for both of you. Why bring TEDx to St. Louis?

HANCOCK: St. Louis has so much to offer, and it needed to be presented from a stage that had an amazing brand behind it. Here we were in the middle of the country, and we felt like people didn’t really know what’s here. There are these universities that are pumping out incredible medical, health, biosciences [scholars], you name it, and they need to be shown off.

SOMMERS: Over the course of the first year, we did some strategy sessions. The idea of creating an inclusive and equitable community quickly and unanimously solidified. That’s the layer that St. Louis specifically needs.

HANCOCK: We were intentional with that. In St. Louis, things feel segregated, and we wanted that segregation to be gone at our events. We wanted a good cross section of everybody within our area.

Some people criticize St. Louis as a place where the same handful of people and the same ideas get the most attention—nothing changes. Does that ring true?

SOMMERS: It’s interesting, we have a lot of discussions about St. Louis—what we are, what we think, what other people think of us. A lot of it comes down to, all of the stuff we’re thinking about ourselves, all of this negative talk, other people in other cities don’t really care. We’re trying to get us past that negative self-talk and, to your point, heighten these diverse thought leaders to be more a part of the conversation. Jason Purnell [a community health expert and vice president at BJC HealthCare] presented six or seven years ago, and it’s encouraging to see people like that become more influential. One of the people that we have speaking this time around is Ben Singer—

HANCOCK: I was just going to bring him up. He’s the CEO of Show Me Integrity. And he is behind that whole thought of approval voting, a new way of voting. This is coming out of St. Louis. It’s exciting that we have such forward-thinking people here.

You must have a list of people you’ve met like him. What are some of the talks that have stuck with you?

SOMMERS: Amy Hunter [former director of racial justice at the YWCA] did this “Lucky ZIP Codes” talk, the idea that it matters where you’re born and that disparity. If you live in this ZIP code, odds are you’re going to live to 80. And if you live 3 miles away, odds are you’re going to live to 60. That talk went really far. It went on to TED Radio Hour.

HANCOCK: Now I’m hearing about that disparity all over the place. I feel like many things that we have presented from our stage end up becoming a dialogue on a national level.

What about the influence here? What is the feedback you hear from the audience?

SOMMERS: A lot of what I hear is, “I came to see this person speak, but this other thing over here, this is what I remember.” There was one from [Missouri Botanical Garden president emeritus] Peter Raven that affected me. It was the idea of helping starving people in Africa, and how can you expect to help people there if you can’t love the people in your own back yard? There’s always the statement or the sentence that makes you look at something differently. I believe that everybody who attends walks away with something. They’re changed in some, hopefully positive, way.

Last winter, I went to an event to see Square founder Jim McKelvey talk about taking down Amazon, and he did not disappoint. He refused to stand on the red dot on stage. He picked it up at one point—

SOMMERS: We were going nuts backstage.

HANCOCK: We were like, “He messed with the dot!” But what do you expect when you get someone who thinks that far outside the box

I loved it. But I ended up thinking about, and still think about, “unreasonable generosity,” which was the subject of former Arch Grants executive director Emily Lohse-Busch’s talk. It’s basically taking a chance on emerging leaders and in a way that alters their entire careers. I think it stuck with me because I realized then that I didn’t practice it.

HANCOCK: That’s what we want. We want people to realize that they have blind spots. And yes, you could watch TED talks all day long on video, but there is something about being at that event, with that energy, with all these other people who have a willingness to be open and learn more, who aren’t so rigid in a belief system. They’re willing to say, “I’m going to change what I believe because I learned so much from this talk.”

It’s probably a pretty specific person who is going to spend a Saturday night at an ideas conference. You mentioned racial diversity, but do you feel like you’re drawing people in who would otherwise not attend an event like this?

HANCOCK: We let people know that they may be uncomfortable by some of the things we’re going to hear, and that is part of our duty. One time, we had a group of financial advisors in the audience, and I remember the next day one of the gentlemen saying to me, “You know what, Mich, I didn’t like the talk.” I said, “So in other words, we really did a good job.” He looked at me like, What are you talking about? I said, “You’ve been thinking about it all night. You couldn’t wait to see me today so we could talk about this. It’s OK if you didn’t like the talk or didn’t agree with it, but it made you start to take a deeper look into something, and that’s what we’re supposed to do.”

SOMMERS: Do we get enough people there who have that reaction? Probably not. But I remember specifically a woman years ago, who was complaining about how these are all progressive ideas. OK, I hear you, but what’s the alternative? We’re supposed to be looking forward to a nondystopian future. And that is, by its nature, progressive.

FYI

The next TEDxStLouis event is planned for 6 p.m. October 22 at Kirkwood Performing Arts Center. Visit tedxsaintlouis.org for more.

MORE TO KNOW

GOING BEYOND

IF THE PAST THREE YEARS HAVE LEFT YOU FEELING, AS THE TEDXSTLOUIS ORGANIZERS WRITE, “UNABLE TO ARTICULATE ANYTHING,” THIS SERIES, DUBBED “BEYOND WORDS,” IS FOR YOU. HERE IS A LIST OF THE SPEAKERS AND THEIR TOPICS.

Mason Aid

LGBTQ Advocate

Falling Forward: How to Recover Gracefully When You Biff It in Inclusion

Myrina Renaissance Otey-Myton

NFT Artist & Community Builder

NFTs: Not Just a Buzzword

Dr. Philip Payne

Biomedical Informatician & Data Scientist

A New Normal: Embracing the Healthcare Information Age

Vivian Gibson

Author of The Last Children of Mill Creek

Deferred Storytelling

Benjamin Singer

CEO at Show Me Integrity

How “St. Louis Style” Elections Will Change American Democracy

Holly Fann

Food Writer and Dining Critic for St. Louis Magazine and Eater

The Illusion of Authenticity

Cyrus A. Raji, MD, PhD

Assistant Professor of Radiology and Neurology at Washington University in St. Louis

COVID-19 Effects on the Brain and Related Cognitive Functions