What you discover when you really listen | Hrishikesh Hirway (re-release and interview)

0:03You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. When was the last time you really listened to someone? Not while checking your phone, not while waiting for your turn to talk, but actually let their words land. It's harder than it sounds, and it might be the most important thing we've stopped doing. It's easy to get distracted, and we tend to listen to other people that way, too. but you can't really get immersed if that's the case. Imagine trying to listen to a song while singing a different song in your head. You can't do it or you can't do it well and you can't fully appreciate what someone else is saying if you're thinking about something else.

0:42That's Rishikesh Hirwe, creator and host of Song Exploder, the beloved podcast and Netflix show where musicians break down how a song was made layer by layer. In 2021, he gave a TED Talk about what happens when you take that same kind of listening and turn it toward people. I started to wonder, could I try listening to people the way that I was trying to listen to music? Because when someone tells you something, just like with a song, there can be all these layers within it. There can be all this context that you're missing. It's a talk that stays with you, partly because of what he teaches and partly because of what he shares, including a beautiful song about his mom called Between Here and There, featuring cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

1:26After more than a decade helping other artists tell their stories and helping us think about listening, he's made his most personal work yet, a solo album called In the Last Hour of Light. He describes it as a sort of memoir about losing his mother, nearly losing his father, and learning to let go. We caught up with him earlier this month to talk about his ideas about listening and how they've evolved, what he's learned from hundreds of conversations with artists and what it feels like to finally turn the key and welcome us into his own house. Plus, we did something we couldn't resist, a mini song exploder of sorts, breaking down one of the new songs on this album, which we then share in full at the end of the episode.

2:08This is an episode with a lot of music, which you don't hear every day on this show. The talk is first and then the conversation, coming up after a short break.

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4:42And now, our TED Talk of the day. I've been in love with music my whole life, both as a musician and as a listener. But as a listener, sometimes songs feel a little like houses to me. Houses that you can only see from the street. You can stop and admire them from the outside. You can say, wow, look, the architecture is amazing. You might be able to get a little peek inside through one of the windows, but it's this thing of beauty that you have to appreciate from a distance, because it's not yours. And as a musician, when you put a song out into the world, it can sometimes feel like you're trapped in the backyard of this house that you built.

5:24There might be people looking at it, but you never get the chance to show them anything inside. Inside a song, there are all these parts that get imagined and written and recorded that are so full of thought and beauty, but only the people who've made the song ever get to hear those pieces on their own. All those pieces get smooshed together in the final version that comes out. Whenever I put out a song, I was always a little sad that no one else was going to get to hear the things that I had heard when I was making it. Let me show you what I mean. Here's a clip from a song of mine.

6:23Okay, what's your experience when you listen to that? You might like it, maybe. Or you might hate it. Or you might say, I don't know, dude, it's 20 seconds of a song. What do you want from me? Which is fair. What I hear is impossible to expect anyone else to hear. It's not just the cello part and the guitar part and the drum beat. It's also all the things that I lived through in order for that music to exist. So in 2014, I started a show to try and solve this distance between the creator and the audience. I interviewed musicians about one of their songs and then combined that with the different layers of music that make up that song.

7:03I thought this way, an artist could bring a listener in and give them a guided tour of this house they made. They could point to the foundation and say, this is how the song got started. And then as more and more layers get built on top, eventually the full song gets revealed. The show's called Song Exploder. It's a pod... Thank you. Song Exploder is a podcast, and it's also a TV show that I adapted for Netflix. And over the years, I've gotten to talk to some of the biggest musicians in the world about their work. People like Fleetwood Mac and U2, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Alicia Keys, Billie Eilish, The Roots, and Yo-Yo Ma, and over 200 others.

7:48At first, I was really looking at those isolated pieces of music to do the work of revealing the inside of their respective houses. but as I was having conversations with them about their songs something happened I realized that there were rooms to be discovered in the conversations themselves doors that could be opened and I started to wonder could I try listening to people the way that I was trying to listen to music because when someone tells you something just like with the song there can be all these layers within it. There can be all this context that you're missing as the person out on the street, outside of the house.

8:31So to get inside, I had to listen for those moments and those clues where there was more to be discovered, where there was something below the surface of what was first presented to me. So I borrowed from my music listening brain. And now when I'm and conversation, this is what I try to do. Be open to new ideas. Stop multitasking. Let the other person know that you're engaged and do it without taking your focus away from them and turning it on to you. Because of making Song Exploder, I now listen to a much wider range of music than I used to. When I was younger, I used to actually pride myself on my music stobbery.

9:14But nowadays, it just feels like I'm potentially cutting myself off from hearing some great ideas. And I think that's a prerequisite when it comes to listening to people too. You have to go into it open-minded and curious and ready to learn something new. Also, the instinct to multitask is so hard to turn off, but it's so important that you do it. You know, when you're listening to music these days, most of the time, it's something that we do passively. It's in the background. It's the soundtrack to something else that we're doing. And I hate to say it, but between our phones and our smartwatches and just our own wandering thoughts, it's easy to get distracted.

9:52And we tend to listen to other people that way too. But you can't really get immersed if that's the case. Imagine trying to listen to a song while singing a different song in your head. You can't do it or you can't do it well, and you can't fully appreciate what someone else is saying if you're thinking about something else. I'm also a big believer in the power of nonverbal communication. Like, just a simple act of a nod is a way to let the other person know that you're engaged and also invites them to keep going and say more. That kind of intentional, engaged silence makes space for them. Sometimes, though, you do have to actually ask for more.

10:39You have to draw them out. But if you can ask for what's below the surface of what they just said, you might unlock some door for them and invite them to go through it with you. That also means turning off the instinct to talk about yourself. I used to think that this was actually the best way to show that I was really listening. Someone would tell me something and I'd say, oh man, you know, that reminds me of this thing that happened to me. And then I would tell a whole story of my own. But it's kind of like listening to half a song and then saying, oh, you know, this part reminds me of this other song and then turning that first song off and going and putting on some other song, which is also something I've done.

11:23But you can't get deeper if you lose the moment like that. So it's a challenge to your impatience and to your selfishness to be engaged without making it about you. okay and so now to ignore the advice about talking about yourself i would like to talk about myself and tell you a little bit about me and that song that i played you a part of to hopefully illustrate what i'm talking about years ago when i was making my first recordings i would play my songs over and over and over again in my bedroom my music career wasn't really something i could talk about with my parents. They were hardworking immigrants whose dream for me had been to become a doctor or a lawyer.

12:11But every now and then, I would hear my mom humming one of my songs just to herself in the kitchen. And that felt like some kind of unspoken approval. And over the years, whenever I would hear my mom humming one of my songs, it made me so happy. last fall my mom passed away and a few weeks after her funeral I had a dream where I got to see her and talk to her and visit with her for a little bit and I woke up filled with longing and sadness but also gratitude for this moment and this dream and I ended up writing a song about it But it's so good to see you. It's so good to see you. See you again.

13:12In the bridge, I stopped singing for a little bit, and I just hummed a melody.

13:22I was thinking about my mom, and I wanted to try and represent her in the music in some way. One of the people who I talked to about the song while I was making it was Yo-Yo Ma. I told him, this is what the song is about and this is what the music is supposed to do in this part. And I asked him, do you think that the cello could represent my mom's voice? And he listened to everything that I said and then he played those notes.

13:58Okay, here's everything together again.

14:25So now, what's your experience when you listen to that from inside the house? Every conversation has the potential to open up and reveal all the layers and layers within it, all those rooms within rooms. And personally, I hope that I can keep looking for those ways in, so I can experience the depth and the richness of someone else's ideas every chance I get to hear them. For now, thanks for listening to mine. Thank you. Thank you.

15:25And it all felt the same as any other night of my life. We lived at home back then. Still feels like home in my sleep. I walk too dark again For a moment It was you And me You're a piece of a dream now Just a little too far And I can still hear your voice through The door left a jar But can't see where you are By the murmuring TV You'd fall asleep too In bed You sat and looked at me I said I miss you You said I know Pictures that I've framed Don't tell the stories in between The moments that contain Who you were really to me You're a piece of a dream now Just a little too far And I can still hear your voice through The door left ajar I guess that's how it is now The only place you'll appear We'll have to meet in some shadow Between there and here Between there and here

18:10But it's so good to see you It's so good to see you See you again

18:32Mmmm

18:37Mmmm Mmmm

18:43You're a piece of a dream now Just a little too far And I can still hear your voice through The door left a jar I guess that's how it is now The only place you'll appear We'll have to meet in some shadow Between there and here Between there and here

19:35Thank you.

19:41That was Rishi Keish Hereway's 2021 TED Talk. When we come back, a conversation about how those ideas have evolved and a mini song exploder on one of his own songs. Stick around. This episode is sponsored by Defender. Are you a trailblazer? A risk taker? Someone with countless tales of epic adventure? Well, even the boldest among us started small, daring themselves to reach greater goals each day. If you're looking to take on a challenge like that, the Defender is too. It's a vehicle built for drivers capable of great things, whether they're headed towards uncharted territory or just a weekend getaway.

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22:02Rishi Keish, welcome back to TED Talks Daily. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me. We have just listened to your beautiful talk where, among many things, you made the case for empathy and discovery through attention. And that talk I got to see in the audience, it came out five years ago now. And since then, you have hosted hundreds of more conversations with artists, recorded your own music, scored music for film and television. And now you have a new album called In the Last Hour of Light. Congratulations. Thank you so much. And it really means a lot for me to be here because I think that performance at TED, you know, that was the first song that I'd put out and first time I'd performed in a decade.

22:52And I feel like that was the first step towards coming back towards music and making this album. Now that this album is out, I can look back and be like, oh, that's really where that started. Wow. A catalyst moment. I love it. I'm curious then, what has shifted for you in the past five years or so? How has your approach to listening evolved? Well, I think the listening to myself part has been the hardest and the thing that I've worked on the most. Because I feel like I'd spent so long trying to be in service to other people on the podcast, listening to their stories and trying to do the best job that I could to convey what those stories were about and make something beautiful out of the interviews and the music.

23:45and like using all of that listening to that end. But making the podcast for that long is part of the reason why I didn't make my own music. Yeah. Because it was so much easier for me to justify spending the time being of service to someone else's art than trying to somehow prioritize something that felt selfish by making something of my own and also nebulous because, you know, who knows if it would ever come out or if it would ever mean anything. But starting with writing that song and talking about that song about my mom, it really opened up something for me that made me feel like I do have my own stories that I feel like expressing through music.

24:29And regardless of if anybody else hears them or if anybody else cares, there's something internally in me that I have been ignoring. And I really need to pay attention to that again in order to feel whole. You wrote in your substack, in fact, that you think of this new album as sort of a memoir, even. And when you listen to the lyrics and the stories that you share about each song, it's clear why it can be seen as a memoir or experienced that way. What makes this more of a memoir rather than just an album? This is, I think, again, a byproduct of having made the podcast, of having made Song Exploder for so long.

25:09The episodes that always meant the most to me were about songs that were incredibly personal to the artist, where I felt like I wasn't just getting something nice to listen to, but I was really feeling closer to that artist and who they were and something deep and intrinsic to them. It was always a privilege to get to make those kinds of episodes. And those kinds of songs always stuck with me. And so naturally when I came back to making my own music, I thought, well, I only want to make music that has that kind of depth and has that kind of richness. And so I just started writing as honestly about my own life and my own experiences.

25:56And I went away from the kind of metaphor and abstract imagery that I'd maybe favored in my younger life, in the sort of earlier era of my music career. Yeah, the writing style of these songs on this album is direct. It's personal. You had said previously in an interview with NPR that your writing style has evolved because you used to love layers of allegory and metaphor. Why did you make this shift to something more direct? I think that I've learned that specificity in someone's stories and specificity in art doesn't make it a barrier for entry for the audience. I think that's something that people can get scared of, that, oh, if I make this too much about myself, then will I alienate people because it won't feel as universal?

26:52And that just hasn't been my experience. and I've had this unique experience of getting to talk so closely with other people about their songs. I find that when the language is very, very specific and the stories are really, really specific, it's just more evocative and I can relate to it in some more poignant way. So I wanted to do that. I just wanted to be as honest about it. Yeah. And I think there's a paradox that exists really in that when I experienced storytelling or artistry that gets really highly specific, it almost feels more universal as they get more specific. Yeah, I think that's true.

27:32After hearing hundreds of artists and speaking with hundreds of artists who have been extremely open on your show, did it help you be more vulnerable? Was it easier for you as an artist as you were putting out your own music to be more open about your own personal experiences? Yeah. I mean, it almost felt karmically unfair if I weren't. Right. But no, I think just the process of being an interviewer, learning how to do that, I tried to ask myself something similar. You know, can you go deeper than that? Can you be more bare about that? Or what is the feeling under that feeling? I think that interviewing someone when it goes well can feel almost like therapy, and I'm sure you know that.

28:24So I got into the practice of listening for those specific details and those phrases that felt really meaningful and honest, and then trying to dig those out of myself. Yeah, yeah. You have talked about how you started Song Exploder during a period of writer's block for you and that the show actually made it harder for you to write for a little bit because interviewing all these greats can trigger feelings of self-doubt. But at some point, something must have shifted. So what is the hardest part about songwriting for you now? And how has your own creativity and writing changed shape? I think that this idea of finding time to make something of my own as opposed to doing the work of the podcast or something like that is still really, really hard.

29:21I think that it's even harder now, not just because I have adult obligations and I have a job and things like that, but I think also just the constant form of distraction. You know, like the fact that I have my phone on me all the time makes songwriting really hard. I'm not talking about the moment where you like sit down and like, okay, now I'm going to work on music. It used to be, I think, that songwriting was sort of a background process that would be running when the rest of my CPU was kind of in an idle state. I would get a lot of song ideas while driving or something like that on long stretches, you know, on tour or something.

30:02because you'd be in a long, straight stretch of freeway and you can't completely zone out. It's not like you're going to go to sleep, but there's a minimum of brain activity required and your mind starts to wander. And then you start to make connections and phrases come to mind. And that would often be the kind of the first DNA of a song would be those kinds of phrases or ideas or something that would come while you weren't really doing anything, essentially while I was bored. And I think one of the hardest things now is finding space to be that kind of board, you know, where I'm not completely unconscious, but I'm just a little bit occupied.

30:44Because normally in that moment, you know, you're waiting in line or something. It's like, hey, take out my phone and see what happens. And you get that little spike of dopamine. But that's antithetical, I think, to the act of creation. You mentioned the initial DNA of a song, which is a perfect opportunity to seg into our mini Song Exploders section of this conversation. We'd love for you to take us inside the song, Things Change Even Now, from your new album, which you co-wrote with Laetitia Tomko of Vagabond. This song is about a lot of things. Set it up for us. Yeah, it's a song that I think started a couple years after my mom passed away.

31:31The time when my dad was sort of newly a widower and living by himself. And we were all kind of adjusting to the new shape of our family. my dad was living by himself in his apartment in rhode island where he and my mom had lived and he was getting ready to take a trip to india and one day i got a call from him and you know my dad and i have a strange kind of relationship we've often felt like we're built quite differently and i think this is probably true for a lot of people with their parents especially children of immigrant parents where you're like, okay, you know, we're going to have this call and it's hard to get into something deep.

32:15But this call was strange in other ways as well. My dad sounded a little strange. And then later our family friend said, we were just a little concerned about your dad. And then the next day he called his doctor and was complaining of like a really bad headache. And I think there was something about the way that he was speaking to his doctor where the doctor said like what happened has anything happened to my dad said oh yeah i fell out of my bed the other day and he hadn't told anybody he'd fallen and he'd hit his head and the doctor thank god was like okay call your daughter and have her take you to the emergency room right now and it turned out he had had like a subdural hematoma he had a pretty bad injury and so i i flew out when he was in the in the hospital and the injury was blood pooling around his brain and specifically around the language center of his brain.

33:09By the time I got there, he was mostly not conscious. And when he was conscious, he couldn't speak. And then this other crazy thing happened where while they were waiting in the ER, my sister and my dad both got COVID because this was 2022. And yeah, that was still happening frequently. So he was by himself. He was like quarantined in this wing of the hospital. And I would go in and see him and I'd have to be all like masked up. You know, I wanted, I didn't want him to be by himself, but we also couldn't speak to each other because he just wasn't speaking. He would sort of just make some sounds.

33:44And that week that I was there, it was also the week of Thanksgiving. It was also his birthday, his birthday was Thanksgiving that year. So it just felt incredibly lonely. I felt so lonely for him. Everything about it just felt really lonely. And a few weeks later, when he finally came home from the hospital, he was well enough to go home, but he definitely was not recovered yet. you know, they had, they had to operate and he was going to have to go through a lot of physical therapy, speech therapy, all this stuff. So it didn't feel like he was himself yet. And he's moving kind of slowly. And he came in and he, he sat down on his bed and, and, you know, we had gotten rid of his car because he was no longer going to be able to drive.

34:22We just changed the sort of parameters around his life to adjust for this. And he sat and, and he just said, he said, wow, I can't believe how fast things can change. And when I came home from that trip, there had been so much going on for me in those kind of quiet hours in the hospital room where I was just wondering if my dad was going to make it or not, because it was definitely not clear, especially early on when he first got to the hospital. And just thinking about what that would mean for sort of like the legacy of our relationship because he and I we've just never connected in the way that I longed for I guess my dream for what a relationship with anybody but especially with a parent with a family member my dad and I have just never had that and I've never been able to figure out why like how it is that we can be related and be so so different I mean I think he would say himself he doesn't really understand my work my life my existence as an artist like what motivates that and i'd gone to see a a friend's memorial for his father and he read the text that his dad had sent my friend who's a musician and a composer his dad said you know your mother and i went to see the movie that you scored it was so beautiful and from the first note, it was so clearly you.

35:46We're so proud of you. And it was just a really beautiful, eloquent, articulate message that made me feel like, wow, what must it be like to have a parent who understands you so well and understands what to say? I've just never had that. And I was thinking about all of that in that hospital room. And so that's where this song began. in the room Hoping you'll say something soon I've learned by now You tried but you never knew how So I went without

36:36In the liner notes you write about the memory of some of the sounds of the machines in your dad's hospital room, which you then explore in a steady piano part that you can hear throughout the song. Tell us a little bit more about this choice. Yeah, I was mostly accompanied by just the heart rate monitor. And when it came time to record and we were figuring out the arrangement, we dropped down at times to just the piano and the voice while we were figuring it out. And you can hear it in the second chorus. everything goes away and it's just the piano. And the chords are changing while I'm singing, but this one note is just playing throughout.

37:25Words you never managed Time I spent away We did a lot of damage Still I wait And we set the tempo to be at around, you know, like a heartbeat speed. And it wasn't something that I had planned. It was something that we sort of discovered in the recording studio while we were working. And it was one of those beautiful, serendipitous moments that just kind of came through collaborating. You mentioned we. Talk a little bit about the collaboration involved and what other collaborators brought to this song that you wouldn't have brought on your own. Yeah. Well, you know, one of the biggest changes in terms of listening, to go back to your earlier question, making this album was a completely new experience for me.

38:24So foreign and different from any way I'd made music ever before in my life. It was recorded live, which I'd never done. I just had spent so much of my life recording in my bedroom, writing the parts and layering them. And even the song Between There and Here, the song with Yo-Yo Ma, that was one that I had made, you know, kind of track by track, building it up. But for this, I worked with a producer named Phil Weinrobe, who has a very specific way of making music, which is he thinks that everyone should be able to hear what everyone is doing and react to it in real time. So rather than having somebody come in and record the drums, and then somebody comes in and records the bass, it's like, no, maybe what you were playing in the bass part would be different if you were there in the room with the drummer.

39:11And rather than listening to a metronome and everybody kind of playing to the same speed, it's like, well, sometimes you do naturally slow down or you speed up. And essentially making everything about the music more human. Relational. Yes, relational. And also instinctive. You know, I thought, oh, well, we should spend a week, right, as a band, practicing every song, figuring out what the arrangement is, so that then when we go to record it, it is super, super tight. And he said, no, actually, the way that I prefer to do things is to have everybody listen to the song. You'll come in, play it for us, and then we'll discover what the song is together.

39:50And in a matter of just a couple hours, we'll have recorded it, which was not only terrifying, it seemed crazy to me, you know, because it's like, don't you need to like, just know it in your bones. And he said, no, there's a point at which you can hear the music is alive and exciting. And there's a point at which that changes and the music becomes just a performance. And that's a different feeling. And you don't know when that's going to happen. You don't know where that shift happens, but once that shifts, you can never get it back. You can never get back to that exciting moment. So we're going to just start recording as soon as we have an idea of what it's going to be.

40:30And that's what you hear in the album. This is, you know, just a couple hours after I've introduced the entire band to what the song is. Do we hear any of those surprises in this song in particular that you can speak to? Maybe something that was a mistake that ended up hitting perfectly or just anything that you didn't go in expecting? Well, one of the things that was the scariest for me was singing this live. Because in addition to just recording all the instruments, that's also part of the live recording. Things change even now Watching you breathe in and out Eyes closed from the strain I know you're not one to complain And I said, you know, like, what if I am out of tune?

41:18And everybody else is great, and I'm just, you know, and I don't hit everything perfectly. Again, because of working on Song Exploder, but also just the way that I'm built normally, I want to do the best job possible. I want to get an A. And I'm like, how do I get an A on my vocals if I can't practice and redo things and use an eraser? And one of the things that has been the hardest lesson to unlearn for me is the idea of getting an A does not exist in music. I thought I wasn't getting an A because I didn't know how when I needed somebody to show me. And it turned out, no, actually, that's just the entirely wrong mindset.

41:56And Phil said, think about some of your favorite records and think about some of the moments where something unusual happens or something weird happens. And I was like, oh yeah, I love those moments. On Song Exploder, I'm always highlighting those moments where it's like, oh, what was that weird squeak? You know, what were the circumstances that led to that? He's like, yeah, exactly. And I was like, but that's fine for other people. I can't allow for that in my own music. Otherwise, it will be clear to everyone else that I am an imposter and I don't actually belong in this world. You know, I should go back to just telling other people's stories about music and not making my own music if I'm the slightest bit out of tune.

42:37And so it's still hard for me to listen to some of this because I do hear all the moments where my voice isn't perfect. And I also think that it's kind of appropriate. Because in the end, so much of the album and this song in particular is about accepting how things never work out the way that you plan them to. that this idea of like control that I might want to have has always been an illusion. And so to make music in this way where I've had to let go of control felt like in some ways I was honoring what the music was about anyway. And it's a marker of your growth too as a human being. Like you're growing up if you can accept that.

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46:03This song is about your dad. Between There and Here, which you shared in your TED Talk, is about your mom. This album in some way feels like a portrait of family as well as a memoir. You know, obviously these things are braided together. So why was it important to you to share so much of your relationships with your parents, with listeners out there? I think that I've been trying to understand who I am and where I come from, why I am this way. And I've been looking a lot at who my parents have been, who they've been in my life, and how that might have figured into things, what I might have gotten from them.

46:45I think with my dad, especially, it feels like a puzzle that I still haven't figured out. And I wanted to make an album that said like, look, this is who I am for better or for worse. This is the truth. And some of the stories are really just questions. And a question for me is like, where does my dad figure into this? Given that we feel so different that I feel like he can't relate to who I am, I can't relate to the stories he tells or the way he sees the world. How is it that I came from him? That question is also a part of who I am, even if I don't have the answer. It seems like so much of what you do is a real project in storytelling, in exploring these narratives.

47:30You made a podcast that turns songs into stories. Another show of yours looks at love stories. You did a live show called Cookie Exploder that was actually about your dad. And you partnered with an ice cream company to make a flavor based on your mom's pie recipe, for listeners who don't know about this. Now you have this album that also works as a memoir. you keep finding ways to take stories that live inside you or stories that live inside your loved ones and open them up so that we can better understand our humanity as well. What do you feel like is the thread that connects all of your work?

48:11Wow, that's a great question. I think there's a feeling that I'm always striving for that comes from one of my earliest memories of listening to music. When I was a little kid, my parents would play old Bollywood songs. And I remember hearing Asha Bosley in a recording from a soundtrack from the 1960s. And as a little kid, experiencing nostalgia. and not even nostalgia for something of my own because it was from before when I was born. But there was something in the music and something in the sound of the recording that had like this memory and this ache in it. And it made me sad, but I also wanted to linger in it.

49:01And it just drew me in, in a way that I think has stayed with me forever. That was the feeling that I wanted to reach for. That was a particular kind of beauty that I was really interested in. And I think that I've either consciously or unconsciously made that a part of my work ever since. And so part of getting to that is explicitly talking about memory and thinking about memory and thinking about the things that make us who we are. I really love talking to people. I love getting to know people. And I think people's stories are so fascinating. and I'm particularly drawn to origin stories. You know, you meet somebody in the world and you get to have this three-dimensional view of who they are immediately.

49:52And I think it's so fascinating to get to find out how did they get that way? What made them who they are? And I think looking back at those origin stories also has that kind of sense of nostalgia built into it. At the beginning of your TED Talk, you said, as a musician, when you put a song out into the world, it can sometimes feel like you're trapped in the backyard of this house that you built. There might be people looking at it, but you never get the chance to show them anything inside. You have now built this whole album, a truly personal one, that is now out in the world. So what are you hoping people will feel when they walk out?

50:35It would mean so much to me if people even spent the time to listen. It really, like, that is a form of love. Like, attention is a form of love, even if they don't know me. And to me, the idea that anybody would spend any time with something that I made, something that I put myself into, is really meaningful. And if anyone were to connect with my experiences, my stories, that would be amazing. I think I just want to feel more closely connected. Yeah, yeah. And since this is a call to listen, you offered four principles of deeper listening in your talk. Those principles are to stay open to new ideas, stop multitasking, engage non-verbally as well, and be careful to not make it about yourself.

51:25Is there anything you would change or add today as guideposts for deeper listening? it's a hard one to put into instruction, but I think being curious about other people is really a requirement for deeper connection and for deeper listening. You have to come in kind of with the table already set for you to empathize, to take a cue from improv, the rule of yes and. And it's not enough to just sort of ask the question, you have the answer come and then you walk away. or you move on, you know, like, I think real listening means sometimes there are other questions underneath that question that they're inviting you to ask implicitly.

52:14And you need to have that kind of internal curiosity to want to go find the next question and go a little deeper. Well, you are masterful at it. And I have so enjoyed our conversation. And thank you for being so thoughtful and present and open, not only in making your work, but also in speaking with us. To everyone listening, the album is called In the Last Hour of Light. It came out just yesterday, April 24th. Hopefully after this conversation, you're going to hear it in a different light, and we will leave you with the full song, Things Change Even Now. Here it is. And Rishi Keish, thank you so much.

52:55Thank you so much. It really means a lot to me.

53:02Thank you.

53:37Thank you.

53:59Words you never managed The time I spent away You did a lot of damage Still I wait

54:32Things change even now Words I keep saying out loud Hands slipping from mine I need a little more time

54:50Words you never managed Time I spent away We did a lot of damage Still I wait

55:31Thank you.

56:00Thank you.

56:27Hugh. Our conversation was recorded in April, 2026. If you're curious about Ted's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is part of the Ted Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by Lucy Little. The Ted Talks Daily team includes Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, and Tanzika Sangmarnivang. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo. I'm Elise Hugh. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.

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