Fresh Air

Each of us has a sense of who we are, where we come from, and what we believe. But is identity assigned at birth? Shaped by circumstance? Or is it something we choose that changes over time? In this hour, TED speakers describe their journeys to answer the question: who am I? Entrepreneur Tan Le recounts her family’s harrowing journey from Vietnam to Australia, and how it defined her identity. Writer Andrew Solomon has interviewed dozens of parents, and he talks about what it’s like to raise a child whose identity is fundamentally different from yours. Novelist Elif Shafak describes how fiction has allowed her to explore many different lives, to jump over cultural walls, and how it may have the power to overcome identity politics. Writer Pico Iyer meditates on the meaning of home in a world where the boundaries of nation-states no longer apply. (Rebroadcast)