Marie Grochowski (CAS’26) gave a talk titled “What Fungi Can Teach Us About Global Immigration” at the annual TEDxBU conference.

Campus Life

This Year’s TEDxBU Talks: Childhood, Privilege—and Fungi

Last weekend’s popular event drew students, faculty, staff, and alums to the Howard Thurman Center

One speaker shared his experiences in foster care and adoption, his privileges, and his opportunities. A second speaker told his story about how he became a writer and why others should join him. A third explained the connection between fungi and global migration. 

The eight people who took turns standing on the big red TED dot on the stage of BU’s Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground were featured speakers at last Saturday’s daylong TEDxBU event, which drew around 100 faculty, students, alums, and others. It was the fourth year the Thurman Center hosted the event. 

Each of the talks centered around this year’s theme: Coming Alive. Nick Bates, Thurman Center director, said the theme comes from The Creative Encounter, a book by Howard Thurman (Hon.’67), dean of BU’s Marsh Chapel from 1953 to 1965, the first black dean at a mostly white American university. 

Thurman “would often say that life is alive and it is sustained by its own vitality,” Bates said. “He would think of life as something that is ever-growing, consistent, always present, and sustains its own self. And so the idea is that this theme [would] empower the participants, the speakers, to deliver something that they feel is their interpretation about Howard Thurman’s themes.” 

The world-famous TED talks started in 1984, and they involve people from any field giving brief talks on any subject. TEDx events are locally and independently organized and follow TED’s format.

This year’s talk was produced by Elizabeth Kostina (CAS’24) and James Eddy, Howard Thurman Center associate director. 

Kostina, a double major in architectural studies and in sociology, has been instrumental in the evolution of the TEDxBU connection over the past few years. She has been a TEDx organizer since high school. As she prepares to graduate, she says, her time working on the TEDx talks has helped her think about the next chapter of her life. 

“I definitely feel that my time at BU, and especially with working on TEDx,” she says, “has prepared me to embrace the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead with confidence and a sense of readiness to contribute meaningfully to any broader community I end up landing in.” 

Kostina believes that TED’s motto (“Ideas worth spreading”) and the Howard Thurman Center’s mission of finding common ground are deeply aligned. “TEDx events provide a unique platform for the BU community to share and discover diverse, compelling stories that might not otherwise be heard,” she says. 

Eddy shares that outlook. 

“Sometimes we get caught up in the idea that somebody has to be an expert in the field, but this event gives an opportunity for people who are really interested in specific subjects to give their thoughts, views, opinions, and research on things,” he says. 

This year’s speakers included Isabella Zangirolami (CAS’27), Joel Paulson (LAW’25), Lily Belisle (CAS’24), entrepreneur Scott Mason, and Marie Grochowski (CAS’26), who compared global migration to fungi in her talk. Shaylon Walker (CAS’24) gave one of the standout talks, speaking about the intersection of racism and the environment, comparing their hometown in Georgia to the city of Boston. 

They began the speech by sharing their awe of nature in Boston that struck them when they first arrived to attend BU. As they started walking along the Charles River every morning before their first class, they began to wonder why the environment in Boston and in Georgia were so different. 

“Why was nature never this accessible? Why was the option of walking really not even a thing—because our sidewalks [in Georgia] were basically ornamentation for drivers to look at as they sped by?” Walker asked. “Why didn’t I have access to public transportation just feet away from where I lived, like I did here?” 

While at first glance Boston may seem a better environment for Black families, Walker cited the fact that the average net worth of a Black family here is $8 (you read that right) and the average net worth of white families is $247,000. “Boston may look diverse on paper, because of all these institutions that bring people in from all around the world, but it is not a place of permanence for Black people,” they said. “You see, Black people have liabilities here. Boston benefits from our labor, contributions, and our financial expenditures, but it has not made itself a place for us to stay.” This elicited applause and cheers from the audience. 

Igor Iwanek, a College of Fine Arts lecturer in performance, gave another standout talk. He guided the audience in a breathwork exercise while he and Amit Kavthekar, an Indian tabla musician, played rhythmic music. 

“I believe that conscious, intentional breath is the most subtle way in which we human beings connect to each other and connect to the world around us,” he told the crowd. “I believe that conscious and intentional breath makes us more available to life. I believe that conscious and intentional breath gives [us] beautiful freedom, the freedom to be well inside of us, no matter what is going on around us in the world. Conscious and intentional breath is like a shower, a shower for our mind, for our agitated emotions.”

The program also featured Matthew Dicks, an internationally best-selling writer and a record 59-time Moth StorySLAM champion and 9-time GrandSLAM champion, whose stories have been featured on the nationally syndicated Moth Radio Hour. He shared his journey to becoming a writer and eventually an elementary school teacher. 

When he teaches writing, he allows his students to choose whatever topic they want to write about, which he said sparks their imaginations and passion for a topic. Another tip he shared: just get down to work. “Engage in the process: write poetry, write essays, write a play, try your hand at a musical. Write old-fashioned letters with pen and paper to people who you love and people who you despise,” he said. “You will understand what writers need… So if you want to be a great teacher of writing, stop guessing and start writing.”