Daily Podcast #43

Source 🎧

How art helped me grapple with grief | Navied Mahdvian - TED Talks Daily (TED Audio Collective)

Sentences ✍️

1. It was only after my daughter, Elika, was born that my personal life began to creep into my cartoons more.
   • creep into: to gradually and subtly start to appear or become noticeable in something
   • New sentence: Over time, doubt began to creep into my thoughts despite my initial confidence.
2. When we’re trying to dodge grief, we caricature those we’ve lost.
   • dodge: to avoid something, usually in a clever or dishonest way
   • New sentence: He tried to dodge responsibility by blaming someone else for the mistake.
3. “It avoids flattening them and leaves them their richness so I can grieve all of them.
   • grieve: to feel or express deep sorrow, especially due to someone’s death
   • New sentence: It took her months to truly grieve the loss of her beloved pet.
     
     

Summarization 👀

Cartoonist Navied Mahdavian reflects on how art, particularly cartooning, helped him process grief after the death of his grandmother, Homa. As someone who understands the world visually, he felt an urgent need to draw her hands when he learned she was dying. His work had long been impersonal, but the birth of his daughter marked a shift toward more personal storytelling. Through cartooning, he learned to distill big emotions—like grief—into simple, expressive lines. He explains the phenomenon of face pareidolia, how we project ourselves onto cartoon faces, and how that opens space for shared human emotion. Mahdavian didn’t get to draw his grandmother’s hands before she passed, so he used his own as a model, imagining them aged and frail. Drawing became a way to preserve the physical sensation and emotional memory of her. He emphasizes that grief can be shallow when we reduce loved ones to caricatures; instead, he tries to capture their full complexity. By inhabiting others through his art—his grandmother, father, daughter—he reaches deeper empathy and understanding. Ultimately, Mahdavian argues that communication through art transcends words, helping us feel seen, connected, and less alone in our loss.