Hi there, I'm Jason Gots and you're listening to Think Again, a Big Think podcast.

Since 2008, Big Think has been sharing big ideas from creative and curious minds.

The Think Again podcast takes us out of our comfort zone, surprising our guests and me, your host, with ideas that we didn't necessarily

come here prepared to discuss.

I am so happy to be here today with Teju Cole.

He's a Nigerian-born writer, photographer, and art historian.

He's the author of the novel Open City and the novella Every Day is for The Thief. He's also the photography critic of the New York Times Magazine.

And his new book is a collection of essays about things, read, seen, and experienced.

It's called Known and Strange Things.

Welcome to Think Again.

Thank you very much. Nice to be here.

So I wanted to start with a section from your new book,

Known and Strange Things.

And the book is divided into three parts.

As I said, things read, seen, and experience.

So literary criticism, analysis of photography,

or ideas about photographs, and then things that have happened to you in your

life and those kind of blend and overlap as well. But this is from a conversation that you had with

the writer Alexander Hemon. How do I actually say his name properly? I say Hemon. Heymon, okay. And you guys,

you know, you were on your way to a book reading or some kind of literary

event and he became friends as a result of this conversation in the car.

So he asks you, what attracts you to cities?

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