You're listening to TED Talks Daily.

I'm your host, Elise Hugh.

The places we come from shape who we are and our connections.

They play a crucial role in the story of our lives.

In his 2021 talk from TEDx Buffalo, filmmaker John Padgett flips this idea.

He asks us to turn the lens on the stories of our cities and those communities themselves.

He'll explain after the break.

Think about your hometown.

Think about the place where important things have happened in your life and in the lives of those you love.

Now, what if you woke up one day and it was just gone?

My very first film was about a town that disappeared.

I was 16 at the time, and my family was on a vacation to see the great national parks of the west and somewhere in

Wyoming we happened upon a classic tourist trap an old western ghost town and admission was five

dollars ahead and there were six of us and my dad was frugal so his idea was send john in alone with the video

camera and the rest of the family will just watch the videotape later so i ventured in alone

and attempted to capture all of the mystery and mystique of this town lost to time.

Now, old Western ghost towns capture our imagination

because they are a touchstone to America's pioneer history.

But in time, I would come to understand that ghost towns still happen.

Wildfires, rage, earthquakes strike, levees break,

but more commonly it is the insidious slow motion disaster,

layoffs at the textile mill, the closing of a steel plant, or the suburban sprawl that slowly

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