TED Talks Daily - Why I’m building libraries inside prisons | Reginald Dwayne Betts

Episode Date: September 28, 2026

At age 16, Reginald Dwayne Betts was sentenced to nine years in prison. He turned to books to help hold onto his sanity — and developed a belief that we find what we look for, even in the toughest places. Now a lawyer and poet, he's opened hundreds of Freedom Libraries inside prisons across the US, putting books he once dreamed of reading into the hands of incarcerated people. In this profound talk, he makes the case that hope is something people pass on to one another. "We put millions of people in prison. I would put millions of books inside," he says. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Lawyer and poet Reginald Dwayne Betts ate his first mango in solitary confinement. He thought it was an apple until he bid in and the juice ran down his hands. At the time, he was 16, staring down a nine-year sentence and teaching himself to juggle to keep himself from losing his mind. But that mango became the seed of an idea that would shape the rest of his life. That's how prison taught me that you find what you look for. Who would expect to hear a story about prison that includes a mango?

In his talk, he describes what he chose to focus on in that cell and the people he found around him, a boxer who taught him discipline, a man who argued law with him for an hour, the friends he made. He walked out of prison and became a writer, and then a lawyer and then went back again and again for the people still inside. We put millions of people in prison. I will put millions of books inside

when she asked me how. I say one library at a time. Dwayne has since opened more than 600 freedom libraries inside prisons across the country, putting the books he once dreamed of reading into other people's hands. And some of the men who taught him how to hope are now handing it out themselves.

That's coming up right after a short break. And now our TED Talk of the Day. I ate my first mango in a hole. With some called a shoe, the box, ass egg lock up. But no matter what you call solitary confinement, no one expects it to be where you eat your first mango. And me, I thought the oval-shaped fruit that came with lunch that day was an apple. apple. I've been teaching myself to juggle to keep from losing my mind, imagining that I can

manage my troubles if I could flow apples into an orbit of my creation. When I sank my teeth into the unfamiliar, fragrant fruit, juices ran down my fingertips. I ate until I chipped the tooth, scraping it along the mango seed. I never saw another mango in prison, and I only learned the name of the fruit when I was home and in my mother's kitchen. Before I started juggling, I trashed the mostly riding apples without a second glance. Then juggling transformed the apples into my way of escape. That's how I was. prison taught me that you find what you look for. Who would expect to hear a story about prison that includes a mango? I got locked up in 1996. I was 16 years old, 5'5 and 125 pounds. I hadn't

went a fight since the second grade. But coming a brawler overnight wasn't in the cards for me. That's why people often ask me how I survived. What if I say, I survive prison because I believe you find what you look for? Because of what it means to notice the mango, to commit yourself to the possibility of a miracle even without a name for the wonder. I should thank my judge. After I pled guilty to carjacking and he sentenced me to nine years in, prison, I was certain that I was going home. I waited for him to tell me it was all a dream. Then he confirmed my intuition. I don't have any illusion that sending you to the penitentiary

is going to help. Do you know what the cruelest word in the English language is? The preposition, but. The judge said, but you can go down. there and you can make the best of it or not. I figured the judge was saying that I could choose what I looked for in those sales. Becoming a computer engineer was now out of the question. Earned in a college degree from prison was just as unlikely. But because of what the judge said, I thought not only of what I would lose, I was 16 years old planning who I would be when I left. I've loved books since I was a kid. And so on my sentencing day, I told myself that I would be a writer.

In a crucible that is prison, I learned to see other people. I remember Starr. We spent months in the job. Jason sales in a whole, we were both obsessed with stories of our past and with fantasy novels like Lord of the Rings. Books that let us imagine ourselves as people who chose to be heroes instead of villains. He was a boxer. I wasn't. Star taught me what he knew, how to train, how to breathe, how not to let frustration and the lack of discipline.

turning to something that ends up costing you far more than you can afford to lose. He was not the only one. I remember Mike G. One day, he asked, if you slipped at McDonald's and broke your leg and they had one of those wet floor signs up, could you sue? Of course I could sue. We argued. I knew I was right.

An hour later, he says, you know you're wrong. And then he shows me a page in a faded yellow book with the word torts on the cover. Who asks a question they don't have answered to? And then argues about it for an hour. The devil on my right shoulder says swing. Now, remember, I hadn't won a fight since the second grade. So instead I picked up a tired issue of prison legal news from his locker An ad for a paralegal course caught my eye

My mom paid for the classes I didn't want to be a lawyer I just didn't want to be anybody's fool I almost didn't finish the class You see I was at Sussex one state prison And they had these lines these yellow lines that you cannot cross but I was a perpetual line crossing. I would cross lines to get stamps,

to say hello to friends, to borrow food, to give people food. One day, I crossed the yellow line to get a book. A new book is a rare occurrence in prison. Betts, I'm so tired of you stepping over my lines. This time, you're going back to the hole. the lieutenant said before he cuffed me. From the second tier, Luke saw it all.

We hadn't exchanged more than a dozen words in his life. But when they opened his cell door, he pushed all his property out of his cell and said, if shy I go to the hole, I go to the hole. Others began banging on their cell doors also demanding to go to solitary confinement. It was another miracle. I didn't go to the hole that day. Luke only knew me from the times we hooped together, but that was enough for him to see me as worthy of more than a sale.

Even then, I guess I was finding what I was looking for. Now, I left prison on March 4th, 2005. Before April 1st, I tried to enroll at the University of Maryland. I didn't even know what the word semester meant. When I told this kind counselor that I had just came home from prison, he suggested community college. I took refuge there. Then I started picking up college degrees like felonies.

I had an AA, a BA, a MFA. I published a memoir in a collection of poetry before I turned 30 years old. But I couldn't even get an interview for a teacher gig. I was 33, I had two small sons, a felony record, I was unemployed. But I was once a jailhouse lawyer, and for a pack of tuna, a box of crackers, and ramen noodles, I got five years off somebody's prison sentence. I decided to go to law school. A year later, I've been admitted to as many law schools as prisons where I served time.

Harvard, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown, Michigan. I went to Yale wanting to be a public defender, but I was working in the public defender's office, and I couldn't stomach my young clients being locked up. Every one of them reminded me of friends in prison during football numbers, 30, 40, 50 years life. Then Juvie asked me to help him get out. I started representing my friends, failing and failing and failing again.

Then Luke found me. I hadn't talked to him in 20 years. I walked into the parole board with his blind mother on my arm as if I were her son. He made parole. Then Keith did, and then Fetz and then Juvie and then Terrell, and I got Dempsey out too. six men all sent to prison as teenagers all out because my mom spent money for me to take a paralegal course

in the middle of a prison sentence that neither one of us knew if I would survive. I left prison on March 4th, the only date that is also a command, advising me to march forth out in the world and leave everything about prison behind. But I'm not. I found myself returning again and again for friends, for clients to read poems.

So when someone asked, what would you do for people in prison if money wasn't an issue? I said, we put millions of people in prison. I would put millions of books inside when she asked me how. I said one library at a time. In 2020, it was all a dream. A little over a year later, we opened our first Freedom Library in a gutted sale in MCI, Norfolk. A prison where Malcolm X served time. Our second was in Louisiana's Angola State Prison.

We put Freedom Libraries on the cell block so that men can step away, no, so that men, women, and children can step away from their bunks and reach for a book. that would be the star or the freedom they look for. We've opened more than 600 Freedom Libraries putting books I once dreamed of reading into the hands of others. What we've heard often

makes me weep. Like when Hillary, one of the first women in prison to touch a Freedom Library, wrote, the smell of wood and the smell of a new book takes me right out of this place. I have been incarcerated for 20 years and I'm doing life.

I love books and I'm an avid reader. I have been since I was a little girl. Hillary makes me think about myself. Thirty years ago, I walked into a prison barely older than my 14-year-old son. My 18-year-old is choosing a college. I am the father I am because of what I found in those prison cells. Long ago, I found out that you found what you look for because there is always someone who believes.

that you'll be searching. These days, I've returned to prisons with something as improbable as the mango I once found in solitary confinement. Luke and Terrell have both returned to open freedom libraries with me. The men who taught me how to hold on to hope are now handing it out to others, unnamed, unannounced, one book at a time. Thank you. You were listening to Reginald Wayne Betts speaking at TED, 2026.

If you're curious about TED's curation, visit TED.com slash curation guidelines. And that's it for today. Ted Talks Daily is a podcast from TED. This episode was fact-checked by the TED research team and produced and edited by our team. Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Lucy Little, Emma Tobner, and Tonzika Sung-Marnivom.

Additional support from Daniela Ballerazo, Christopher Faisi Bogan, Valentina Bohanini, Ban Ban-Ban-Chang, Brian Green, and Laini Lange. lot. Learn more at podcast. ted.com. I am Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feet. Thanks for listening.