Elise Hu

the self-confidence to keep moving forward.

That was Cheryl Lee Ralph speaking at TED 2023.

If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at TED.com slash curation guidelines.

And that's it for today.

TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective.

This talk was fact-checked by the TED Research Team and produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, and Tansika Sangmarnivong.

This episode was mixed by Lucy Little.

Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Balarezo.

I'm Elise Hu.

I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.

Thanks for listening.

You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.

I'm your host, Elise Hu.

We are continuing to share a handful of talks, conversations, and podcast episodes from the TED Archive that we hope will spark some inspiration in all of us as we think about the end of the year and the resolutions and practices we hope to bring into our lives in 2026.

And on this final day of 2025, we bring you a beautiful talk that asks us to consider a fundamental question.

If you had to explain to a newborn what it means to be a human living on Earth in the 21st century, what would you say?

In this talk from 2020, visual artist Oliver Jeffers put his answer in a letter to his son, sharing pearls of wisdom on existence and the diversity of life.

He offers observations of the beautiful, fragile drama of human civilization and why we must go into every day, every month, every year with a profound sense of love for this planet, each other, and our collective future.

And for those of you who can, I recommend heading to TED.com to watch this talk again after this to see it come to life with Oliver's original illustrations and animations.

That was Oliver Jeffers speaking at TED 2020.