TED Talks Daily
A parent's guide to raising kids after loss | Andy Laats (Kelly Corrigan takeover)
08 May 2025
Andy Laats had the textbook fairytale family setup ... a great job, a happy marriage, three wonderful kids and everything going for them. Until one day, they didn't anymore. In this tender, wise and unexpectedly funny talk, Laats describes the profound lessons he's learned over the years as a father, offering insights that will resonate with anyone who's ever had any kind of family.This is episode five of a seven-part series airing this week on TED Talks Daily, where author, podcaster and past TED speaker Kelly Corrigan — and her six TED2025 speakers — explore the question: In the world of artificial intelligence, what is a parent for?To hear more from Kelly Corrigan, listen to Kelly Corrigan Wonders wherever you get your podcasts, or at kellycorrigan.com/podcast.For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
You are listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm Kelli Corrigan. I'm a writer, I'm a podcaster, I'm a TED Talker, and I am taking over for Elise Hu this week for a special series on AI and family life.
I guest curated a session about this topic at TED 2025, and I'm here now to share these very special talks with you, along with a lot of behind the scenes recordings and personal insights to shed some light on the process of how these talks came to life. When I sat down to map out this six part discussion about AI and parenting, I kept coming back in my mind to one of my very best friends.
His name is Andy Lots and he's like a brother to me. He is my husband's best friend from business school. He's been a CEO. He founded a watch company called Nixon. We've known each other for 25 years. We've spent every Thanksgiving with him and his wife. his whole family. We've gone on family vacations. And over the course of that, his wife became a very important friend of mine.
And then she died. I was a part of Liz's memorial. So her sister gave a talk, I gave a eulogy, and then Andy spoke. And in the process of that, I started to see that he was learning things that other people needed to know. In the years since she's died, Andy and I have had conversations, the likes of which I have never had with anyone. And one of the things he said that always struck me
and I think it's relevant to this conversation about AI and parenting, is that he used to be a dad, but then he became a mom. And he was finding out every day all the things that he didn't know as a dad and that he didn't know he didn't know.
And it made me think about who is behind all of this AI development and whether those people, that handful really of people, know what they need to know in order to be involved in these tender, consequential relationships between parents and children. And to be completely transparent, I am afraid, and maybe for very good reasons, that most moms are invisible.
I don't think that we are taken seriously as a group of people that are contributing in a very meaningful way to society. I think we get used to buy things that are developed without any input from us.
And so watching Andy grow into this new life as a mom and a dad instead of just a dad, it made me wonder, what would he say AI is possible of doing in the context of these profound relationships between parents and children?
what was his point of view about what we or ai could offer to strengthen this fundamental building block of society so i reached out to andy and i said i have this super weird idea and just let me explain i'm doing this session at ted about what a mother's for in an ai world and it's quickly evolving into what is a parent for in an ai world And I wondered if you had thoughts about that.
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