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TED Talks Daily

Sunday Pick: 2025 Staff Picks - Best of How to Be a Better Human

28 Dec 2025

Transcription

Chapter 1: What high school superlatives are featured in this episode?

7.102 - 30.513 Elise Hu

Happy Sunday, TED Talks Daily listeners. I am Elise Hu, and we are continuing to share a handful of talks, conversations, and podcast episodes from the TED Archive that spark some reflection as we head towards the new year. And today we're bringing you a very fun episode of another TED podcast, How to Be a Better Human. Remember those high school superlatives like class clown or biggest flirt?

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31.174 - 52.937 Elise Hu

In this episode, you'll hear from Dallas Youth Poet Laureate, Naisha Rondar, and How to Be a Better Human's team of editors, marketers, producers, fact checkers, and more on their favorite episodes this year through the lens of such superlatives like most likely to make you rethink your place in the world or most likely to make you feel your feels, best motivator, and more.

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52.917 - 60.649 Elise Hu

And if you want to hear more insights like this, listen to How to Be a Better Human wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, now on to the episode.

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69.185 - 85.337 Chris Duffy

You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. We are coming to the end of the year, and it has been a really big season for our podcast. So before we graduate, before we move on to our next season, we want to take a little look back. And we're going to do that in today's episode, High School Yearbook Style.

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85.317 - 103.952 Chris Duffy

So people from across our podcast team are going to pick an episode and give it a superlative. You remember those, right? Things like most likely to succeed or biggest class clown. If I was going to get a superlative for this episode, it would probably be most likely to have a seasonal head cold and sound like his nose is stuffed up because it is. OK, so this episode, this is that.

103.972 - 120.413 Chris Duffy

This is the superlative episode. And these superlatives are going to be bestowed by folks who work on this show, who produce it, who fact check it and keep it going. We've even got a previous podcast guest, poet Naisha Randhar, who's going to share her own superlative pick. I'm going to get out of the way. So you're going to hear the voices of members of our team.

120.853 - 132.01 Chris Duffy

And then after they tell you which episode they picked for a superlative, you'll hear an excerpt from that episode. I want to also note that some superlatives were so popular that multiple people wanted to share their episode pick for that same superlative.

132.35 - 151.4 Chris Duffy

So you will have to listen to the whole episode to find out which superlative wins most popular superlative, which is itself, of course, a superlative. Okay, that is more than enough for me. Let's get started with Lainey Lott, our audience marketing associate. And Lainey has an episode on which she would like to bestow this superlative, most likely to make you rethink your place in the world.

151.761 - 152.382 Chris Duffy

Here's Lainey.

Chapter 2: How does Lainey Lott's episode challenge our perspectives?

965.85 - 983.828 Elise Hu

You can only strengthen a muscle by stressing it, by pushing it, by challenging it. And that's something that I think we all understand. We can look at life as something that always is stressing us, is always throwing these challenges at us. I know it's just a really good life lesson.

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987.692 - 1014.984 Chris Duffy

We're going to take another quick ad break and then we will be right back with many more life lessons. Today, we are awarding some of our guests of this past year with the very prestigious awards we all know and love, yearbook superlatives.

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1015.004 - 1030.466 Chris Duffy

Lainey Lott and Mateus Salas are two members of the Better Human team, who you heard from earlier, but they're also both overachievers, so they nominated multiple episodes. They are going head to head in this next superlative because they both made a pick for the category of most likely to improve your life tomorrow.

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1030.486 - 1037.897 Chris Duffy

So let's hear from them both, and then you can decide which episode you think should take the crown. Who deserves the superlative? Here's Lainey.

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1038.535 - 1050.673 Elise Hu

So when I listened to the episode with Dave Nadelberg and Neil Cather, How to Reclaim Your Cringe, I really felt a lot better about the many cringey things I've done in my life. I'm a theater kid, so there's many.

1050.713 - 1068.958 Elise Hu

But hearing everyone make a huge joke out of their cringey stories helped me kind of spin the narrative on my own cringey moments and look at them with kinder eyes and see them to be a little funnier and more endearing. Plus, this episode really made me want to journal more just to try and make myself laugh.

1069.599 - 1075.385 Elise Hu

So it was a quick perspective shift to keep me from laying awake thinking about something I did 10 years ago that was embarrassing.

1075.445 - 1106.784 Unknown

I think one of the things that is really fun in Mortified is that the things that a kid wants isn't necessarily any different than what an adult wants. The big difference is that the kid has less information. And so I often call teenagehood the sort of the first day on the job of being an adult. And the training's been really bad. There's been really poor training at the office.

1108.066 - 1121.8 Unknown

And so a lot of the things that we laugh at and enjoy but also relate to so much is just someone operating without a manual. And in a weird way, that's why they're keeping their journal.

Chapter 3: What inspiring story does Michelle Quint share?

1710.993 - 1730.879 Chris Duffy

You can pre-order that now and find info at chrisduffycomedy.com. How to be a better human is put together by a team who are all superlatively superlative to work with. On the TED side, we've got the extremely likely to succeed Daniela Balarezo, Banban Cheng, Michelle Quint, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Valentina Bohannini, Laini Latt, Tansika Sungmanivong, Antonia Le, and Joseph DeBrine.

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1731.279 - 1747.359 Chris Duffy

This episode was fact-checked by the most likely to correct an error duo of Julia Dickerson and Matthias Salas. On the PRX side, we've got audio prom kings and audio prom queens, Morgan Flannery, Norgill, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. Thanks again to you for listening. The best listener superlative goes to you.

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1747.779 - 1764.079 Chris Duffy

Please share this episode with a person who you would want to have sign your yearbook. And that is it for this season of How to Be a Better Human. I would say have a great summer, but it is the middle of winter. So instead, I will say stay warm and we'll catch you next year. Thanks for listening. I'm going to go blow my nose.

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