TED Talks Daily
TED Talks Daily Book Club: Essential questions to ask your future self | Meg Jay (re-release)
12 Oct 2025
How much do you think about your future self? If your answer is not much, you're not alone. It can be difficult to plan for a version of yourself you haven't met yet, says psychologist Meg Jay. Sharing how to close the empathy gap between you and your future selves, she outlines courageous questions to ask about how your present and future can align, so you can begin to achieve your goals. (This conversation, hosted by TED current affairs curator Whitney Pennington Rodgers, was part of a TED Membership event. Visit ted.com/membership to become a TED Member.)TED Talks Daily is nominated for the Signal Award for Best Conversation Starter Podcast. Vote here!Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
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. As many of you know, here on TED Talks Daily, we have our own book club series. Once a month, I sit down with TED speakers who have new books out, and we talk about their work and the big ideas that shape them.
A few times a year, we host one of these conversations live for the TED membership community. Our last event of the year will be November 4th with the author and TEDx speaker Oliver Berkman.
And I'm super excited to let you all know that for the first time ever, I am hosting a virtual read-along of his book, Meditations for Mortals, four weeks to embrace your limitations and make time for what counts. I'd love for you to join me for the read-along. I really am a huge fan of Oliver Berkman and his work. The live event happens on November 4th.
You can follow me on Instagram at Elise Who, that's E-L-I-S-E-W-H-O, where I'll be sharing some thoughts and prompts about the book leading up to the event. And if you are intrigued, head to TED.com slash join to sign up and RSVP.
Reading Oliver's book has made me think of the many incredible talks and conversations we have shared over the years that dig into big questions of how to embrace who we are and what we want to be, how to make the most of our time. Today, as we get started on week one of our virtual read-along, we're sharing this Archive TED membership conversation from 2021.
It's with TED curator Whitney Pennington-Rogers, who sits down with clinical psychologist Meg Jay to talk about how to close the empathy gap between you and your future self.
we need to talk about the empathy gap. So the empathy gap is why we sometimes hate on people on the other end of the political spectrum. Or it's why maybe we shrug our shoulders at the problems of those who look different or live different or love different than we do. It's why we almost certainly aren't doing enough to protect our kids and grandkids from climate change.
It can just be difficult sometimes to care about people that we don't know or to do right by people who don't even exist yet. But what if I told you that that same empathy gap can also get in the way of us doing right by ourselves in our 20s and beyond? And before I go on, let me say that everything I'm about to talk about also applies to all of us out there who are well beyond our 20s.
But for a little bit of background, in 2013, I gave a talk about why our 20s matter. So it's about almost 10 years later. I'm still a clinical psychologist who specializes in 20-somethings. But these days, the 20-somethings I see, they know their 20s matter. So they want to get them right. They want to move to the right city. They want to take the right job. They want to find the right partner.
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