TED Talks Daily - The poetry of family | Duncan Keegan (Kelly Corrigan takeover)

Episode Date: May 10, 2025

Duncan Keegan doesn't consider himself a poet, but this deeply beautiful talk shows otherwise. With simple grace and quiet eloquence, he celebrates family, connection and togetherness, often most called for at the hardest of times.This is episode seven 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.Want to help shape TED’s shows going forward? Fill out our survey!Learn more about TED Membership here! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We were gifted the new Google Pixel 9 and the built-in AI assistant Gemini has been so helpful with our weekly science podcasts. Okay, listen to this. Hey Gemini, what is an interesting science story from the last couple of weeks? One particularly interesting science story involves a potential breakthrough in understanding and treating Alzheimer's disease. It's ridiculously useful. Right? I don't have to stare at my phone being overwhelmed trying to gather information in the same way anymore. Check out google pixel nine at store.google.com. This show is sponsored by Aura Frames. My mom taught me that thoughtful gifts connect people and that's exactly what Aura does. Named Best Digital Photo Frame

by Wirecutter, it stores unlimited photos and videos that appear instantly on my mom's frame, no matter where you are in the world. Plus, setup just takes minutes. Save the wrapping paper, every frame comes packaged in a premium gift box without a price tag. Ready to win Mother's Day? Nothing says I cherish our memories like an Aura digital frame. And Aura has a great deal for Mother's Day. For a limited time, listeners can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $45 off,

plus free shipping on their best selling Carver Mat frame. That's A-U-R-A frames.com. Use promo code talks. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply. Support for this episode comes from Airbnb. Winter always makes me dream of a warm getaway. Imagine this, toes in the sand, the sound of the waves,

and nothing on the agenda except soaking up the sun. I think of myself in the Caribbean, sipping on a frozen drink and letting my troubles melt into the sea. Maybe Jamaica, Turks and Caicos, St. Lucia. Lots of possibilities for me and my family to explore. But vacations always fly by too quickly. I was planning my next getaway when I realized my home will be sitting empty while I'm away. That's why I've been thinking about hosting on Airbnb. It'll allow me to earn extra income and could help me extend that trip just a little longer. One more sunset, one more amazing meal, one more day to unwind. It sounds like the smart thing to do, and I've heard it's easy to get started. Your home might be worth more than you think.

Find out how much at airbnb.ca slash host. You are listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm Kelly Corrigan. I'm a writer, I'm a podcaster, I'm a TED Talker, and I am taking over for Elise Hugh 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. So at my day job, which is hosting the podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders, we do a long form interview on Tuesdays. On Fridays, we do a little thing called For the Good of the Order, which is anything I learned that week that we wanted to share. And then on Sundays, we share a eulogy sent in by a listener. And basically, it's our version of church, which is to say it's our way of reminding ourselves that we have a tremendous impact on one another over the course of our lifetimes, and that there are very specific ways that we show people that we love them. And so we received this eulogy that a guy in Dublin named Duncan Keegan had written for someone he lost. And it was a different category of thought and feeling and expression than we had ever seen before. And we have probably received a thousand

eulogies submitted for this special part of the feed. And Tammy, my producer, said I'm gonna send you something today and I need you to kind of clear your calendar for an hour after you read it, at least, because it is very affecting. And she was right. And I just read these words and totally bald. So when the Ted thing came up, I really wanted somebody to speak to the kind of loss that is always possible in family life, and what we risk when we join in relationship with one another because to me that risk does not exist with AI. So I reached out and I felt hesitant because I didn't want Duncan to feel that I was using his tragedy in any

way. I just wanted to say I have an opportunity. If it's interesting to you, terrific. If it's not, don't give it another thought. And he was interested. He was game. And I knew that he would need absolutely no help from me, and he did not. I didn't change one word of this. It was so right there, what he said on stage. It was like on the tip of his tongue, and he was so ready for this moment. He gave everybody in that audience and now for you listening an

unforgettable emotional experience like an insight that we will carry with us till the days we die. I don't know what Duncan Keegan's LinkedIn profile says and I don't care. I met him through my podcast and ever since I have wanted more people to know him and his story and his mind and his heart. His talk is so generous and you just kind of have to hear it to believe it. I mean honestly people were just pinned to their seat. You could have heard a contact lens hit the floor. It was so quiet. He had the absolute full attention and also the love of every person in that enormous room.

And he gave us something sublime. So this is Duncan Keegan's very beautiful talk about his very human family. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you. Hey, Callie. Thanks. You can do this. Wow. The American poet Robert Frost once observed that although both scholars and poets work from knowledge, they differ in the way they come by it. Scholars get theirs along projected lines of logic and poets theirs you know cavalierly and as it happens in and out of books they stick to nothing deliberately

but let what will stick to them like birds where they walk in the fields. Now I know filled with scholars and I'm no poet but I am from Ireland. A place where even now a poet, a maker of a poem is seen as someone who has come by an uncommon kind of knowledge. I mean truly there's so little left of that older Ireland but in the little that remains and in those little truths that only loss can teach, we find small felicities, like how the word for art and that for science were once one and the same, allian, or a word like dawn, which in our older tongue

can mean a poem, a gift, or fate, or an ear for silence. The high relief that lets a word perfect its progress into intimacy, my wife Sarah has that. A field for how ambiance, presence, the quality of a moment, it can all shape the meaning and weight of a word. I've heard it when she's with her friends

and I've even seen when she's with her friends and I've even seen it with our children. Every week Sarah used to drive our son Rory to a song and dance class in North Dublin and one evening as I was watching them arrive back home I realized that I could see Rory in the front seat, his face pale in the glow of the headlights and I could see his hands clasped to the front seat, his face pale in the glow of the headlights. And I could see his hands clasped to the seatbelt, the motion of his head just tilting and turning to look, and his bare arm raised just to point at something.

And then he pulled back and he was reaching for his mom just to tell her, just something. I don't even know what it was because I couldn't hear anything. But in that moment, I knew everything about that conversation. Everything about Rory and his mom that truly mattered. You know, we're told that the advent of AI marks a new era when science becomes art, when technology no longer merely invents but creates. When science becomes art.

When technology no longer merely invents but creates. Machine intelligences that will soon form an intimate part of family life. AI companions who will never abandon a child, never belittle them, never maltreat them, who will never sicken, never ache, never long to sleep, who will comfort our children at night, counsel them in the day, care for them when we cannot, be there for them when we no longer are,

for they will never die. But they're here to help you, not replace you, that's what they say. But if you speak of someone counselling my child, caring for my child, you're speaking of a rival for my child's affections. A rival, no parent, no mother, however capable, however strong, can ever hope to match. But here's the thing, I actually believe them. We have nothing to fear.

Just not for the reasons they think. For behind their promises and beneath our unease, I feel lies a misapprehension that artificial intelligence might become, or perhaps already is, artificial consciousness. And in turn, this rests on an assumption that consciousness is a mere product of matter, an emerging secondary effect of just a particular arrangement

of atoms in the brain. And even though we found no way, even in principle, to divine from matter how it is we love, we grieve, we entertain this notion that the processing cores and algorithms will somehow serve as proxy for a living soul. Well, they won't. I mean, they will be useful. But not as the empathetic synthetics

or the paper-folding replicants of sci-fi lore, which I love, but more as the board game from Jumanji, or Wilson from Castaway, or Bianca from Lars and the Real Girl. As devices of distraction for the living heart and all its loneliness and loss. But what of us? What are we for?

That's not a question that I can easily answer. So instead, shall I tell you a story? On a Wednesday in February, 2023, our Rory died. He was five and we brought his body home and we held his wake and we brought his body home, and we held his wake, and we said goodbye. And yet that's not the story. The story I wish to tell is actually about our then 11 year old daughter, Niamh,

and how she came to say goodbye to her brother, to her Rory. When they came, the men wore black, but they were kind, and spoke quietly and asked where it would go. The casket, the living room, we said. We helped them clear a path and make a place for it beside the couch. They touched the lid to lift it, and then they left. As we looked at him, at how still he was, how pale. We cried.

Neve, I said, come in, come in, it's okay. And from the doorway, she turned and she looked right through me. And then she left. She went round the corner and just somewhere up the stairs. I had the sense to stay. But Sarah went. And I could hear a little, but I heard no argument, no promises, no words, just the saddle of a child's weight against her mother, a catch of air and tears. And then she was there. We watched her foot the threshold to a living room where her dead brother lay.

We saw her eyes trace every line. She saw the gift of him, the curving verse of all he was and ever would be. She saw his fate. We saw her read the poem of a short life. You know our story is yours. Yeah? You know that one day you will stand before a door you do not wish to open, a room you do not wish to enter, and when that day comes, when every word, every line of logic fails, what then? Will you turn to all your devices of distraction? I hope not.

I hope instead you feel the press of a kind hand taking yours, the steady press that says, I will take this step with you. I hope you hear the silence that holds a friend's words in place that says they hear it too. You and the poem of your own life.

I hope you have a Sarah. For then, then you'll see what a mother is for and you'll learn what a friend is for and then you'll know, you'll know, you'll know at last what we are for. Thank you. (*audience applauding*) Stay with us, we have a lot more to share

right after a short break. This show is sponsored by Aura Frames. My mom taught me that thoughtful gifts connect people, and that's exactly what Aura does. Named Best Digital Photo Frame by Wirecutter, it stores unlimited photos and videos that appear instantly on my mom's frame, no matter where you are in the world. Plus, set up just takes minutes. Save the wrapping paper, every frame comes packaged in a premium gift box without a price tag.

Ready to win Mother's Day? Nothing says I cherish our memories like an Aura digital frame. And Aura has a great deal for Mother's Day. For a limited time, listeners can save on the perfect gift by visiting auraframes.com to get $45 off plus free shipping on their best-selling Carver Mat Frame. That's A-U-R-A, frames.com. Use promo code talks. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.

Hi, it's Morgan from Off the Shelf, and I'm here to tell you how my Google Pixel 9 helps me read more. Google actually gifted me this phone, and now I use it nonstop. The other day, I was trying to remember the name of this book someone recommended, and instead of spiraling into a 40-minute social media scroll, I just asked Gemini on my Pixel. What's that romantic book with a competition and a ghost helping her through the trials? The book you're likely thinking of is Phantasma by Kaylee Smith. Here's a breakdown of why it fits your description.

It's like having that one friend who always knows what you're talking about. Learn more about the Google Pixel 9 at store.google.com. For me, one of the most interesting lines in Duncan's profound talk was, you know, our story is your story too. And when I first read it in an early draft, I thought, no, that's not true. And all he meant was there will be a person, you will lose somebody that you cannot bear to live without. And in that moment, you are going to have a set

of very human needs that cannot be met by anything other than another living human being, another central nervous system to meet yours. When you said, do you think this story is not yours? I think that phrasing assumes that the audience isn't with you. Yeah. They're totally with you. Yeah. They're totally with you.

Yeah. So in my phrasing, it would be an inverse of, you know, this moment is coming for you. You know, your person might not be five, but you know there's a land beyond words. You may already know it. Yeah, you know the story will be yours. I thought that was such a generous and poignant thing that he said there. He didn't set himself off in this tiny circle of one where the thing that had

happened to him, which is every parent's worst fear, absolute worst fear, made him different and separate from everyone else. What he was saying was, it makes me just like you, you will go through this. And when you do, I hope you have a hand to hold as I did. I thought that was the pinnacle of graciousness. There is an experience of parenthood that involves first steps and first moments and moments that you hope you will never forget. And then for some people there's an experience of parenthood where it is final moments and moments that you wish you didn't have to remember. And also moments that actually you don't even remember. I was talking with Sarah about something to do with the talk today,

and I just I wanted to ask her about it because I have my very indistinct memory. It's almost not a it's almost not a clear memory, but it is a moment. It is a moment. And she just said, I don't remember that. I don't remember that day very well, I don't remember it. But she started crying and I started crying. I have these experiences with Sarah and with her grief and with losing Rory and with loving Eve, our daughter. And I, it makes me very skeptical of a lot of the inflated claims about what AI can or might be

able to do. And I think of it very much in terms of like poetry. What human beings can do with poetry. Think of it as Michael Longley, that poetry is an event, not a construction. You don't like it, you unfold it on the page, but the poem is an event, something that happens. And there was a moment where a poem reveals itself and it's well derived to you. And I feel like those moments that you have with a person, with another person, the words can drift in

that are just right for that moment, that they are not, those words do not truly describe what it is the moment you are having. And we can, with the technology we have, we can do beautiful things, like we can have a conversation over preparing dinner with someone who's another way across the continent or another side of the road.

But I would say the key thing is that we can travel in many instances and we can be in the presence of someone there with them. And then you can really rub your nervous system up against someone else. It was also so interesting to have these lead up conversations with Duncan because he needed zero help or support from me in shaping his talk and choosing his words. I mean he's a complete expert. I mean he exceeds my abilities and so that wasn't the point at all but these lead-up conversations were so interesting to me because I was asking him to think about how AI might factor in here and I was delighted by his willingness to go there intellectually and have that conversation

and consider those factors and features that might make family life something that is good for childhood development or that might have factors and features to aid the growth of children in a way that we couldn't quite imagine when we first started talking. People use AI for like they're lonely and they're in grief and they're lost. And that's what they won't be looking to fight like a tie. It's actually more like, will you turn to AI for this? Right. Or will you turn to a person who will really hear you and really know you? Right. And that goes to this finer point, which is in that moment, I hope you have a Sarah. I hope you don't have to, I hope that most people

can find a living, breathing, organic intelligence to turn to. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Great, a lot of people are saying, yeah, first in ideal world, everyone has a Sarah. Yeah. I mean, as you say, Sarah is rare. Yeah, yeah, that's true, that's true.

So in a less than ideal world, could we get somebody this, could we sub in an AI? But it's that element of listening, that element of like, can you hear me? You know, what is that? What is that nature of like, of someone being present and then of a person not being present? And I think if we entrust the care of our loved ones

and even our own sense of being seen and heard as another human, if we entrust it to something that isn't even there, it's like, in some way, it's like you say, it's a statistical process that's been rendered into an anthropomorphically, you know, engaging screen. Like, we're cheating ourselves and we're closing ourselves off from the mystery of what it a topomorphically engaging screen. Like we're cheating ourselves and we're closing ourselves off from the mystery of what it is to be with another person. And it is a mystery.

Right. It is a mystery. I could imagine ways in which you would tip your hat to. There are all kinds of roles for AI to play in my story. Here are some. If it could remind me that I need to take Neve to the eye doctor, fantastic. If it could do a scan of Rory's blood type faster and give us more personalized options, yay.

You know where it doesn't belong? Right here, and then you just do the moment. Yeah, I love that, Ellie, I love that, yeah. AI can technically live forever. It is totally unlimited. It can take care of quote unquote, millions of people at the same time. But people, people have to choose

where to spend their limited time choose where to spend their limited time, where to invest their limited energy. People have to sacrifice for each other. That's part of how we know someone loves us, is they choose us over someone else. They choose us over work, over play. They pick us. And it comes out in these eulogies that we play on Kelly Corrigan wonders. It comes out because people talk about that time their special person dropped everything to be with them in their moment of need. That is a feature of what love feels like. And to me a takeaway from this work with Ted and everything you've heard this past week is that that cannot be replicated by AI because AI doesn't have

limitations and AI doesn't die, at least not in the human sense. And you can walk away from AI, you can be rude to AI, you can fail AI, and theoretically it will show up again the next day, chipper and ready to receive you. So there are no stakes like there are in a human relationship where often you can't walk away. Again, this is not something for this talk, but you know, the way I see it with Rory and any number of people who've lost someone, I think it's almost like the presence of their body isn't there. But there are moments when it's almost like they've moved from the perfect body and presence that they had there into the world around us.

And that is the thing about this, the artificial intelligence side of things and that move to screens and that move to removing the friction of the world through the latest app or the latest function. It's like it's constantly pulling our attentions away, distractions away from what it means to be present in the world. And it's just- Right, right. And it's like perfecting away the-

Yeah, it's almost, it's that whole, drives me crazy. The self-overcoming of humanity, the transhumanist nonsense of like, we can improve ourselves so that we are no longer even humans. I want also to allow for a stronger contrast between the positive representation of what AI companions or whatever could be for people with the frailty and the feelings of being a human.

At the beginning of the week, I shared my TED talk. And as we wrap up this week and thinking about all the ways that AI is spectacular and terrifying, horrible and useful and things we cannot imagine yet, I can't stop thinking about the very act of staying, which is the heart of my whole TED Talk from 2024. That extraordinary bravery that it takes to sit with someone through their worst moment and say, tell me more, what else? Go on. Like, I can hear anything you want to tell me.

That loving space that's created that's so painful and terrifying cannot be replicated by a mom bot or a parenting bot because the mom bot isn't afraid. The mom bot doesn't know pain. The mom bot cannot love you. The mom bot does not need courage to stay. And so, Duncan's talk has left me feeling glad to be human, feeling glad to be living inside the tremendous risk that comes with deep human relationships. There's nowhere I'd rather be. I have had

loss. I've suffered it and that suffering feels a lot like love, just in a different form. Duncan put humanity in the absolute center of the conversation he put our deepest humanity our most human moments dead Center and I know not everyone agrees with me or the questions and thoughts that we've explored here this weekend Of course, that's great. But for me in the wake of all my speakers I find myself feeling strongly that I am just so team strongly that I am just so team human. I believe what I said in my own TED Talk more than ever, which is that the reward of all this interpersonal bravery is a full human experience, knowing every emotion, even the worst ones, at maximum dosage. That's what I signed up for. That's what I'm here for. When someone dies I'm here for.

When someone dies in Ireland, one of the ways of saying it, that someone has gone on the way of truth, of the great truth, slín na fíona, or slín na fíona, or Rúirí Imáir or slín na fíona, has gone on the way of truth. And that is the great truth, isn't it? The one we don't know. Duncan, thanks for coming all this way. Thanks for laying it out for people. That was a really hard thing you did. Really brave. Seriously, Kelly, thank you so much for a chance

to share our story with other people and to, you know, there's very little consolation in the events that happen in certain people's lives. But one of them is maybe to be able to share a story that touches other people and in some way helps them feel less alone. I mean, that's it. That's it. You should end the conference. Yeah.

It's like, my job. Yeah, see you later, everybody. That's the point. Right. Yeah. Like he said. Oh my god, you did it. You were perfect. You were so perfect. So nice to meet you. So nice to meet you. Yeah.

Hi, man. Duncan. Don't set me up again. Don't set me up again. Don't set me up again. I just got my shit back together. Yep. Don't. Don't set me up again, don't set me up again, don't set me up again. I just got my shit back together. Yep, don't, don't. I'm married too. Yep. It's like I couldn't let it out until now.

Not fair making the whole crew cry. I know, they're amazing. They're amazing. And how, like, Duncan is sublime. I mean, he's transcendent. He's otherworldly. He's so calm. I couldn't. I mean I was like... No, because there was no noise. It was so silent.

It was at the end of the show. Yeah, I could hear my heart beating basically. All I heard in the calm was, okay, everyone has to stop crying in here. Okay, you can stop tape. Yeah, I mean it was sublime. That's it for today. Elise Hue will be returning tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. I loved doing this work from start to finish, so thank you for listening, for sharing it

with your friends, for letting it be fodder, for bigger, more important conversations. That's all I've ever wanted to do in my whole life. Start good conversations. And I hope this set of talks and podcasts does just that. You can find me at kellycorrigan.com or on my podcast, Kelly Corrigan Wonders, wherever you listen to podcasts. wherever you listen to podcasts. TED Talks Daily is a part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and mixed by Lucy Little, edited by Alejandra Salazar, and fact-checked by the TED Research Team. The TED Talks Daily Team includes Martha Estaphanos,

Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, and Tansika Sangmar-Nivong. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Belarezo. I'm Kelly Corrigan, guest host of TED Talks Daily, here for a special week where we're taking a deep dive into the topic of AI and family life. Ever notice odd tastes or smells in your drinking water? Unfiltered water can carry hidden chemicals that impact your family's health.

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We were gifted the new Google Pixel 9 and the built-in AI assistant Gemini has been so helpful with our weekly science podcast. Okay, listen to this.