Beyond the Talk: Ariel Ekblaw in conversation with TED Talks Daily

Summary

TED Talks Daily: "Beyond the Talk" Featuring Ariel Ekblaw

Release Date: May 30, 2025

In the latest episode of TED Talks Daily, host Elise Hu engages in an insightful conversation with Ariel Ekblaw, an aerospace engineer and architect renowned for her pioneering work in space construction. This episode delves deep into Ariel's TED Talk and explores the transformative potential of space technology in addressing some of humanity's most pressing challenges on Earth.

---

The Journey to the TED Stage

Elise Hu opens the conversation by congratulating Ariel on her recent TED Talk. Ariel reflects on the meticulous process of crafting her presentation, emphasizing the importance of refining ideas to their essence.

"Refining to the very core. What is that idea that's so important to really share with the public and share with the audience?"
[03:43] Ariel Ekblaw

She highlights the challenge of distinguishing between science fiction and scientific reality, striving to communicate complex ideas in a relatable manner.

---

Space Exploration Serving Earth

Ariel shifts the focus to a compelling perspective on space exploration—not merely as a quest for discovery but as a strategic initiative to solve Earth’s critical issues.

"Space is a frontier for more than exploration. It's a laboratory for solving humanity's biggest challenges."
[06:12] Ariel Ekblaw

She argues that space infrastructure can be leveraged to benefit Earth directly. For instance, building large structures in orbit can facilitate innovative solutions like zero-gravity biotechnology and space-based solar power.

---

Innovative Technologies with Earthly Benefits

Biotechnology in Space

Ariel discusses the unique advantages of conducting biotechnology research in microgravity environments. Proteins fold differently in space, enabling the creation of drugs and therapies unattainable on Earth.

"You can stabilize them and then you can bring them down. So a great example is artificial retinas."
[08:35] Ariel Ekblaw

She cites LambdaVision, a company that manufactures artificial retinas in orbit, capable of curing macular degeneration—an innovation impossible under Earth’s gravitational constraints.

Space-Based Solar Power

Another focal point is space-based solar power. Ariel explains how placing solar panels above Earth's atmosphere can capture undiminished sunlight, addressing the intermittency and storage issues associated with terrestrial solar energy.

"You could shine energy on Earth even at night, which would fundamentally solve the storage problem for solar power or the intermittency problem."
[08:54] Ariel Ekblaw

She envisions a future where concentrated solar energy from space acts like a flashlight, providing a consistent and reliable energy source.

---

Timelines and Political Climate

Development Timelines

Ariel outlines realistic timelines for these technologies:

• Biotech Habitats: She anticipates that within five years, commercial space stations focused on biotechnology could emerge, scaling up the experimental groundwork laid by the International Space Station (ISS).

"In five years we could be able to credibly say that we could do another commercial space station focused around biotechnology."
[09:45] Ariel Ekblaw

• Space-Based Solar Power: This is viewed as a mid-term investment, comparable to constructing nuclear power plants on Earth, with a projected timeline of 10 to 15 years.

Political and Economic Factors

Ariel acknowledges the significance of bipartisan support in the U.S. for space initiatives, which bolsters funding and governmental backing. She also emphasizes the importance of democratizing access to space, envisioning a self-sustaining space economy less reliant on government funds.

"We think space infrastructure could serve Earth, to help Earth."
[07:53] Elise Hu

---

Environmental Considerations

Addressing environmental impacts, Ariel discusses the current carbon footprint of rocket launches. She underscores the necessity for cleaner propulsion technologies to make frequent launches sustainable.

"We need to be able to do cleaner mass to orbit. It needs to have a lower carbon footprint than it does right now."
[13:23] Ariel Ekblaw

Innovations such as liquid oxygen and hydrogen engines, as well as alternative methods like mass drivers or slingshots for cargo, are presented as viable solutions to reduce the environmental impact.

---

Navigating a Male-Dominated Field

Ariel shares personal experiences and lessons learned from being one of the few women in aerospace engineering. Inspired by her mother, one of the first female pilots in the U.S. Air Force, Ariel emphasizes the importance of role models and mentorship.

"Girls are good at math. Just reinforce the fact that you have just as much right and opportunity and natural ability to go out and really succeed and try hard."
[14:20] Ariel Ekblaw

She also highlights the efforts of her nonprofit, Aureli Institute, which aims to diversify the space workforce by providing opportunities to individuals from underrepresented backgrounds.

---

Behind the Scenes of Her TED Talk

Ariel expresses a desire to showcase the extensive groundwork that precedes successful research, such as years of lab testing and iterative prototyping. She reflects on the unseen efforts that contribute to space missions.

"There's so much development in science and engineering, so much iterative prototyping and failure..."
[16:29] Ariel Ekblaw

---

Lightning Round: Personal Insights

In a lighthearted segment, Ariel shares glimpses into her personal life and philosophies:

• Innovation: Values elegance and simplicity in solutions.

  "I like it to feel elegant. Something that doesn't feel kludgy, doesn't feel over engineered."
  [18:50] Ariel Ekblaw

• New in 2025: Recently moved to New York to expand her professional and personal horizons.

  "Splitting my time between Boston and New York has been a delightful change of scenery."
  [19:18] Ariel Ekblaw

• Hobbies: Enthusiast of tropical botany, maintaining over 40 houseplants.

  "I am obsessed with tropical botany... I have over 40 houseplants in my house."
  [22:08] Ariel Ekblaw

• Regret and Lessons: Reflects on prioritizing personal relationships and fulfillment over solely professional ambitions.

  "Don't get so caught up in your own excitement that you forget some of the really fundamental, like basic human needs around fulfillment and taking care of others."
  [23:15] Ariel Ekblaw

• AI Conversation: Emphasizes the importance of addressing fundamental human needs alongside advancing AI technologies.

  "Let's not get obscured... there are still fundamental pockets of humans who need help in a less technologically driven way."
  [21:17] Ariel Ekblaw

---

Conclusion

The episode concludes with heartfelt thanks from both hosts. Listeners are encouraged to watch Ariel Ekblaw’s TED Talk for a deeper understanding of her groundbreaking work and visionary ideas.

Elise Hu remarks on the importance of balancing technological advancements with human-centric priorities, encapsulating the essence of the conversation.

---

Key Takeaways:

• Space as a Multifaceted Frontier: Beyond exploration, space technology offers innovative solutions to Earth's challenges.
• Biotech and Energy Solutions: Microgravity environments facilitate groundbreaking biotech advancements, while space-based solar power presents a viable, long-term energy solution.
• Sustainability and Environmental Responsibility: Emphasizes the need for eco-friendly propulsion technologies to support scalable space infrastructure.
• Diversity and Inclusion: Highlights the significance of role models and inclusive initiatives in traditionally male-dominated fields.
• Personal Fulfillment: Stresses the balance between professional ambitions and personal relationships for a well-rounded, regret-free life.

---

For those eager to explore these transformative ideas further, Ariel Ekblaw’s TED Talk is available on the TED Talks Daily feed and ted.com.

Transcript

[Elise Hu]

Hey TED Talks Daily listeners. It's Elise. Thank you for making this show part of your daily routine. We really appreciate it and we want to make it even better for you. So we put together a quick survey and we'd love to hear your thoughts. It's listener survey time. It only takes a few minutes, but it really helps us shape the show and get to know you, our listeners, so much better. Head to the episode description to find the link to the listener survey with we would really appreciate you doing it. Thank you so much for taking the time to help the show.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

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[Ariel Ekblaw]

Thank you. It's great to be here.

[Elise Hu]

Congrats on giving a TED Talk.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Thank you so much.

[Elise Hu]

Talk us through the process of it and any surprises along the way.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Yeah, so it was an amazing process to put together with my curator. I'm so grateful to the help that she gave me and not just shaping the talk, but the ideas and the framework behind the message that we really want to share. And that's what I think is so special about the process is refining to the very core. What is that idea that's so important to really share with the public and share with the audience? We have so many things that we take for granted in our field, which I think is true for a lot of folks coming from academia. It was really interesting for me to hear feedback and then also from folks that I was practicing the talk with. What is familiar to people outside of science fiction who weren't steeped in it from when they were a child? What is and isn't familiar to people about where have we been in space? People see the Martian and they think, oh, great, we've had humans on Mars for some period of time and really smart people can understandably think that there's this crossover now between hyper realistic sci fi and reality. What is real and what's not. So learning what really resonated with people and where they were at and learning to communicate, to reach that audience was really an amazing experience for me.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah, it's really amazing how they've gotten it kind of down to a science. How to prepare people as they go through the process.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Yeah, exactly.

[Elise Hu]

Something I was surprised about in your talk is to hear your framing of space exploration in service of the Earth.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Thank you, Helen. Thank you. Hello, Ted. It's lovely to be here. I once had a professor ask me, why in the world do we spend so much money on space exploration in the face of so many pressing challenges here on Earth? It's a good question and a tough one for me. I do believe in the beauty of space exploration for the sake of new knowledge. But space exploration does so much more than just inspire. Our space program has routinely delivered breakthrough innovations. The Apollo program gave us the foundation of modern computing, the International Space Station gave us Lasik. Eye surgery contributed to that amazing technology. And now new technologies are coming online to enable life saving biotech in orbit and even deliver energy from space. What makes all of this possible?

[Elise Hu]

It's not something that we've heard much before on the TED stage. So can you break that idea down?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Absolutely. So again, in science fiction there's been this idea for decades, let's go and either escape the Earth so something wrong has happened to the Earth, or we've let it fall to pieces. And we think of space exploration as either an escape or a plan B.

[Elise Hu]

Right.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

What we really want to argue at Aureli Institute, where I do my work, is we should be protecting the Earth from the beginning and we could use space technology to do that. And so one of the best things to do with space infrastructure, build these big structures in orbit, but do things like zero gravity biotech or space based solar power that use space technology in service of Earth's citizens. And that's not to say that someday we won't explore Mars, or someday we won't travel outside of the confines of the solar system. But in the near term, we have so much opportunity to put space to work for Earth. So that's what we really mean by that, is use space technology and bring it back down to Earth.

[Elise Hu]

So it's not just pushing to new frontiers for frontier's sake or exploration's sake. Right. But it's in purpose of something.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

It's in purpose of something. And I am enough of a scientist, I love exploration just for the sake of new knowledge. But we also have to remind the public why it's relevant for their day to day life. People know about GPS in many cases, right? This is space based technology that powers the precision of where you are with your phone. It's why Uber works so well. But there's now an incredible slate of new things that we could be doing in space. But we need to build up the infrastructure to do it. And that's what people haven't heard about before. Instead of building space habitats to go away from Earth, let's build up more infrastructure in low Earth orbit to serve Earth, to help Earth.

[Elise Hu]

What new things, what do you feel are the most urgent problems that should be solved or could be solved with better understanding of space or this change of infrastructure as you discussed?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Yeah. The first is that we know that things like proteins, the building blocks of life, they fold differently when they're floating. And when you're in space, you're in free fall. So you have this Sensation of floating. And if the proteins fold differently, that means that there's all kinds of different drugs and therapies and cures that can only be made in space. You can stabilize them and then you can bring them down. So a great example is artificial retinas. There's a really cool company called LambdaVision that has figured out how to make an artificial retina in orbit.

[Elise Hu]

Wow.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

You can't do it on Earth because it starts to sag. Gravity basically pulls the really delicate little tissue down. But you can do it in micro G, you can stabilize it and then you would be able to cure macular degeneration once these retinas are inserted into the back of the eye. So it's like a simple surgical procedure. Amazing, amazing gift from space.

[Elise Hu]

So wild.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

That's the first one. And then totally different. Outside of the healthcare field, there's this huge potential to get energy from the sun. Right now the sun's energy has to filter through our atmosphere, so it has to go through the clouds. So solar panels, particularly in like a rainy Vancouver, are not going to get as much energy. But we could put solar panels above the atmosphere, above Earth, get raw unfiltered sunlight, concentrate it so it pierces through the atmosphere better and basically treat it like a flashlight. So you could shine energy on Earth even at night, which would fundamentally solve the storage problem for solar power or the intermittency problem. So really cool infrastructure, you should be building safely, things like this that could again leverage this environment of orbit for the benefit of life on Earth.

[Elise Hu]

So assuming there's buy in for this at scale, what kind of timeline are.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

We looking at for the biotech habitat? We think in the next five years there's going to be this race to fill the market gap from the International Space Station being decommissioned. So we already have a space station in orbit that does a little bit of this, but it's more like one off research projects. It's not a high throughput biofactory. So I think in five years we could be able to credibly say that we could do another commercial space station focused around biotechnology and really scale up what the ISS did. Space based solar power is a little trickier. We've known how to do it since the 1970s. So it's not a science question like fusion, it's really a question of the funding and the engineering ability to assemble thousands of solar panels in orbit. So you can imagine, you know, it takes 10 or 15 years, sometimes 20 years on Earth to build a nuclear power plant. Yeah, we might similarly take 10 or 15 years to build that infrastructure in orbit and then be able to deliver the clean energy. So space based solar power is more of a middle term investment, I think.

[Elise Hu]

Does the political environment and the changing attitudes, I guess, in the changing economy and situations here on Earth, does that have an impact on your timeline and these visions and how?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

So it definitely does. And I think it's important to remember. Luckily, space exploration is still one of the few bipartisan things. So at least in the US in our political climate, it's really special and we actually really treasure it that we can still get support from both Republicans and Democrats for space. We're lucky that the current administration does care about space. So I think as an area where we can expect some additional government attention, it's going to be able to be funded. But we do worry about groups like NASA having their funding cut and how that could change, you know, where other groups like us are able to apply to do some of this scientific and engineering precursor work.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah, got it.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

I also think it's important to think about the ways in which we can democratize access to space. So for some of this infrastructure we're building, we want people to know that you could commute to space or maybe your kids could commute to space for a job. We do see this kind of self sustaining, burgeoning space economy and there's enough investment and enough excitement about this that we think it'll no longer be purely dependent on government funding, which is really important for it to mature as an industry. So keep that in mind. If people are listening, you might be able to commute to a job in space in the future.

[Elise Hu]

Wow. But of course, anytime you are building infrastructure, that's a major drain on resources. So talk us through environmental costs and how much it would be.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

What are the trials? Yeah, yeah. So one of the biggest challenges we have in the space industry right now is the current carbon footprint of rocket launches is not significant at all compared to aviation. But if we succeed in increasing the frequency of launches, which is what everybody wants to do, then it does really become a serious issue. So one of the things that we think about to be able to achieve this infrastructural level building in space, we need to be able to do cleaner mass to orbit. It needs to have a lower carbon footprint than it does right now. So there's really interesting new rocket engines, liquid oxygen, hydrogen engines that are cleaner than hydrazine, cleaner than some of the old types of rocket fuel. There's also really cool new companies where it doesn't Work for humans because we're a little fragile. Our biology is very gentle. But for things that are just mass, like cargo that you need to get to orbit, you might be able to do it with a mass driver or a slingshot.

[Elise Hu]

No way.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Get it off the earth without a rocket. And so then there's less chemical propulsion burden on the planet. So definitely a huge area of focus for the space industry. How can we be responsible as we scale up?

[Elise Hu]

So there's a near future in which you could slingshot like a container.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

[Elise Hu]

Normally travels on a container ship.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Yes. You slave it off to space.

[Elise Hu]

That's amazing. And that's in order to have a lower carbon footprint.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Yes, exactly, yes.

[Elise Hu]

We're doing it for the environment.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Right, right, right, right.

[Elise Hu]

All right. Well, it is no secret, I'm sure not a secret to you, that the fields you are in are heavily male dominated. And so I'd just love to know how you've navigated this and what kind of lessons you've taken from being often kind of the only one or one of the few in a room.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

I'm really lucky in this regard. My mom was one of the first women to ever fly for the United States Air Force. So she was in the second class of women pilots admitted into the Air Force. She ultimately became an instructor pilot and taught the guys how to fly in her particular school.

[Elise Hu]

Oh, like in Top Gun?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Like in Top Gun, yes. My parents met in pilot training, so they do have a bit of a ridiculously adorable Top Gun story. My dad was a fighter pilot, but my mom being one of the ever allowed to fly, she really raised me with a sense of pride. And she used to say things from the time I was really little, girls are good at math. Just reinforce the fact that you have just as much right and opportunity and natural ability to go out and really succeed and try hard. So I bring that with me in all the different things that I do. It really helps to have had a role model and that's important. I think that we now show women who would be coming up behind us that there are role models. Amazing women like Gwynne shotwell who runs SpaceX. She's so. Am I allowed to say badass? She's so badass. And that's an example of young women can look at that, whether they're in, you know, middle school, high school, undergrad, graduate school, and say, oh, wow, there is a path for me in this industry. I might be one of a very few number of women in my quantum physics class, but There's a example, and I know that I can achieve that. We also work really hard at Aurveilla Institute, the nonprofit that I run to give opportunities to people from all walks of life, not just women by any means, but really thinking about people who traditionally might not have had an aerospace door opened for them. And through bringing that on a zero gravity flight, affectionately known as the Vomit Comet, we try to introduce more people to this opportunity to be part of the workforce of the space industry, now that it's burgeoning so incredibly.

[Elise Hu]

And arguably just you being on the TED stage and just being more externally focused too, is a way of role modeling and showing.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

I hope so indeed.

[Elise Hu]

I mean, showing other folks and younger people, especially in marginalized communities, that they could do what you do and have a very polysyllabic title.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Polysyllabic title.

[Elise Hu]

Well, let's bring it back to your experience giving a TED Talk, because one of the struggles with especially scientific TED talks is there's so much nuance, there's so many ideas, so many things I want to say. Exactly. So many things that you want to say that you then have to distill into a single Talk that's usually 20 minutes or less. So what was something you ended up cutting or that you really wanted to include that you would love to take this platform and this moment to share?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Oh, that's such a great question. Thank you. There's so much I wanted to say, and it is, it's a really, like I said again at the beginning, it's such a good exercise to be to distill your ideas down. But something I'd love to share with this audience is before the research that gets shown in the talk happened, the missions to the International Space Station. We did six years of zero gravity flights of lab testing just on a benchtop in the MIT Media Lab with strings suspending the tiles, learning how to actually do robotic self assembly. And so in a TED Talk, you often see kind of the end glory state and the most recent thing that got you there. But there's so much development in science and engineering, so much iterative prototyping and failure and, you know, recreating the idea that builds into that. So I wish, yeah, I could have shown all of those hours in the lab building up to the very first spaceflight tests that we did.

[Elise Hu]

Okay, well, you got to talk about it now.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Thank you.

[Elise Hu]

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[Ariel Ekblaw]

Ooh, this is going to come from my physics background. I like it to feel elegant. Something that we think a lot about in math and physics, something that doesn't feel kludgy, doesn't feel over engineered or over innovated. It's something that is maybe a new as yet unknown idea that is an elegant solution to a problem and sometimes it speaks for itself and sometimes you have to really search for it, but that's probably what first comes to mind.

[Elise Hu]

Okay, what is something new that you brought into your life in 2025?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

I don't know if this counts, but I recently moved to New York. I decided to split my time between Boston, where my MIT lab and the team is, and then bring a little bit new energy by moving to New York and kind of expanding my sphere of activity. And so that has been really delightful and a good change of scenery for me.

[Elise Hu]

Bringing New York into your life for 2025 is pretty big.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Seems lovely. Yeah. I lived in Boston for 10 years, so it was time. I think that counts.

[Elise Hu]

What are you hoping to leave behind by the time the year's out?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Ooh, that's a great question. In the team, we're in basically a startup mode constantly. And so something that my chief of staff and I always think about is survival. Survival level, fundraising, surviving in the global economy. Survival in all of these different ways that young fledgling startup has to think about. I would love to get to a point at the end of the year where I've taken care of my team. We're pretty well funded. We have the pathway to really do the meaningful work that we want to do in orbit, and I can shed some of that survival scale mentality.

[Elise Hu]

So this conference obviously focuses a lot, or at least in the last few years, on AI.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Yes.

[Elise Hu]

For you. What do you feel like the conversation around AI is missing or what's not talked about enough?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

I actually heard the amazing poet Salome today, who just gave her TED Talk as well, say that we think about AI as the kind of scary boogeyman sometimes of all these things that it might bring forward, but there are so many fundamental things to still solve for humanity. Her point was, why are we worried about these superhuman super thinking structures when so much of the Earth's population is still not yet literate?

[Elise Hu]

Hmm. Hey, everyone, jumping in quickly to say that Ariel is referring to poet Salome Agbarugi here, who shared a Beautiful poem at TED 2025. Salome's performance will be coming out in just a few weeks, so make sure to keep an eye out on the feed for that. And now back to my conversation with Ariel.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

And so I actually think one of the things that's missing that she did such a great job of calling out is let's not get obscured. Absolutely. We should think about AI safety. Absolutely. We should think about all of the amazing ways to integr this miraculous technology. But let's remember that there are still fundamental pockets of humans who need help in a less technologically driven way. Maybe technology is part of the solution. But go and remember that while we're solving really complex problems that AI brings us that are new, we still have some really fundamental.

[Elise Hu]

What about clean water?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Yeah, what about clean water? Yeah, that still exists too. Yeah, exactly. Some of the mundane things are still just as important and just as critical to solve. And I thought it was a wonderful part of being, you know, here in the TED community is to have been reminded of that.

[Elise Hu]

That's lovely. That's lovely. Okay, off the TED stage, what's a fun talent, skill, or hobby that you have that you love so much that you could give another TED talk about it?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Ooh, I am obsessed with tropical botany. I have something over 40 houseplants in my house, and I love trying to keep semi tropical plants alive in Boston. Quite a challenge.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

And yeah, I just love.

[Elise Hu]

Do you have a greenhouse? Like, what do you do? Do you have to create an environment to allow them to survive?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Some of them get sprayed, some of them get misted. I give them special water. No, tap water. You have to filter out the soft dissolved salts that are In a lot of our drinking water. So they get ridiculous attention. And I don't quite have a greenhouse, but someday I would love to have a separate greenhouse for the botany. The botany project.

[Elise Hu]

Where are you on talking to plants?

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Ooh, I'm pro. Definitely pro.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah. A lot of people talk to plants and they swear by it. They say that plants seem to.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

To respond to it.

[Elise Hu]

To respond at least.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Cause you're giving them the attention, you know, when they need water. That might be as basic.

[Elise Hu]

It could be that, yeah, here's the scientific explanation. Because it does seem kind of woo like, oh, we're all connected as living things by this collective unconscious. But maybe it's just like, oh, I'm paying more attention to it.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

I'm paying more attention to my plant. I know whether I need to spot it up. Yeah.

[Elise Hu]

Okay. Is there a regret you have a mistake that you've made in your life that's really taught you something.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

I had a wonderful conversation with another TED speaker that reminded me of this the other day. I went through a really tough situation with my mom. She got really sick a few years ago. She has since recovered. That period of taking care of her was incredibly intense. It happened to overlap with the pandemic. But the sense of fulfillment and mattering that I had and she had in that time feels actually so much more profound sometimes than even my day to day work. And I love my day to day work. I love working on space exploration. But I basically don't want to have the regret in 10 years of having focused so solely on a aspirational ambition that I didn't do the things, the very human things that just help you feel fulfilled and grounded, like taking care of your family, being there when someone really, really needs you. And it was another wonderful conversation at TED that was just such a crystallization of. That's how you avoid regret, is don't get so caught up in your own excitement, which can be a good thing, that you forget some of the really fundamental, like basic human needs around fulfillment and taking care of others and being needed.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah, that's beautiful. And a beautiful reminder. Ariel, thank you so much.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me. It's been great talking to you.

[Elise Hu]

Yeah, it's been a delight like that was Ariel Ekblaw in conversation with me, Elise Hu, in 2025. You can check out Ariel's talk on the TED Talks Daily feed [e-mail] and that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced by Lucy Little and edited by Alejandra Salazar. This episode was recorded by Rich Ames and Dave Pullmer of Field Trip Production support from Daniela Ballaraiso and Shu Han Hu. The TED Talks Daily team includes Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Greene and Tansika Sangmarni Vong. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. Support for this show comes from Capital One. Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft draft fees. Just ask the Capital One bank guy. It's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast too. Oh really? Thanks Capital One Bank Guy. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capital1.com Bank Capital One N A Member FDIC the new McCrispy Strip is here. Dip approved by Ketchup Tangy Barbecue Honey.

[Ariel Ekblaw]

Mustard, honey mustard, Sprite, McFlurry Big Mac.

[Elise Hu]

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[Ariel Ekblaw]

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[Elise Hu]

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[Ariel Ekblaw]

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[Elise Hu]

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