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Foreign.
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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. Neel Kumar Kutyal has argued 52 cases before the US Supreme Court, but his recent one may matter most. He took on global tariffs.
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I was hired to do what no lawyer had done in 237 years.
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But he didn't just assemble a legal team to prepare for this case. He he tapped into unlikely teachers to explore all sides of winning against the odds.
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I get to defend the Constitution of the United States. I get to the son of immigrants remind the country of what it's about. I get to defend my parents vision of America.
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In this talk, Neil takes us behind the scenes of what some have called the most important Supreme Court decision in a century and makes the case that in an age of extraordinary technology, the skill that matters most is the oldest one we have. That's coming up right after a short break. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn. Running a small business means every hire matters. A bad hire can cost you time, money and momentum. A good hire? They can help grow your business. But finding great talent isn't easy, especially when you don't have the time or resources to save. Sift through piles of resumes to find the right fit. That's why LinkedIn built Hiring Pro, your new hiring partner that screens candidates for you. So instead of sorting through applications, you spend your time talking to candidates who are actually a good fit. With Hiring Pro, you can hire with confidence, knowing you're getting the best talent for your business. In fact, according to LinkedIn, those hiring with LinkedIn are 24% less likely to need to reopen a role within 12 months compared to the leading competitor. Join the 2.7 million small businesses using LinkedIn to hire. Get started by posting your job for free@LinkedIn.com terms and conditions apply.
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Guys, we gotta talk about your secret late night Internet searches. You know the ones. Bumpy leg rash, hair loss, itchy bump. Trying to figure out your body by endlessly searching for answers. We all do it. And it never works. Thankfully, there's Amazon Health AI. It can connect your symptoms with your medical history to offer personalized care 24. 7. So call out the search. Amazon Health AI is here. Healthcare just got less painful.
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This episode is brought to you by Planet Visionaries, a podcast in partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet initiative. If you've been feeling overwhelmed by climate headlines lately, here's something worth your time. A show focused on solutions. It's called Planet Visionaries hosted by Alex Honnold. Yes, the climber from Free Solo, who recently completed an impressive skyscraper climb in Taipei, now turning his attention to protecting the only planet we've got. What makes this show stand out is the people you'll hear from scientists, explorers and storytellers who are actually building a better future and making it feel tangible, human and possible. One conversation features coral restoration leader Tituan Bernacote, along with legendary oceanographer Sylvia Earle, sharing what it really takes to restore our oceans. In partnership with the Rolex Perpetual Planet Initiative, this is Planet Visionaries. Listen or watch on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you're listening to this podcast. And now our TED Talk of the Day.
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There's a mahogany podium at the Supreme Court of the United States. One person died there mid argument. The stroke. Another collapsed there, dying soon thereafter. That's the podium. It also happens to be where I practice law. The most powerful court on earth. Nine mines ready to attack, and you stand 10ft away from them. There are no prepared speeches in this court. Instead, 50 questions thrown at you in 30 minutes. I'm making hundreds of decisions in real time. Every argument I choose to make or not make, every word, every pause, every tone. There are no rewinds. Flinch, and the justices pounce. That's my courtroom. But each of you has something like that. A place in which words matter. The right words can win and the wrong words, a huge difference. Five months ago, I stood before that podium asking the Supreme Court to do something it had never done in its history. Declare a president's $4 trillion signature initiative unconstitutional. And I had a secret. April 2, 2025. The president dusts off a 1977 law and imposes tariffs on virtually every country on earth. No congressional vote, nothing like that whatsoever. Just his word. And here's what's at stake. If the President can command the global economy by yelling emergency, what can't he do? Checks and balances don't just bend, they break. I was hired to kill it. Legal scholars, commentators, my own colleagues said it was impossible. They said the President has nominated three of the justices on the court and three others were appointed by Republican presidents. They're not going to go against their President, they said. I thought that was wrong. But the real problem was that the Supreme Court never in its history, in 237 years, has declared a signature initiative of the President unconstitutional. I was hired to do what no lawyer had done in 237 years. My first thought, hell yes. My second thought, what in the world is wrong with Me. People have died at that podium. And I'm about to tell the world's most powerful man he can't do what he just did. I had the self preservation instincts of a moth near a bug zapper. So for months I prepared for the argument of my life. Three weeks before that argument, one of my own teammates decided to try and take me down so that he could argue the case. He campaigned, he lobbied, he made calls. Just a few days before the argument. About two weeks, the Washington Post runs an editorial. Somehow, and I'm going to read this to you word for word. Strategic mistake. I read it over breakfast. Look, I don't begrudge the guy. I mean, whatever. I had more important things to do because I wasn't replaced. Up, I walked to that mahogany podium and I won. The president's tariffs declared unconstitutional. Okay, look, I know how this sounds. Lawyer wins big case, gets a fancy TED Talk invitation, talks for 14 minutes about how great he is. I've seen that guy at dinner parties. Nobody stays for dessert. So that's not what this is. This is the behind the scenes story of four teachers that helped me connect. And it's also about one secret that I've never told anyone about. When I walked out of that courtroom, first connection I needed was with myself. I was terrified of blowing the case. And that Washington Post editorial didn't help matters. A month before the argument, I met Ben. Ben coaches sports legends, Andre Agassi, Olympians and the like. His whole thing is about game day. That moment when everything you've been preparing for either shows up or it doesn't. Ben's first question to me, what are you afraid of? Now, look, at that point, I argued 52 cases. I'd saved the Voting Rights Act. I'd struck down the Guantanamo military tribunals. But Ben forced me to admit a truth I buried for myself. Every time I walked into the court, I looked at those portraits on the walls and thought, they don't look like me. I don't belong here. Imposter syndrome doesn't care about how many cases you won. It cares about only your doubts. Ben didn't dismiss this. He worked with it. He had me write down five adjectives and visualize them every day before a pretend court. About 18 hours before the argument, Ben says to me. He calls and says, how are you feeling? And I say, honestly, I'm terrified. I got to do a great job. I've got to remember 500 things. I've got to deliver an argument for history. Ben says, you know, change the vowel, use An E instead of an O. He says, what do you get to do? And instantly it pours out of me. I get to defend the Constitution of the United States. I get to the son of immigrants, remind the country of what it's about. I get to defend my parents vision of America. One letter. The terror didn't disappear, but it transformed into joy. So was Ben the secret an elite sports coach who teaches people about mindset? No. But he got me ready. The second thing I needed was connection to information at scale. I assembled the most relentless legal team in the country. They stress tested every argument until only the best one survived. But I needed more. I needed someone who was absolutely relentless. I found Harvey. Harvey reads the 200th tariff case the same way as he reads the first. You know, a month before the argument, Harvey. Harvey told me that I should expect a question from Justice Barrett about license fees. And it's almost verbatim what Harvey told me to predict and what Justice Barrett actually said at the argument. So Harvey taught me peripheral vision. The idea of if you read a lot, you can see patterns and come up with stuff and anticipate the angles of attack before it arrived. So was this secret a team of relentless lawyers who. Who never slept, who pressure tested everything closer. But that's not it either. The third thing I needed was the hardest. And it's something we've been talking about. Connection here. I needed to connect with nine very skeptical legal minds and to do so in real time. Enter Liz, my improv coach. What does improv have to do with the Supreme Court of the United States? Everything. Liz's secret. Neil, you need to actually listen. Actually listen. She taught me to quiet my own thoughts and to trust myself to come up with the words after the other person had spoken. That's the essence of yes. And absorb the question and then build on it when the justice is attacked. I validated their concerns and. And then bridged back. The interrogation became a dialogue. The room's energy flipped. This power, as Justice Gorsuch said, as Justice Barrett said, is going to be stuck with us forever. Justice Alito, I think you've said many times, the purpose isn't what you look at. You look to actually what the government is doing. Thank you, Justice Kavanaugh. So five answers on the Nixon precedent. Tariffs are constitutionally special because our founders feared revenue raising. Unlike embargoes. There was no Boston embargo party, but there was certainly a Boston Tea party. Oh, Justice O.T. meyer. I wish I had an hour to talk about this with you because this argument by the government is wrong every which way. I wonder if you ever thought that your legacy as a constitutional advocate would be the man who revived the non delegation. Yes, Justice Alito. So was the secret an improv coach who taught a lawyer to. Yes. And the justices. That would be a hell of a TED talk. But no, that's not it either. Liz taught me the power of connection. And the fourth teacher? The fourth teacher, the one who taught me the most important thing, the thing we forget to connect with. Yourself. Enter Bob, my meditation coach. Now I am just about the last person to meditate. I thought meditation was for people who own crystals. I do not own crystals. But way before, way before the tariffs argument, I started working with Bob, and he had me 20 minutes a day focus on a single word. He didn't send an app. He actually rented an apartment a block from the court. And we worked together every day focusing on that word. Bob didn't just give me a mantra. He gave me a weapon. When I walked into court that day, the static was cleared. I was calm. I was dangerous. Was Bob the secret, the crystal free meditation coach? No, but close. Because Bob, like Ben, like Liz, are human. That fourth teacher is not. Harvey is an AI, A bespoke system I'd been building with a legal AI company for the last year. And I trained it on every question asked by a Supreme Court justice in the last 25 years. And everything they've written. Every opinion, every concurrence, every dissent, every separate opinion. And in that, patterns emerged. It predicted the contours of the very argument I would face. It knew that Justice Gorsuch would ask me about the taxing power. It knew Justice Kavanaugh was going to grill me on tariffs versus embargoes. It nailed Justice Barrett's worry about tariff refunds and the Chief Justice. It didn't just predict his question. It predicted a possible escape route. How the Chief justice could vote for us and at the same time protect the institution he had spent his entire career defending. Harvey glimpsed that narrow door. I held the door open. The Chief justice walked through it, writing a 6 to 3 opinion striking down the tariffs. Harvey even predicted Justice Gorsuch's separate opinion striking down the tariffs almost verbatim. Now, I want to be precise about something. I'm a lawyer. Precision really matters. What we were doing was not some trick. We weren't pulling some fast one over on the court when we predicted the these things. Because predictability is what we want, especially in courts. A Justice who returns to the same principles case after case. Year after year is a justice with character. Predictability is just consistency made visible. It is in every sense, a compliment. What Harvey found in these justices was not weakness. It was integrity. But if I had just parroted Harvey's output, I would have lost the case. 10. 0. And there aren't even 10 justices. Because AI has a shadow side. When a tool is powerful. When a tool is powerful. You've all seen it. People stop thinking. The computer says so. Four words. Human judgment ends. Then people just fold, like a cheap lawn chair. The machine thinks. The human just nods. And in that nod, somewhere, we disappear. My legal team never nodded. Harvey was not some God. It was our sparring partner. Brilliant, tireless, occasionally insufferable, but not a God. Harvey asked the questions. We found the answer. Now, this is bigger than just law. It's about all of us. For centuries, the expert was the person who read the most, who remembered the most, who'd seen the most. The seasoned doctor, the experienced lawyer. Their edge was accumulated knowledge. AI is making that edge nearly worthless. Not because humans no longer matter, but because that particular advantage, pattern recognition across vast data and breadth of knowledge, is now available to anyone. AI can analyze. AI can predict. But the one thing AI can't do is the thing that actually won that argument. Connect. That's the last irreplaceable human skill. Persuade one person to change their mind by appealing to something beneath the surface. Adjust not just the argument, but the delivery, the pause, the tone, the look that says, I hear you. And here is my answer. You know, at one moment in the argument, Justice Barrett asked a question that Harvey hadn't predicted. And I remember it felt like she and I were the only two people in that marble and mahogany room. And in the half second before I answered, I did something no algorithm can do. I looked at her. I really looked. I wanted to understand her worry. And I answered the worry. That lesson is true for all of us. You don't just got to do it. You get to do it. In an interview, in a negotiation, in a conversation that could save a marriage or end one. Any place in which you need to reach another human and actually connect. The question AI poses to every one of us is not, will you be replaced? The question is, what is the irreducibly human thing that you do? Go deeper into it. Not to survive AI but to come home to yourself. That's where your edge lives. So Ben taught me to reframe. Harvey gave me foresight. Liz taught me to listen, and Bob taught me stillness. Four teachers, four connections. One argument. An argument that some have called the most important decision the Supreme Court has made in a century. When I walked into the court that day, I never felt more like I was exactly where I was meant to be. I brought to the podium no mountain of legal notes, just an email from Liz about the power of connection. And on the top of that, in my own handwriting, scrawled my parents names, my children's names, my wife's name, the people I was fighting for. My father was my first audience. He didn't get to live to see this argument. But as I walked out of the courtroom afterwards, past those marble walls, past the portraits of people who didn't look like me, I got a text on my phone. An email from Ben. So happy for you, Neil. I think your dad was watching over you too. The newest technology, the oldest human wisdom, the most powerful court. I get to do that.
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That was Neel Kumar Katyal at TED 2026. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more@ted.com curationguidelines and that's it for today. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This talk was fact checked by the TED Research team and produced and edited by Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Greene, Lucy Little and Tansika Sangmarni Vong. This episode was mixed by Christopher Faizy Bogan. Additional support from Emma Tobner and Daniela Balarazo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening. Today's episode is sponsored by NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast. Navigating your finances can be stressful and sometimes easier. Just need some advice from someone you can trust. Imagine if you could have that one money savvy friend on demand for the moments when you just need a little guidance before making a big decision. NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast can be like that, friend. Their team of trusted journalists breaks down financial decisions to give you research backed insights and clear pros and cons. Whether you're planning a big purchase or just want to grow your wealth, they explain the why behind tricky decisions like investing, home buying and choosing the best credit cards, all while keeping it engaging and hum. This podcast cuts through the jargon and misinformation that's so often wrapped up with financial advice. To get to the clear research backed answers you're looking for, make your next financial move with confidence. Follow NerdWallet's Smart Money podcast on your favorite podcast app.
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Hi there, it's Adam Grant from ted's Rethinking Podcast and this episode is brought to you by ServiceNow. I get to spend my days studying how people think and what it actually takes to change our minds. It's work I find deeply meaningful. But even in meaningful work, there's still busy work. The admin, the repetitive processes, the invisible load that pulls attention away from what really matters. That's where ServiceNow's AI specialists come in. They don't just tell you what you should do about your busy work, they actually do it. Start to finish, cases closed, requests handled, no extra work for you. To learn how to put AI to work for people, visit servicenow.com
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