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What Do We Leave Our Children as a Legacy? (Aya Seyahat #8)

Orhan Erkut is the guest on the Aya Seyahat podcast hosted by Ebubekir Kaplan. With the show's regulars, psychologist Cihan Çelik and educator Gökhan Demirezen, he discusses the material and non-material legacy we leave our children, young people born into wealth, learning by living, and antifragility.

11 June 2026 · 39 min

Transcript

This text is a transcribed and lightly edited version of the conversation above. Speaker distinctions have been preserved from the recording.

Host: Ebubekir Kaplan. The show's regulars: psychologist Cihan Çelik and educator Mehmet Gökhan Demirezen. Episode guest: Orhan Erkut.

Introductions: A Consulting Practice Focused on Succession

Ebubekir Kaplan: Hello everyone, we're on Aya Seyahat. Today we have a new guest on our journey: our dear Orhan Erkut. A management consultant; but not only a management consultant. We're talking about consulting aimed at families, generational handover, and the development of intergenerational dialogue in family businesses. So there are many points where we intersect. Together with my dear Cihan, today we'll try to make our guest sweat a little. I hope the outcomes are productive for all of us.

Cihan Çelik: I think he should tell us about it first. I'm curious too: what is this work?

Ebubekir Kaplan: We talked before the show; what's going on here? Go ahead.

Orhan Erkut: Thank you. From the energy beforehand, I could tell this would be a good episode. As you said, I'm a management consultant, and for about 25 years I've worked with families and family businesses. Sometimes the companies I worked with asked about the process of passing to the next generation; sometimes they didn't ask, but I witnessed it while working. It's a hard process. While thinking about how to keep going in management consulting as the gray hairs piled up, this was already an area I'd worked in quite a bit, but for the last four years (not yet five) I've been moving forward as a management consultant fixated on succession: a job that builds, inside families, a rather complex, structured academy with few equivalents even globally; one that, with the requests coming in between the day I started and today, has evolved into a whole range of different products. It's a structure that stretches from young people of 16-18, starting with high-school graduation, to people of 35-37 who, even if they hold shares, haven't been able to step into active management because they haven't yet taken over from their father, and whose preparation for the board we handle. What I did was carry into this difficult field an experience built over a professional lifetime of running many projects; of sitting at that table and making decisions together with the family and the patron, of being able to say the sentences that would change them. You could call what I do a bit of a crazy undertaking; because it really is a hard, multidisciplinary field. You have to use both communication and persuasion, both connect with the patron and be able to touch the new generation in their twenties through their interests. My own interests, technology included, let me genuinely enjoy doing this work. I now do it with many families of very different scales. We call one side the current generation; in the literature it's named NowGen. The other is NextGen, the next generation. It's work aimed at both sides. It's become a lovely story, really; I'm very pleased.

Ebubekir Kaplan: Cihan, you technically work with children aged 0-18, but a good portion of the people you deal with are surely parents. In practice the two jobs complete each other. You support strengthening the child's position within the family and preparing them for life. And you, Orhan, consult so the child can strengthen their place within the family and carry this family on into the next generation. I don't think there's much structural difference. Am I reading it wrong?

Cihan Çelik: Let me put it this way: what Orhan does is a bit like this. You're running a marathon; we train, train, train. Then Orhan takes over, saying, "You're ready to run now, you've reached a certain age and level of maturity, off you go" — like a handoff. You take it and carry it on, Orhan. Because we work on psychological resilience, on patience, on anxiety management with the kids; so the child doesn't collapse at once in the face of a hard problem, we explain emotional development with scales: "Look, these happen: disappointment, sadness, anger, happiness, joy." The child will use these when they get there; but using them is also something Orhan takes over: "Come here; look, it's like this, the company's like this, management's like this," he says, reshaping it according to the child's dynamics within the family. It's like continuing the marathon; he takes the baton.

Orhan Erkut: That's a nice way to describe it.

Cihan Çelik: Now I'm thinking: however much Orhan works with a child, with a family, or however much it's requested, it feels like the child also needs a degree of suitability. Resilience gets used a lot; the ability to flex, psychological sturdiness, endurance get talked about a lot, because they collapse so quickly. The 6.5 million stay-at-home youth we mentioned earlier: they sit at home doing nothing, with no qualifications. All of these are actually young people who couldn't do that training, who couldn't get anywhere after it. Orhan's audience may be a little different, but in the end some of the children growing up there continue the same way too.

Ebubekir Kaplan: The common thing here is a child and their development process, essentially. Now, our listeners aren't the niche group in your target market; since they're a small group, if we only addressed them we wouldn't reach decent numbers. Let's continue the conversation from here with a holistic angle: at its core it's the relationship between family and child, preparing the child for the business world, preparing the family and the company. That's our frame. But if we get into themes where our viewers can find something of themselves, where they can connect with their own child, it becomes much more accessible for a broad audience.

Cihan Çelik: For instance, I was very curious about this: in Orhan's work, the children's views on life, whether parents see those children as individuals... what happens there? Is it a tough process; does the family surrender in a "this child is our everything" mode; or is it Orhan going, "Come on, champ, come on, coach"? In childhood there's so much overprotection: not letting go, not allowing... The child can't become an individual; that's our biggest problem. The child can't grow, the family won't allow it, does everything for them. What kind of process plays out there? Are those children ready, are the families ready? What are the difficulties, the easy parts?

Born into Wealth

Orhan Erkut: I hope I can answer it all before I forget; it's a lovely area. In our own work, we think this preparation should begin even before the period that starts with high-school graduation (16-18), and we have preparations aimed at that. In the end it's a niche field: we work with a group born into wealth. That is, when the child is born, there's already a family, wealth, companies, the concept of "the family business." Unlike with your audience, you have to prepare the young people born into it for certain specific concepts; and this is independent of the education they receive. Whatever field they study, they'll have to manage that wealth: whether by building an art collection, by investing in startups, or by founding their own brand and building something from scratch; or they become someone who decides, "Let the wealth sit there; I'll live my own life in professional life, even on the academic side." The only difference is that, at the start, they're born into wealth; in terms of their outlook on life and the routes they choose or want to try, they also experience much of what young people without such a family might encounter. So there's a great deal of common ground already. I said "a crazy undertaking" at the start for this reason: there's no standard. Families differ, culture differs, the family's business size differs, the young person's expectations differ, the partnership structure differs. Sometimes there's a sole owner of the company; some things are easier then. Sometimes you have a picture founded by two siblings, each with three children, where six cousins form the current generation, and behind them twenty cousins, and you're trying to understand the cultures of six different families and establish a path there. Development, expectations, and motivation differ from individual to individual. When you add the more specific matter of preparing the young people for the family on top, you have to put in serious desk work: it's not only the young person you work with whom you must analyze; you have to chart a path for how those young people should look at the wealth they'll need to protect in the future, and how they should manage it without damaging family relationships and the family business. The order you build in families with a settled institutional awareness, who know what they want to do, is one thing; even the sentences you construct and the difficulties and steps you define along the same path are different there. The path you chart for a current generation that is still far from corporate thinking but wants the young people to work in harmony in the future, and that doesn't run its company corporately enough at that point, is something else entirely. Someone who knows the rules you set in one family might, on seeing that you've built something completely different in another, say, "My friend, what are you doing there, what are you doing here?" So it's a truly multi-variable, many-unknowns equation. A boutique business; a hundred percent boutique.

Ebubekir Kaplan: I'd like to interpret this for a general audience like so: we all have children. Every citizen living in the Republic of Türkiye has a legacy to leave their child; it doesn't have to be a material one. For some it's an idea, for some a journey, for some a story, for some a cupboard full of books... The child can, and should, use this legacy for a life built on their own realities. At some point we need to respect this child's own journey; independent of fortune, of wealth. The child has a journey; that journey definitely intersects somewhere with mine, with the life I've mapped out for them. Let's take those intersection points, respect the child's flow, and together build a future and leave it to them in peace.

Orhan Erkut: Wonderful. Putting this in writing so everyone can fill in the blanks, draw meaning, and adapt it to their own life is a marvelous solution equation: "They'll live on after me; let me shape their life as much as I want today, then let go and let them live." Let me maybe add a little salt to that equation to bring out its flavor: the young person can't always chart their own path purely by living and learning. What do I mean? "Learning by living," "let the child fall and learn," is a popular recent approach; part of it can connect to what you call antifragility. But we should look at this: "learning by living" is actually two big words. One: are they living? Two: are they learning? As a parent, you have to consciously observe both the "are they living" and the "are they learning." It's impossible for someone who isn't living to learn by living; to be able to experience things, they need to step in and out of places, to do things. So that concept can make pushing, nudging, and sometimes using systematic approaches necessary. The same goes for learning: are they living, and can they learn from what they live? Can they turn what they've learned into a foundation for what they live next? If that's missing too, then the "learning by living" you speak of, while it produces results early in some well-guided young person, can — when left to its own flow — end up described for a thirty-year-old with sentences like "They still haven't amounted to anything."

Which Child Is Easier to Work With?

Ebubekir Kaplan: I'm very curious about this, Orhan: is there an answer to it? Based on your experience, could you say, "Folks, it's easier to work with children who are more developed in such-and-such traits, or who've developed themselves in this area"? We just said: one is resilience, one is something else. Do you have a kind of rulebook for this in your mind?

Orhan Erkut: I do. I'll try to define it by finding the right words, but I do. First, being open to communication and having the energy to try is the priority I'd name. In a lot of places people talk about the traits of the new generation; I can make headway very easily with children who have energy, who want to try, who have the skill and curiosity to ask questions; who can then rein in their ego a bit as they learn; who carry the concepts of conscience, community, and respect; who can listen to the person across from them in communication; and who — may his ears be ringing, in the words of Erdal the networker — know how to give a damn. With children, young people, more grown young people who have less of these, the distance you cover is smaller. I don't want to use the word "awareness," but if you can communicate, if they listen to you, a bond forms. These are priorities for me.

Cihan Çelik: "Knowing how to give a damn" is a nice phrase. Ask anyone: maybe the first thing children in the world need to learn is the skill of communication. Being able to listen, to speak, to understand, perhaps empathy. Everyone enters from here; it's the same in the work I do.

Orhan Erkut: Let's picture it like this: as every parent who's had a child go through adolescence knows, a relationship where the bond between child and parent always stays solid, where you're in constant communication, where the parent is always able to be useful to the young person in measured doses and the young person lends an ear and listens to their experience, simply doesn't exist; you could even say there's a relationship the young person rejects. Communication, independent of the niche field I work in, means two people being able to come to the same table in search of agreement or with the intention of understanding each other. The biggest breaking point of the work I do is that it invites those two generations, with a system, to resolve certain matters on a plane where they don't have to be in each other's faces. Because of this they're at the same table, but they don't actually have to communicate with each other directly. An output of the kind the current generation wants flows from there. What does the next generation want? It wants flexibility, it wants freedom; it finds that. But it has to weave this process, in the field it chose itself, with a discipline the current generation wants. You give both sides their wishes and expectations in a way that lets them communicate at the same table. If you focus on the intersection set and put a little play into it (your area of expertise, much to my delight), you make it possible for that process to be patiently and happily continued by both sides for a long time. Especially for the young-age group you deal with, this is a must. Let me give an example from the pandemic period: my daughter caught the pandemic while she was in high school, in the 9th or 10th grade I think; the situation everyone lived at home. But there was one class; I'll never forget her laughter, her raised voice in that class, and how she sold that class to me. There was a game inside the lesson. Her classmates, like levels in games, would "heal" each other, give one another health; another would use their own power to raise the grade of someone who'd scored low. It would carry over to the real world, even to grades; but it was a gamified setup where, if you did this, no one could do anything for anyone for three months, so you had to do it for the right person. Tremendous communication, and superb results came of it.

The Education System, Feedback, and a Closed Circuit

Ebubekir Kaplan: We've touched right on education now. Today we'll do something different: a substitution. In Cihan's place, Gökhan will come in; we'll continue the education part with him. If this kind of educational approach were applied to every lesson, would life get much lovelier? Welcome, by the way.

Gökhan Demirezen: Glad to be here. Life would get much lovelier.

Ebubekir Kaplan: Cihan was great too; the substitution isn't for poor performance, don't get me wrong. It's about area of expertise.

Gökhan Demirezen: I think it would make things much easier too; but, sir, one thing here is very important: the equipment of the teacher who can provide this, their knowing how to do it. If we developed teachers and educators on this and worked on it, it would be wonderful.

Ebubekir Kaplan: Is it hard?

Gökhan Demirezen: It shouldn't be too hard; but this education community is a bit static, we're unfortunately not very open to novelty. With every curriculum change all the teachers revolt: "This has gotten terrible, this system isn't right at all." Because, as I said, you become static at a certain point: explaining the same things the same way with the same notes; constantly solving the same questions. There are some teachers who've used the same book, the same notes, for 20 years.

Ebubekir Kaplan: Is there a difference in teacher initiative there? If you say, "I'm running this lesson with a method I think will raise the children's interest more," do you get attacked for it?

Gökhan Demirezen: Nobody attacks you for it; but for that, the teacher needs separate energy, an inner motivation. The teacher friends who provide this bring out lovely things like that. You'd have to catch the spirit of Coach Carter and the like from Hollywood films and become one of them; that's probably why we hear of it so rarely. And the one doing it also needs to find happiness in the feedback they get — like the feedback you get from your child — seeing the children's excitement there. Teachers unfortunately get no extra encouragement from the administration, the founder, the boss; and behavior that isn't reinforced doesn't continue. Plus the education system is very closed-circuit. You witnessed it during the pandemic: for the first time teachers could be observed by parents, it was seen for the first time who taught how. Then it closed up again. Now there's no one who can see the lesson I teach in class and make comparisons; there's no environment where teachers can compare among themselves either, because we don't teach lessons to one another. The lesson actually turns into something very private. Interns come to my school from university; there are internship courses in the final year. I beg them: "You interned with me; second term you'll go to another school; please give me feedback. Give feedback about the teacher there and about me: my pluses and minuses, the teachers' pluses and minuses. Compare us." Because right now there's no other mechanism by which you can improve yourself. Doctors have it: they go into surgery together, they share with each other at conferences. We have no such mechanism; so we unfortunately stay a bit closed to development.

Ebubekir Kaplan: Sir, if I say "feedback" here now you'll be cross with me... How old a Turkish word is "dönüt" [the Turkish term for feedback]? Was there always such a word? I learned "dönüt" when I got acquainted with education; it feels to me like a word coined later.

Orhan Erkut: But here's the thing: I founded my company in 2003; in 2005, I think, I took part in a project with a social psychologist, and for eight weeks we drove back and forth constantly. He's the one who taught me the word "dönüt." Maybe if there'd been no such project I might never have learned it.

Gökhan Demirezen: It's an educational concept; one that's inside education, that appears in education books. I too place great importance on using that word, dönüt.

Antifragility and "Will I Be Able to Do It Too?"

Ebubekir Kaplan: Now, a program or two ago, I think, we talked at length about antifragility; both Cihan and Gökhan came with lovely examples from the field. Today's children are fragile; however much parents struggle to make these lovely children antifragile, we still can't be very successful, really. When these children become adults — perhaps the leadership candidates working with you, or entering the business world with any profile — how do they develop this antifragility story? Does the new generation really come as resilient, tough manager or employee candidates; or should we keep worrying?

Orhan Erkut: I think we should keep worrying; because here too we can't say there's conscious guidance. For one, the group I work with already has certain difficulties: they're born into a successful family-business pattern; while being born and growing up, they're automatically born under a kind of pressure. There are many question marks in their heads. The simplest question: "Will I be able to do it too? Will I be able to carry this on without botching it, at that success rate?" Now, antifragility, or allowing the child to make mistakes; the root of this matter is right here, for instance. When you say "allow them to make mistakes," there may be a view somewhere of "Did we bring this company here by making mistakes?" Actually, yes: in the families I work with, important sessions and exercises are done where the patrons discuss, together with the children, the mistakes that were made. Because that success, that wealth, is a natural source of pressure for the child; they have many anxieties, we exemplified one just now. The current generation, the parent, teaching the child earlier that this story was written not only with success and brilliant thinking and decision-making faculties, but through a process that contains mistakes too, forms, I think, the most important foundation of antifragility. Like hunters' tales: they always tell you about the ones they hit, never about the ones they missed; there are very similar examples. I don't think this even needs to be specific to family businesses: a parent's general conduct while raising a child should be about letting them see and make mistakes. But, as we said just now: developing by learning. Are they learning, are they developing? Without observing these concepts, without turning them into something measurable, merely telling them about mistakes relating to antifragility isn't enough. You'll give it; but you have to proceed by seeing what they take from it. Because everyone's way of learning, their response to different methods, is different. If you see the young person, the child, isn't drawing a conclusion from a narrative, you should think they either didn't live it or didn't learn it, and change something. There too, antifragility feels to me like a path dragged along by a coach, a role model.

Gökhan Demirezen: In what I've observed there's something like this, sir: the fragility that passes from baby to child develops more like this. For instance, the children of very disciplined parents turn out less disciplined. There are a few reasons for this. One is this: because the parent is so disciplined, they do the things the child should be doing, getting ahead of their learning. This can also happen: because the parent is so skilled at discipline, they don't nourish or count the child's small disciplined moves, they want it more perfect; the sense of inadequacy in the child eventually causes them to give up. The children of very orderly mothers are more disorderly; I don't know if you notice. This isn't something I read somewhere, it's my observation. I look, and the parent is incredibly disciplined, very orderly; the child very messy. But over the process, while working together, I observe this: the child tries to get somewhere step by step; but the mother or father, when they should be reinforcing the progress, do the exact opposite, saying "It could be better," making the child feel inadequate. These stages, I think, set the child back, sir. You've probably seen these pictures too.

Orhan Erkut: Yes. And I don't think this process is experienced only one-sidedly; "raising, developing the young person" isn't a concept on its own. For example, in the families we work with at SPALDA Academy, even though the program looks like it's preparing the young people for a certain point, it's actually also, on the side, the parent...

Ebubekir Kaplan: And to no small degree, I'd say. It disciplines them.

Orhan Erkut: Oh, please; let's not put it that way. But it definitely has a side that guides the parent, or the current generation, on how they should look at this process. Because if you don't do that... The same goes for parents, I think. When this gets loaded onto one side's responsibility alone — "We sent the child to school, let them educate them; we sent them to a tutoring center, to a psychologist, let them heal, let them be fixed" — it's doomed to fail, in my view.

Ebubekir Kaplan: Absolutely. For my part, I personally take the "getting disciplined" part; because the more time I spend with my son, the more I see that I too need to be disciplined at certain points. Your example woke me up: whenever I see my child among a crowd, I see his positive sides better; I get the chance to compare. It's then I realize I've been unfair to him when we're alone. "This child can do these things; no other child can do that move, but I haven't once praised this behavior of his." Maybe from there I kept saying negative things to this child.

Gökhan Demirezen: You're projecting, but from yourself.

Ebubekir Kaplan: I'm about to cry here.

Orhan Erkut: Actually this sentence can be of great benefit as an example of you critiquing your own behavior against other parents. While explaining the differences between the Scandinavian education system and ours, they once told me something that affected me a lot: with us, teachers reading their students' exam papers cross out the wrong answers with a red pen; in that system they underline the correct ones.

Gökhan Demirezen: This is at the root of gamification, by the way: reward the good.

Orhan Erkut: Exactly. So, building on my takeaway from your sentence just now, this constructive approach toward your child's behavior, one that will shape their future positively, should be an example to everyone. When I listen to you, if I'm trying to understand what you're saying and can adapt it to my life, then whoever I am, as long as I can listen to the right people, my life improves. So: listening, and understanding them.

Gökhan Demirezen: Very nice: listening, understanding. The listening, understanding child can perhaps develop themselves accordingly; but the listening, understanding parent is also valuable for the child in this sense. If there's a shortfall at this point, after a while the child starts to feel unnoticed, to think they've become invisible. One day, when this child reaches a certain point, maybe in order to take some revenge...

Orhan Erkut: There they can sometimes also think wrongly; I don't disregard that at all, there are cases where they're right and cases where they think wrongly. But a lot of foxes can roam in their head: "I'll take revenge, I'll make a difference, I'll show you who I am." The most important one is proving oneself.

Ebubekir Kaplan: How will we get out of this?

Gökhan Demirezen: There's a great deal of this in the children of businesspeople, sir; I've observed it too. In the old Turkic tradition they wouldn't give you a name until you'd performed an act of heroism, like Bamsı Beyrek (a hero of Turkish epic). In these children too there's a constant effort to prove themselves against their fathers, or, if it's a family company, their grandfathers: to climb a notch higher than the father or grandfather, to develop a story. That can backfire too: you can't reach in 5 years a place the man took 30 years to build. That race is risky too, I think.

Ebubekir Kaplan: It is; but I always approach the matter like this: what a young person thinks at 22 isn't the same as what they think at 25, 28, 32. And it shouldn't be.

Gökhan Demirezen: It isn't; and it shouldn't be. If it is, there's another problem. "For 67 years our whole family has voted for the same party; religion may change, but the party never does." If learning by living is in their life, it doesn't turn out like that.

Orhan Erkut: A very accurate observation. Because in young people who aren't rewarded, whose successes go unseen, this process is fueled even more: a tiny but real success, since it stays so small compared to what the current generation has achieved, makes the current generation refrain from, avoid, honoring and rewarding it; and that inflames the process. But as I said just now, the ages differ: sometimes the matter is "In that moment, has the child made it or not?" Families wonder this too: "He's grown big as a horse, pardon the expression; has he made it or not?" That is, they want to get the answer to "Should we use this child in some part of the company in the future?" at a single point T. This is utterly wrong; because a snapshot brings with it the disregarding of future potential, of how that child can be transformed by the experiences they'll live and the things they feel inside. Second, as I said, it's not only high-school graduates; I also work with young people in their thirties to mid-thirties, some who've taken over the company, some about to, with serious business experience. I call them "the generation that has already arrived"; because they've already come to manage. There I see frequently recurring patterns; I name it "the breaking point." Sometimes the young person has chosen their own path: "I'll show you," they say, they experience some things; it doesn't work out. Or it works, but while their sibling or cousin continues inside the family company, they see this: the family company's assets are no small thing; it's impossible for a young person to reach as fast as they'd like the point the company has reached over the years. "It probably won't happen; I won't be able to get from there to there," they say, and this time start thinking about whether they can take a role inside the family company again. Or their sibling or cousin makes headway; "Oh no, am I missing my train?" they say.

Ebubekir Kaplan: Internal rivalry.

Orhan Erkut: Yes; or sometimes it tips toward sabotage. Out of regulations, or harm a professional has done to the company, their feelings of protecting the family and the company swell; a protectiveness toward their family almost like nationalism. Different things come up in different cases, but the result always comes to this: after passing their thirties, they start thinking, "Actually, working in my own family company isn't bad; it'll open an easier path for me." And then a feeling of regret forms: "I wish I'd brought this to today earlier, while doing other things too." For this reason, leaving the young person alone in their effort to put the parent in their place, or to prove themselves with "I'll set out on this road too, I'll be successful too," is again, I think, the current generation's mistake.

Gökhan Demirezen: There was a businessperson; when we came to the choosing period about his own child's profession, he'd say to me: "Sir, if this child takes over my profession, he'll gain 30 years. But if he gets into a race with me and tries to chart a new path and surpass me, he'll start 30 years behind. Will you work on that?" He was saying something very logical, by the way. As you said, after a while they all turn back to the father's business anyway: at first they try paths, but then they switch to benefiting from the father's experience and continue on that road.

Ebubekir Kaplan: As long as this return doesn't come too late.

Closing: The Most Important Trait of the Future Leader

Ebubekir Kaplan: Our topic went well; we used the time very fully, but we've reached the end. I'll ask a single question and request your final answers; I think it can be a shared question, from both the education angle and the management and consulting angle. We're in the age of technology; we keep saying most of the old qualifications have lost their value. What should now be the most important trait of a child you'd call "a possible future leader"? Through an educator's eyes, how would you answer?

Gökhan Demirezen: I think learnability; that is, learning how to learn. Because the age develops so fast, something new constantly appears; they first need to sort out the learning-how-to-learn part, this is very important. If I'm to name the second... And there's the fragility thing: resilience. They won't break, they'll flex. If they realize these two stories, they can bring themselves to much lovelier places in the coming periods.

Orhan Erkut: I agree; while agreeing with what you said, I might pair a different concept with them: I say adaptation. Adaptation is an important skill; because it contains within it technological change, political changes, and business-related changes. Living somewhere different, suddenly losing your status or finding yourself in a different status; adaptation includes adapting to that, too. Maybe here I'd use the coffee-roasting analogy: if you throw coffee into a very hot, blazing cauldron, you burn it; because for it to give off its aroma, to bring out its oil and essence, it needs heat applied at a certain even temperature. If you apply too little heat, it stays raw. I think you have to roast the young person — whether they come to the family company or are being prepared for the future — in different cauldrons: resilience is one of these cauldrons, adaptation is another. People who have the means should do this by steering them toward people who really do the right work in that area. And for those who don't have the means, the question is how we give these concepts to the young person: reaching information is so easy now; what matters is the young person processing them, applying what they've learned. Going along while watching the "are they learning, are they developing" concept can be a nice approach, I think.

Ebubekir Kaplan: Maybe one more thing can be added: communication skill. Right, gentlemen? I'm right now with two people whose communication skills are strong; we'd seen in our previous program, where we discussed loneliness, just how effective this is.

Gökhan Demirezen: Let me add that one too: communication. Because when you look at the professions AI can do, the ones it can't are professions related to communication. So whoever strengthens their communication will again be very advantaged down the line, I think.

Ebubekir Kaplan: Thank you; it was a most enjoyable conversation. Let's close today's program by saying may the lives of the coming generations be far lovelier than ours. Take care.

Source: Aya Seyahat, Episode 8 (YouTube) · Published: 11 June 2026 · Duration: 39 min.