TED Talks Daily Book Club: How to Be Free: A Proven Guide to Escaping Life’s Hidden Prisons | Shaka Senghor
TED Talks Daily
TED
4.1 • 11.9K Ratings
🗓️ 28 September 2025
⏱️ 49 minutes
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Summary
Note: this talk contains mature content.
Shaka Senghor is a resilience expert and New York Times best-selling author, who spent 19 years in prison–including 7 in solitary confinement–for a crime committed when he was young, before finding his path to freedom. In this TED Talks Daily Book Club interview, Elise Hu speaks with Shaka about newest book, How to Be Free: A Proven Guide to Escaping Life’s Hidden Prisons. Elise and Shaka discuss the lessons he learned while incarcerated, and why he believes that these can offer a blueprint to anyone struggling to break free from the hidden prisons in their life. They discuss the important mentors in his life, as well as the crucial role that reading and writing played in helping him “get free.” He also talks about his work with people incarcerated and recently released from prison, and shares why his work and mission always emphasizes the importance of vulnerability and forgiveness, and what it really means to yield to joy.
Support Shaka's message! Donate copies of HOW TO BE FREE to young people, incarcerated individuals, and others who need Shaka's message but lack access. Click here!
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Transcript
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