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These Young Emoji Designers Want to Make History
CNN 5 Good Things
Feb 22, 2025
A California woman who lost her home in the Eaton Fire has a 3D plan to rebuild. When a father couldn’t find toys and apparel featuring Black historical figures, he created his own. We’ll tell you why a London youth group is on a mission to create emojis with Black and mixed-race hairstyles. A space robotics engineer is helping make farming easier in a country with an aging workforce. Plus, the poem – I Met My Younger Self for Coffee – has inspired millions to do the same.
Episode Transcript
Krista Bo, Host
00:00:00
Hey there! Need a reason to smile? Well, I got five. Let's get into it. From puzzle pieces to phone keyboards, meet the people behind the fight for better representation in the physical and digital world. Plus,
Jennae Cecilia
00:00:15
It's just so nice to see that people are finding pieces of themselves within details and then being able to just make it their own.
Krista Bo, Host
00:00:23
How a poem inspired a cathartic online trend. From CNN, I'm Krista Bo and this is Five Good Things.
Krista Bo, Host
00:00:36
3657 Fair Oaks Avenue, Altadena, California. That's the home of Evangeline Iglesias lived in with her family for 25 years. Her home was, unfortunately, one of the thousands that burned down in the neighborhood from the Eaton Fire.
Evangeline Iglesias
00:00:52
But I just thought it wasn't real. You know, I just thought, I'm going to go up and everything's fine, you know. And I saw everything was gone.
Krista Bo, Host
00:00:59
The single mom of three adult kids is staying with family for now. She has her good days and bad days. But Evangeline, who goes by Vange, sees the light at the end of the tunnel, knowing plans are underway to build her new three bedroom, two bathroom home at 3657 Fair Oaks Avenue.
Evangeline Iglesias
00:01:19
It's going to be great, and I'm going to start my life over again and have different memories and a better place and a better home, so it'll be wonderful.
Krista Bo
00:01:27
She wanted to rebuild as quickly as possible and make sure it could withstand another disaster. That's when she found Don Ajamian, from Emergent Construction up north in Redding, California. They're the first company in the state to have 3D printed homes using concrete.
Evangeline Iglesias
00:01:44
A house that's easy to build. I could afford it and it's fire resistant. I mean, come on, it was just amazing.
Krista Bo
00:01:52
Altadena holds a special place in Don's heart. It's the neighborhood he spent the first 27 years of his life in.
Don Ajamian
00:02:00
At least two of the homes that I grew up in, entire blocks that we used to play in as kids. That time capsule that I remember is gone.
Krista Bo
00:02:09
He also understands what Vange and her neighbors are going through. In 2018, he had to evacuate his home as the Carr fire was closing in.
Don Ajamian
00:02:18
And I remember the fear I felt. I remember thinking, where am I going to live? Thankfully, I didn't lose my home, but I was able to relate at least a little bit with how people must feel as a builder of now close to 40 years. It's these situations that I've never felt so needed.
Krista Bo
00:02:36
The process works by setting up a huge 3D printer on site, which layers concrete to form the walls.
Don Ajamian
00:02:43
A cool aspect of it is the fact that we can do these unique shapes that aren't normally available to us in regular home building. But in this case, the most important aspect of it is that our exterior walls have no combustible materials in them.
Krista Bo
00:02:57
The biggest hurdles they face right now are getting the right permits, hopefully within the next month or so, and cleaning up the debris. But Don is optimistic he can help more people in Altadena, like Vange.
Evangeline Iglesias
00:03:08
My family will start over again, but it'll be a brighter future for us.
Don Ajamian
00:03:12
We can never replace what they lost. We know that we're never going to try. But we, in many ways we can give them something back that is much better. And peace of mind goes a long way coming after a disaster like this.
Matthew Goins
00:03:29
I'm from Detroit, Michigan. I have three degrees from Howard University. I married a beautiful Black woman and I have three Black children. So every single day is Black History Month to me.
Krista Bo
00:03:41
For Matthew Goins, honoring Black history doesn't just happen in February. It's part of his job year round. He's the founder and owner of Puzzle Huddle, a toy company that designs puzzles, coloring books and apparel that features significant figures in Black history. Years ago, when buying new puzzles for his kids, he had trouble finding ones with Black children on them. So he decided to create his own back in 2018.
Matthew Goins
00:04:06
You had dinosaur puzzles, you had farm animals, you had Caucasian princess puzzles, but just almost nothing in terms of diversity. So I didn't start necessarily with a business in mind. I started cutting puzzles out of cardboard because I I can be a bit crafty when inspired.
Krista Bo
00:04:23
To date, he says the company has sold over 100,000 puzzles, has been featured twice on Oprah's Favorite Things List, and has customers that range from parents of young children to seniors in nursing homes. And this month, he's added a few new faces to a sweatshirt line.
Mackenzie Goins
00:04:39
I think my favorite might be the artist.
Caleb Goins
00:04:43
My favorite one is the boy riding on the dragon.
Mit Goins
00:04:47
My favorite one is the Mae Jemison one I have.
Krista Bo
00:04:51
'Those are Matthew's three kids, 11-year-old Mackenzie, seven year old Caleb, and Mit is nine. And they've been rocking the new line, which includes drawings of the legendary orator Frederick Douglass, Mae Jemison, the first Black woman astronaut, and Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, the first Black woman to earn a medical degree.
Krista Bo
00:05:10
Now Matthew's looking to include more underrepresented groups in his designs, like people with disabilities. And he'll be relying on his kids to help lead the way.
Caleb Goins
00:05:19
I like that we can see people like us in the pictures.
Mit Goins
00:05:25
All the Black kids can see what like we can do, like when they grow up.
Mackenzie Goins
00:05:31
They probably think it's themselves in the photos, which I think is a really cool experience.
Reanna Bryan
00:05:39
It's important for us to be represented in different ways, and to show that our hairstyles and stuff that we do is very important.
Krista Bo
00:05:47
'There are nearly 4000 emojis that help people express themselves online. A youth support group from London says none of them feature Black or mixed race hairstyles. 18-year-old Reanna Bryan and her fellow designers at Rise 365 want to change that. They're determined to get the world's first emojis featuring afros, braids, cornrows and locs.
Krista Bo
00:06:11
Amina Gray as a youth mentor at Rise 365. She said the idea to design new emojis sparked from a deep conversation the group had about discrimination they've faced and unwanted attention they've gotten about how their hair looked.
Amina Gray
00:06:24
So we did a poll among our community, and we found that 61% of the Black and mixed race people that we polled had experienced some form of discrimination when it came to their hair, how their texture of hair might be perceived as being unkept or unruly, or the experiences that they'd have from their peers about, like, comments on their hair.
Krista Bo
00:06:43
Reanna said she was part of that 61%, so she believes the emojis could help normalize the hairstyles. She and her friends like to rock.
Reanna Bryan
00:06:51
We want it to be there on the keyboard to show you that, yeah, they should be normal. There should be in your keyboards already.
Krista Bo
00:06:56
Rise 365 will submit their application in April to the Unicode Consortium, which approves or rejects new emoji designs. They've denied an application like this before, back in 2019, because they said the curly hair emoji that exists already is supposed to reflect a variety of hairstyles.
Reanna Bryan
00:07:15
I think there's like four different vampires, a whole bunch of different trees, and it's like we just wanted one afro. So this is why we're asking everybody that we're speaking to, to search Afro hair. Because it's going to be part of our application to prove that these emojis are needed. And we've also got a petition on Change.org, so you can also sign the petition too.
Krista Bo
00:07:36
So what happens if Unicode says no again? Amina says they'll keep trying until it's a yes.
Amina Gray
00:07:41
We just want to see ourselves represented, and we want to make history with our young people by seeing these implemented on keyboards all over the world.
Krista Bo
00:07:50
Reanna said she hopes their campaign inspires the next generation.
Reanna Bryan
00:07:54
It's okay to fight for what you believe in, despite how people tell us no or like, you can't do it, still try.
Krista Bo
00:08:03
We've all heard this phrase: work smarter, not harder. Well, some farm workers in Japan are teaming up with robots to do exactly that. Japan's population is the oldest in the world. A third of its people are over 65, and the workforce is rapidly shrinking, especially on farms.
Tamir Blum
00:08:22
In the past 20 years or so, 50% of the farmers have retired. Meaning that there's more and more burden on fewer and fewer farmers to keep producing a stable food supply. And so it's the same issues that we see in Europe or in America, but really more exasperated to a much worse degree.
Krista Bo
00:08:38
The good news is Tamir Blum, a space robotics engineer, has a high tech solution. He fell in love with Japan's countryside and learned a lot about its agriculture as a PhD student at Tohoku University in 2018. He saw aging farmers struggling to keep up. So a few years later, he founded Kiswi Tech, a company that uses moon rover inspired robots to support farm management.
Tamir Blum
00:09:02
We want to support farmers in the local area, have a brighter, greener future. And so we produce Adam, which have a transportation or farm mobility platform that can automatically transport goods within the farm.
Krista Bo
00:09:14
Tamir says he's been working with farmers to test and refine the technology to meet their needs. He's also looking into how the robots can help other industries, like solar and construction. For more on this story, check out the link in our show notes.
Krista Bo
00:09:33
Grab a coffee and a notebook because up next, we're meeting with our younger selves for coffee, and the poet behind the viral trend is here to help guide us.
Krista Bo
00:09:48
Imagine meeting your younger self for a cup of coffee. Would you offer words of comfort or encouragement? Maybe you'd roast yourself a little bit over a cup of dark roast. That's what I'm drinking these days. And my younger self would be horrified. Jennae Cecilia's poem, "I Met My Younger Self for Coffee" taps into that very idea and it's resonated with millions online.
Jennae Cecilia
00:10:11
So it goes: I'm at my younger self for coffee at 10:15. She was late, I was early. She lets out a sigh and has a good cry. I tell her to release her feelings one at a time. She doesn't need to hear that things will be better. She just wants a hug and reassurance of her feelings during this uncertain season ahead of her. We won't meet again for 15 more years, but each day she thinks of the woman who acknowledged her tears.
Krista Bo
00:10:37
It's a poem from her upcoming book called, "Deep in My Feels," coming out in August. This simple act of reflection inspired a trend on social media where people write their own versions of the poem.
Jennae Cecilia
00:10:49
It's just so nice to see that people are finding pieces of themselves within details, and then being able to just make it their own.
Krista Bo
00:10:57
Some keep it light and funny, while others shared more heartfelt memories or get pretty vulnerable about challenging times in their lives.
TikTok 1
00:11:06
I met my younger self for coffee today. She ordered a vanilla iced coffee and told me she was watching her weight. I ordered a black iced coffee and told her she looks beautiful either way.
TikTok 2
00:11:13
I met my younger self for coffee today. I asked if he's still working three jobs to buy his new camera. He said he's almost there without realizing it would change his life forever.
TikTok 3
00:11:23
I finally gave her the warmest embrace I can muster, and I don't want to change her because I know she needs to experience everything I did to get to where we are now. We're good.
Jennae Cecilia
00:11:34
I think that was the what was beautiful about the process was being able to just provide the structure for people, because that's honestly the hardest part about writing. I didn't know it had such a kind of like fill in the blank type of poetry style where it was like, okay, what time are you meeting yourself for coffee? Are you a later, early person? What did you look like?
Krista Bo
00:11:52
In this crazy world we live in, there's something cathartic about taking the time to check in with yourself. So try it out. You don't have to post it or anything, but hey, it's worth a shot to see and celebrate how far you've come.
Krista Bo
00:12:13
That's all for now. Join us tomorrow for the next edition of One Thing. You'll hear from community members who are doing what they can to protect undocumented immigrants amid President Donald Trump's mass deportation operation.
Krista Bo
00:12:26
Five Good Things is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Eryn Mathewson and Krista Bo. Our senior producers are Felicia Patinkin and Faiz Jamil. Matt Dempsey is our production manager, Dan Dzula is our technical director. And Steve Lichteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio. We got support from Joey Salvia, Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaro and Lisa Namerow. And special thanks to Wendy Brundige. And thank you for listening. Take care. Till next time.
