Monday, April 24, 2017

All Things TED Quarter 4



Post your responses to the 8 TED talks that you watch in this section for 4th Quarter.  Your responses should be about a paragraph.  These responses should be anything that you think is important, cool, uncool, interesting, uninteresting about the video you watched.

166 comments:

  1. #1: My son was a Columbine shooter. This is my story | Sue Klebold

    In this TEDTalk, Sue Klebold is the mother of Dylan Klebold and speaks of what it is like to be the mother of the infamous school shooter and how she has lived after that traumatic experience. She has spent a great amount of time trying to understand how she “failed” as a parent, what she could have done to prevent this, and what aspect of their family life provoked Dylan. She also talks about the relationship between mental illness and violence, and advocates for parents and professionals to look for signs to help the child or student. I honestly wonder how she lives her everyday life, knowing that her son one day woke up and decided to murder 12 students and a teacher. I would be absolutely devastated and ashamed, and blame myself for not being a good enough parent and not seeing the early signs. The Columbine shooting was one of the biggest school shooting that sent a wave of shock and fear across the nation. It caused schools to take much more precaution, such as holding drills and using advanced door locks. I am fascinated with the Columbine shooting myself, and I have watched a documentary on it. The motives behind school or mass shooters will always intrigue me and there is this underlying fear within me that there is a possibility my school could be shot up one day.

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  2. #2: What will humans look like in 100 years? | Juan Enriquez

    Juan Enriquez discusses how ethical it is to evolve the human body. We can evolve bacteria, plants, and animals, so why can’t we evolve humans as well? Science has allowed us to create prosthetics, and modern day science has led us to neuroengineering and genetic engineering. Enriquez explores the necessity to evolve humans in the future if we wish to live in places other than Earth. I am curious to know what would happen if we created a “human” that was much more intelligent than the average human, but at that point, haven’t we created a species that is not longer human? Also, I feel like this could be very dangerous because intelligence could cause the “human” to exterminate any other forms of human life. In addition, it would be extremely difficult to regulate this and decide who holds the power to evolve humans. However, if humans do plan to live in other places than Earth, I think our bodies must be more optimal and learn to adapt to the place which we want to live. If those desired places require our bodies to change and evolve into something more fit for the place’s environment, then wouldn’t we have to evolve the human body? This is a really interesting topic to discuss and decide on, and ultimately I do think this will happen in the long future.

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  3. #3: How humans could evolve to survive in space | Lisa Nip

    This TEDTalk is similar to one I previously watched, but strongly advocates genetic engineering and its advantages. She wants us to see the level of mastery of what the sciences can do and how we can use this to our advantage by surviving in space. She believes we can create the optimal human being by harnessing the benefits of microbes that give us the new abilities that help us survive. I think it would be cool to explore and survive in space, but I think Lisa Nip has too much wishful thinking and isn’t thinking about all the consequences. Who decides to be genetically engineered and who controls the power to genetically engineer others? I feel like there is so much more to discuss and it isn’t as easy as she is making it seem. I like the concept of the TEDTalk, but I do not like her approach and the shallowness of her analysis of how we can “easily” augment the human body to our benefit.

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  4. #4: 3 moons and a planet that could have alien life | James Green

    James Green is a planetary scientist that explores the possibility of life appearing someplace else other than on planet Earth. The three ingredients necessary to sustain life are water, organics, and energy. There are three moon and a planet that could contain extraterrestrial life, which are the planet Mars and the moons Titan, Europa, and Enceladus. Recent missions to Mars have revealed river valleys and deltas that were there in the past. The current rover, Curiosity, has dug us gray material under the surface of the red material which was found to be organics that included hydrogen, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. The craters on Mars actually contain liquid water that occasionally flows through it. I think it is really cool that there are major advancements in this field of science and there is a significant chance that life may exist someplace else other than Earth. Even if there turns out to be no life on these three moons and Mars, I still believe there is extraterrestrial life in the universe. We have only explored an extremely insignificant part of the entire universe, and it’s unlikely Earth is the only celestial body that contains any form of life.

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  5. #5: How do you know you exist? - James Zucker

    This TEDTalk almost sparked an existential crisis and I am very thankful that it didn’t because it probably would have triggered an emotional breakdown, an anxiety attack, or both. I got really scared throughout the talk because it talked about how do we know we are real, and how do we know that we are not dreaming or just the game pieces of some looming player with complete control over us. It made me question our existence, who really controls us, and whether we have free will or are destined. It really does make me wonder if we truly exists and it makes me frustrated to know we will never have a clear and definite answer. At the end of the TEDTalk, it tries to reassure you that you are real, but honestly nothing can help you recover any sanity you have lost or save you from any anxiety you have gained from an existential crisis. I would not be shocked if these exact questions and thoughts continue to haunt me tonight before I sleep.

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  6. #6: Underwater astonishments | David Gallo

    In this TEDTalk, Gallo shows us the amazing achievements and findings of creatures in the deep sea, and how there is currently work put into making advanced technology that can help us in our adventure to explore the oceans. It amazes me how vast the oceans are and how little knowledge we have of them. There are so many exotic creatures that live in the deep abysses of the ocean, and much more we have yet discovered. I hope that in the near future we will have great advancements in science and engineering that allows us to create submarines and equipment to explore the ocean. Once we discover different species, perhaps we will have methods to track them, protect, and gain knowledge about their species. It is also a matter of how long this entire process is going to take us, and what if human greed causes us to endanger species that are very valuable.

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  7. #7: The Math Behind Basketball’s Wildest Moves | Rajiv Maheswaran

    Maheswaran talk about him and his team analyzing the movements behind some of the wildest moves in basketball, and how this can help players and coaches improvement their plays and skills. On a greater scale, the math behind basketball’s wildest moves helps us overall understand the complex movements of the human body. I think it is pretty cool to analyze how basketball players are able to perform certain plays, and how math can explain that. I think math does play a certain role in allowing players to perform complex moves, but I think it call comes down to practice and skill. I watch the NBA a lot, and I have seen some amazing gameplay and moves by some of the best players in the league. Their skill and ability to execute these plays are few of the main reasons as to why I like watching basketball and the NBA.

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  8. #8: Exploring the mind of a killer | Jim Fallon

    Jim Fallon, a neuroscientist, discusses brain scans and genetic analysis that may reveal the sinister wiring of nature and nurture of murderers. Also, he talks about a fascinating family history that makes the TEDTalk much more personal and creepy. I find this topic really interesting and I have always been intrigued by the motives of serial killers and rapists. It is shocking to me that some people are capable of killing another living being, and how they find the motive to do that. The environment and traumatic experiences (nurture) of an individual may lead them to be a killer, but it is also crazy to think that there is a biological explanation. If more research reveals that there is such thing as a “killer” gene, then I wonder how this will affect the legal defenses of murderers in the court of law. Will the killers receive a lesser severe punishment or be less at fault? We all know that some mass shooters plead mental illness, so does this give killers and mass shooters another excuse?

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  9. Caroline Paul: To raise brace girls, encourage adventure.

    My dad sent me this one and told me to watch it and honestly I bawled through the whole thing. It just hit way too close to home for me. We've actually talked a lot about stuff similar to what she was saying but something about the way she said it just made me snap. I'm a mess, she was too real. I'm a very anxious person. 10/10 don't know how to feel about this.


    Lux Narayan: What I learned from 2,000 obituaries.

    I wanted it to be longer, I feel like he could have said much more. But now I've got this urge to go read obituaries. He's a good storyteller so he really keeps you engaged. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who wants to make their day a little happier, he was a calming dude.


    Robert Waldinger: What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness.

    Look, I didn't ask for all these emotions. He's a really happy and nice speaker but he just made me want to crawl into bed and cry. He just keeps smiling and has an uplifting message, but just don't watch it when you're feeling off. I don't know. This was a really interesting talk though. I'm impressed with the survey.



    Paul Knoepfler: The ethical dilemma of designer babies.

    So of course I was compelled by this title. Turns out it was about eugenics which is a freaky subject for me and I don't like and don't support changing humans that much it's just ahhhhh. But he brought up some good points about the benefits in the medical field. It's just such a big topic and I really really hope it doesn't become a thing in my lifetime because I just can't and don't want to. It does feel really sci-fi-y. I don't know. I'm uncomfortable.

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  10. Mandy Len Catron: A better way to talk about love.

    Kind of disappointed by this ted talk but at the same time it was nice. She got into some of the linguistics and the diversity of romantic relationships. She made occasional jokes and talked really openly, so that was cool. I liked her metaphor. Don't know how to feel about the talk.


    Kang Lee: Can you really tell if a kid is lying?

    Despite being almost fourteen minutes it still felt this talk was too short. I wanted to hear so much more about his experiments. Basically the technology to detect lying can also be used for so much more apparently??? It's really cool but I don't fully understand all the correlations and science and would have liked to hear more.


    Peter Molynex: Meet Milo, the virtual boy.

    I absolutely hate this. I don't want anything about this. I don't like artificial intelligence and I hate even more casual use of it as a game. Nope nope nope. Let's definitely not. Why? Why do we need this? I don't. Let's stop. Let's just not. Don't created AI games. Don't do it.


    Takaharu Tezyka: the best kindergarten you've ever seen.

    So do it was kind of just an ad but it was super cool and talked about the way children learn and how that's counter to nearly everything we do in their young schooling. They found a way to encourage athletics and attention just by changing the shape of the school, it's all pretty incredible and I was really impressed by it all. Would definitely recommend.

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  11. 1. Zubaida Bai: A simple birth kit for mothers in the developing world
    The three leading causes of death in childbirth are severe complications, teen pregnancy and unpreparedness to give birth, and lack of access to basic clean tools at the time of childbirth. Bai met with an Indian midwife who used agricultural tools in order to perform the surgery and was disappointed with the unavailability to basic medical tools in India. She found a clean based on charity that contained tools not exactly suitable for childbirth let alone catering to a woman's needs. The kit contained a razor like ones found in a men's shaving kit and a plastic sheet that would only smear blood and cause infections. Unhappy with the kit Bai created a cheaper version that contained tools useful in childbirth and safe for midwives to use, helping end the epidemic of unnecessary childbirth deaths.

    2. Jane Chen: A warm embrace that saves lives
    20 million babies are born prematurely each year around the world. The problem of premature births stems from the babies incapability to regulate its own body temperature and as a result they struggle to keep warm. 4 million of these babies die and the ones that do survive past childhood suffer long terms consequences in terms of health related illness. To solve these problems incubation chambers are utilized in order to help the baby grow, well staying warm. However most incubators require electricity and are to expensive to maintain in third world countries. As a solution to the problem Jane Chen then invented a baby sleeping bag that contains heatable wax which hold a regulated temperature for up to six hours, keeping the baby warm.



    3. Carrie Nugent: Adventures of an asteroid hunter
    Asteroids formed 4 billion years ago can mapped out and located, thus allowing scientists to obtain a better understanding of the solar system. NASA heads these searches of asteroids and sees it as a scientific way of broadening our perspectives. Thousands of asteroids are being cataloged and located each year and the undertaking of their flight paths followed. The eventual location of a certain asteroid can be charted years in advance and some even fall to earth. An example of this historically, was the extension of the dinosaurs and all plant life of that era.

    4. Steven Johnson: The playful wonderland behind great inventions
    The invention of the flute by cavemen in what is now modern day Slovenia is anything but understandable. Our ancestors learned to master fire, tool making, and hunting in order to obtain food and clothing, yet they felt the need to create a musical instrument. This is so bizarre because the flute or the need to play one has no relevance or value in the will to survive as an early human. As a matter of fact many inventions are created out of not only the will to survive but also the simplicity of fun. It's refreshing to know that many of our innovations that we rely too heavily on today are around because of imagination and the will to create.

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  12. 5. Sarah Parcak: Hunting for Peru's lost civilizations — with satellites
    The discovery of Machu Picchu was a monumental moment in explorations history. Not only did a Yale graduate and professor discover the location of the lost civilization but it was the first national Geographic funded trip in the world. State of the art photography was used to record the vast mazes and links between the old village and now similar technology is being used to locate Peru’s lost civilizations. Satellite technology can locate and photograph an entire country for lost villages and artifacts. This will allow historians and anthropologists the ability to study these villages and protect them from commercialization.

    6. Andrew Pelling: This scientist makes ears out of apples
    Treating biology like hardware is how Andrew Pelling was able to make a human replicated ear out of apples. Pelling found joy in dumpster diving in which he would retrieve various thrown away appliances and re work them in order to create something new. Well also in the garbage can Pelling came across thrown away food, and to his luck got the idea to pair the two things found in the trash. Taking apples and the basic building blocks of human biology Pelling infused and grew human cells into the skin of an apple that had been reworked. The apple was totally absent of its basic cells and thus able to grow a human cell in its place.

    7. Nina Tandon: Caring for engineered tissue
    Cell growth in laboratories involves taking a cell out of its environment, plating them, and feeding them cell cultures in the warmth of an incubator. Scientists observe the cells and then attempt to grow new tissue that can be utilized later. Growing hearts and bones is common and are used as transplants to people who need a replacement that there body cannot produce on its own. However engineered tissue is extremely hard to grow because cells will only grow in places that can replicate the human body. Scientists are finding that petri dish growing is not as suitable for cell growth as other forms of biological engineering might be. The utilization of electrical pulses is one way scientists have solved this problem as charging the cells promotes healthy long term growth.

    8. Prosanta Chakrabarty: Clues to prehistoric times, found in blind cavefish
    Ichthyology is branch of zoology that deals with fishes and Ichthyologist Prosanta Chakrabarty finds great significance in blind cavefish. Commonly found in holes in caves, cave fish are an indicator of how the land has changed and moved over time. Because these fish are stuck in the caves that move over time there evolution is indicative of the environment that changes with them. Additionally the evolution or deterioration of blind cave fishes eyesight is also indicative of the cold spaces they occupy. By paring biology with the evolution of land masses we can not only trace a species changes but also looks back into prehistoric times.

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  13. #1. “5 ways to listen better.” by Julian Treasure
    With the world around us becoming increasingly louder, we as humans not only are somewhat numb to the noises and conversations of the people around us, but we also are relying less and less on our hearing. With an increasing number of people who listen to music in today’s society it is predicted that more people will become deaf in their adulthood; much earlier than the normal man. Today clickbait seems to call out more of our attention than anything else, and yellow journalism is a cancer in which affects the way we think in society, and feel about certain things. Taking some time to simply appreciate silence around us is great, especially when we can do this daily. Just three minutes a day can help readjust our hearing to the world around one. Our attention span has as well dropped by 2 seconds, whether it is seen as a good or bad thing by one it is safe to say that today’s people lack the virtue of patience. Thus articles with glamorous title(click bait) or misconceptions call our attention so much, and thus we only read a 3 second article headline, and do not fully read the rest of the article itself.

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  14. #2. “A shark-deterrent wetsuit (and it’s not what you think).” by Hamish Jolly
    A surfer's worst nightmare besides breaking their board may have to be being involved in a shark attack while surfing. To try to limit/ prevent this to the best of their abilities Hamish Jolly shows the new idea of a deterrent wetsuit for surfers and or deep sea divers. Essentially it is a camouflage for surfers and swimmers against sharks. Even though in its prototype stage, Jolly believes that eventually it will become the new thing for surfers in particular. LIke hunters wearing fluorescent orange vests not because of the prey but because of other stupid drunk redneck hunters to not shoot them. If one starts to bleed or do anything else to alternate/ attract the shark though; the suit does not stop this, and unfortunately they are screwed. It is a cool idea, and I have no doubt that shark attacks lethal, and nonlethal will decrease once this product comes out. Although the design is similar to the tides of water, and a light blue tint, if possible different designs will come out. As long as they do not take away from the products intention which is to try to hide users better from the eyes of a shark.

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  15. #3. “Where is Cybercrime really coming from?” by Caleb Barlow
    Cybercrime is quite a major problem that seems as if no particular focus/emphasis is placed on it. Underneath it is a massive crime ring in which affects society in more ways than one. As of last year, more than two billion records were either stolen or lost due to this problem. It did not say this in the presentation, but just recently around one million google and yahoo email accounts were sold on the dark web. This is only one more sign of cybercrime being a threat to society. As of last year it is estimated that around 445 billion dollars were stolen via cybercrimes. In perspective this amount is greater than the GDP of 160 countries in the world, these include Ireland, Denmark, and more. 80% of these cybercrimes are committed in groups/ organizations. Cybercrime is not the easiest thing to combat seeing that the only way to find the criminal is via tracking in which takes a lot of work. The best way in my opinion to prevent a cyber crime from happening to you would be to become Amish. It is hard to even notice that your gmail may be hacked due to most cyber crime cases not being reported after months of the actual crime itself.

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  16. #4. “Buildings that blend nature and city.” by Jeanne Gang
    Not only does it look nice seeing a more creative form of architecture, but it also is very important when helping establish social relations between people in a community. To the high rise in chicago in which allows for occupants to see one another due to its unique structure when it comes to it’s roof top design to a revolutionized police station. With Chicago being the main center of the speaker's focus, the new police stations who had their infrastructure redone show how the neighboring community around it can come together, and not be afraid of the police due to overall presence they show, or that the building shows. Barbershops, and other small things can be implemented at the station in order to emit a more welcoming environment to the people around their. Basketball courts, and other ideas have been brought forth to encourage the youth to not see the police in a negative light. Better architectural structures not only improve the outside look of structures, but also to improve social understanding, and relations with people in that community.

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  17. TED Talk 1 q4

    For my first TED Talk of the fourth quarter, Jonathan Rossiter, a scientist from the United Kingdom, described his creation of a robot that has characteristics of living organisms. The robot has two mouths, a stomach, and fins. He compares his product to a basking shark, and a water boatman. The robots purpose is to eat up pollution. He describes how agricultural runoff, and oil in the sea cause pollution. His product swims through the water and eats everything in it’s path. It collects the materials that are polluted, and uses the excess material to gain energy and eventually rids of it. I enjoyed this talk. It was very cool to see a robot that could help limit the amount of pollution in our world.

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  18. TED Talk2

    I did my second TED Talk of the fourth quarter on how to speak so that people want to listen. Julian Treasure was the presenter, and he had some key points to make sure that when you talk, people want to listen. The first remarks he made were about people who gossip, judge, spread negativity, complain, make excuses, exaggerate, and lie when they talk. This types of people do not draw attraction from the person they are speaking to. These types of people can also be very hard to figure out. According to Julian, the best way to attract someone to what you are saying, is when you are honest, authentic, show integrity, and speak with high hopes for the person whom you are speaking to. I enjoyed this talk as I can use the same points that Julian talked about when speaking to others in day to day life.

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  19. #5. “Why dieting usually doesn’t work.” by Sandra Aamodt
    Aside from the common reason why dieting does not work which is that people eventually break, and do not commit to the diet, there are also other reasons why dieting does not work. Our conscious minds are always active, our brain also has a range of what our weight should be. It’s hard to stay out of of that range. This is like a thermostat, the temperature outside of a home will change, but the thermostat will remain the same. By losing a lot of weight you burn less calories, thus your metabolism is weaker. Starvation is a bigger problem than eating, but in the time period that we our currently living it seems that overweight is a bigger problem than starvation. Change the food environment is proposed to be the best way to fight against obesity which is the biggest problem in today's world. Our brain will change the set point in which is aligned to our current new weight, but we must have the willpower to stay at that weight range for a period of time following the accomplishment of our goals.

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  20. #6. “A plant’s-eye view.” by Michael Pollan
    With the simple life of a plant, the worries of paying student loans, forgetting to pay bills, or stocking up on groceries for the month are excluded in the simple life of a plant. If humans were like animals we would be simple, with the economic problems being gone. But due to our evil nature, law and order would not be in play, and chaos would ensue. A plant freely receives nurture through the course of time and the seasons. From a plant’s-eye view they are losing natural ground, and are instead being relocated into pots in homes. The simplicity of a plant is sometimes desired by someone with the simple idea of not having to worry about anything other than where your next meal will come from, and finding a stable home. If only life was this simple, how much easier would life be. But we as humans make life only more complicated than it really is in it’s bare bones.

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  21. #7 “How a driverless car sees the world.” by Chris Urmson
    With no emotions or outside thoughts on the traffic that is around them, driverless cars seems to observe the world as a circuit in which they are simply nothing more than a charge making it’s way around a circuit. The main problem is if a car accident were to happen, who will people blame when a situation like this happens; do we blame the passenger, the car, or the company that manufactured the vehicle. The thing of human driving is that we can dismiss most accidents as recklessness, intoxication, or just human error. Self Driving cars are the next phase in the branch of transportation, and like all change it will be met with resistance. As Robert Kennedy once said, “Progress is a nice word. But change is it’s motivator. And change has its enemies.”. My view on self driving cars is that there should be an option to choose whether the car should be self driving or manual control, similar to planes. If something were to go wrong, there are more reasons to investigate the cause of the accident. Was the passenger tampering with the system, was the care defective, was it just a freak accident, etc.

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  22. #8 “A young scientist’s quest for clean water.” by Deepika Kurup
    The process of purifying salt water to normal drinking water is somewhat complicated, and as well expensive to do on a nation scale, much less a global scale. The idea of an inexpensive water pumps seems far fetched but in reality the idea isn't to out there. An idea of a water pump producing water from the coolness of the Earth, and the humidity of the air was a viable idea, but the only problem is the amount of water it produces. It is not enough, and in order for one pump to produce 11 gallons of water in one day, the levels of humidity must be at a 90% for the entire day in order for this to be possible. So the idea is not far fetched, and it is possible to create a water pump capable of creating water for countries such as Somalia, or Ethiopia. The only problem is it’s over reliance on the humidity levels around, and the small amounts of water that it produces in order to provide for the people in need.

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  23. TED Talk 3

    I did my third TED Talk of the fourth quarter on what happens when you reply to a spam email. The presenter, James Veich, documented his hilarious encounter with a man named Solomon who had a “business interest” idea. James toyed with the man and ended up talking to him for many weeks. This was such a great TED Talk that did nothing more than make me laugh, yet James did say to make sure to use a second email address when messing with spam emails, and he said he has been toying with spammers for three years. This is quite possibly the best TED Talk I have seen.

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  24. Ted Talk #1-Wendy Troxel:Why school should start later for teens
    This Ted Talk was alright for me, and mixed in some categories. On one hand I emphatically agreed with her message and ideas, the other annoyed with her presentation skills. The way she talked was in that kind of "I'm trying to be funny and relatable but failing" kinda way. As I have said before though, I really do agree with her points. She discusses the issue of teens in the US not getting enough sleeps, and identify problems cropping up because of that. She brings up statistical evidence about the improvements of more sleep for teens, which had some surprising information. Her final way of argument was emotional, about how amazing it is to wake up naturally and in sync with our own bodies, rather than by some clock. Overall, I thought the information she presented was accurate and well structured, with layers to it.

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    1. Ted Talk #2-Bruce Aylward: Humanity vs. Ebola. How we could win a terrifying fight.
      This Ted Talk is gem that I found from about two years ago. Taking place during the height of the Ebola epidemic, Aylward talks about how the disease spread so quickly, and how we can beat it. He discusses the origins of Ebola and the treatments with it, as well as the origins of how this outbreak started. The more important part to me is how we solve the problem. To him, the international community has to unite together to help stop the crisis. Instead of quarantining off whole countries, the combined strength of unity will fight the plague. The other interesting point he brought up was that it is important to educate the locals about Ebola, to dispel the myths and rumors that spread as fast as the virus. Through unity and knowledge, this is how to deal with epidemics.

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    2. Ted Talk #3- Parul Sehgal: An ode to envy
      As far as Ted Talks go, this was probably one of the most "different" ones out there. Many of the talks deal with new ideas and topics to solve problems. Some deal with the arts, with different styles and techniques. This talk was about trying to understand something, envy. The talker brings up different examples in the past in order to help better understand it on an emotional level. She brings up an incident in 3rd grade, and the plots of multiple books that revolve around the emotion. Ultimately, its impossible to truly define "envy", but this is an enlightening discussion.

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    3. Ted Talk #4-Michael Shermer: Why people believe weird things
      This Ted Talk was a very entertaining one to watch. The speaker, Michael Shermer, is a professional skeptic. His job is to go around, debunking incorrect claims and hoaxes regarding things like the paranormal or UFO's. The message he is trying to convey is that the reason people believe crazy things like these is because we are pattern seeking creatures. Our senses tell us that there is something to what we are seeing, because of an evolutionary trait about being weary of predators. He then goes on to give multiple examples of how certain hoaxes take advantage of particular senses. For examples, with UFO there is sight, where smooth, grainy objects look out of place which means there are aliens! In reality, the picture was a hub cap flying through the air taken at a different angle. Another is auditory priming, where the man plays a song backwards. He then tells the audience to look out for a particular message, "Heil Satan." Because the crowd has been informed that they will hear this message, their minds will interpret the backwards lyrics in this way. In short, I found this talk interesting and informative.

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    4. Ted talk#5: Inside the mind of master procrastinator- Tim Urban
      Moving on to the most relatable ted talk ever, I found this an interesting discussion with a good speaker. There were two points in this talk that made me glad I watched it. One, was when he helped personify procrastination as people in your head. There is the "instant gratification monkey", the "deadline monster", and the responsibility person. Whenever something serious needs to be done, the procrastination monkey distracts from the situation with something frivolous. When something like a deadline occurs, the deadline monster comes out and scares the monkey away, so that responsibility can take control. This kind of simplification helps me better understand why some people are such horrible procrastinators. The other point I found interesting was the one about how we are all procrastinators. It's just human nature to do things we find fun rather than thing we have to do that are boring. Some people are just better at suppressing this instinct, and getting work done on time, in a healthy manner. The speaker was adept at getting his point across, and I enjoyed this talk.

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    5. Ted Talk #6- James Randi: Homeopathy, quackery and fraud
      This talk was alright in my book. The speaker was charismatic and charming, with a calm attitude that helped make the crowd feel at ease. His message is that physics and alternative medicine are bullshit, which I agree with. One example is where he "overdoses" the special sleeping pills, which should kill him. He turns out totally fine and healthy. The effect is merely a placebo. He works with part of a group which works to disprove people who claim to talk with the dead, or predict the future. One way he disproves them is by asking them about his grandma, who hid her will before she died. Whenever the "psychic" contacts her, she just talks about how great heaven is and how she loves her family, and completely dodges the question! He has offered 1000000$ to whoever can prove they really do have magic abilities. To this day, no one has taken them up on their offer.

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    6. Ted Talk #7: Chinaka Hodge: What will you tell your daughters about 2016?
      Feminist Slam Poetry is not really my thing. I thought the poem itself was well structured, with a good rhythm to it. Her word choice is advanced and and used throughout her piece of art. The problem that I have with these kinds of poems are that the speakers tend to be emotional to the point where it feels kind of melodramatic. Its not really her fault, since most kind of poetry is like that. If that kind of emotion is your thing, than this is right up your alley. The speed in which she talks is well put so that the poem is powerful as much as it is understandable. The main issue for me was the message of contempt she has for pro lifers. Even as a pro choicer, I don't like equating them as rapist, grabbing and holding women without their consent. Most of them (in my opinion) are misguided folk who think they are really protecting the unborn. So I guess I think the art has a sort of sensory appeal to it, but a divisive sting in the message, pulling people apart instead of bringing them together.

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    7. Ted Talk #8: Anthony Goldbloom: The jobs we'll lose to machines -- and the ones we won't
      This talk was certainly an important one to watch in order to prepare for the future job market. Goldbloom first brings up how automated machines are taking more and more jobs as the years go on,citing the 50% are risk of being automated. He explains that machines excel in high volume jobs with lots of data. These machines use the past data to produce a rapid solution to a problem, and produce quite quickly. This is what gives them a leg up over their human competitors, as well as not having to pay them.
      The jobs that won't be affected are the ones with novel situations. These are situations with little data, which means machines can't learn them. Humans on the other hand, have evolved so that they can branch two separate pieces of information in order to reach an answer for their problems. In short, creativity and ingenuity will help you keep your job.

      Delete
  25. 1. Kate Stafford: How human noise affects ocean habitats

    Humans generally use the sense of sight to navigate throughout the world. However, animals such as arctic marine mammals must listen intently to cues in their environment such as the cracking of ice. I was surprised to hear an actual representation of what animals hear underwater in the arctic during the spring time, which was astounding! I typically think of the underwater world to be deathly quiet, where animals live in relative silence. Ice covering acts as a buffer between the atmosphere and the water, which is why the arctic is so quiet during a typical winter. Therefore, as ice decreases and storms increase, the atmospheres of the oceans, specifically the arctic, increases with sound. Ship noise also increases stress levels in animals such as whales, and the behavior of animals in general, including subarctic animal migration. To aid this, we can slow down ship speeds and the amount of noise they produce.

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  26. Ted talk#1:Why school should start later for teens- Wendy Troxel
    In this ted talk, Troxel talks about how sleep deprivation is an epidemic among teenagers in America,only about one in 10 gets the eight to 10 hours of sleep per night. The major factor preventing teens from getting the sleep is that many schools are starting around 7:30am or earlier. These early starts keep American teenages from ettig enough sleep. Troxel suggests that school should start no earlier than 8:30, this will benefit students health and performance. I really enjoyed this ted talk and I hundred percent agree with it, it’s really hard to function at school when waking up at 6:00 to attend school.

    Ted talk#2: Inside the mind of master procrastinator- Tim Urban
    In this ted talk, Tim Urban uses his past experience being a procrastinator, he explains that being a procrastinator is not a good thing but he has always had a hard time to stop his bad habits to complete things at the last minute. There are two kinds of procrastinations, one are contained to short term that make you panic at some point and the other happens in situations with no deadlines. Tim also states that everyone is a procrastinator, although some of us are worst than others. I am also a procrastinator as Tim mentioned, I also have hard time trying to get over my bad habit. Even though I am a procrastinator I always manages to get things done on time.

    Ted talk#3:A climate solution where all sides can win- Ted Halstead
    Halstead started his ted talk sharing his concern as a parent if his kids and the situation with climate change, he was determined to come up with a solution against the barrier of climate change. Halstead stated that climate progress runs through the Republican party and the business community. He started the Climate Leadership Council, that would reach out to Republican staestmen and business leader. This was a very informative ted ted talk.

    Ted talk#4: What the people of the Amazon know that you don’t- Mark Plotkin
    In this Ted Talk, Mark Plotkin states, "The greatest and most endangered species in the Amazon rainforest is not the jaguar or the harpy eagle. It's the isolated and uncontaminated tribes." Mark is an ethnobotanist, he introduced the indigenous tribes that belonged to the Amazon as well as the medicinal plant that are used by the shamans to heal. Plotkin discussed the challenges and obstacles that are endangering indigenous tribes of the Amazon. This was a really informative ted talk and it explored how we should uphold the values of indigenous knowledge as much as we do for modern knowledge.

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  27. Ted talk#5: A Summer School Kids Actually Want To Attend- Karim Abouelnaga
    Karim Abouelnaga always wanted to be rich but he grew up poor.Most poor kids don’t get help because they will not ask for it. If a kid is struggling, chances are that a parent or a teacher will come to their rescue, but it is not the same for a poor kid. He talks about the creation of a program over the summer within which teachers can be empowered as teaching coaches. This was a very inspirational ted talk.

    Ted talk#6: Tidying up art-Ursus Wehrli
    Ursus Wehrli showed how modern art should be organized. In this ted talk, Ursus deconstructs famous paintings and organizes them by color, and size. Ursus tries to convince his audience that his new organized and tidied art is doing the late artist a favor since they didn't know better. I really enjoyed this ted talk, it was really funny and entertaining, the only thing that I didn't like was the way Ursus kept breathing into the microphone throughout the ted talk.


    Ted Talk#7: How students of color confront impostor syndrome- Dena Simmons
    Dena Simmons started her ted talk talking about her childhood. She talked about growing up as in immigrant in Bronx, New York. Dena told the audience about her her neighborhood was the source of weed and drugs. Simmons was soon sent to a boarding school in Connecticut with a full scholarship. She talked about the difference in the boarding school made her feel like she didn’t belong to the place. Dena then discuss “kind of violence” which is the damage kids go through when they are pressured to be someone they aren't. She then relieves she has impostor syndrome. She concludes her talk urging the audience that the the connections that kids of color have with their connection with the family and community should be preserved for their creativity. This was an amazing talk and I share same perspective that poc should not lose their cultures and traditions.


    Ted Talk#8:Behind The Lies Of Holocaust Denial- Deborah Lipstadt
    Lipstadt recalls the first time she heard a Holocaust denial and she just laughed it off. She never knew that there are actual people who deny that Holocaust happened. She decided to proceed with a study about holocaust deniers. She found out that they are revisionists on a mission to fix historical mistakes. The deniers take lies and dressed them up as opinions than facts. She encourages to embrace truth. I also get surprised when people deny the holocaust, there are clear evidences but they still choose to ignore that. This ted talk was very informative.

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  28. #1 Casey Brown: Know your worth, and then ask for it.
    Brown keyed the phrase “You will never be paid what you're worth. You'll be paid what others think you're worth”. In itself, this phrase is entirely true. Constantly, people undersell themselves or what they are doing and earn less praise, recognition, or money than they truly deserve. If they communicate the value of their service and why their service is worth the price, then people are more likely to respect that, accept them, and give them what they desire. I feel like this is true, especially in regards to friendships and relationships in general. Often times, people believe they are not that great, and accept being treated badly in return. When they understand their worth, they stand up for themselves and demand better treatment.

    #2 Amy Green: A videogame to cope with grief.
    I really enjoyed this talk. Amy Green discussed her experiences surrounding her young son’s battle with terminal cancer and the impact it had on her and her family. One of the parts of the talk that really spoke to me was when Green singled out the experience of loving something so much, yet holding back love because you know what you love will not be with you forever. Green talks about the power of breaking down this barrier and loving to the fullest because every experience counts. She argues that we have a lifetime to heal, and heal stronger, but we only have a limited amount of time to love these fleeting sources. To help communicate this and share her story, her and her husband created a video game that simulates growing up with their son, experiencing his diagnosis, and watching him die. The game is hard to play, but helps people realize how little control they have in some aspects of their life and simply to appreciate what they have when they have it.

    #3 Dena Simmons: How students of color confront impostor syndrome.
    I think that this talk was okay. I in full agreed with all of Simmons’ points, but felt that I was not fully engaged in the talk. Simmons tells her life story and shares what she experienced as a student of color and her journey to “success”. Specifically, Simmons mentions her imposter syndrome, how she feels she is and never chosen and has never been chosen for who she actually is as a result of scarring childhood memories. As a child, she grew up in the Bronx and ended up moving to Connecticut to receive a better education. Once in Connecticut, she experienced disgust at what she defined as herself and ultimately received the message that she could not be accepted if she were truly herself. I completely agree and have noted myself that negative reaction to cultural and personal norms causes permanent damage, in some cases changing the way people consider themselves for the rest of their lives.

    #4 Graham Hill: Why I'm a weekday vegetarian.
    As someone who does not eat meat myself, I really appreciated this talk. It felt sophisticated and not so forced and in your face. Rather than attacking the people who eat meat, Hill was understanding (as he partially eats meat himself) and deemed vegetarianism more of a responsibility rather than an obligation. He discussed his journey with vegetarianism and how it improved his personal life, including his beliefs, mental health, and physical health. He focused on sharing the outcomes and his positive experiences rather than putting others down for their views, which I truly appreciated. I believe this is the best way to help open up people’s minds!

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  29. #5 Julia Sweeney: Letting go of God.
    This was a very noticeably different talk than I’m used to. Sweeney seemed overly enthusiastic - obviously an engaging storyteller, but it felt overdone to me. Perhaps 2006 was just that much of a simpler time. To her advantage, Sweeney stuck to storytelling for the entirety of her talk, detailing her experiences with religion, relationships with God, and how obscure religion seems when taken from different perspectives. The title of the talk urges her audience not to read into religion so heavily and take everything literally, however she rarely directly touches on this issue. Rather, she implies this mindset through the stories that she tells.

    #6 Lux Narayan: What I learned from 2,000 obituaries.
    I liked this talk. It was short, simple, but still had a lot of comedic character which both I and the audience attending the talk appreciated. Narayan stated that “the world would be a better place if people lived in attempts to be famous in death”. I agree with this statement. Those who were remembered most, or what was remembered most about people, was their tendency to help others. Narayan noted this using analytical technology and urged his audience to use their gifts and natural talents to help better society as a whole.

    #7 The Myth of Average: Todd Rose.
    This was a talk at TEDxSonomaCounty that my aunt recommended to me. It captured the idea surrounding adjustable learning - learning that would be personalizable to each individual student, rather than teaching to the average. I know that this would be incredibly beneficial to many - I’ve seen many drop out because school is too easy for them and they end up bored, and the other way as well where a gap in a student’s learning causes their downfall. Personalizable learning would benefit everyone, as every student would be able to fill the gaps in their learning, learn thoroughly, and challenge themselves with tasks that are advanced. Of course, this seems to be the dream for the school system in America, given how horrible education is at the moment, but much funding would ultimately be needed to do so.

    #8 Sebastián Bortnik: The conversation we're not having about digital child abuse.
    This was the first ted talk in Spanish that I’ve watched(!). Bortnik told stories about predators on social media targeting young children. These tactics victimize children and coerce them into revealing themselves online - either through text, photos, or videos. Many times this occurs when children do not know that this is “wrong”, dangerous, or they simply believe that they are talking to another kid and so the information is protected. However, appearing as a child is simply a tactic of these predators. Bortnik urges his audience to care for their children and help them understand the boundaries of safety online. He believes that if a parent truly cares about their child they will heavily inform them with what they should and should not do over the internet in order to maintain the safety of both their child and their child’s dignity.

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  30. Joe Landolina: This gel can make you stop bleeding.. A soldier shot in the femoral artery can die in 3 minutes. If a medic gets to him, their tools take 5 minutes to stop bleeding, and require the medic to apply pressure throughout. Joe has been working on bio-products that work with the body to stop bleeding quickly. Cells are the most basic unit of life, but these are surrounded by the extracellular-matrix (ECM) which is what is damaged during a cut. A scar is a symptom of poorly formed ECM. ECM is different for different parts of the body, so it is difficult to design a product that is compatible with all the different ECMs. Most technology is only a crude approximation of ECM, but Joe’s gel is derived from plant products and can re-form to replicate any type of ECM once applied. Wherever the gel is applied, it forms the shape it needs. He shows an example of a serious ‘cut’ in a piece of meat, with a pump pushing blood through it. By the time he finished applying the gel (~10secs), the bleeding is completely stopped. The product is already being used by vets, and Joe hopes it will be used on humans within a year.
    Kare Anderson: Be an opportunity Maker: Kare grew up with crippling shyness, and was stuck observing others. She found some people wanted recognition and so talked about themselves. However others talked about the mutual ‘us’ – grow the connections between them and those they were talking to. Kare is calling to all of us to use our best talents with others, to make opportunities happen. Everyone is the best at something. Kare met an actress who believed every new building in Los Angeles should have public art in it. This will let people connect, pose in front of it, and socialise. Kare referred the actress to a soon-to-be-released inmate with a passion for art and charisma to make things happen. She also found an architect to help them. The unexpected team were startlingly, compelling and credible, and together met with lawmakers to get art in every new building. When she was a writer looking to spot trends, Kare had to build contacts from worlds very different to her own. She then had to translate this to relate to the reader – how these big trends affect them. While most people get more insular and connect with only those who feel the same as them, opportunity makers build connections with different people. They’re not affronted by differences, they’re excited by them. It isn’t always the first connection with another person that is the best. Once you have worked together with someone and built a trust, more unexpected opportunities will arise. She related another story with the ex-con and actress from the public art job – the ex-con was fit and started teaching racquetball. When people work together, more opportunities will arise in the future. 3 Traits of opportunity makers : Opportunity makers keep honing their key strength.
    They become pattern seekers. They deal with people outside their normal circle to find wider patterns.
    Communicate to connect.The world is hungry for opportunity makers to unite together and use our best talents in a team. We can accomplish greater things together than we can. “You can’t succeed coming to a potluck with just a fork”

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  31. Ken Robinson, Do Schools kill creativity? Ken thinks that creativity is as important in education as Literacy. However, children are being taught how not to be wrong. Ken argues that being creative means that you have to be willing to be wrong, and the education system treats being wrong as the worst thing possible. In doing this, education teaches away children’s natural urge to ‘give it a go’. All education systems globally have a ‘hierarchy’, with math and language at the top, social sciences in the middle and arts at the bottom. This is because the childhood education system was developed to satisfy the industrial revolution of the 19th century, where math and science was essential for jobs, but times have changed. While once people just needed school for a good job, then a bachelor degree, and now that alone is no guarantee for a job. Degrees have had a form of inflation over time, and this shows it is shifting too quickly. Having children go to school just to attend university is not really equipping them to work any more. We know 3 things about intelligence: It is diverse – we think in many ways – visually, in sound, movement, abstract, it is dynamic – original ideas come about from the interaction of many different ways of seeing things, it is distinct – people have their way of doing things – Ken’s example is a ‘problem student’ who couldn’t sit still at school, but when moved to a dance school fit in fine – she needed to move to think. Her dance skills went on to give her immense fame and fortune, bringing value to millions of people. In modern times, she would probably have been given ADHD medication and been put told to calm down. We need to redefine our education system – our current way is one of ‘strip mining’ our children for the most desired properties, in the same way we mined the Earth for ore. We now need to use our imaginations and creativity wisely, to face an uncertain and problematic future. We may not see this future, but need to equip our children to conquer it.

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  32. How to live to 100: Only 10% of what it takes to live to 100 is genetic. He first looks at some longevity myths: If you try hard, you can live to be 100. False. Humans are designed to die – evolution only allows us to be old enough to procreate. There are treatments that can stop or reverse aging. False. As we get older, our cells fail to replicate, damage accumulates. So there are body-imposed limits – roughly 90 years is achievable, but the average American lives to be 78. So we could get those 12 years back with minimal loss of life quality.Dan worked with National Geographic to look at areas where people frequently live to be 100. Sardinian highlands (off Italy) for example have 10 times the US rate of centenarians. There are a number of lifestyle and dietary differences, but also cultural. Dan focuses on the way they treat the elderly – they show great respect for their wisdom. Okinawa archipelago (Japan) – the oldest female population, and the oldest disability-free life expectancy in the world. Lower rates of cancer, cardiovascular disease and average age of 85. They eat mostly vegetables and tofu, and have a few strategies to prevent overeating. They have smaller plates, serve food before they eat it (making it harder to go for seconds), and have an adage to stop eating before they are full. The elderly also stay active – they form tight and old friendship groups (staying together in groups for 90 yrs or more), and always keep a reason to get up in the morning rather than just retiring to do nothing. In USA the oldest population were 7th Day Adventists in Loma Linda California. Average age of 11 years older than the average American. One key is the 7th day itself – a day off without stress, nature walks are common. They also are a tight knit community, and their gatherings reinforce their wholesome values. Dan shares stories of 3 centenarians, all still working or staying active. So what can we learn from these groups: Move Naturally – these people do not exercise in the usual sense, but keep walking and gardening, moving up and down stairs. Active movement is build into their lifestyles. Positive outlook – the 3 groups take time out – to pray or talk. They also have a sense of purpose in retirement. Eat wisely – they have a plant based diet, though usually not purely vegetarian. They often have a drink in the evening, and keep from overeating (stop eating when 80% full). Connect – these cultures are tribal and stick together. They tend to respect the elderly and have a sense of belonging. Their friends also have the same healthy values, so reinforcing a good lifestyle.

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  33. James Randi Homeopathy, Physics, and fraud
    James issued a 1 million dollar challenge to psychics to prove themselves, and has had a single response which was never followed through. He also took a ‘lethal’ dose of homeopathic sleeping pills on stage (no effect), and said he was reassured by the fact the dosage of active ingredient was equivalent to dumping a pill of aspirin in lake Tahoe and drinking the water. He considers homeopathics and people who speak to the dead to be emotionally and financially draining, and they should be cracked down upon. I was entertained, and I’m sure anyone with a friend into psychic readings or homeopathy could have a good time showing this video to them. Reaction videos would be appreciated. However for me it was missing an idea or suggestion to improve myself, or teach me anything. It was basically a long rant against psychics and homeopathics. Not that I disagree with anything he said, I just don’t think many people would get anything out of it.

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  34. Steven Johnson Where good ideas come from….Steven discusses how ideas are formed. He argues against “lone scientists”, and eureka moments where a single person sitting along is the whole source of an idea. Instead he favours the coffee houses and team meeting environments where a number of different people can discuss and improve each other’s ideas. In this way, innovation is more organic, happening over a long time period. He goes into detail about the discovery of GPS from a few curious researchers listening to sputnik, then one of them using Doppler to work out speed, then someone using the signal to work out its location, then their boss asking them to ‘reverse’ their calculations and develop a system to find ground locations from a satellite. Chaos is the mother of invention! I like that idea, and the arguments for open source ideas instead of intellectual property protection. It was an interesting summary of the history of good ideas. However, I think where this talk fell short is discussing how we can apply this in the modern environment. I’m particularly curious how the internet fits in – is this modern ultra-chaotic information sharing network more conducive to innovation? Or are we overloading ourselves and getting too much stimulus? So I enjoyed the talk greatly. In rating I may be harsh because it stops short of passing on any ideas of its own. Still recommended though.

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  35. William Ury The Walk to No from Yes
    William discusses the importance of a ‘third side’ in a conflict – the outsiders affected by it. Their role is to keep perspective for the parties, and find the common ground. He especially talks of helping parties take a step back – go for a walk, “go to the balcony” and think together. In the context of middle east conflict, he talks of finding a common story between the combatants. In this case he suggests Abraham – a common biblical figure known for hospitality between strangers. He mapped a walk along important points in Abraham’s life and the hotspots of the conflict, walking the route together and allowing enemies to experience the kindness of locals together. This is a good story with an interesting perspective on negotiation attached. Some is obvious but well phrased “when angry you will make the greatest speech you’ll ever regret”. The idea of calmness “going for a walk” or “going to the balcony” and letting people get alone time away from the conflict was strong in his talk. His idea of the walk through Abraham’s life didn’t resonate with me, but I can see it working for the middle east. I can certainly see help in people walking through hotspots together and getting to know the locals. This could start to soften the violence associated with religious intolerance, and at least get different people talking together.

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  36. Treating Violence as a Dangerous Disease by Gary Slutkin... Violence can be modelled as a contagious disease, since typically people exposed to violence are more likely to be violent themselves. It can therefore be treated as an infectious disease, by using ‘case workers’ to work with the angry people likely to instigate violence, and those directly affected by it. The intent was to change the norms associated with violence, or to stop the future spread of the “disease”. His method was trialled in the West Garfield neighbourhood of Chicago and saw a 67% drop in shootings, and has since spread to other areas. This is one of the best types of TED talks – where a technique from one field (in this case infectious diseases) is used to successfully treat a different problem (gang violence). The results speak for themselves, with each area it is rolled out showing approximately 50% drop in violence. I think the main difference between this and the normal criminal counselling is that he is pro-actively going into neighbourhoods to look for ‘patient zeros’ – rather than waiting for them to commit the crime. I’d be interested to hear more about how he selects the people to counsel, and the counsellors themselves. If the talk has a flaw it is that it talks a lot about the theory and results without much about the implementation. I’m also concerned that if the program is funded by governments, a primary health or crime prevention program is often the first thing to be cut around budget time. Despite these flaws, a worthwhile talk. The need for his solutions is only confirmed reading through the youtube comments defending violence and racism.

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  37. 1. What is your favorite word?
    My favorite word is candor. It has a certain rhythm to it, and I also like the meaning. I try to have candor in the things that I do in general.
    2. What is your least favorite word?
    My least favorite word is moist. It just has a really gross sound and also creates a gross image in my head no matter how I try to think of the word. The only good connotation of moist is with cake.
    3. What turns you on (creatively, spiritually, or emotionally)?
    I tend to only get to do things when I have other things to do. Procrastination allows me to get a lot of not very necessary things done and has gotten me to do more artistic rather than school related activities.
    4. What turns you off?
    I generally really hate it when people are closed minded. I tend to be more judgemental of things, but I try to keep an open mind and consider others opinions. I really hate it when others do not make the same consideration.
    5. What is your favorite curse word (no need to censor here)?
    I love the word bitch. I feel like it can be both loving and mean. It is also a word that has changed meaning a lot over the years and women have recently reclaimed it. I like being a boss ass bitch and being able to tell people they are my bitches.
    6. What sound or noise do you love?
    I like the sound of rain on cars. It is one of those weird white noise things, but it is really calming and reminds me of long car rides with my family.
    7. What sound or noise do you hate?
    I hate the noise of nails on a chalkboard. It is just so painful and annoying to hear.
    8. What profession other than your own would you like to attempt? (Obviously you probably are not in a profession, so what do you want to do?)
    My crazy dream is to be the producer or manager of a children's science tv show. It's really specific, but I feel like it addresses a lot of my interests about science, art, and being in charge.
    9. What profession would you not like to do?
    I desperately do not want to end up in some boring office job. I really want a job that allows me to be outside or work on something dynamic. I also do not think I could do something that involves strength, like a construction worker.
    10. If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
    I want him to say something snarky and fun, like step up, bitch.

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  38. 1)Dean Ornish: The killer American diet that's sweeping the planet
    Cardiovascular disease, diabetes are preventable if we change diet. People are starting to eat like us and die like us, people starting to eat more like americans meaning more disease due to bad dieting. Heart disease is one of the number one killers, it is not only preventable but also reversible. You can reverse prostate cancer by changing diet, it starts to diminish slowly after changing what one eats. Our kids live a shorter lifespan than we do. We are continuing to have soaring rates of obesity. Instead of evolving, we are “devolving”.

    2)Kamal Meattle: How to grow fresh air
    Lung capacity goes down due to bad air quality. There are 3 basic green plants which we can grow indoors to better quality of air. They remove CO2 and converts it to oxygen. They also remove formaldehydes and we are able to grow fresh air. One person needs an average of 6 plants. Clinically shown to increase blood oxygen capacity when one stays in a building with these plants. Improves lung and respiratory functions. 60 percent of population will be living in cities in the next 15 years and the air quality will not be so good in industrial settings.

    3)Andy Hobsbawm: Do the green thing
    We need great creativity, it is irrationally powerful. Can spread tolerance and make education seem like a great idea. It can make politicians electable and make war seem like tragedy. Great creativity is less noble and more magical, to provoke us to be greener. It may inspire us to walk and explore the world. Reducing carbon releases. Walking can have us experience things we may not have because in our society we are so absorbed in our own little bubbles that we do not connect with the world around us. Let us get creative against climate change and let us do it soon.

    4)Gregory Petsko: The coming neurological epidemic
    Over the next 40 years we will have neurologic diseases on a global scale. For 12,000 the distribution of people globally looks like a pyramid with the oldest people having the smallest population but now it is starting to invert with there being a smaller number of younger people. The average life span has more than doubled, increasing by 5 hours every day . After the age of
    65 our risk to contract alzheimer’s disease increases exponentially. We have no cure or prevention for these diseases. This happens when proteins misfold, we are developing medicine to have the proteins continue to fold properly and prevent the contraction of these diseases for as long as possible.

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  40. 5)Alisa Miller: How the news distorts our worldview
    The news shape how americans see the countries of the world. It distorts the size of the countries. The US accounted for 79% of total news coverage. There are discrepancies in news globally. News networks have decreased the size of their global bureaus by half. The reality is that covering celebrities is cheaper than stories that actually may have a global impact. The most popular news sites on the internets do not do any better than other news outlets, just showing the same news content than the rest so we only have the same information cycling around. We are not educated on global news not because we are not educated, it is because we are not able to be sufficiently informed.

    6)Dean Ornish: Your genes are not your fate
    We can make new genes by changing our lifestyles. We do not have to wait very long to see the benefits. When we are happy our brains gain more oxygen and can grow bigger in capacity. We can change our lifestyle to be healthier and this will in turn increase brain cell growth. We can lose brain cells by chronic stress. When we get more blood cells our skin ages less. We may be able to prevent or stop the growth of prostate cancer. Sexual potency increases with the increase blood flow. We can change gene expression and turning on the good genes which is giving people new hope and new choices. Genetic profiles are not necessarily our fate, we can change how our genes are expressed.

    7)Carolyn Porco: Could a Saturn moon harbor life?
    We had discovered a geologically active and warm region on one of its moons. Water ice crystals and simple organic compounds are present from the geysers on the moon. This is a possible environment that can sustain simple life organs. We have found that the organic compounds coming for the geysers are more complex than we thought, there is salt and propane. The liquid water is in contact with rock which can provide the compounds to sustain life. We may have an environment on the moon that has the possibility of life and one day may be able to visit the moon that has life just because we can.

    8)Birke Baehr: What's wrong with our food system
    Corporations are always trying to get little kids and parents to buy not nutritional food and is not good for the planet. There is GMO seeds and organisms, this is when we manipulate the DNA of organisms that nature did not intend. This food has proven to induce cancer. Almost all the corn we eat has been genetically modified and corn is in everything we eat. We use pesticides and herbicides to kill weeds and bugs, when it rains these toxins then poison our water systems. We also use chemical fertilizer that also runs into our waterways. We can better our livelihoods by buying our food organically and local and is more healthy.

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  41. TED Talk 4

    I did my fourth TED Talk of the fourth quarter on how looks aren’t everything. The presenter was Cameron Russell, who is a model. She begun by arriving on stage in a tight black dress with heels. She gave the audience some time to perceive her, and than put on a looser dress, and an ugly sweater. She talked about how the way that we look impact our lives, yet we do not always fill secure with our looks. Cameron claims that she won a genetic lottery, and was lucky enough to be tall and beautiful. She tells the viewers that she is insecure with the way she looks, even though most people would say that she is one of the most beautiful humans they have ever seen. She also discussing how she can get away with so much more because of her looks and that people treat her as a goddess. This TED Talk was nice to hear, especially coming from a model who lays all this valuable information out their, and tells the viewers how she really feels.

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  42. TED Talk 5

    I did my fifth TED Talk of the fourth quarter on how we are over-medicalized. The presenter, Ivan Oransky, talks about how Americans are over-medicalized, and uses humor and baseball to describe it. He first talks about Billy Beane, who was supposed to be a great baseball player, but ended up being a general manager. All of the scouts predicted that Billy would be a great baseball player, but he obviously did not meet those expectations. Ivan talks about how this is similarly happening in the medical field, where so many people are being handed treatments, and different types of medicines to decrease the chances of getting a disease or sickness. He claims that more people will die from these pre-treatments than the actual diseases. This talk was pretty hilarious and very informational. I really enjoyed the talk.

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  43. TED Talk6

    I did my sixth TED Talk of the fourth quarter on why school should start later. The presenter, Wendy Troxel, starts off by talking about how much of a struggle it is to wake up her 14 year old son at six in the morning before school. She claims that waking up at six A.M. for a teenager, is like waking up at four A.M. for an adult. She soon describes all of the poor side effects that occur when kids do not get a good nights sleep, including increased suicide rates, depression, and substance abuse. These are just a few of the many issues that revolve around sleep deprivation. She also claims that schools should start no earlier than 8:30, which exposes the many schools across the country who do not follow these proposed guidelines. I enjoyed this talk although I knew most of what she was talking about, having previously heard it before.

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  44. TED Talk 7

    I did my seventh TED Talk of the fourth quarter on medical marijuana. The presenter, David Casrett, is a physician who mainly deals with patients who have extreme pain throughout their daily lives because of their diseases. He starts out by telling the story of a patient he saw who was 73 years old, and was dealing with the horrific symptoms of pancreatic cancer. She asked him if medical marijuana could do anything to ease her pain, and he said that there were no benefits. She than handed him a study, and told him to read it. He began to find out that for his patients, who were dealing with diseases and chronic pain, marijuana would help alleviate the pain. One patient told him that she loved marijuana because she could control how much she wanted and when she wanted to use it. I enjoyed this talk because of the stories that were associated with David and his patients.

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  45. TED Talk 8

    I did my eighth TED Talk of the fourth quarter on skills for a healthy relationship. The presenter, Joanne Davila, talks about how intimacy, security, respect, and being valued are all things we want in a relationship. She also lists the things that we do not want in a relationship, such as fighting, no support, and criticism. She encourages people to find the right person, know what you want and need, and develop using important interactive skills from the beginning. This talk is very valuable. It is important to know and understand what you want in a relationship. I enjoyed this talk as it includes valuable keys and information that will hopefully lead yo happier and lasting relationships in the future.

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  46. 2. Karim Abouelnaga: A summer school kids actually want to attend

    Karim, a man who grew up in a lower class family with only a single mother to support them, is tired of some of the inconsistencies of the educational system. His proposal to create a summer school to tackle the problem of regression during summer is interesting. The logistical problem of organizing teachers and school administration to do so would be almost impossible, however. Even for Montgomery to change the bell schedule is taking over 2 years. Also, students and teachers must be motivated that a summer school is worthwhile, and should be weighted over their 2 month sumer. Although the summer school proposal is interesting and may be a better form of education, I do not think it will be implemented in mainstream schooling, especially in Karim’s targeted population of run down, ghetto schools.

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  47. 3. Elon Musk: The future we're building -- and boring

    Elon Musk I must say is the most inspiring individual in the 21st century to this point in time for the possibilities of the human race. In this lengthy but extremely worthwhile and interesting talk, he goes over details in his new Boring Company, Tesla, Space X, etc. His insight into what he sees himself doing is impressive. He gives projections for amazing feats of science such as having every home having a solar roof, putting people on Mars, and creating underground hyperloops are astounding. If another man were to give these projections, even someone like Bill Gates, I would be highly skeptical. However, Elon Musk is the man who sets out to do what he thinks must be done, or what is the most fun to do, and he does it! Even though the video is 40 minutes long, the speed of the talk, specifically the speed of the content, is very quick and I very much enjoyed watching every minute of it, even though Elon Musk is not the best public speaker (although I think he is improving).

    4. OK Go: How to find a wonderful idea
    I picked this video because I’ve always watching OK Go’s music videos on Youtube, and their content has always been the highlight of my day if they release content. It is refreshing to hear from an artistic perspective in a TED talk, as they seem to typically lead towards STEM topics. His explanation of his reasoning of how he gets ideas is interesting, and sounds kindve manic. I love how he had his band members hold up many large signs to the audience to accompany his talk, which was definitely unique. His explanation of how intensely complicated his Goldberg machine is was eye opening, for even if the 130 parts of the machine were 90% reliable, the machine would only work 1 in a million times.

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  48. 5. Zubaida Bai: A simple birth kit for mothers in the developing world

    In the modern day, I typically do not think about the process of childbirth being a significant problem. However, in developing countries it is still very much so prominent. Professional medical help is not always available, which is why mothers in developing countries must buy birthing packages to provide tools such as a scalpel, blood-absorbing sheet, cleansing supplies, etc. Zubaida got a group of experts together in order to address the problem and created a product that provide all of these supplies. Her speaking style is very effective due to her implementation of pausing, variation in speaking tones, and her excellent enunciation.

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  49. 6. Casey Brown: Know your worth, and then ask for it

    Oh my god. I hate this woman. Her speaking style is nasally and unpleasant to listen to. Her simple diction is ineffective. Her memes were cringy and her tone is condescending, and insinuates she knows more than others. She argues that woman make 20 cents less to the dollar compared to men due to women wanting their work to show their worth rather than “tooting their own horn.” Her annoying little sound bytes and saying such as saying she knows how to “take her own medicine” were very distracting, annoying, and did not add value to her talk. The variation in her speaking style is basically monotone, besides when she becomes particularly nasally and deep. The focus of her subject was inconsistent and her random comments and tangents were extremely distracting. Do not even get me started on her “math.” Define + Tell = Learn. What does that even mean? Why should I have to decipher your crappy equation? She also claims that “you control their thinking” which she also decided not to explain.

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  50. 7. Anthony D. Romero: This is what democracy looks like

    This man is a treasure chest of metaphors, although I do not know how effective they are. He fuses his interests with Italian renaissance art with modern politics, which was definitely a stretch. His memes of the election and Trump were okay, but he gave me a creepy vibe with the way he spoke such as “I stalk the old masters.” His humor is super dry, such as his joke about Bob Marley. The compares Trump to Satan, claims he has cut down Justice, he’s narcissistic, and basically all the characteristics of a dictator. He uses paintings as an allegory to the reality of bad government, and spends a long time highlighting those similarities. Romero claims that the paintings are a call to action to the governed. His speaking style is so incredibly slow that I ended up speeding the video up to 2x and the video then sounded like a normal speech.

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  51. 8. Laura Galante: How to exploit democracy

    Here, an online journalist describes the reality of cyber warfare between America and Russia. The Russian government, Laura claims, noticed right off the bat that the media made the minds of the people easily exploitable, which makes sense due to their regulations on media output. Reflexive control was mastered by Russia through media areas such as YouTube, where anything can be posted. The real operations are the techniques that control the decisions the population makes and the opinions that individuals make. Laura claims that everyone needs to know that the cyberspace area is not just a series of zeros and ones, but the interactions between humans and computers. Therefore, we can control how we interact with technology in order to find out the truth, not be controlled, and question the information being given to us.

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  52. TED Talks #1-4:

    Prosanta Chakrabarty: Clues to prehistoric times, found in blind cave fish

    Chakrabarty discusses how cave fish hold the key to understanding evolutionary history through their adaptations. He holds the audience’s attention through his passionate tone, facial expressions, and hand gestures. He also makes jokes as well as deliver hard facts in order to captivate the audience. His use of images and videos also provides stimulating ways of communicating information. He combines disciplines of science and history in order to understand and present his findings, as well as new discoveries in the scientific field. I found his presentation to be utterly fascinating for both the subject matter and the way that he presented the information.


    Stephanie Busari: How fake news does real harm

    In her speech, Busari discusses how “fake news” blurs that facts and causes suffering by creating disbelief of the truth. Busari expertly weaves stories and current events in order to convey the real problem of “fake news” and “alternative facts.” She also displays powerful images that cause the audience to sympathize with Busari and the people she talks about. She shares both her own and the experiences of others that are affected by the idea of “fake news,” causing the audience to even further empathize. Busari is a clearly passionate speaker whose ardor and call to action holds the audience’s attention and causes them to feel obliged to help her cause. She appeals to her audience by connecting to them and asking questions to engage them. Overall, I loved her presentation and it provided me with a new perspective that is vital to understanding current events.


    Carrie Nugent: Adventures of an asteroid hunter

    Nugent presents the importance of asteroids in understanding the history of the universe. She catches the audience’s immediate attention by showing them a real asteroid while passionately explaining how its structure presents valuable information. Nugent also employs graphics that illustrate her point, making them more comprehendible to the audience. Her gestures, tone, and facial expression demonstrate extreme excitement that causes the audience to share her enthusiasm for the subject matter. She makes jokes that allow the audience to process the facts and statistics more easily while staying entertained. By discussing new scientific breakthroughs and how technology functions to analyze asteroids, she provides exciting and important facts in her field. I enjoyed her presentation for its content and her blatant enthusiasm.


    Negin Farsad: A highly scientific taxonomy of haters

    In her talk, Farsad explores how haters in the American population have such a loud voice despite being a minority. Farsad relates to her audience by sharing her own experience as a Muslim woman and a “social justice comedian” in a climate of hatred of Muslim culture in the U.S. She also employs bright graphics and charts that depict her point in a humorous way. She combines different areas of knowledge by using taxonomy, a biological tool, to describe phenomena in the human sciences. Her exuberant gestures, facial expressions, and voice demonstrate her clear passion for social justice. Her combined use of comedy and real issues creates a truly entertaining and informative presentation.

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  53. TED Talks #5-8:

    Nizar Ibrahim: How we unearthed the Spinosaurus

    Ibrahim shares his discoveries about the Spinosaurus with his audience by communicating his own experiences in the field of paleontology. He relates to his audience by sharing childhood stories and his journey to find these fossils. Ibrahim also captures his audience’s attention with powerful graphics and real fossils of the Spinosaurus. By presenting his new discoveries, Ibrahim piques the audience’s interest and creates excitement. His facial expressions and tone also expressed obvious interest and dedication to his field. However, his sometimes wavering voice and rapid motions also communicated a slight nervousness when speaking to his audience. In spite of this, I found his presentation to be incredibly informative and fascinating.


    Bel Pesce: 5 ways to kill your dreams

    By outlining what beliefs will destroy one’s future goals, Pesce demonstrates what one should really focus on in order to succeed. She uses aesthetic graphics to captivate the audience’s attention while emphasizing her points. She also tells the stories of successful people and herself in order to relate to her audience while providing real examples for her subject. Her gestures, face, and tone were all animated and thus made her presentation more entertaining. The combination of jokes, stories, and facts created a balance of information that the audience can easily process and enjoy. Pesce’s speech provides a highly motivating inspiration to realistically find success in my life. I greatly enjoyed her speech and found it to be entertaining.


    Isabel Allende: How to live passionately--no matter your age

    Allende discusses the importance of living with passion and enthusiasm despite the onslaught of time. She employs her beautiful story-telling skills to share her own and others’ experiences with continuing to be passionate despite age. Her powerful graphics express her points using words and pictures of the subjects of her story. She makes jokes that compliment the sincerity of her message, thus creating a fascinating and captivating presentation. To her audience, she is an authority as the presenter, but she is also incredibly relatable and humble. I loved listening to her presentation and admire her immensely.


    Jared Ficklin: New ways to see music (with color! And fire!)

    Ficklin discusses methods of visualizing music and sounds, and how they provide just as much, and sometimes more information than the sound itself. He employs powerful visuals, not only with images, but also with a Ruben’s Tube that expresses sound waves with columns of fire. Not only are these visuals exciting, but they also communicate information about physics and mathematics. He also outlines how sounds express social matters like etiquette and speech, thereby combining many different areas of knowledge and ways of knowing. He performs a variety of demonstrations from the Ruben’s Tube to skate park sounds to mapping Stephen Hawking’s speech, and thus engages the audience with his topic. Though not always highly expressive, one could still perceive a clear passion for his subject. Overall, I found his speech to be very entertaining and informative.

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  54. TED Talk #1: Tales of ice-bound wonderlands by Paul Nicklen

    Nicklen begins his talk with a personal anecdote about his journey to become a marine specialist. He had a rather unusual upbringing among the Inuit people, where he had no internet or TV access, and so spent all his time outside. He managed to introduce a bit of humor by discussing his despair at failing to photograph a spirit bear, before moving on to a slideshow of his pictures. These images were unsurprisingly stunning, and I can even recall having seen some of them in National Geographic magazine. He then moved on to appeal to the audience to do something about global warming, or else see the ecosystem depicted in his work disappear with the sea ice. His pictures of dead polar bears were particularly moving and distressing. His story about a leopard seal trying to feed him was, on the opposite side of the spectrum, oddly heartwarming. I really enjoyed this talk, from his speaking ability to his humor to the way he gets emotional at the end to the gorgeous photography, Nicklen was a very good speaker with an incredibly interesting and vital topic.

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  55. TED Talk #2: What do you see when you look at me? by Dalia Mogahed

    Mogahed begins by addressing negative stereotypes about Muslims, and how she herself has faced them. She places particular emphasis on negative reactions to her hijab, both from friends and strangers. She also spends quite a lot of time in a personal anecdote about the extremely negative reaction to Muslims following the September 11 attacks, and how she crouched down in her seat during any car trips that day because she was afraid for people to know that she was a Muslim. She did not leave her house for a week, and did not attend mosque that Saturday. Mogahed argues that American Muslims are not a danger, and that mosques are not a breeding ground for radical views. She argues that ISIS has as little to do with Islam as the KKK has to do with Christianity. She points out the rather interesting fact that spikes in Islamophobia are not in response to terrorist attacks, but rather have happened in conjunction with the lead to the Iraq War and two election cycles, indicating that Islamophobia is not a natural response to terrorist attacks. Mogahed was an incredibly effective speaker, using both facts and personal anecdote to make her point. She garnered applause multiple times during her speech as a result of her moving words. I greatly enjoyed Mogahed's talk, and think that it is a vital message, particularly in light of recent political developments.

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  56. TED Talk #3: Sexism in gaming by Paul Verhoeven

    Verhoeven begins by acknowledging that he is a bearded man and as such is way out of his depth with this topic. Throughout this talk, he draws on humor quite effectively, particularly as he seeks to eliminate the notion that female gamers are scarce. He uses the specific example of Grand Theft Auto 5 and accusations of it being sexist to illustrate his point about male gamer trolls. One review from a professional critic at Gamespot received horrible backlash because it accused the game of misogyny and was incidentally written by a woman. He then goes on to outline why the female critic was right about the game, and also how the video game industry as a whole is sexist. Verhoeven's final point addresses how these issues can be fixed, simply by including women instead of actively excluding them. I enjoyed this talk, and was particularly entertained by the comedic tone that the speaker took throughout. I thought his point was especially illustrated by the number of dislikes on the YouTube video and all of the angry male comments on it. Clearly, the internet trolls that he talked about are alive and well, and do not think that sexism is an issue, a claim which Verhoeven addresses in his video.

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  57. Ted Talk #1
    Why is 'x' the unknown?
    By Terry Moore
    Moore describes the way that math came from Arabic language, and how the language is like an equation to read. Algebra, the word, actually came to us from a similar sounding name meaning a system for reconciling disparate parts. The arabic texts arrived in Spain, but translating was difficult because some of the texts did not cross over. A character meaning 'the unknown' was found in a series of derivations of roots. This word could not be translated because the Spanish do not have a 'sh' sound in it's language, so they used the 'chi' from Greek, which is just 'x'. When it was translated into Latin, the chi became x. Therefore, 'x' is the unknown because you can not say 'sh' in Spanish.

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  58. Ted Talk #2
    What Your Doctor Won't Disclose
    By Leana Wen

    In this ted talk, a female doctor talks about how there is a disconnect now between doctors and patients. There are many special interests influencing doctors, and many patients aren't aware of this. Some doctors are paid more for recommending certain procedures, raising the pressure to recommend that over something else, which means less effective patient plans will be suggested. Wen created a site that was for patients to look up participating doctors, who disclosed not only their medical background, but also their values, beliefs, and who paid them, to increase transperancy. There was major backlash by the medical community towards her site. Yet, I believe what she is doing is very important to begin to reverse this trend towards less effective care. Her initiative is inspiring. This relates to ethics because Wen looks into the lack of ethics of some members of the medical community, and how those ethical concerns have can have very serious consequences.

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  59. 10 ways to have a better conversation | Celeste Headlee
    I watched this TED talk because recently I’ve realized that I struggle a bit in conversations with new people. Being in college group chats, meeting people at grad parties, and making conversation with distant family members is a difficult prospect to approach. This TED talk was surprisingly helpful. I expected roughly the same advice I’ve always received (make the other person talk about themselves) but Celeste Headlee instead offers succinct pointers to improve conversation. I particularly liked that she noted never to equate your experiences to others, and that conversations are not a promotional opportunity. Headlee is a professional interviewer, and it shows. She has a distinctly powerful presence, and she instructs viewers on how to adopt it. I would recommend this talk to everyone, not just those who want to get better at making conversation.

    5 ways to listen better | Julian Treasure
    I watched this directly after the Headlee talk. I’m sure it was recommended because of how much Headlee mentioned silence. I was expecting some shrewd, if bland, advice. Instead, Treasure augments his talk with sound effects and environments as he instructs the audience on how to listen. His counsel is sound, and his five tips are actually useful. My one complaint would be that a notable portion of his comments paint a picture of my generation that I think might be a little harsh. This is forgivable, though, because he lacks the demeanor of someone angry at the world for changing. He chooses to offer useful advice in an engaging format. I would highly recommend this talk to young people who want to listen more, and to older people who are looking for a kindred spirit to lament the faults of today’s youth.

    Own your face | Robert Hoge
    This was a captivating talk. Robert Hoge was born with severe birth defects, and shares his story about how his face came to be his. This talk is at times heartbreaking, but Hodge is broadly a dynamic speaker who knows when to lighten the mood with a well-timed joke. He relates how, at the age of fourteen, he was given the choice of extensive and risky surgery to mostly correct his face, and why he refused it. The talk is not limited to his own experience: he also explores the definition of ideal beauty, uncanny valleys in science, and the power of art. This proved to be a powerful speech, and unexpectedly a good TOK-like conclusion about the power of art and the concept of ownership. I absolutely loved this talk and would highly recommend it.

    The unheard story of David and Goliath | Malcolm Gladwell
    I watched this talk because I had heard of Malcolm Gladwell and of several of his books, and I was curious what he had to say. In this talk, Gladwell tells the story of David and Goliath. He then embarks on an in-depth study of the story rooted in science, attempting to explain why it was in fact David who had the advantage. I didn’t like this talk. I found it off-putting that Gladwell offered no thesis or reason for analyzing the story. He only explains a metaphorical importance at the very end, in a way that made it feel rushed and disconnected. I understand that he wrote an entire book on this topic and topics like it, and I think the length of the book might suit him better. The analysis itself is intriguing, but I can’t shake the sneaking suspicion that he simple forgot to add a substantial recount of his point.

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  60. The Enchanting Music of Sign Language | Christine Sun Kim
    This talk was a fascinating discussion of music by a deaf artist. Christine Sun Kim gives her talk in ASL as an interpreter speaks for her. She discusses what it is like to be deaf both as a citizen and as an artist. She then displays some of her art, and explains how she sees ASL as a music piece and as a dance. I was not sure what to expect from this talk, but I ended up loving it. Her conclusions were delightful and unexpected. This was also extremely good as a TOK talk. She uses drastically different ways of knowing to understand and define what music actually is, and it pays off. I would highly recommend this talk to anyone next year who chooses to write anything in TOK about music, and for anyone who loves music.


    Ballroom dance that breaks gender roles | Trevor Copp and Jeff Fox
    This talk is fantastic and I highly recommend you watch it. Trevor Copp and Jeff Fox break down the many, many stumbling blocks of partner ballroom dance. They talk about the unspoken rules of race, gender, size, and presence that are commonly associated with ballroom dance. Their talk is broken up into segments as they pause to dance and break the rules they discuss. Copp and Fox are clearly passionate about their topic. They want to make ballroom dance like a conversation (as it is often described) and eliminate any social bounds we wouldn’t accept in a conversation. They also offer a system for doing so. My favorite quote from this talk was, “The physics of movement doesn’t give a crap about your gender”. This talk was especially notable because of how easily the duo distance themselves from the seemingly set in stone traditions of dance. They see dance as the art of taking care of others.

    Noy Thrupkaew: Human trafficking is all around you. This is how it works
    I clicked on this video because human trafficking is something that I haven’t ever really heard discussed. Noy Thrupkaew is a journalist with a strikingly warm presence, especially when she talks about her childhood caregiver (a woman who was trafficked). She discusses the closeness of human trafficking to so many of our daily lives, and how it is tempting but not advisable to think of it only as forced prostitution. She urges viewers to acknowledge the societal context of human trafficking, and how it can be found in industries like fishing and agriculture around the world that we rely on. She explains the flaws of the criminal justice system in addressing this issue. She says trafficking when need meets greed, in systematically degraded work environments (including in the United States). She urges consumers to remain conscious of what they buy, and advocate for workers. She says we need to not just “buy a fairtrade peach and call it a day”, but make a conscious decision to change an entire industry. The possibility of a just world is what Noy Thrupkaew advocates, and she relates stories of the successes so far and of future possibilities. This talk is an inspiring call to action, and I would highly recommend it.

    The happy secret to better work | Shawn Achor
    I watched this talk because it seemed apt, facing the prospect next year of a whole new level of workload. Achor begins his discussion on positive psychology with a humourous story. He continues his light tone throughout his talk. He advocates aiming higher than average in every facet of life to increase that average. I found it especially interesting when he talked about studying happiness at Harvard, and the relationship between the external and internal. The faced-paced optimism of his talk is easy to get caught up in. I love his positive outlook, and call to contextualize our happiness and being grateful. I’m not fully convinced of the validity of his findings, but I would love to believe him. I would urge anyone who wants to think about what happiness in life can do.

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  61. Ted Talk #3
    How we're priming some kids for college - and others for prison
    By Alice Goffman
    Goffman begins by showing how she went to UPenn, which sat right next to a neighborhood that was a poor, black neighborhood. She expresses how her tutoring of a high schooler from there and the student's fifteen year old brother who had just left prison had got her involved in the subject of how certain kids are going to college and how some kids are going to prison, both of which shape the teenager into the type of adult they will be as well as what kind of life they will have. She explains how she saw that there was a much more police action and involvement in young people's lives in the neighborhood then she saw at her high school. She asks us why are we expecting so much better behavior from kids who are disadvantaged than those who are not? Why don't we offer them help rather than just jail time? She hypothesizes that our justice system only punishes them, and doesn't allow for black young people to succeed. She explains that there has been criminal justice reform, and that some states are closing prisons and giving money education instead. She brings the idea that youths who are in college and those who are struggling in poverty can both be at the front of criminal justice reform.

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  62. Ted Talk #1
    I have tourettes. Get over it.
    -Analise and Robyn Twemlow

    -Typically when you hear Ted Talks about people and their hardships, it is told from the perspective of the person who lives with it. This is why I found this Ted Talk to be very intriguing, because the girl's mother also shared her thoughts and perspective on the syndrome. This helped enable me to better understand what it would truly be like to raise someone with this incurable disease. I have the utmost respect for any parents who have to support their child through this disease and help them try and live a happy life. Overall, I really enjoyed this Ted Talk, as it reminded me that no matter what cards you are dealt in life, you are ultimately in control of your own success and happiness.

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  63. Ted Talk #4
    How painting can transform communities
    By Haas & Hahn

    Throughout this TED talk, Haas and Hahn explain their journey to transform these slum-like communities and make them beautiful. Painting the walls of these places makes the communities join together to build one amazing project. In a couple of different projects, like in North Philadelphia and a part of the Flavela, they had young people work together to paint and transform their homes. To finish their master project to paint the whole flavela, they had a community fund that made over a 100,000 dollars in less then a month. Their art bring the communities together and makes them into a place worthy of good press. Before their project, this place in Rio was only known for the bad things that happened with the police. But now they are getting recognition for transforming their home.

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  64. Ted Talk #2
    I got 99 problems..palsy is just one
    -Maysoon Zayid

    -In this ted talk, Zayid uses humor and passion to engage her audience and make them feel more comfortable about her disability. Like many disabilities that people are not familiar with, it is easy to become ignorant to the struggles these people face on a daily basis. For myself personally, I know it can often times be truly difficult to put myself in someone else's shoes and really imagine the pain they endure. Zayid does a phenomenal job captivating her audience while also getting her point across with her positive aura. It is truly hard not to respect and admire someone this brave who is willing to share their story and educate people who aren't aware of the many challenges disabled peoples face.

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  65. Ted Talk #3
    I am not a monster
    -Cecilia McGough

    -When people imagine a person with schizophrenia, they will typically imagine an absolutely insane person who wanders the streets talking to themselves with no conceptual understanding of the world around them. This could be due to how the media portrays them, or simply my personal experiences. Nevertheless, this ted talk showed me just how ignorant of a thought process this really is. McGough not only portrays herself in a professional, educated manner, but also manages to captivate the audience and make them relate to her. Although she lives in this terrifying, spontaneous reality, she has still managed to thrive in life, despite having this condition. This ted talk reminded me that once again, you determine how you live your life,and that you certainly shouldn't judge a book by its cover.

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  66. Ted Talk #5
    Hidden music rituals around the world
    By Vincent Moon

    This Ted talk was about showing how diverse cultures across the globe are, and how beautiful their unique rituals can be. Vincent Moon, primarily uses video to capture the essence of these musical gatherings, often with minimal processing after. He wants this to instigate people's recognition and respect for these celebrations, and to not forget them and allow them to fade into the past as the human race becomes increasingly interconnected. I found it interesting to watch the videos, and see these traditions that beforehand, I knew nothing about. Often their musical rituals are not simply a social gathering, but art shared and participated in by the community.


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  67. Ted Talk #4
    Tourette's Syndrome-Why it doesn't define me
    -Jess Thom

    - I enjoyed this ted talk because Thom brought up many new fascinating perspectives on Tourette's Syndrome that I had not considered. She is completely correct in her claim stating that people do not understand the true depths of Tourettes, because even I am ignorant. It would take a lot of courage for this woman to get on stage and tell her story, and for that I respect her greatly. Her perspective on life is very optimistic and uplifting, and reminds me that through humor and inspiration, true happiness can be achieved.

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  68. Ted Talk #5
    Can you really tell if a child is lying?
    -Kang Lee

    -This ted talk honestly surprised me. I always felt like kids were pretty predictable and bad liars. As it turns out, this is not always true. In one of Lee's games where you try to figure out which child is the liar, I got it completely wrong. I simply assumed that I knew the typical gestures and expressions that a child would make if they were lying. The reality is, kids are pretty damn good liars. This ted talk made me wonder if lying is an inherited trait or if perhaps at some point in life we are just taught it. Overall, this ted talk made me wonder if the habit of lying could be minimized in children or if it is simply part of natural human development.

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  69. Ted Talk #6
    Let's not use Mars as a backup planet
    By Lucianne Walkowicz

    The first thing I noticed when started this Ted talk was theft that Lucianne sounds like a robot, nothing much to do with the content of the Ted talk but it was funny to me and did distract me a little. regardless, I do agree with her in the sense that just because we have found signs of life on mars and it will be possible for us to visit mars in the close future does not mean we should
    use mars as our own back up planet. She points out that Mars will not be habitable, not like our earth and to believe that mars will be there to save us when we destroy the earth is foolish. we should be trying to take better care of the planet we have now and not rely on some idea that we will be able to colonize mars some how because it is unrealistic. She makes a great point saying that if we can expect to surpass the hostile environment on mars then we should be able to preserve life on our own planet.

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  70. Ted Talk #7
    Religions and babies
    By Hans Rosling

    In this TED talk, Rosling talks about the increasing amount of babies and whether it has to do with religion. Before continuing, he gives the audience a quiz to see by how much the rate of birth will be by 2100. In order to see how religion affects the rate of births, he studies each country based on their religion. But he also talks about how income can be a factor to birth rates. He mentions that the religion doesn’t really affect the rate but income does because regardless of their religion, those who have higher income have less to no children. While those with small income have more children. He also explains how an increase of babies does not mean the population will increase because the elders die and keep the number somewhat balanced.

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  71. Ted Talk #6
    How painting can transform communities
    - Haas & Hahn

    -In this Ted Talk, Haas and Hahn describe the journey they took in turning run-down, slum like communities into gorgeous places. The way that they were able to get the whole community involved in helping out is truly a step in the right direction. Their painting and art brings people together and allowed for a transformation of a once poverty stricken place to a new beautiful community that is now getting the attention and recognition it deserves. This just goes to show how small steps can make a big difference, and how when the whole community pitches in, change suddenly becomes possible.

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  72. 1. The agony of trying to unsubscribe- James VeitchJames Veitch turns his frustration with unwanted email that kept to pop up in his inbox, into a game. James would keep getting email reminders for a store openings that he didn't sign up for therefore he decided to unsubscribe, but the email kept coming. Then to entraine himself he started replying back to the emails until one day he stopped receiving the emails. I can relate to this since I get so many spams to my email that even if I delete it they somehow manage to come back. This was a really funny ted talk that took something frustrating and made it entertaining.
    2. Why Open a School? To Close a Prison - Nadia LopezLopez talks about the public middle school she opened in a bad neighborhood of New York in 2010. She started with a class of 35, 30% of which had special needs, 86% were below their grade level, and 100% were living below the poverty line. She struggled finding teachers that could relate to the students and there was a lack of funding and parental involvement, not to mention the presence of neighborhood gangs. Lopez calls her students “scholars” because she want to encourage lifelong learning through college and career prep. Humans of New York, a popular Instagram page I myself follow, did a story on one of her students, becoming viral and inspiring many. This lead them to raise 1.4 million dollars, helping to create a better future for the now hundreds of students and graduates.
    3. Pixar: The math behind the movies by Tony DeRose. Tony DeRose talks about Woody from Toy story to walk in a movie that use Coordinate geometry. Mathematics of translation is addition, Scaling making a object bigger or smaller you use multiplication. In pixar the shapes of the characters are detailed and complicated to move the characters pixar uses midpoints the original four points are used to move the figure then points are added by splitting and averaging to turn the character around. Tony explained that you use math thought your childhood the time at pixar.
    4. My journey from Marine to actor - Adam Driver- In this presentation, Adam Driver, known best for playing Kylo Ren in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, discusses his transition from Marine to actor and how he found a way to reconcile his military and civilian roles after being unable to deploy. His reversion to civilian life was made all the more difficult by the fact that it was caused by an unfortunate injury. Driver was only a few months out from deployment when he dislocated his sternum, thus ending his military career. He later got into Juilliard to become an actor, at which point he discovered complex and poignant characters, leading him to the idea of performing for Marines as a greater form of mental and emotional stimulation. Driver created the non-profit Arts in the Armed Forces for this very purpose. I found it inspiring and moving that even after the en of his tie as a Marine he still sought to use his civilian skills to make serving a more human experience for both his friends and fellow servicemen. The extent of the emotional impact of the monologues presented to the service men and women was not apparent to me until the end of the TED talk, where one of the performers involved in the project read one live. The story was extremely touching and emotional, not to mention relatable. I could see such a story as being worthy of the attention of the armed forces, even if just for entertainment purposes.

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  73. 5. Morgana Bailey: The danger of hiding who you are- Morgana expresses for the first time what she has been holding back for the last 16 years, and that was that she is a lesbian. She felt that she would not be accepted by her culture, especially being that she lived in Kansas, a state that created a bill to discriminate gays. I think that her message does not only pertain to the gay community though, I experience this message of not hiding yourself everyday. It feels so much better when you put yourself out there and do not care about what other criticize you for. At the end of the day, those who are outgoing and care a bit less about what other people think are those that make a difference. Those who go out of their way to make somebodies day, whether that be making them laugh or doing a good deed. Either way, those who hide themselves only bring themselves down and discourage themselves from opportunities in life. I thought that despite Morgana not being the best public speaker, I thought her message was quite compelling and moving.
    6. Why Climate Change Is A Threat To Human Rights, by Mary Robinson- She starts off by saying that she grew up with older brothers so from an early age she always had a passion for human rights. She was the first Lady President of Ireland. She met with officials from all around the world to help people have Human Rights. She also says that there is countries and countries officials out there who have to worry about the possibility that their land will get swallowed up from water, and they have to buy 'insurance land' so their country wont be landless. She says that climate change affects the human race, not just animals. Climate change affects crops growing and water functions. The reality is that this issue news to be seen y everyone not just politicians. We all live in this planet do we all have to put our two cents to help fix something that we broke and continue to break. Its an issue for every type of movement it's an issue for young people who will get his planet after we are all gone. I think that this issue is really important and I think that this presentator made it very clear that climate change is real and we need a plan to start to fix it, before its too late.
    7. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: “We Should All Be Feminists”- Many people know part of this TED Talk because it was in Beyonce’s song “Flawless,” but they may not have watched the video that it is from. Adichie creates a very personable atmosphere in her TED Talk and captivates the audience through a mixture of comedy and seriousness. She talks about her own personal experiences with sexism, inequality, and feminism. Adichie touches on mainly on the fact that we as a society has evolved, but gender expectations have not and because of that feminism is given a bad reputation. She also talks about how boys and girls should be taught the same because then this sense of equality will be second nature to kids because that is how they were raised. This TED Talk is very interesting and I would recommend everyone to watch this because she proves her points effortlessly and makes you think about our society as a whole.
    8. Benedetta Berti: The surprising way groups like ISIS stay in power- War used to be a contest between states, now it is not a conflict between state and non-state actors. We study what makes these organizations when not fighting begin to tick. Media and communication used to recruit people. These armed groups seek to win the people over by giving the people what the state will not such as security. Providing social services allows these groups to rise in strength and power. In the West we only tend to look at the violence of these organizations, The more these armed organizations are complex we are no longer able to see them as a non-state and see them as more of a state because they fill this government act. If we better understand these groups we can give better incentives to transition them from violence to nonviolence.

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  74. Ted Talk #7
    Sleep Teens: A health epidemic
    -Wendy Troxel

    -In this Ted Talk, Wendy Trowel discusses the struggle of waking up her fourteen year old each morning at 6 am, and the many potential health problems this may cause. Sleep deprivation has been known to lead to depression, increased suicide rates, and substance abuse. These are just a few of the many problems that are caused by sleep deprivation. Troxel also claims that schools should start no earlier than 8:30, which in my opinion is a good idea. Teenagers needs lots of sleep, because growing up takes a lot of energy. Overall, I enjoyed this ted talk and found it to be very applicable to my own life as well as those around me.

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  75. Ted Talk #8
    Looks aren't everything: Believe me, I'm a model.
    -Cameron Russell

    -In this ted talk, the title is pretty self explanatory. Cameron Russell is this beautiful model who tries on different outfits throughout the ted talk in order to express her point on how much physical appearance affects the way we view and treat one another. Russell discusses how she is still insecure about the way she looks, even though she's a model who some people would treat like a goddess. Simply because of her looks, she is treated with more respect and can get away with more. Overall, the message I got from this ted talk is that you can be the most beautiful person in the world but if your personality is ugly, then so are you.

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  76. Ted Talk #8
    Robots that "show emotion"
    By David Hanson

    David designs his own robots and he designs them as characters, allowing the to demonstrate human emotions. He says that they can read your emotions by scanning your facial expressions and then they can use you facial expressions to provide an appropriate response. By doing this they can then in way provide people with a sense of human empathy. I find the subject of these robots that can show emotions extremely interesting cause I don't quite understand it. David here does not truly believe that these robots can express emotions the same way as humans do which I would say I agree with. They are programmed to have these feelings, which we as humans have naturally. it could however, be argued that we too are just programmed to have feeling but honestly who really knows.

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  77. TED Talk #1: How to gain control of your free time by Laura Vanderkam

    Laura Vanderkam’s TED talk covered how to find more time to do the things we want in our lives. Firstly, she started by emphasizing that we don’t build the life we want by saving time, we build the lives we want and time will save itself. Instead of recording a TV show and saving time by skipping the commercials, we should find time by prioritizing everything in our lives. Time is highly elastic, and a choice that we are free to make. When we are faced with something we are not enthusiastic towards, we tend to avoid doing the chore. However, Vanderkam encourages people to look into the future and fit these things into our schedule. She suggests looking one year into the future and envisioning what we want to proudly say we have accomplished in the end-of-the-year review; this way, we plan and schedule the smaller things into our daily lives. I decided to watch Laura Vanderkam’s TED talk because I have been experiencing senioritis to the max recently. I often find myself doing anything but the homework I have due the next day or studying for the big biology test. The TED talk was helpful and has me slightly more motivated.

    TED Talk #2: How online abuse of women has spiraled out of control by Ashley Judd

    Judd takes on an interesting approach to this topic by starting off listing just a few of the horrendous comments about her on Twitter. However, this abuse towards women on any social media has impacted women psychologically and supports the patriarchy. Judd makes sure to define patriarchy as a system rather than something made up of only boys and men; in fact, we all contribute to the patriarchy by not taking part in ending the online abuse. I was amazed by how strong Judd is, having survived three rapes and constant cyber bullying on her social media. Furthermore, she was engaging and bold during her TED talk, capturing the audience’s full attention. There are tasks we must complete in order to step towards the end of the online abuse: we must have digital media literacy, put an end to sexism in workplaces, and keep the law enforcement up to date with the different types of abuse. Moreover, gratitude and affirmations offset negative interactions. By telling yourself and those around you positive things, it will help bring positive change for the future.

    TED Talk #3: Good news in the fight against pancreatic cancer by Laura Indolfi

    This TED Talk is focused on the inefficiency of chemotherapy on pancreatic cancer and how to better treatment. Indolfi claims that pancreatic cancer has one of the lowest survival rates, with very little new innovative treatments to help improve the rates. There are many different factors that prevent successful treatment of pancreatic cancer. Firstly, the pancreas is surrounded by many other vital organs. The spreading of the cancer will affect all of these other important organs. Secondly, the pancreas has very few blood vessels. Chemotherapy is a treatment for patients by injecting the drug into the vein and travelling to the tumor site. However, if there are very little blood vessels in the pancreas, the negative effects of chemotherapy outweigh the positive. Indolfi’s new treatment includes placing a small device that will only target the pancreas. I thought this TED Talk was very informative and I am hoping that this new treatment will soon become available and help those with pancreatic cancer.

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  78. TED Talk #4: Beautiful new words to describe obscure emotions by John Koenig

    Koenig starts off with words in different languages that can not be translated perfectly into English only for him to tell the audience after that he had made all those words up. The speaker makes an argument that words are only words, and that all are made up. Koenig started a project, finding holes in the language of emotion, filling them in with his own words; he later published the book. In fact, one of the most famous words he coined was “sonder”. Koenig continues by asking the audience what makes words real. He ultimately believes that a word is real and important if it can get people access to as many brains as possible. I thought that the TED Talk was really interesting, especially Koenig’s point that the meaning is not in the words themselves, but how we as humans pour ourselves into the words.

    TED Talk #5: There’s no shame in taking care of your mental health by Sangu Delle

    Delle started off his TED Talk with a few jokes but serious very fast. He draws from a very personal experience, going through anxiety attacks after dealing with the death of seven of his closest friends and family. However, when he was offered to go to a mental health advisor, Delle refused strongly. He felt the shame and the weight of the negative stigma surrounding mental health. Furthermore, Delle called out the African masculinity that looked down on men who appeared weak. In 2009, Delle received a frantic call, finding out that his best friend was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Many friends recoiled while others started talking negatively about his friend, calling him “mad”. I felt that Delle made a good point when he claimed that the hateful words said around mental health would never be said if you were talking to someone with cancer. His strong message that mental health is just as important as physical health resonated with me.

    TED Talk #6: Why open a school? To close a prison by Nadia Lopez

    Nadia Lopez’s TED Talk was truly inspiring. She started a public middle school in Brooklyn to help children from underprivileged places, starting with 45 kids. 30% of the students had special needs, 80% were below grade level in English and Math, and 100% were living below poverty level. Furthermore, none of the children had any idea about the landscape of opportunity outside of what they knew. A young girl dreamed of being a fast food cashier because she did not believe it was possible to do more. However, Lopez pushed that through education, we can create future engineers, scientists, and more even in the worst environments. Her middle school has now had 3 graduating classes with a 98% graduation rate. Their story was picked up by the “Humans of New York”, where they gained social media attention. With the help of donations, the 200 children were able to visit Harvard and see for themselves the possibilities available for them; for the first time, the students saw hope in their education. I look up to Lopez and all that she has done for her community. She has gone above and beyond to help these kids who grew up with challenging backgrounds.

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  79. TED Talk #7: Wisdom from great writers on every year of life by Joshua Prager

    To be honest, Prager’s TED Talk was a little boring. I liked the concept that he compiled a quote from different authors for every age. It was interesting to see how the quotes and experiences were relative, as humans started to live for much longer as time went on. Prager also noted that life was wild, making individuals experience the same age differently. It was also unique how literature helps us remember what we have experienced. However, I was really distracted by the audience who were sitting on bean bags which looked super comfortable. I don’t think I would recommend this TED Talk unless people wanted some nice quotes.

    TED Talk #8: Bring on the female superheroes! By Christopher Bell

    I really liked Christopher Bell’s TED Talk. He was extremely passionate about the topic over the lack of female representation in superheroes and strong characters. He started off with an introduction about his own daughter, who is extremely athletic and loves Groot, Incredible Hulk, and being a jedi. However, Bell brings up the issue of representation, especially with Walt Disney. They purposefully sell princesses to girls and superheroes to boys. The new Guardians of the Galaxy movie had a strong female role, Gamora, played by a beautiful black woman. Bell’s daughter instantly fell in love with Gamora. When Bell tried to buy clothes with Gamora, he found that there was no merchandise with her at all. On the lunchboxes and shirts, Gamora is excluded and taken out. Furthermore, the Avengers frenzy saw a lack of Black Widow on merchandise as well. Target erased and replaced Princess Leia with Luke on a t shirt. Bell argues that he is sick and tired of fighting for the equal representation, believing that boys and girls should have equal respect as well.

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  80. TED Talk #1 - Got a meeting? Take a walk
    by Nilofer Merchant

    Short and straight to the point, I love it. This talk was not necessarily the deepest or the most important to have ever existed, but it really did have a simple and nice answer to a problem many people in today's society seem to have. An idea that I might even use some day, just because it seems so simple, easy and fun to do. Not only that, but you get to go out of the office and enjoy a nice walk, which can be really nice and revitalizing at times. Overall, I feel that it was a bit cringe when she tried to set up a joke and no one laughed, which happened multiple times, but when they didn't laugh, I thought she handled it really well and managed to keep her cool and move on. Very nice talk, I give it a 7/10.

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    Replies
    1. TED Talk #2 - How to speak so that people want to listen
      by Julian Treasure

      This was a really nice TED talk, I liked his ability to actually demonstrate his topic, because my biggest fear in the beginning was that he would try to persuade us of this stuff without being able to prove it. In the end, he mixed comedy and demonstration pretty well, because he managed to explain what he was trying to say, while also making it enjoyable and entertaining all along the way. I think I might be repeating a lot of stuff right now, but that's alright. The point of it all is that he did well in showing the audience what exactly he was talking about, while also teaching and pushing a bit of a deeper message. Very good TED talk. I need to write a little bit more though, so this doesn't look bad. He did gut.

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    2. TED Talk #3 - Looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a model.
      by Cameron Russell

      Cool talk, I liked the message in the end, and I felt like her speaking style, while not being the most professional or ironed out, definitely made it easier to relate as I felt that she was having a conversation with me, not speaking to a crowd. Shes pretty cool, but I don't know, I kind of lost it in the center of the video as she decided to blame all of her success on her whiteness. I get the point and I understand why she wants change, but I don't like that she must hate on herself to do so. I feel like she thinks that the only way to acknowledge the inequalities in society to throw your own dignity away. Personally, I feel like there is a middle ground to find, and she took it way too far. Every person that is born into power must be able to look down and see what makes up the base that they stand on. They must be able to accept the truth of the situation at hand, but they can't just throw themselves away because they think its unfair. If you really believe that being white is the reason that you have more power, than use that whiteness to help you solve the problems that you see. Why take away your power to feel like everyone else, when you can use the power to help make everyone else feel like you?

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    3. TED Talk #4 - Your brain on video games
      by Daphne Bavelier

      Interesting topic overall, I enjoyed the fact that I could actually understand what she was saying despite the fact that she seemed to have a pretty French accent. I like the message that she sends, seeing as I play videogames all the time and need a reason to justify my actions, but I don't really like the fact that she thought 2 things. 1 was that she seemed to think that she could completely destroy a concern that anti-video game adults have with only 1 peice of evidence. 2 that piece of evidence was almost always one that she said her lab worked on. The problem that I have with this is that I have no idea what lab she is a part of and she never dares to even show us the actual results of any of these experiments that they have conducted. I like the idea overall, but I just feel like they probably got minimal results, if any, to show that video games are good and just want to push their agenda. Many studies have been done on video games and health, and many also say that video games are bad, which one am I supposed to listen too???

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    4. TED Talk #5 - Photos from a storm chaser
      by Camille Seaman

      You might notice a bit of a trend in my next couple of videos, short and sweet. I'm definitely pressed for time right now and I need you to know VT, no matter how little time I have, I will still do the work. This video was just about only pictures, but they were very cool. She discussed the connections that everything on the planet and even in the universe share, and I thought was pretty cool to think about. Humans, however parasitic to the planet we may be, are still apart of the cycle and everything we come from and everything we do just becomes another part of that cycle. Its cool to know that everything in my house will return to the earth in some form or another some day, including me. The pictures were really nice and I liked the colors that were shown, it really makes one appreciate what those magnificent creations can do to you. Love it.

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    5. TED Talk #6 - 8 secrets of success
      by Richard St. John

      I do feel like I learned a lot while watching this video, while also learning nothing along the way. This video, like the last description reads, is quite short and right to the point, perfect. The steps overall were quite similar to all of the other peoples steps who claimed that they had the true steps to success, but nevertheless, it was still valuable and I did enjoy the show. My only problem with the presentation was that he simplified some very complex, and sometimes uncontrollable circumstances. I feel like some ideas are just lucky and don't have anything to do with how long Bill Gates sat down and thought about random ideas. No, it all comes down to opportunity, which this man left off, for a reason. I think he made this presentation in the hopes of making everyone watching, think that they could control the success that they receive throughout life. The problem with that is that sometimes, it just comes straight down to luck. Sometimes, you just get lucky with your circumstances, and your life can change forever based on that luck. But for many that luck might come very late, if it ever comes at all, regardless of how hard they try to follow the 8 steps that this man stated today. Sorry to be frank, but its the truth.

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    6. TED Talk #7 - Could a Saturn moon harbor life?
      by Carolyn Porco

      Short and sweet, and this time, actually interesting to some degree. This scientist goes over their data when it comes to one of Saturn's moons. She talks of her last TED Talk and how they saw many curious things about this moon, but had no completely solid proof, but today, she has come back to say that there is a lot more proof and a very strong indication that there might indeed be life on that moon. The jets of particles that flow out of the surface have been analyzed and various chemicals have been found that seem to imply that the water underneath the surface is in fact touching rock, which, according to her, means that there might be enough correct circumstances to harbor some form of life. Sorry if this one is a bit short, but I really want to go to bed, graduation is tomorrow VT, you have to understand!

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    7. TED Talk #8 - The best gift I ever survived
      by Stacey Kramer

      I thought this was really cool TED talk, she certainly had me going for nearly the entire video. I thought she might have been trying to hint at something else, so I was proud to think that she was talking about pregnancy, which I now realize almost everyone was probably doing. She masterfully crafted her speech and made sure to make every single detail sound like something else. She made this so intricate and interesting, that now I want to go back and watch it again, this time with the right context. Ofcourse I wont be going to watch it again, because I have very little time, but it is still worth the thought.

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  81. In “A Video Game to Cope with Grief”, Amy Green details the story of her late son, and the struggles of loss. Green explains how she and her husband lost a child to cancer, and how they faced this issue. Green tackled cancer in a much different way than other parents would- she and her husband made a video game. To cope with the loss, the two created a unique player-choice biased game that felt with their sons short life. Green wanted to convey the raw emotions that came with intense loss, with great success. The talk is not very long, and is well worth a watch, given its powerful nature and inspiring outlook on life. Green’s message on loving and living is a wonderful take on a cruel world.

    “An Intergalactic Guide to Using a Defibrillator” was one of the most un-TED Talk TED Talk I've watched. The premise is literally explaining how to use a defibrillator but using Star Wars references. Don't get me wrong, it was pretty funny at some points, it just seemed a little off after watching talks about kids dying of cancer. However the point Todd Scott makes is an important one- no one knows how to use these things, so why not educate using funny, memorable things people know. The talk is very short, and actually taught me a lot about saving lives with a defibrillator.

    “How Fake News Does Real Harm” by Stephanie Busari followed exactly what the title would lead you to believe. Busari chronicled her venture to Nigeria after the kidnapping of 276 schoolgirls by Boko Haram. She conveys the anguish and suffering the families and girls faced in light of this situation, as well as the incompetent and idiotic response by the government. Busari explains that the government basically did nothing, spreading and believing fake news that the kidnappings never happened. Obviously in these times we are well aware of what fake news can do, and Busari commends Facebook and Google for trying to help with this situation. Busari’s main goal, it seemed, was to educate those who believe and do not believe in fake news, to research and inspect news and what comes in. The talk is average length, and does a pretty good job at explaining fake news.

    Kate Stafford’s “How Human Noise Affects Ocean Life” brought yet another perspective on how humans are fucking up wildlife. Stafford explains how most marine life rely on sonar, and gets messed up by humans. Stafford focuses on the Arctic and its animals, mainly wales and different types of fish. Since the arctic is conveniently melting, passages are opening up for ships to travel. These ships are messing with animals’ sonar, and really hampers their ability to detect one another. She also goes into the usual spiel about climate change and other causes and how to help. The talk is not long- 11 mins, and if you want to be father depressed about the current situation then check this one out!

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  82. “Inside America’s Dead Shopping Malls” was different in the sense that it didn't feel like a TED talk. The guy delivering the talk read off cards and the topic had no real overarching lesson to it, just a guy sharing his experiences. Even he admitted that he was shocked TED actually asked him to speak, since all he does is break into/ visit old malls and take video. Bell explains his rationale behind taking the videos was his depression, which prompted him to seek out dead and dying things, such as malls. The talk is very short and pretty interesting, however Bell is noticeably nervous and fumbles a LOT so if that bugs you steer clear.

    “I grew up in the Westboro Baptist Church. Here's why I left” by Megan Phelps-Roper was a more stereotypical TED talks than previous ones. The talk can be summed up by the title, as Phelps describes her time in the church and what helped her out. Phelps stresses the importance of listening and trying to understand why people have certain rationales. She believes no one has bad intentions, they just have bad actions and ideas. Phelps provides many stories about her experience dealing with people who didn't agree with her, and how people change quickly when spoken to politely. Near the end Phelps stresses the importance of talking and communication, something that can help people on opposite sides see eye to eye.

    The Pope did a sort of TED talk-speech thing from his desk, and I checked it out. It was “Why the only future worth building includes everyone”. First of all he spoke in Italian so it's a reading TED talk! Second of all the pope reminds me of a little old Italian man (I know he's from Argentina) and I can 100% picture him at a deli. Anyways his talk was a very pope-y talk, discussing the power each of us hold as individuals. We all have the power for a better future, regardless of our faiths. He seems pretty damn progressive for a Pope, yes he still presses the church’s agenda but he recognizes scientific achievements and even suggests they are good for humanity. The pope does stress over and over the importance of caring for each other, since that is what will make the world better. I won't try to spoil all of his wisdom, so if you don't mind reading or are really tired, then check out his talk.


    Let me just say Elon Musk looks like a slick billionaire business mogul, which he is. His talk was 40 mins (more like a conversation) and I watched all of it, somehow. First impression is Musk is a crazy genius. He shares a couple of his current projects (all of which are insane) and talks about the future of technology. For such a long talk I am writing a short writeup on it, just because everything Musk talks about is too overwhelming to write down! I am not sure if it's all talk at this point, but he is promising some big things coming up VERY SOON, which furthers humanity as a whole. Well worth a watch.

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  83. 1.) Nilofer Merchant - Got a meeting? Take a walk.
    Nilofer Merchant talk that what you are doing right now at this very moment is killing you. She claims that nowadays people are sitting for 9.3 hours a day, which is more than what we're sleeping at 7.7 hours. And since we sit a lot, and everyone seems to be doing it, we don't even question how bad it really is for us to be sitting for a long period about of time. She also claims that sitting has become the “smoking” of our generation, which sounds like a really big thing to say in my opinion. And to be completely honest I kind of think she's “reaching” just to get her point across. But she does say that by our lack of physical activity we can cause for ourselves illnesses like breast cancer and colon cancer. She said that what got her to become more active was the fact that she had an important meeting to go to, but this meeting had to be held in an unusual way. She had to basically walk and talk.

    2.) Damon Horowitz - Philosophy in prison.
    Damon Horowitz is a teacher who teaches philosophy through the prison university project. He brings college-level classes to images of San Quentin prison. He says that he has a student who when he was 16, murdered a person for simple pocket change. And so when his student showed up to this professor's philosophy class, he was shocked to find out that this would be a class about “morals and ethics”. Tony (the student) was claiming that, “how was the professor going to to teach us convicts right or wrong, when we know we're wrong”. And that's exactly what they did. Talk about what was right and what was wrong, but not in a professer vs convict, but as human to human with the same question “who is right and who is wrong ?”.

    3.) Angela Lee Duckworth - Grit: The power of passion and perseverance.
    Angela Lee Duckworth left a job in consulting,to pursue other careers that seemed to her to be more fitting. Angela Lee Duckworth took a job teaching math to seventh graders in a New York public school. She quickly realized that IQ wasn't the only thing separating the successful students from those who struggled. She then left her school to become a psychologist to study this further. She concluded that those who were naturally good at the material had lower IQ scores than those who did not do so well on test and quizzes. She also concluded that we need to educate our students from a motivational perspective. I really enjoyed this ted talk. And I appreciate how she went out of her way just to pursue a question that she was curious about.

    4.) Hyeonseo Lee - My escape from North Korea
    In this Ted talk we meet a woman, Hyeonseo Lee, who as a child growing up in North Korea, thought her country was “the best on the planet.” It wasn't until the famine of the 90s hit when she began to wonder “maybe my country isn't so great after all.” When the famine hit, more than a million North Koreans died, and many only survived by eating grass,bugs, and tree bark. Power outages also became more and more frequent so everything at night was completely dark. She said that there was a way to escape, it was a river (that she lived close too) that served as a border between North Korea and China, she even says that she sometimes say dead bodies floating in the river. She escaped her country at 14 and began to live a life in hiding as a refugee in China.

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  84. 5.) Sarah Knight - The magic of not giving a F***
    In this Ted talk we meet a woman, Sarah Knight, who is a bestselling author who claims that, we are living in a post tidying society. She says that everyone, including her, has a story about de-cluttering their home, gathering all their possessions into the middle of the floor, sexideifm what is useful and what is not. But she asks the question, “what if we gather the rest of the other stuff, ‘tasks, events, obligations, relationships’ and go through those as well?” And she says by doing so you will be able to free to focus your time, energy, and money onto other important things that need more attention than stupid unnecessary problems that can be solved quickly. I really enjoyed this Ted talk because I feel that she was being really real with her audience and just really wanted them to gain the confidence they once had.

    6.) Ashley Jennings - Have you met your soulmate?
    In this Ted talk we meet a woman, Ashley Jennings, and she starts the Ted talk by asking a simple question that might take more than two seconds to answer, “have you personally met your soulmate?” After that she reveals that she grew up in a Christian environment and was really dedicated with finding her “soulmate.” And when she did, she claims that it was amazing. He was the ying to her yang and that she really felt like. She had found a home inside a person's body. After being married to her husband for nine years she finally found out that her husband was transgender. What doozy right! So after she was told this, she did her research on, “what does it mean to be transgender?” And for her spouse, she found out was that it was that she was not comfortable in her male body, and that she needed to medically transition to be female.

    7.) Karim Aboulnaga - A summer school kids actually want to attend
    In this Ted talk we meet a man, Karim Aboulnaga, who says that getting a college education is a twenty year investment and when you're growing up poor, you're not accustomed to thinking that far ahead but instead when you're going to get your next meal, and how your family is going to be able to pay rent for that month. He says that, when you grow up poor you want to get rich and he was no different. He was the second oldest of seven and was raised by a single mother on government aid in Queens, New York. He said that he and his sibling went to some of New York City's most struggling public schools. He says that when he was in seventh grade he had 60 absences, because he didn't feel like going to class. His high school had a 55% graduation rate and even worse only 20% of the kids graduated were college ready. He says that 7 years ago he started to reform our public education system shaped by his first hand perspective and he started with summer school.

    8.) Laura Galante - How to exploit democracy
    In this Ted talk we meet a woman, Laura Galante, a cyberspace analyst, who talks about the recent events in the media that has been happening currently in the United States. She claims that you can convince people to start questioning current democracy by saying that the system is failing them and that we have corrupt puppet masters who are holding the truth away from us. All of her talking was so she can distract us of the main point that she was talking about. Distraction. And how the media uses it to get away from what is important. I personally didn't really like this Ted taking seeing that it was super boring to me. And I feel like she could have done a better job with her talk. And it was a great topic, just really wish she gave her topic justice.

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  85. TED Talk #4: How I found a mythical boiling river in the Amazon by Andres Ruzo

    Ruzo begins the talk by emulating the stories his grandfather used to tell him about the Spanish conquest of South America, with a tone of voice that immediately grabs the viewer's attention. He recalls one story, that of the boiling river, and begins the tale of his own journey to find that place, despite widespread disbelief from the rest of the geological community. In spite of the scientific logic that the river should not have existed given Peru's lack of volcanic features, Ruzo followed his aunt through the Amazon, to where he found the supposedly impossible body of water. After having subsequently studied the river for several years with the shaman's blessing, he came to the conclusion that the hot water was a result of an underground reservoir of boiling water coming to the surface over an unusually large area. Ruzo then goes into a disturbing description as to what happens when animals fall into the water. He inevitably asks for the river to be protected from the logging companies and cattle farmers ravaging other parts of the Amazon. Overall, I really enjoyed his style of speaking, as though he were telling us a story at a vampire. I also appreciated Ruzo's enthusiasm, although it sometimes translated into jokes that fell flat. I also found the topic quite fascinating, and the idea that there are still more wonders out there to be discovered thought-provoking. Ruzo was a decent speaker, and generally his talk was a good one to watch.

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  86. TED Talk #5: Could we speak the language of dolphins? by Denise Herzing

    Herzing begins by establishing the intelligence of dolphins, and by posing the question as to whether dolphins are smart enough to have a language, and if that language can be understood by humans. She then spends a while outlining background information about both dolphins in general and her study in specific. Some sounds, like individual whistles and echolocation clicks are well documented, whilst other communication behaviors, including other sounds, body language, and touch are not. In order to better attempt this, a two-way interface for human-dolphin communication is in the works. The scientists successfully trained wild dolphins to make certain noises to request certain toys or games from the researchers. After descriptions of how this research might go further, Herzig just kind of drops off without any real conclusion. While the topic was fascinating, the speaker was not all that engaging. She was just a standard speaker, though her few attempts at humor did succeed. The video footage of the dolphins was somewhat grainy, though understandably so given that this study happened over the course of decades. Overall, it is an interesting TED talk, although you should watch it if you are interested in the topic, not the speaker.

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  88. The happy secret to better work | Shawn Achor
    I decided to watch this talk because I am almost done with highschool and I will be entering the work world soon so it is really relevant to my life The discussion starts on positive psychology with a really funny story that he tells about one of his own experiences as a student. He continues his light tone throughout his talk. He advises his listeners to always try to aim higher than average in every facet because aiming for above the average cause said average to increase. I found it really interesting when he discussed how he a studying happiness at Harvard, and the relationship between the external and internal. The faced-paced optimism of his talk is easy to get caught up in. I love his positive outlook, and call to contextualize our happiness and being grateful. I’m not fully convinced of the validity of his findings, but I would love to believe him. I would urge anyone who wants to think about what happiness in life can do.

    Ballroom dance that breaks gender roles | Trevor Copp and Jeff Fox
    This talk was really different and I highly recommend it. Trevor Copp and Jeff Fox hilariously describe the world of intense ballroom dancing.. They talk about the unspoken rules of race, gender, size, and presence that are commonly associated with ballroom dance. Their talk is broken up into segments as they pause to dance and break the rules they discuss. Copp and Fox are clearly passionate about their topic. They want to make ballroom dance like a conversation (as it is often described) and eliminate any social bounds we wouldn’t accept in a conversation. They also offer a system for doing so. My favorite quote from this talk was, “The physics of movement doesn’t give a crap about your gender”. This talk was especially notable because of how easily the duo distance themselves from the seemingly set in stone traditions of dance. They see dance as the art of taking care of others.

    The Enchanting Music of Sign Language | Christine Sun Kim
    This Ted talk was really interesting because it is entirely about music and it is doe by someone who is deaf. Christine Sun Kim gives the entire talk in sign language while someone interpreted. She discusses what it is like to be deaf in both her private life as well as her career as an artist. She then displays some of the art that she has done and she discusses how being deaf influenced her art and her inspiration. Her conclusion had a few twists and was a little unexpected. This talk also discusses a lot of the different TOK related topics. She uses drastically different ways of knowing to understand and define what music actually is, and it pays off.I really liked this talk and i would recommend it to others especially people who like music.

    Human trafficking is all around you. This is how it works | Noy Thrupkaew:
    I decided to watch this video because human trafficking is something that I feel needs to be discussed and dealt with much more. Noy Thrupkaew is a warm and funny journalist, especially when she discusses her childhood caregiver . She discusses the closeness of human trafficking to so many of our daily lives, and how it is tempting but not advisable to think of it only as forced prostitution. She urges viewers to acknowledge the societal context of human trafficking, and how it can be found in industries like fishing and agriculture around the world that we rely on. She explains the flaws of the criminal justice system in addressing this issue. She says trafficking when need meets greed, in systematically degraded work environments She urges consumers to remain conscious of what they buy, and advocate for workers. She says we need to not just “buy a fairtrade peach and call it a day”, but make a conscious decision to change an entire industry. The possibility of a just world is what Noy Thrupkaew advocates, and she relates stories of the successes so far and of future possibilities. This talk is an inspiring call to action, and I would highly recommend it.


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  89. Ted Talk # 1
    What Makes Things funny
    by Peter McGraw
    He begins the ted talk by asking people to interact with strangers in the audience. He then goes into explaining how humor affects people of all ages. Laughing helps with stress, cope with pain and, adversity. he created the Human research lab to figure out why people find things humorous. He came up with the benign violation theory, which is when humor occurs when three situations are violated. The three situations are violation, benign and both occur simultaneously. one way to make a violation benign is when the situation is psychologically irreverent. Mock attacks or situations that are harmless are what cause humor. falling down a flight of stairs and being unharmed is benign violation. This guy shows puns to make people laugh and show the benign and non benign violation. This presentation was not as funny as I originally thought it would be.

    Ted Talk #2
    Comedy Hypnotist
    by The Incredible Boris
    He begins by calling people onto the stage to be hypnotist. He continues by talking about the conscious and the unconscious mind. "Anything that you put your mind through you can achieve" he says this to show that the subconscious and brain work with these thoughts. For one of the participants hypnotist tells him to forget his name and gave him a new name. He also makes people forget how to count. he says he has the ability to connect the subconscious and the conscious mind. This Ted Talk was very entertaining to watch.

    Ted Talk #3
    Hypnotize Yourself
    By Dan Candell
    He starts the talk by stating that he is a hypnotist and he is not going to make you do things, he is instead going to tell you how to hypnotize yourself. In middle school he managed to hypnotize himself to get good grades. To hypnotize yourself you need to think good about yourself and think good. You need to control your thoughts in order to hypnotize yourself jut like how a computer controls its programs. Thoughts create emotions that case you to do certain actions. First you need to clasp your hands together and put your hands in your lap. To see weather you hypnotized yourself place your fingers together and see of they move closer together if they do you have just hypnotized yourself. when you are hypnotized you go into a natural receptive state. This is the same kind of state that you go into when you are sleeping. This ted talk was very helpful to go to bed unstressed and how to be a much happier person.

    Ted Talk #4
    The Dander of Silence
    By Clint Smith
    This Ted Talk starts out with a quote of Martin Lither King Junior. He then goes into how the silence of people cause discrimination, violence, genocide and, War. Tell your truth, in times where you failed to in the past. Speaking is a powerful trait that can show you what you say and listen to then what you fail to say. This short ted talk is a very powerful message on standing up for people who may not have a voice. speaking is a gift to have and should be used to stand up for what you believe in because if you don't stand up for what you believe in no one else will.

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  90. Ted Talk # 5
    five ways to kill your dreams
    By Bel Pesce
    The Ted Talk begins about how people have many dreams but many of the dreams that people have are never achieved. Bel Pesce will talk about how not to follow your dreams and the first step is to believe in overnight dreams. She talks about how people may think that there are overnight success and that is only because you worked hard for many carriers before that success. Another thing is to believe other people have the answers because other people would like to help out. last tip is to believe that the fault is somebody else's, the dream that you had but didn't do anything about it is nobody else's but yours. achieving a dream is a momentary sensation the best way to achieve a dream is to enjoy all the steps to solving the dream. This Ted talk was not that interesting it was helpful in completing your dreams in multiple steps but she did have a thick accent that made it hard to understand what she was saying.

    Ted Talk #6
    Try Something new for 30 Days
    Matt Cutts
    This ted talk starts off with a personal story about why he wanted to try something new for 30 days. 30 days is enough time to add a habit and subtract a habit. The time was much more memorable for the 30 days instead of watching the days go by. If you want something bad enough you can in 30 days without a little sleep if necessary but you will get a positive end result. the 30 day challenge will also leave you feeling more comfortable and confident in yourself. This ted talk was interesting to watch because he managed to do so many things in 30 days and actually remembered the 30 days instead of letting them fly by.

    Ted Talk #7
    3 things i learned when my plane crashed
    by Ric Elias
    This ted talk begins with the plane blowing up and you are 3000 feet in the air and lots if strange noises. possibility of hitting a couple birds in the air,the plane turns around and halfway through the flight back to the airport the pilot flies over the river and says over the intercom of the plane brace for impact. With these three words he learned that life can change in an instant, all the experiences you shouldn't wait for you should try to do everything when you can and without delay. During this time he decided to be a happier person and to appreciate life more. He also believed that we prepare for death our entire life and it's not as scary as you think. a near death experience can really open your eyes to the world around you and how you look at it. This ted talk was interesting to listen to this person near death experience and how it changed his view on his life.

    Ted Talk #8
    Why Do we dream?
    By Amy Adkins
    This ted talk begins by talking about how people recorded their dreams dating far back into history. There are no definite answers yet to why we dream but a theory is that we dream to fulfill our wishes. our dreams are a collection of images from our daily lives with symbolic meaning. every thing we remember from a dream is our deepest thoughts desires and dreams shown by symbolic images. We dream to remember and to increase our performance on certain mental tasks. scientist study when people dreamed about a maze that they did the day before they were more likely to finish the maze than people who thought about the maze in between trials while awake. dreams might be a random screensaver to keep your brain active while you are asleep so it doesn't completely shut off. Dreams could also be practice for certain situations, for example getting chased spikes your adrenaline and prepares and practices your fighter flight response. This Ted Talk was very interesting and actually made sense to the dreams you have at night, it will be interesting as technology and sciences evolve what we will find out about our dreams.

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  91. A summer school kids actually want to attend by Karim Abouelnaga
    In this ted talk Abouelnaga talks about his experience growing up with a single mom with government aid in Queens. More specifically, he talks about his experience with intercity schools, mentioning that his school only had a 55% graduation rate and only a 20% college readiness rate. He uses this to talk about how he was raised to not think about the future and not expect help while children from more affluent families are often offered guidance from parents and teachers and are raised believing that their college attendance is a surety. He then continued to talk about what he has done to combat the education gap. He talked about how his program and team have worked to restructure summer school using peer leadership and reshaping teaching methods and mentalities. He then ended with the hope of talking about how much more good they can do. I thought he was very passionate about his subject and a good speaker but his data and evidence were a bit lacking. The presentation was still educational and informative.

    2. How fake news does real harm by Stephanie Busari
    This ted talk was about the negative effect fake news and the idea of a hoax had on Nigerian kidnap victims. The speaker, a journalist, told her personal experience of being stalled in an investigation into the abduction of hundreds of girls because first the government believed the kidnappings to be a hoax and later they believed all the girls to be dead. She made some really strong points on the ability of fake news to keep people from seeing a very hard truth. While her presentation was emotionally moving, she relied heavily on her audience’s emotional reaction rather than hard facts and evidence. She did this by showing pictures and videos of the girls and their families and sharing her own emotional reaction to and fury about the situation. She was a very passionate speaker but seemed distracted and nervous at the end.

    3. A brief history of goths by Dan Adams
    This ted talk connected modern day goths who dress up and listen to angsty music to the historic people who ended the classical era by overthrowing the roman empire. It talks about how they were a series of small armies and how during a mercenary revolt they overthrow western influence in rome and replaced their leadership and that throughout the land with their own descendants. It also talks about the shift this caused away from realism and into allegory in art trends. Finally, it talks about how gothic came to be named as such when a scholar labeled the architecture and art of the time using the term in a derogatory way. I thought it was a rather overarching summary of a topic I would not have otherwise looked into.

    4. What makes things funny by Peter McGraw
    He talked about he originally was doing a talk on how people react to the breaking of moral codes with disgust when the audience found one of his examples to be funny. This led him to question what makes things funny and why we find them to be so. He started with a joke as if to prove to the audience that he knew how to make things funny and to segue into asking why it was funny. He was a good enough presenter but he could not have been that funny because we fell asleep midway through and it’s not even 10:00 yet.

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  92. Let’s stop child marriage with education by Alinafe Botha
    I really liked this ted talk and I found it to be rather eye opening. In it Botha talked about her experience in her country and that of her peers. There, it is their cultural practice for girls to be married in exchange for a dowry when they hit puberty. She emphasized that parents have a choice between paying the fees for secondary school or accepting the money from the dowry and making the girls the new husband’s problem. This was eye opening because in our modern society I have become so use to education being a right that we don’t think about how little access hundreds of thousands of girls have. I think that Botha’s passion and personal experience alone made her presentation very compelling and made her call to action very powerful.

    6. Be whoever you want at any age by Ishita Katyal
    The girl doing this ted talk looked like she was about 9 years old and she was adorable, she had on big glasses and a little pink dress. Despite her adorableness, she carried herself as well as most of the adults we’ve seen in the past few ted talks and she made some very good points. She talked about how adults always ask kids what they want to be when they grow up and how this can give kids an excuse to push off their dreams and not work for them right away. Her main point was that kids are very capable and should be encouraged to take action and make change now rather than later. She used her own experience writing a book as an example and seemed to fully believe she could make a change. I fully believe that often children are underestimated and unfairly treated as if they are less intelligent by teenagers and adults just because they’re young.

    7. Being young is about free thinking by Zoe Conolly Basdeo
    This was another ted talk done by a young person. This presenter seemed to be around 12 and was very bland. I understand I should go easy on her because she’s so young but I just found her rather uncompelling; her arguments were pretty cliche, she had no expression, she had one joke, and I found it difficult to focus throughout her talk. She said that “young people should have the opportunity to step outside of the past’s shadows” which I found to be both very vague and a total victim statement. I think if she wanted kids to be so innovative she should have been accountable for the fact that many don’t want to be before blaming adults. Also, she had absolutely no evidence and lacked an evident personal connection to her topic. Overall, I was both board and disappointed, I think Gavin’s review is a little nicer but I’m not sure.

    8. Exploitation and ethics in clinical trials by Boghuma Kabisen Titanji
    In this talk Titanji talked about her experience meeting a young girl with HIV and hearing about her experience with clinical trials. Her main point was that there is a lot of work left to be done regarding these trials. She talked about how the girl, despite being a willing participant, did not know what treatments she was being given and after the study had to stop going to the clinic because she could not afford bus fare. At the end of her talk, Titanji urged everyone already involved or who could be involved with these trials to stand up for fair and ethical practices. I liked that she acknowledged that many of these studies were necessary and did not detract from her argument by doing so. I think this was a very good reminder of how easy it can be for the ethics of something to be lossed in the need to find a solution.

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  93. TED Talk #6: Inside the mind of a master procrastinator by Tim Urban

    Urban begins by defining procrastinator and how a procrastinator's work progress compares to that of a normal student. He then applies his own personal examples, the most extreme one being that he wrote his entire master's thesis in three days, pulling two all-nighters. Urban explains his purpose in giving this talk, which is to explain procrastinating behavior to the portion of the population that does not procrastinate. His poorly animated sketches of the brains of these two different groups are quite amusing, as was Urban's previous anecdote. His whole explanation is more about his perception of his own mind and somewhat lacks actual scientific reasoning, but is nonetheless educational and amusing. He categorizes procrastination into tow types: the kind with a deadline, and the kind without. Urban notes that the short-term procrastination can work as a system, but that the long-term and just leads to unhappiness and frustration. He also comes to the conclusion that everybody is, to some extent, a procrastinator. Time Urban was a hilarious and highly effective speaker. He never lost the attention of myself or the audience. The topic, while not particularly interesting, is incredibly relatable. Overall, this talk was informative for non-procrastinators and comforting for chronic procrastinators, definitely worth the watch.

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  94. TED Talk #7: My road trip through the whitest towns in America by Rich Benjamin

    Benjamin begins by describing what most would describe as a perfect place, identifying that place as a "whitopia", and then defining the term "whitopia". Over the course of two years, he travelled to the whitest counties of America, documenting his travels. He treated his stays in three different whitopias (one in my home state) as anthropological studies. In Utah, Benjamin interacted with members of the community primarily through golfing, fishing, and poker nights. He noted that immigration was a very important issue to the locals, who held regular anti-immigration protests. In north Idaho, he engaged in the prominent gun culture to fit in with the retired LAPD officers that often lived there. He noted not only a great sense of paranoia due to the proliferation of guns and retired police officers, but also of white supremacists. The most memorable part of this particular visit was when he decided to crash an Aryan retreat. In Georgia, his way of associating with the locals came at a megachurch. Benjamin notes that the Georgia whitopia was the most comfortable to him of the three. Through his travels, he came to the conclusion that America is still highly racially segregated, in both residence and education. He makes the observation that even though individuals are on average less racist, communities as a whole are as racist as they were in the 1970s. Benjamin was somewhat awkward at some points in the talk, although that can be attributed to nerves given that I could see his hands shaking. Despite this, he was relatively engaging and witty. Overall, I found this talk humorous and informative, and think that it particularly applies to America given the recent election. Also, can the YouTube comment trolls take one fucking day off? Chill the fuck out and pull your heads out of your asses.

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  95. TED Talk #8: I am not your Asian stereotype by Canwen Xu

    Xu begins by recounting the difficulty of reconciling her Chinese heritage with her desire to be a mainstream American as a child. Although she notes that she had very few interactions with actual racists, she did have to put up with a large number of people who were simply clueless or insensitive. One of the most common of these interactions was the typical "where are you from?" line of questioning. To avoid appearing different, Xu actively avoided stereotypically Asian activities and pretended to hate her heritage, which actually succeeded in increasing her popularity. This had the adverse effect of convincing her subconsciously that white was the norm. She leaves the talk open-ended, allowing the audience to decide how best to not be racist towards Asians. I thought it was a decent talk, especially impressive given that the speaker is my age. I did, however, wish that there was some kind of visual instead of just listening to talking for 9 minutes. The topic, however, I found to be incredibly compelling and important.

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  96. Bruno Maisonnier: Dance, tiny robots!
    This was mostly just a fun TED talk. It was just a video of a bunch of robots dancing to a beat. It was actually super cool though, and the robots were human looking but not so much that it was creepy. They were just small robots, doing their thing. I am sure that this was an experiment into human motions, and that is really cool. Just the engineering to configure robot parts that can move even somewhat like a human is astounding. I was just sad that I could not see the dance in person as I feel that it could have been even more compelling if I could have witnessed all of the robots dancing together instead of the camera zoom ins.

    Billy Collins: Two poems about what dogs think (probably)
    This talk was not how I thought it would be. My first thought after looking at the title was that it would be a silly, rhyming poem about dogs eating food and goofing off; but no, the first of the two poems was actually really sad. It was about a dog thinking about how he would age and die before his owner would. As someone who has a fairly old dog, that was pretty depressing to hear. The next poem started off very sad as it was by a dead dog. It was actually funny in some parts since the dog in the poem was talking about how he hated his past owner. That was kind of a good spin on the classic loyalty thing as the dog really hated his owner for no reason.

    Jedidah Isler: How I fell in love with quasars, blazars and our incredible universe
    The speaker in this talk began talking about how she fell in love with looking at the night sky, something that I can relate to as an avid lover of stargazing. I am not super interested in astronomy, but I still found her talk compelling. It is always cool to hear people talk really passionately about things, even if you have no clue about what they are talking about. Quasars and blazars are somewhat advanced topics and as someone who hasn’t even taken physics, her descriptions of them did not make the subjects any easier to comprehend. Some of the visuals were helpful, but I still find myself confused as to what quasars and blazars even are.

    Aomawa Shields: How we'll find life on other planets
    I found this talk very interesting because I recently saw a presentation in my biology class about exoplanets, so I had a tiny bit of information going into it. Looking for aliens is also a really cool concept. The woman giving the talk was a good speaker, and at the end when she mentioned that she is a classically trained actress it made perfect sense. She is also an African American astronomer, which I thought was really cool. The most interesting thing about her video, to me at least, was that she is a part of an organization that teaches middle school girls of color about astronomy through the arts. I think that sounds like an amazing organization and as someone who wants to be a scientist but is also very passionate about the arts I fully support their purpose.

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  97. Why the future worth building includes everyone-His Holiness Pope Francis



    In this Ted Talk Pope Francis talks about how a single individual can always be hopeful and how that can always exist even if it is only one person. But the magnitude of more than one person with hope can bring people together in an extremely deep way. I relate this to a topic i learned about in economics which is “share ideology” and how regions with shared ideology are way more progressive and efficient. He believes that people are straying away from helping other but the world would be a way better place if everyone cared for eachother. Having people to fallback on is one of the most valuable things because you know someone will always be there for you. Pope Francis wishes to live in a world where everyone helps each other and there is no more selfishness.

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  98. Prosanta Chakrabarty: Clues to prehistoric times, found in blind cavefish
    I thought that this was a very cool talk. For a scientist, the speaker was actually very good at explaining the concepts and was even pretty funny at times. The jokes were good since the study of cavefish is not something that I find to be particularly enthralling. By the end of the video, however, I found that I was much more interested in the freaky looking blind fish. It is very interesting that scientists are using these fish to examine geological changes. I also thought it was interesting that these fish can help with the study of blindness since they evolved to be blind to adapt to the dark cave environment.

    Chinaka Hodge: What will you tell your daughters about 2016?
    This talk was a spoken word poem about what the past year was like for feminism and women. I thought that it was extremely powerful and would recommend that everyone watch it, whether man, woman, or nonbinary. This was a good poem for anyone who felt like last year was one of the hardest to witness, for anyone who felt hurt by the injustices of the world. It mentions a lot of different problems, especially those that sparked mass amount of protest. My favorite part about his poem is that it was not a bemoaning of the hardships of the world, but rather a call to action. It was charged with anger and righteousness, but also with truth. It called out to women that now is the time to stand up and do something that would make your children or family proud.

    Jessi Arrington: Wearing nothing new
    This talk was not the most inspiring of the ones that I watched this summer, but it was still very interesting. As someone who really cares about fashion and about what I wear, I connected with this talk. I also strongly agree with some of the beliefs that the speaker shared, even if my fashion sense is not quite as kooky or as ethically sourced as hers. I too believe in dressing for yourself and to make you happy. I also like the idea of thrift shopping and buying second hand clothes, even if I am not ready to fully commit myself to only buying second hand clothes. Overall, I thought that this talk was engaging but not superb.

    Morley: "Women of Hope"
    This is a performance piece inspired by a previous speech that had the call to action of “If you are feeling helpless, help someone.” This tagline does not seem to me to be especially true, but maybe that is because I have not lived a hard enough life to ever feel truly helpless. This song is about all the women around the world who fight to help others, and that is certainly an idea that I support. The song was accompanied by a slideshow of strong looking women from around the world. A little part of me was hesitant about the slideshow which may or may not have just shown a bunch of women of different ethnicities, regardless of their pasts. I want to think that she did not just google images of strong women and grabbed some that looked diverse, but I do not know if that is true. The actual song was very nice and she had a lovely voice.

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  99. How fake news does real harm-Stephanie Busari

    In this Ted Talk Stephanie talks about a terrible terrorist act where 200 schoolgirls were kidnapped by the terrorist organization Boko Haram. This crime was heard of around the world and become a huge issue. In Nigeria the government call the crime a hoax and it took them a very long time to even search for the girls. I don't blame this on the Nigerian government i blame this on fake news there has been a uproar of fake news and people are started to become much less credible. Who can we believe anymore, it is our job as readers to find a credible source but this is becoming extremely difficult for not only us but for newspapers businesses to find sources. This is also because the demand for interesting and thought provoking stories are in great need. People will go to any extent just to release a story that is popular and get very popular in social media.


    A video game to cope with grief-Amy Green

    In this Ted Talk by Amy green she discusses the topic of her young son who was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor. Amy noticed that her children had a very difficult time coping with the whole idea of the brain tumor. She created bedtime stories that simplified this topic for her children these stories resulted in the creation of a video game called “That Dragon, cancer.” This game takes players on a journey that they can not win, the overall idea of not winning helps people deal with grief but it's not about the end result it's all about the journey. Amy Green is a amazing who bring joy and play to even the most depressing topics, i know i could not be nearly as strong as her. Her strength helps her help other people cope with grief and what better person than her. She is someone who has experienced grief first hand and had to not only help her young son but also her other children cope with the grief.


    How Photosynth can connect the world's photos by Blaise Agüera y Arcas
    A software engineer who has worked for multiple large companies such as Google and Microsoft working on augmented reality and the concept of machine learning. In this talk Blaise leads the audience through a stunning tour of Photosynth and its ability to weave photos together to form an virtual map filled with little details in every crook and cranny. While guiding the audience through his virtual maps Blaise explains how people are now able to easily see the connection between everything through photos without having to stop and look at two separate photos making the task of creating a link between the two exponentially more tedious. This type of photo navigation is seen in well known things such as your gps and Google maps. While the talk was quite interesting, I found the speaker to mediocre at the delivery aspect of his talk as at times it seemed slightly dry and almost impersonal. However this talk was listed in the jaw dropping category for a reason.



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  100. Hi, I'm Scott | Scott Mescudi | TEDxSHHS

    In this Ted Talk, Scott Mescudi, or better known as Kid Cudi the musician, talks to his home town and speaks about his life. He speaks on the difficulties that he went through growing up and the difference between high school life and the real world life. He moved to New York and then blew up. I liked this talk specifically because I've only know him as Kid Cudi the famous rapper, but know I get to see him in this different light which opens my perspective on him along with his life and how he got to where he is today. He speaks about his trouble with depression and how he overcomes it. All in all, I think this is a very well spoken Ted Talk.

    A year offline, what I have learned | Paul Miller | TEDxEutropolis

    At 26 years old, Paul Miller decided to branch off from social media and describes his journey for this year. He talks about how social media suppressed him, and speaks of the internet in rather a bad way even though his whole life revolved around the internet, considering that he was a web designer as a teen and a journalist about the web as an adult. However, he once found out following leaving internet that he had found time for many other things that brought him much more happiness. I think that this is a great talk and really is relative to our time in society right now. I agree to a sense that in doing so, that we can change our perspective and being very productive. But on the other side, I personally use the internet to ramp up my business and create more sales whereas I could not do so without. I think this is a very powerful talk and I highly recommend it.

    A rich life with less stuff | The Minimalists | TEDxWhitefish

    Before I clicked on this video, I have heard of the minimalists movement and have actually watched videos of this idea of living a minimal life. As soon as I clicked on the video and saw they were the creators of the minimalists movement, I became intrigued. I completely see how this idea of less is more and it makes sense that being rich does not mean you have to have more. I really like how these two guys described their lives and how they have changed from "living the american dream" to living life in happiness with less. I really like this talk and recommend it to everyone.

    How to travel the world with almost no money | Tomislav Perko | TEDxTUHH

    Tomislav Perko goes in detail about he was able to travel the world without paying to go from one place to another. He started out about how he began couch surfing all over the world, and then going from sleeping in parks and volunteering in places that gave you all the necessities you needed as long as you volunteer. I like how this guys explains his experience, however I don't know if I really would recommend this to other people.

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  101. What if you could trade a paperclip for a house? | Kyle MacDonald | TEDxVienna

    I was very intrigued throughout the whole entire Ted Talk because first of all, this is insane that this guy literally traded a fricken paper clip for a house. This is actually my second time watching this because I am still amazed by how this man did this. He is a very funny speaker and kept me along with the audience on their toes the whole talk. I really like this Ted talk and would recommend to anyone and everyone because it is a good story that also has a great meaning behind it. If he had never traded that one paper clip away, then not only would he of never got the house, but he also would never of gotten any of the experiences with these people ever.

    When money isn’t real: the $10,000 experiment | Adam Carroll | TEDxLondonBusinessSchool

    In this Ted Talk, Adam Carroll gives his own experience about how his kids were playing Monopoly recklessly without caring about how much they were actually spending. He decided to try out his theory that they would play differently with real cash instead of the play money. To his belief, it worked out well when each kid was give $1500 dollars and each one played completely different and they were very more cautious with their plays. Carroll is completely correct when he explains that the youth looks at money differently than before because most money is not in hand and electronic as well as in most video games it is very easy to make a ton of money and become a virtual billionaire. All in all, I thought this was a very educational talk and the way that Adam Carroll presents this theory is very effective. I would recommend this video to many people.

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  102. 1.)Casey Brown: Know your worth, and then ask for it
    In her TED talk, Brown discusses the wage gap in relation to asking for what you deserve. She talks about how you only know your worth, everyone else knows what they think your worth is. Because of that you need to determine your value and communicate what you deserve. If women ask more for what they are worth, not what people think they are worth, we can solve the wage gap. Brown discusses how many women are afraid to ask for what they deserve and that costs women 27 cents to every man’s dollar. She talks about her own personal journey with communicating about what she deserves and being direct with those around her in what her value is. If we learn to communicate our value, we will be able to have a voice. By determining and communicating our worth, we will be able to be direct with what we deserve and find our own voice in speaking our mind. Brown brings an inspiring talk to the stage filled with personal experiences and some comedic elements. This is a good TED talk and Brown puts forth her message in an interesting way.

    2.)Steve Zee: Tap Dancing is the Story of America
    Steve Zee talks about the history of tap dance and how it parallels to the history of America. The political, economic, and cultural elements in the US during the beginning of tap dance have affected what it has become. Zee talks about the different things that have affected tap. He discusses the major leaders in it and the role that racism and civil rights played. When tap first began it was mainly done my white males in blackface. As the civil rights movement increased in power, many African American tappers pushed to the front of the stage in order to push against their discrimination. In addition to talking about how the US culture has affected tap, Zee also talks about the other side of it, how tap has affected the US. As stated before, tap played a large role in the civil rights movement and in bringing diversity in the entertainment industry. Zee talks about his own person experience tapping. He begins and ends his TED talk with a tap dance routine. While this is an interesting topic, Steve Zee himself is pretty bland. He was not able to fully capture the audience and keep their attention.

    3.)Chinaka Hodge: What will you tell your daughter about 2016?
    I honestly have no words for this TED talk, it is my favorite one that I have ever watched. Hodge talks about 2016 and how women were able to find their voice in the time of need. Her spoken word poem brings to light the struggles of women and how this is the time we need to stand up. She talks about how this is the year we did not see each other as wives or brides or girlfriends, but as women. When your daughter asks you about 2016 she will not care about your makeup, your weight, or what you looked like. She will care about what you did and how you fought for your people. Your daughter will wonder about if you were fearful or fearsome and it is up to you to tell her about the struggles women have faced in this past election and how this is the time to be a leader. Hodge delivers such an empowering and inspirational poem. I would recommend this to anyone.

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  103. 4.)Zaria Forman: Drawings that show the beauty and fragility of Earth
    Forman talks about how she uses her artwork to illustrate the urgency of climate change. In this talk she discusses how she travels around the world in order to show how big of an affect climate change is on our nature. She chooses to show the beauty instead of the devastation in order to inspire the need to protect them by allowing the audience to connect with its beauty. She believes that this is a way to educate the public about climate change without using the attacking nature of the news. She talks about her personal experience with creating her art. By doing this she is able to connect more with the audience and seem more relatable by explaining how she creates her drawings and paintings. Once her piece is complete, she is fully able to connect with the natural world and hopes that the public will too. This is a very interesting and inspiring TED talk. Her take on how to educate and inform the public is very refreshing. She is able to capture the audience not just in the beauty of her art, but also in how she delivers this talk.

    5.)Thomas Peschak: DIve into an ocean photographer’s world
    In his TED Talk, Thomas Peschak talks about his own personal journey with being an ocean conservationist photographer. While he talks about the problems facing the ocean and why he has chosen to go into this profession, images that he has taken show on the screen. He used to photograph more of the surprising and somewhat scary sides of how humans affect our ocean. He has chosen to show more of the beauty of the ocean in order to show people why we need to save it. Peschak talks about how he goes to these remote islands that have not been touched by civilization in order to show the breathtaking beauty of these marine animals. This was a very good talk, even though it was not a live talk, but rather a video. Everything he said was inspiring and made me want to go out and have a profession in helping the marine life even though open water scares me. All of his photographs are truly breathtaking and his take on educating the public is refreshing.

    6.)Sally Kohn: Let’s try emotional correctness
    Instead of political correctness, Sally Kohn brings up the idea of emotional correctness in her TED Talk. She brings up the idea that not everyone will agree with your views or political standings, but we should talk through our disagreements rather than at each other. Kohn discusses her personal journey with being a lesbian liberal working for FOX news and all of the hate she has gotten. While this does affect her to some extent, she chooses to disregard it because she cares more about how people say things rather than what they say. She talks about how in politics you cannot get anyone to be on your side, unless they are listening. This means they have to care about what you’re saying, which can be done through emotional correctness rather than political. Kohn tries to include some comedic elements into her talk, but it came off as awkward and was kind of uncomfortable. What she was saying and the different elements she brings to light is inspiring and I agree with her completely when it comes to being more emotionally aware.

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  104. 7.)Wendy Troxel: Why school should start later for teens
    In her TED Talk, Wendy Troxel talks about how later starting schools can benefit teens. By starting later, students are able to sleep more and be less sleep deprived. In America only 1 in 10 teens get the recommended 8 to 10 hours of sleep. Troxel talks about her personal battle with having to wake her teen up and how hard it is to wake him up being she is disrupting his natural biological clock. Based on statistics, teens with less sleep are more likely to turn to drugs and drinking, are more likely to have physical problems such as obesity, are more likely to get into car accidents, and are more likely to have mental health issues. A study has shown that a teen that gets only 4 hours of sleep is equivalent to driving with a blood alcohol content above the legal limit. Troxel also brings up how schools with later starts, the earliest being 8:30 am, result in safer communities. These communities have less car accidents and crime. An interesting statistic that Troxel said was that in adolescence your biological clock is two hours behind those of an adult, so when you wake up a teen at 6 o clock it is like you are waking up an adult at 4 in the morning. This was an interesting talk and I completely agree with the fact that students need more sleep.

    8.)Amy Green: A video game to cope with grief
    Amy Green talks about her youngest son and his battle with terminal cancer when he was a baby. In this talk she brings to light a new way on how to cope with the grief of losing her son. Her and her husband decided to create a video based on the story of her late son Joel. When talking about this, Green does not talk about her son’s death in a devastating light, but rather as the blessing they got to enjoy for a short amount of time. In the game, the ending is the same, Joel dies. They create this ending to teach and show people that not everything can be controlled and you just have to deal with what life throws at you. Many people ask her why would you create a video game that is so hard to play. She knows that this game is hard to play, but it is like this because the hardest moments in our life change us more than anything else. Her talk is interesting and inspiring and beautiful.

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  105. An Intergalactic Guide to Using a Defibrillator
    This comical take on the use of AEDs is a fun way to interest an audience in the proper use of an AED. Many of the more awkward and less interesting points are made far more interesting by his amusing metaphors. Perhaps it tells us something about ourselves wanting to hide the serious nature of cardiac arrest within the guise of comedy and fantasy. Regardless, it seems an innovative way to educate people on such an important topic.

    What will you tell your daughters about 2016?
    God the title alone is harrowing. I can’t imagine telling any child, daughter or son, about this past year. How do you even start to explain that our chief of state can get away with sexual assault? How do you even begin to explain Saudi laws toward women? So many more questions exist. Chinaka Hodge’s spoken word poem resonates with a tone of defiance. Perhaps the answer is just that, tell your daughters of defiance. I think as a society it's time we made a bigger stink about women’s equality on not just a legal level, but also a cultural one. We cannot regulate the world’s culture but we can change our own.

    The Jobs We’ll Lose to Machines - and the Ones We Won’t
    The changing nature of industry and automation is beginning to translate to office tasks. Insurance claim evaluations, grading, diagnosis, mailing, and more are soon to be replaced by machine learning. Machines are vastly more effective at frequent and high volume tasks, and can outperform humans with ease. However Goldbloom points out where machines cannot ever match humans, novelty. Conceiving of new information is beyond the bounds of machine learning which is based solely on excess previous exposure. Creativity limits machines, it enables us to excel in the fantastic not the consistent.

    How Free is our Freedom of the Press?
    Beginning with the story of James Risen’s reporting work which addressed poor performance or even abusive practices on the part of the US Intelligence Programs. The consideration of FISA court warrants and other surveillance methods has limited our nation’s press being able to actually source information for publishing in the public interests. Technological innovations to protect sources may be able to strengthen our press to ensure whistle blowers are safe from government persecution to continue protections of the first amendment.

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  106. Is Religion Good or Bad? (it's a trick question) by Kwame Appiah

    This talk starts off by making a bold assumption and answer to his question. Appiah states that religion is actually not even real thus the question of whether religion is good or bad is irrelevant because religion is not a thing that one cannot have an opinion on. He talks about somebody who is a Jewish Rabbi however he does not believe in god. He talks about how that can even be possible considering that religion is all about believing in the preachings and morals of a higher individual or being. He gives other interesting examples that support his claim of religion to existing at all. While I found his argument extremely interesting and I myself am an atheist; I found his argument weak in that he couldn't prove that religion didn't really exist more that it didn't follow all of its rules. Appiah is a extremely wise voice in the discussion on religion and his minority atheist opinion is refreshing to hear.


    An Interview with Serena WIlliams

    The number one tennis player in the world and arguably the best female player to ever live talks about her life and relationship and how that is affected by her stardom. She also discusses how she accidentally leaked her pregnancy on snapchat which she took only with good humor and fun. Serena is an idol amidst the female athlete community for her cool and calm personality and willingness to fight racial stereotypes in her sport. She also talks about how her playing career will be affected by her pregnancy and her age. Being an older player she has to deal more with transitioning from her playing career to living a life less surrounded by her playing career. There is a reason to why Serena is able to accompany her amazing play with a persona that inspires women and blacks across the country.


    Poverty isn’t a lack of character; it’s a lack of cash by Rutger Bregman

    Rutger Bregman, a dutch historian speaks about poverty and the many misconceptions surrounding it. He discusses the central issue which is that society seems to think being poor translates to a lack of character and knowledge. People always think we need to fix the poor but the poor do not need to be fixed, they need a little cash. He then proposes an idea “basic income guarantee” where everybody is given a base income which will allow them to rise above the poverty line. He discusses an experiment which took place in Canada all of which give signs to there being successes in “basic income guarantee”. He talks about the need for radical ideas such as this income guarantee which will help not only just the poor but can help our society as a whole.


    Your genes are not your fate by Dean Ornish

    In this brief talk, Dean Ornish discusses genetics and what causes us to turn out into who we are. He gives relief to the audience that based off our parents genes, our genes and fate cannot be determined which to many people who are afraid that their parents genes will determine theres. He gives an example that people who live healthier lifestyles and add more positives to their lives can actually increase the number of brain cells they have! Long story short, don’t look at your parents and fear you will turn into a mini clone of them.

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  107. A videogame to cope with grief. | Amy Green
    This was a really sad ted talk but I still really enjoyed it and it inspired me to look at certain aspects of life from a different perspective. Green describes her struggles with her young son’s battle with terminal cancer and the impact it had on her and her family. One of the parts of the talk that I found really touching was when Green described loving something so much, yet holding back love because you know what you love will not be with you forever. Green talks about the power of breaking down this barrier and loving to the fullest because every experience counts. She argues that we have a lot of time to heal, and heal stronger, but we only have a limited amount of time to love these fleeting sources. To help communicate this and share her story, her and her husband created a video game that simulates growing up with their son, experiencing his diagnosis, and watching him die. The game is hard to play, but helps people realize how little control they have in some aspects of their lives and simply to appreciate what they have when they have it.

    Know your worth, and then ask for it. | Casey Brown
    This talk made me think a lot about the value of having confidence and all of the positive impacts that it has. Constantly, people underestimate their own abilities themselves or what they are doing and earn less praise, recognition, or money than they truly deserve. If people have the confidence and self esteem they need to communicate the value of their service and why their service is worth the price, then people are more likely to respect that, accept them, and give them what they desire. I strongly agree with this especially in regards to friendships and relationships in general. Often times, people believe they are not as good as they actually are, and accept being treated badly in return. When people understand their worth, they stand up for themselves and demand better treatment.

    How students of color confront impostor syndrome. | Dena Simmons
    I was interested with this talk because I find the idea of racism in schools to be pretty interesting. I believe that simmons made a lot of very valid points and i personally fully agreed with all of Simmons’ points, one problem that I experienced with this talk was that I felt the presenter, Simmons, seemed somewhat uninteresting and I had trouble feeling engaged to the talk.. Simmons tells her life story and shares what she experienced as a student of color in the United States. Specifically, Simmons mentions something that she has called imposter syndrome, how she feels she is and never chosen and has never been chosen for who she actually is as a result of scarring childhood memories. As a child, Simmons grew up in the Bronx and ended up moving to Connecticut to receive a better education. Once in Connecticut, she experienced disgust at what she defined as herself and ultimately received the message that she could not be accepted if she were truly herself. I completely agree and have noted myself that negative reaction to cultural and personal norms causes permanent damage, in some cases changing the way people consider themselves for the rest of their lives.

    Why I'm a weekday vegetarian. | Graham Hill
    I was really interested in this video because found it interesting that Hill is only a vegetarian during weekdays and then eats meat during the weekend. I had never heard of a diet like this before watching this video and I found it really interesting. Rather than attacking the people who eat meat, Hill was understanding and explained the possible substitutes and benefits to reducing your meat intake.He discussed his journey with vegetarianism and how it improved his personal life, including his beliefs, mental health, and physical health. He focused on sharing the outcomes and his positive experiences rather than putting others down for their views, which I truly appreciated. I believe this is the best way to help open up people’s minds!

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  108. The Surprising Way Groups Like ISIS Stay in Power
    Violent insurgent groups are more complex than we give them credit for, and understanding their inner workings without understanding their more subtle actions. For example, Hezbollah's work to develop a social security net and political structure in Gaza. They multi-task in many ways that we need to consider in order to functionally address the threat that they pose to human life. Social services are a critical way of indebting a population to the insurgents by providing a better option to the poor provisions of the pre-existing government. These groups exist in the wake of a lack of social services, quite a scary thought for me living in a nation racing as quickly as it can to strip away social services.

    Programming Bacteria to Detect Cancer (and maybe treat it)
    Revolutions in medicine are quickly moving beyond the simplistic method of pills and syrups. Factories grown in labs may one day populate our blood streams to produce life saving medicines and defense creatures. Tumors have the ability to host colonies of bacteria making them a prime candidate as both a marker for tumors and a treatment method. Revolutionary methods of treatment which enable us to more specifically address the problems within our own bodies will continue to revolutionize the world of medicine.

    How I Fell in Love with Quasars, Blazars and our Incredible Universe
    The work being done by astronomers and astrophysicists is in many ways spiritual to us humans. Out of pure insignificance is terrifying, and seemingly a challenge to form some kind of meaning for ourselves. The pure beauty of these massive entities is stark, their power is incredible and simply boggles the mind. So much we don't understand about these grand structures is still out there for us to discover, and in doing so better appreciate the beauty of these behemoths.

    For More Tolerance, We Need More … Tourism?
    More and more it becomes apparent that in the absence of diversity, diversity is feared. Tourism is a great method to develop friendships across cultural borders. Friendships are able to humanize those who are different than us. The spectre of a people is far easier to hate when you cannot put a name to all the positive traits present within a culture. We have to understand more than the stereotype as it is too simplistic of a metric. Developing connections with people different than us is how we can revise nativism and xenophobia.

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  109. Top hacker shows us how it's done | Pablos Holman | TEDxMidwest

    Holman, who seems to know his hacking very very well shows the audience how easy it is for him to pick locks, steal personal information as well as look at the exact screen his neighboring. He gives us an inside look at how everything from cars to keys are being as easy as a PC to hack into and brings light to the problem of hacking. He gives the audience an insight to the dark side of the world that literally creeps right behind us and could affect us at any moment. However, this talk was from 2012, so yes I know that security is definitely a lot higher now then it was back then but I think it is still a relatable topic to what goes on today.

    Faster than a calculator | Arthur Benjamin | TEDxOxford

    Okay, now I would like to start this review off by saying that this man is a wizard and not a human simply because it is not possible to do what he is doing. However, in all seriousness, this man is very impressive in what he does. As a Ted Talk, I think this is more of a "show off your talent" talk rather than an educational video. He was very good of interacting with the audience and keeping them interested in the topic. I would recommend this video to anyone who like to get their mind blown but not to somebody who is trying to learn something new.

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  110. TED Talk #1

    “Bring on the female superheroes!” by Christopher Bell

    In this TED talk, Christopher Bell, a media professor, discusses the lack of female superhero toys, games, and clothing despite the large number of female superheroes. He prefaces this by talking about his own daughter. His daughter is both athletic and nerdy. She is a state champion in martial arts and also loves comics and Star Wars. She is particularly drawn to female superheroes because she looks up to them and identifies with them. However, when Bell takes his daughter to the store to buy female superhero merchandise, there is almost never anything. In some cases, female superheroes have been replaced with their male costars on merchandise. For example, on a shirt from Target which is supposed to depict the iconic Star Wars scene where Leia stands up to Darth Vader, Leia has been replaced with Luke Skywalker. Bell discusses how replacing female superheroes with males and not representing women in the first place in comic marketing can have disastrous effects on young girls. It teaches them from a young age that they are inferior to men. I thoroughly enjoyed this TED talk. It was one of the best TED talks I have seen. Bell was articulate and made some very compelling points. Because I am not very interested in comics and superheroes, I had no idea that this was a prevalent issue. Bell’s talk was very informative and shed light on a form of gender disparity I did not know even existed. I would highly recommend this TED talk.

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  111. TED Talk #2

    “Why school should start later for teens” by Wendy Troxel

    In this TED talk, Wendy Troxel, a sleep scientists, talks about how difficult it is to wake her son up every morning for school. She has had friends who have had to pour water on their children’s heads to wake them up. She discusses how chronic sleep deprivation is an epidemic among teenagers. Only one in every ten teenagers gets the recommended 8-10 hours of sleep. Sleep scientists have been warning schools that starting school before 8:30 am is harmful to students. Students lose the hours of sleep where the brain dreams, processes emotions, and consolidates memories. This sleep is valuable to mental well-being. She argues that the side effects of sleep deprivation are eerily similar to the characteristics we often associate with teenagers: irritability, moodiness, and even depression. Because sleep deprivation is so common among teenagers, we characterize them by this. Troxel also talks about how teenagers have a delay in hormones until later in the day. Melatonin is released in teenagers at around 11 pm whereas it is released in young children and adults around 9 pm. Therefore, waking up a teenager at 6 am is the equivalent of waking up an adult at 4 am. Troxel argues that it is not social media and technology that is causing chronic sleep deprivation, but rather public policy. She believes that if school started later, this epidemic would end. This was a very interesting TED talk and I would highly recommend it. Troxel is informative and provides insight on this topic which is applicable to all of our lives.

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  112. TED Talk #3

    ‘Why I keep speaking up even when people mock my accent” by Safwat Saleem

    In this TED talk, Safwat Saleem discusses his recurring nightmare where he is in a room with a large group of people and everyone is looking at him and he cannot remember how to speak. Saleem is a digital artist who often posts videos on the internet. However, he often receives hateful comments over his Pakistani accent. His confidence has dropped immensely as a result of this. Saleem had a stutter as a child and was often bullied because of this. As an adult, he had finally become at peace with his stutter and voice. However, these hateful comments have now begun to affect his confidence. People leave horrible comments unknowing of how self-conscious Saleem is of his voice. Saleem uses this story to have a greater discussion on race in our world today. He discusses how we view American accents as “normal and good” and how everything else is considered “abnormal and bad.” Saleem has decided that he is going to use his work to challenge our everyday ideas about what is normal and hopefully change people’s mindset in regards to accents. This was a very interesting TED talk. Saleem is both informative and entertaining with a great sense of humor. I would highly recommend this TED talk.

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  113. TED Talk #4

    “How free is our freedom of the press?” by Trevor Timm

    In this TED talk, executive director of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Trevor Timm talks about how the freedom of the press is diminishing in a post-9/11 United States. The press has the right to publish secret informative if they deem this information is pertinent to the public. However, the CIA and FBI have launched attacks against reporters and their personal information demanding that they testify against their sources. They famously accessed a New York Times reporter’s phone history, internet history, bank and financial information, travel history, and used physical surveillance to determine who his anonymous source was for an article. They did all of this without his permission. Timm states that the government has had more involvement in the press under Obama’s administration than any other administration even though he claimed he would protect “whistleblowers” during his election speeches. I found this TED talk to be very interesting. I did not know much about this topic. Timm raised important questions about our democracy and how to uphold it. I found his claims about Obama to be surprising. I would argue however that the government has an increased role in the press not because of Obama himself but rather because of increasing technology in the 21st century as well as fear in a post-9/11 world. I would recommend this TED talk.

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  114. TED Talk #5

    “For more tolerance, we need more...tourism?” by Aziz Abu

    In this TED talk, Aziz Abu, a Palestinian activists, discusses his unusual form of protest in regards to Israel. As a child, he saw people on TV throwing rocks. He did not understand why they were throwing rocks and thought it looked fun. So, he went outside and began throwing rocks at his neighbor’s cars. He did not understand that he was supposed to be throwing rocks at Israeli cars and not his neighbor’s cars. At the age of 18, Aziz’s brother was arrested for this very same thing: stoning a car. He was taken to a prison and was beaten until he confessed. Soon after he was released from prison, he died due to internal injuries from this violence. Abu became angry and violent. All he wanted was revenge against the people who murdered his brothers. He became even more angry at the Israelis. However, at the age of 18, this all changed. Abu realized that he would need to learn Hebrew in order to obtain a job. He traveled to the other side of the wall. It was here, as a tourist, he grew to have more empathy. He realized that he was more similar to the Israelis than he had originally thought. He realized the wall dividing them was built of hatred, violence, and ignorance. Abu discusses how simple interactions with people of disparate cultures can begin to mend conflicts. He advocates for tourism as he believes it builds empathy. I thoroughly enjoyed this TED talk. It was uplifting and inspiring. This TED talk gave an interesting perspective on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I would highly recommend this TED talk.

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  115. TED Talk #6

    “Lies, damned lies and statistics (about TEDTalks)” by Sebastian Wernicke

    In this TED talk, data scientist, Sebastian Wernicke, hilariously shares his statistical analysis on TED talks and why some are popular and others are not. He discusses which topics tend to be more popular as well as the duration of most popular TED talks. He reveals that in order for a TED talk to be popular and well-received, it should be as long as possible unless it is a comedy TED talk. Wernicke even discusses the mood of the stage and which colored lights on stage give rise to a popular TED talk. Wernicke is very funny and weaves aspects of his own advice into his TED talk making the audience laugh hysterically. At the end of his talk, he gives the audience two online programs which share the characteristics of good TED talks and bad TED talks. In the program, the audience members are able to design the perfect TED talk as well as the worst TED talk. This video was very funny. I found it interesting because I have been watching so many TED talks. I know that in the future I will now look for the good and bad characteristics. I would recommend this TED talk to anyone watching a lot of TED talks because it provides hilarious insight.

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  116. TED Talk #7

    “Who would the rest of the world vote for in your country’s election?” by Simon Anholt

    In this TED talk, policy advisor, Simon Anholt, talks about the recent election. He states that Hillary Clinton won with 52% of the votes, Jill Stein followed with 17%, then Donald Trump with 14%, and the rest of the votes were spread out between independent candidates and Gary Johnson. Anholt states that he is not living in an alternate universe, he is rather simply living in the world. He states that these would have been the results of a global election as opposed to a US election. A few years prior, Anholt launched a website where anyone could mock-vote in a country’s elections. Using statistical analysis, Anholt came up with the figures previously mentioned. Anholt used these figures to show that the US voted much differently than the majority of the world would have. I found this TED talk to be very interesting. It was strange to see how the rest of the world would have voted in the US election. It is clear that Donald Trump is not popular in the rest of the world. Anholt was informative and engaging. He provided unique insight on the 2016 election. I would highly recommend this TED talk.

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  117. TED Talk #8

    “Confessions of a bad feminist” by Roxane Gay

    In this TED talk, writer, Roxane Gay discusses feminism in 2017. She recalls how as a teenager she was scared to be labeled a feminist. She associated feminists with being man-hating, hairy, and intense. Over the years, she has come to have a better understanding of feminism but still only considers herself a “bad feminist.” By this she means that she will never be able to live up to the expectations of what people expect from a feminist. While she believes in equal pay, access to safe reproductive health care, an end to global violence against women, and many other things, she still does not meet the requirements to be a “good feminist.” Her favorite color is pink, she depends on men for car assistance and spider killing, and she watches the Bachelor. While she is an intersectional feminist, pledging to work to ensure the rights of not just white, straight, middle-upper class women, but women of all races, sexual orientations, and socioeconomic statuses, she is still a “bad feminist.” Gay wrote an essay and a book about this idea. She tells the audience that rather than tearing feminists down and disregarding their contributions and beliefs, we should be embracing all flavors of feminism. We must each make individual changes which hopefully altogether will make an impact on misogyny and gender disparity. I loved this TED talk. It sends an important message: rather than judging people with similar views to our own, we should be focusing on changing the minds of people with disparate views. Rather than feminist websites rating how “good” of a feminist Beyonce is, they should be focusing on misogynists and people who do not believe in equality. I would highly recommend this TED talk.

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  118. 1 Battling Bad Science: Ben Goldacre

    This talk features Ben Goldacre, who is a physician and scientific author. He is an epidemiologist, so he uses evidence and science to decide what’s good for the human body. He relays examples of bad science, including headlines that flaunt lists about what is cancer causing and what is not, as well as sometimes contradict themselves. His talk centers around the way evidence can be manipulated through ignorance or deception.
    Bad science exists because of ignorance. Those who perpetuate certain ideas are just poorly informed. This is why authorities in the public stimulate bad science, whereas good science is fostered by actual proven facts that are accepted in the academic community. A lot of the time, bad science is a result of a poorly constructed experiment in which parameters are not accurately measured. The public responds to bad science because of the simplicity it provides by giving answers to questions far too complex to have one single answer for. It also occurs when organizations refuse to publish new information that would counter existing knowledge.

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  119. 2 The Danger of Hiding Who You Are: Morgana Bailey

    This speaker is a human resource activist who strives to see diversity of society in the workplace. She came out as a lesbian during this talk in order to make the point of not wanting to be defined by that fact solely. Growing up in Kansas caused her to feel the need to conform. Most of society believes conformity is the path to career advancement. When she began to see the influence conformity was having on the politics of Kansas, she still remained silent about her differences, which perpetuated the issue. She then moved to a diverse, socially inclusive business where she still could not get herself to be true to herself. From all this, she realized she can change the world positively by being who she is.

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  120. 3 The Optimism Bias: Tali Sharot

    The speaker defined optimism bias as a tendency to overestimate the likelihood of good things happening to you, and underestimate bad things. People tend to be optimistic about themselves and their close family and friends, yet maintain a negative outlook for the future of the world. She explores whether low expectations could be the key to happiness. This is countered by the fact that anticipation of something good brings one happiness, joy, and excitement. She also points out that optimism acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy, willing one to work harder for their goals. She ends by expressing the need to imagine a better world in order to make it happen.

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  121. 4 The Happy Secret to Better Work: Shawn Achor

    He begins the talk by telling a story of when his little sister fell from a bunk bed and landed on all fours. He made her feel better by telling her she looked like a unicorn. This changed her mindset and allowed her to go from crying, to smiling. He expresses the value in studying outliers, rather than just baselines when observing people. He advocates positive psychology—studying the positive side, rather than the negative. It is explained that 90% of why people are happy is determined by the way we interpret our surroundings. He debunks the common goal of becoming successful to be happy. He also talks about how it takes 21 days to rewire your brain, including to teach it how to see things more positively.

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  122. 5 Learning How to Learn: Barbara Oakley

    The speaker is a professor of engineering, but wasn’t always good at math. When she was a child, she was terrible at math. She articulates the rewiring of one’s brain that allowed her to develop her capabilities in math, and she does so from a neuroscience perspective. The brain has two modes: focused or diffused. Focused mode calls for tight through through familiar problems you have solved before, whereas diffused encompasses thinking creatively to solve a problem you have never seen before. A problem in learning is procrastination, because it naturally causes the brain to feel pain at the idea of doing something you don’t want to do. One reaction includes delaying. You must force yourself to do the unwanted task at hand, however, which will result in the pain diffusing. All of this takes practice—”brain training”, and can allow one to access different areas of intelligence.

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  123. 6 10 Myths about Psychology Debunked: Ben Ambridge

    This researcher in psychology disproves 10 facts. Men and women are not that different. Their main difference is spacial awareness and language abilities. Rorschach inkblot tests do not have any validity, and actually diagnosed schizophrenia in ⅙ of normal people. People do not have different learning styles, which is something I am surprised by. He says that studies show no difference in people learning a task in their preferred way as opposed to a different way. Rather, learning should be matched to the task being learned. Success in school is determined 58% by genetics, compared to surroundings. Left brain and right brain thinking is a myth because any task involves all parts of the brain. We use way more than 10% of our brain in a single task. I was baffled by a lot of the facts that I thought were common knowledge that he was able to debunk.

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  124. 7 Got a Wicked Problem? First, tell me how you make toast: Tom Wujec

    The speaker studies how people share and absorb information. He uses design and technology to help groups solve problems and understand ideas. He makes the point of how much one can draw about another by asking them how to make toast. He notes that most people draw flow charts because we intuitively think in this way. The amount of detail people go into can reveal more about them. It may show you where someone is from, as different appliances are used in different parts of the world. Most people explain in around 5-13 steps. He says that the process of explaining how to make toast can translate into business managers being able to map out their organization strategies. He ends the talk by suggesting that next time anyone in the audience is confronted with a complicated problem, to break it down into visible nodes as you would the process of making toast.

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  125. 8 The Internet Could Crash and we Need a Plan B: Danny Hillis

    This inventor, scientist, author, and engineer who developed the parallel computer discusses the risk in our technological system. He says that one of the problems is that trust nowadays is much lower than it used to be. VPNs and subnetworks have had to have been developed. However, internet protocols are still very vulnerable despite the parameters that have been set by security systems. Because our society relies so heavily on technology as a platform for all of our functions, the damage that could be committed by a cyber-attack is insurmountable. Foreign countries could hack the systems that control nuclear plants, dooming enemy countries. Danny proposes a backup internet, or police developed just to design fire walls and services that protect the free internet.

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  126. Ted Talk Response #1
    Carolyn Jones
    A tribute to Nurses
    This ted talk goes in depth with different stories about nurses around the world that had a significant effect on their patients. Jones spent five years interviewing, photographing and filming nurses across America, traveling to places dealing with some of the nation's biggest public health issues. She documented different stories of nurses who performed above and beyond for their patients. Jones was interested in highlighting the stories of the nurses because of the overwhelming attention that doctors receive. Jones is able to shed light on the passion and enthusiasm the nurses have for their patients. I really enjoyed this ted talk because Jones is interested in what she is presenting and it is obvious that we does care about the nurses that are discussed. I also value the amount of effort she put into the ted talk and her research traveling the world to document the stories. It made the Ted Talk more interesting and enjoyable to watch. It is crazy to hear about the different stories and the experiences that the nurses went through to help their patients no matter what the circumstance was.

    Ted Talk Response #2
    A summer school kids want to attend
    Karim Abouelnga
    This ted talk addresses the challenges of the disparity of quality between poor and rich of education. The speaker, Karim Abouelnga went to a high school with a 50% graduation rate and 20% college rate. He then attended Cornell university and finished in the top 10% of his class. As he experienced education he realized there was a wrong approach in the way teachers and peers were addressing the students. They were using a sympathetic approach wanted to help the poor children in the impoverished schools instead of an empathetic approach, something like I understand that you are struggling let me do what I can to help you. After he went through college he realized that there was a ⅔ achievement gap between the rich and the poor students. He also found that students lose three months of material over summer and teachers spend two months reteaching the material. He wanted to create a summer school that kids would enjoy and a way to limit the amount of material lost. He created a program that coaches teachers how to be successful and students how to be mentors for younger children. Overall he was able to provide a fun and valuable summer school for 4,000 students, 300 teachers, and 1,000 jobs for people in the area. His studies found that the students were one month ahead in math and two months ahead in english.





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  127. Ted Talk #3
    That’s why they call it the joy of sports
    John Wilson
    John Wilson is a retired pro soccer player who was a long time left fullback of the Charleston Battery. He describes the moment in which he fell in love with the sport when he attended his friends practice. As he began he loved to play and wanted to specialize in his sport. He focused on the joy of the sport instead of winning. He found that when he focused on having fun and loving the sport the success came with it. It created expectations for fans, coaches, and parents. However, as he began to get older he observed a switch in behavior. In this generation athletes have received pressure from schools during or before their ninth grade year. Out of seven million high school athletes only 140,000 get scholarships. This creates an unbelieveable amount of pressure on the athletes to perform to their best ability. Wilson realized he had lost his joy and love for the sport. This made him decline an offer to play in 2008. However, he decided to work to regain the joy and reclaim the focus. He advocates that success will follow if you play for the love of the game and to focus on what matters most. I definitely agree with the message and argument that Wilson was sharing. I think in this generation it can be easy to play sports for the wrong reasons instead of for yourself and the love of the game. I believe that athletes will find themselves more successful if they focus on the true values of the sport instead of the potential scholarships or money involved.

    Ted Talk #4
    Secret of Elite Athletes
    Ken Dickinson
    Dickinson analyzes two key components of an elite athlete which include visualization and deliberate practice. Visualization helps to prepare an athlete for the pressure and stress that is a part of competition and performance. He stresses the importance of focusing on the emotions and senses that come with the sport and to go into the future. It is significant for an athlete to define reality and picture themselves participating in their sport. Dickinson advocates to create a blueprint of what success is going to be for that athlete. Then they can use that as a focus point and goal to work towards. Visualization suggests that an athlete paints a picture and makes it happen. There are three activities that improve practice performance; make it personal so you have fundamentals to build on, repetition, and feedback. These three components can help turn an elite athlete from good to great. It makes it more likely for the athlete to have a successful and productive practice instead of going through the motions. I enjoyed this ted talk because dickinson seemed to have past experience with being an elite athlete and has an upper hand on describing the techniques to be successful. I believe there are little aspects that can have a greater effect on the overall performance of an athlete especially at such a prestigious level.

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  128. TED Talk #1
    “A summer school kids actually want to attend”
    Karim Abouelnaga

    This TED talk walks through a little about of Karim’s childhood told by Karim. He discusses the hardships he had growing up in a poor neighborhood where school was not a high priority. He went to Cornell and realized how different his school environment was compared to others. He believes that officials do not approach inner city kids with an empathetic system and do not try to relate to the children. Karim focuses on developing a better education system for poor kids. He strives to create a summer school system that will actually engage students and teachers. This program will inspire teachers to be coaches and students to become scholars. I recommend this talk to anyone who wants to become a teacher or anyone interested in the education system.

    TED Talk #2
    “How fake news does real harm”
    Stephanie Busari

    Stephanie told the story of a Chibok girl who was kidnapped by Boko Haram, a terrorist group, in April 2014. She went to Nigeria around the time of the incident and the Nigerian officials fed her alternative facts and told her she didn’t understand the situation completely. The girl in question can’t be named but escaped from the kidnappers by jumping off the truck and breaking both of her legs. Stephanie emphasizes her frustrations with the situation and lack of support from the Nigerian government. She suggests that we all answer our own questions and not let others dictate what we believe so that others are not harmed by our false judgments. I really liked this talk and would recommend to anyone who is suspicious on the actual effects of alternative facts. Stephanie was a great speaker that appealed to my emotions that led me to agree and relate with what she was saying.

    TED Talk #3
    “Know your worth, and then ask for it”
    Casey Brown

    Casey’s talk discussed the wage gap between men and women. She emphasized the fact that women do not like to brag about themselves or show others how well they do their job. Men are more likely to boast about themselves and ask for raises when not necessary whereas a woman would not want to confront. This talk goes through steps on how to actually assess your worth and go to an authority and let them know what you want. I enjoyed this talk because it is spreading the truth of gender inequality while inspiring women to ask for what they are worth. Casey was a little humorous which helped get her point across accurately while also stating the facts.


    TED Talk #4
    “What I learned from 2,000 obituaries”
    Lux Narayan

    Lux analyzed 2,000 obituaries from the New York Times over 20 months. He was able to view different types of achievements according to each human. He shared his views on how those immortalized in print can teach us about a life well lived. He talks about the headlines associated with those who had passed and how those portray the personalities and achievements of those people. He learned how important life is while doing statistical analysis of the age of death and most commonly used words to describe the deceased. I enjoyed this talk because it showed me a new perspective and take on obituaries. It made me interested in seeing how people are portrayed after death and how well that accurately depicts their achievements.

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  129. TED Talk #5
    “Why I’m a weekday vegetarian”
    Graham Hill

    Graham started by stating negative impacts from meat production and eating meat. He then talks about his switch to vegetarianism and how it’s such a binary choice. He was conflicted at first but then decided to be a sometimes vegetarian. He is a vegetarian during the week and then on the weekend he gives himself the choice to continue or switch back. I found this talk interesting since I recently also became a vegetarian. I’ve been wondering about how long I actually want to be a vegetarian and this talk convinced me that I can be one technically forever if I adjust my schedule. I would recommend this talk to anyone considering vegetarianism or just wanting to learn about some negative impacts of meat and meat products. I learned a lot and like his presentation style.

    TED Talk #6
    “Love letters to strangers”
    Hannah Brencher

    Hannah received letters from her mom when she went to college and loved how personal they were. When she moved to New York she felt the need to write letters for other people. She wrote letters to strangers and left them all over the city. She then put on the internet that if people wanted a letter she would write one for them. She received many requests and created a small community of people who preferred these letters to any technological option. The intimacy of a letter will always outdo the fast-paced internet. Hannah believes that letter writing is an art form that will never die even with the ever-present increase in popularity of social media and technology. I think this talk is especially important to those hindered by technology such as millennials and teenagers.


    TED Talk #7
    “Secrets of success in 8 words, 3 minutes”
    Richard St. John

    This presentation is actually a 2 hour one that Richard gives to high schoolers that he cut down to 3 minutes. A teenager asked what leads to success and he thought about it and asked other adults what they thought. The first is passion. The second is work. The third is focus. The fourth is persist. The fifth is ideas. The sixth is good. The seventh is serve. The eighth is push. These words and ideas were the overall secrets to success that Richard found after 500 interviews and 7 years of research. I enjoyed this talk because I learned how to succeed while also being entertained. Richard was a great presenter that made the audience laugh and was entertaining. I also like how short and brief it was.

    TED Talk #8
    “Got a meeting? Take a walk”
    Nilofer Merchant

    She emphasizes the fact that we spend more time sitting during the day than sleeping. Sitting leads to health and medical negative impacts since our bodies are moving less. Nilofer started taking meetings on walks instead of going to coffee meetings or conference room meetings. She takes the meeting on the go so she can exercise and take care of her health while also getting work done. She walks approximately 20-30 miles a week because of this. I found this talk intriguing and I would actually like to try to walk more to places. It will get me out of the house and in nature while also exercising and getting things done. I would recommend this talk to anyone who sits for long periods of time to open their eyes to a different way of living.

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  130. Ted Talk #1: I recently watched a Ted Talk called Secrets of success in 8 words, 3 minutes by Richard St. John. In the very beginning of this Ted Talk, Richard stated that after being asked by a young high school student how she could be successful in life, he decided to create this presentation, that was later condensed down. This presentation was pretty interesting. The eight words were serve, passion, work, push, good, ideas, persist, and focus. I liked this Ted Talk because as graduation nears and we are forced into the real world where everyone strives for success and fears failure. We are unsure of our futures and who we will become. This Ted Talk gave me the motivation to strive for more and know that the same self doubts and fears that I am experiencing now were felt by the people I aspire to be.

    Ted Talk #2: I watched a Ted Talk by Hannah Brencher called Love letters to strangers. I thought that this Ted Talk was pretty meaningful, although I personally did not like the speaker very much. I thought the speaker was a little bit strange, however I thought the message was important. She spoke about the importance of love letters and how, no matter how large social media on the internet becomes throughout the world, the intimacy of letters will never be forgotten or abandoned. Her story of writing letters to strangers in a time of need in order to spread love was truly inspiring. I personally love to receive letters in the mail, and I genuinely enjoy writing them as well.

    Ted Talk #3: I watched a Ted Talk called “Grit: the power of passion by Angela Duckworth. Duckworth covers the topic of one’s grit and how it is important to stay passionate and persevere in the long run, not just for today or the week. She begins by talking about a study she did in which she noticed that some of her smartest kids weren't doing so well in her class and how the not as smart were doing quite well. She also quoted that one’s IQ does not at all matter or affect their success or accomplishments. Duckworth argues it is passion and drive that carries people a long way. Something that not everyone has because it is really difficult to stay motivated or have drive to so something for a long period of time. I agree with Duckworth in that my grades don't mirror my intelligence they mirror my work ethic and my grit, the grit I have in order to finish my homework everyday and put my best efforts into it. It is important that parents have the grit themselves to make sure that their kids are grittier and then they can succeed or accomplish their goals because it is one's grit that will carry them a long way, not necessarily their IQ. Duckworth does a good job of presenting this in such a way that keeps it short yet it gets the point across very precisely. I myself feel the importance of being gritty now and now am reevaluating myself and how I can improve my own grittiness.

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  131. Ted Talk #4: I watched a Ted Talk called The Art of Being Yourself by Caroline McHugh. Caroline's speaking style reminds me of a muse, a mellow spirit with a deep understanding of life. She presented a thought-provoking concept that the only job we have on Earth is to define ourselves rather than let our world define us. Her speaking style bored me, and I had to take a break halfway through, but she succeeded in opening my mind to her perspective on life. This will effect my everyday life by adding another angle onto which I can solve social problems, since she seems to see life as a socially driven journey. Although the intertwining metaphors and descriptive story-telling is interesting, the clarity of her message is obscured and I am left unsure on what her thesis is or what my steps in achieving a truer form of myself should be. Even so, after watching this video I am reminded on how important balance is, for example a balanced ego, and I have been persuaded to further search on who I really am, even though Caroline says this might take all my life.

    Ted Talk #5: I was really interested in the Ted Talk, "Why we should talk to strangers", by Kio Stark, because in our society we are taught not to talk to strangers as we do not know their background or their intentions. Stark started off the presentation discussing the short conversations we have with strangers to present a topic that the average person can relate to. I enjoy how she included personal experiences about her interactions with strangers to add to her argument. It was interesting how she blamed our actions onto categories. We put strangers into categories, young, old, male, female, black, etc. Based off of these categories we make assumptions and interpretations. I was also intrigued by the comparison she made to other cultures around the world. In Egypt it is considered rude not to talk to a stranger. Strangers could share a sip of water or even invite you in for a cup of coffee. Overall, I think Stark provided quality evidence and examples to support her overall opinion and I agree that we should start to see the positive affects of talking to strangers compared to the dangers.

    Ted Talk #6: I watched a Ted Talk called “How Islam made me a feminist” by Zena Agha. In this TED talk, Agha eloquently describes the relationship between her religion and feminist ideology. She discusses how there is a false pretense that Islam is deplorable for women. She argues that Islam is “a book that sheds light on to humanity” and that it is the interpretations of Islam that lead astray for women. Similarly, the false interpretations of the definition of feminism in today’s day and age are the reason there is a stigma surrounding feminism. Modern perceptions of both Islam and feminism confuse them as opposites, when in fact they are compatible ideologies. Agha then describes how her single mother raised her to be a feminist. I thoroughly enjoyed this TED talk, however the majority of this TED talk was about her mother and not about Islam as all. She did not fully answer or prove her initial claim that Islam and feminism are compatible. She rather explained how her Muslim mother raised her as a feminist. It was a very interesting and informative video and it had an important message, however, its focus lacked.

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  132. Ted Talk #7: I watched a Ted Talk by Celeste Headlee called 10 Ways to Have a Better Conversation. Headlee discusses the ways in which people lack the ability to converse with one another. Now a days people are more like to text their friends than to talk to them face to face. She goes over ten different ways in which to have a proper conversation, all which I can agree with. The focus of all of them is about listening. She expresses the importance of listening to understand, not listening to reply. Many people just want to talk and here themselves talk but in order to have a proper conversation with someone it must be equal and you must be present and listening to the other. I now realize there is so much more to having a conversation with a person and the importance of really listening to what they have to say and block out whatever else is in my mind in order to truly listen to them. Headlee does a good job of keeping the audience interested by showing funny images in the back and using a lot of jokes. That way, as an audience member, I was both entertained and felt I was gaining a serious knowledge from it.

    Ted Talk #8: I watched a Ted Talk called How fake news does real harm by Stephanie Busari. As social media continues to grow, I come across post after post of stories and tragedies, and me never knowing whether it's true or not. She talked about how spreading fake news detours people from knowing the actual facts of an event and can actually over shadow and neglect the true issues at hand. She spoke of an incident where the government actually spread fake news in order to cover up a story that had actually harmed families. Fake news detracts from serious issues and can spread falsities to the public which slows the action needed to be taken against serious actions. I liked this Ted Talk and the speaker. She was a journalist and spoke with passion about this serious issue. I would recommend this Ted Talk and to spread awareness about the severity of fake news.

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  133. Ted Talk Response #5
    The first ted talk I chose to examine was about sex. More specifically, what young women believe about their sexual pleasure and how it brings up issues of body shaming and inequality. As I was watching the video, I could feel myself nodding and/or silently cheering as Peggy Orenstein went on to describe that we as women deserve to be sexually satisified. She introduces different studies of what women describe as being “sexually satisfied”, as well as their criteria. She sites a study by McClelland (I missed her first name) that states that young women are more often than young men to use their partner’s satisfaction as a measurement for their own. Orenstein also describes the issues of bodyshaming with such cases such as women shaving their pubic hair, claiming it’s to feel cleaner, but in reality do so in order to avoid humliation. No one wants to be talked about like that. It really goes to show how much women have to put up with when it comes to societal standards (which is something I could rant about for ages, but I doubt you want to read ten thousand pages). I really enjoyed Orenstein’s talks, and how she courageously brought up issues that NEED to be talked about that are often labeled as taboo.

    Ted Talk #6
    David Camarillo
    Why helmets don’t prevent concussions
    This TED talk analyzes why helmets do not prevent concussions. The presenter of this talk was a man who had played football for over 10 years. He described how there is a growing fear about concussions in our society today. Many people believe that football is the leading cause of concussions, but in reality, most concussions come from bike riding. He tells the audience that concussions are not designed to prevent concussions but to protect the skull. The brain is made of soft substances and is divided into the left and the right lobe. The presenter shows the audience a mouthguard that is designed to collect data from a hit to the head in football. From this data he found out that the brain is more likely to endure a concussion when the head is moved form side to side. I found this ted talk very interesting because the safety in football has become a very popular topic lately and I think this is just another argument in support of the dangers of the sport.

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  134. Ted Talk Response #7
    The danger of a single story
    Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
    I absolutely loved this ted talk. Adichie addresses the issues surrounding only understanding a single story about a region or area of the world. She explores personal experiences and stories that help support her argument about the inaccurate stereotypes that people can place on other cultures because of the lack of full understanding. People believe they understand a different society because of something they hear or see in social media or in a movie or book. This creates problems because a culture or race can be so much more complex than that single story. I believe that this is a very relevant issue in our current society and in other places around the world. It is difficult idea to quickly alter but I think by sharing stories and advocating the danger of a single story we can come closer to recognizing the errors in that.

    Ted Talk response #8
    Graham Hill
    Less stuff, More happiness
    I really enjoyed this Ted talk, in our lives especially with today's trend, we all think that more Is better, more is happier, more will do this and do that, but after hearing this talk it made me realize that the happy memories I have made in my life didn't come from when I was paid after working or after I just bought clothes, they happened when I barley had anything. Graham Hill stressed how it's the times when we had a little, is when we had the most fun, and the most freedom, and I can second that with the many back packing, vacation type experiences I have had. Hill helped me understand and remember that the times I had less, were the times I was happiest. I think that if people do not realize that money does not necessarily buy happiness they will become less stressed out and will value the little moments in life more than before. I think they will cherish memories that do not include consumerism.

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  135. TED Talk #1 - How to Speak So That People Want To Listen - Julian Treasure
    In this TED talk, Julian Treasure discusses with the audience how best to make yourself heard and make people want to listen to you. Overall, I did not find this TED talk all that helpful or interesting. He highlighted seven rules that you should follow and they were all pretty straightforward and things that I had heard before. Being heard is a combination of many factors, volume, tone, honesty, authenticity, confidence, and so on and one is only really listened to when their speech embodies those characteristics. Basically, if you are smart and have intelligent and funny things to say people are more likely to listen to you. I would recommend this TED Talk, but don't expect to get a ton out of it.

    TED Talk #2 - How to Spot a Liar - Pamela Meyer
    I found this TED Talk incredibly interesting and useful and it made me realize that I really do not know all that much about lying, deception, and how to detect all of it. To sum it up, when someone lies, they are likely to do something unnatural. It can be many different things, and can either be in the physical speech or in the body language, but people will leave hints as to whether or not they are lying and you can discern from these hints the truth. What I found most interesting was the statistics on how often people lie. People lie constantly, literally constantly and I am inspired to get some education in deception because I want to be a living lie detector.

    TED Talk #3 - What Makes a Good Life
    Just like my second TED Talk, I found this TED Talk very interesting as well, but slightly repetitive. There was a study begun in 1938 that tracked hundreds of males throughout their entire life. Everything about them was and still is documented and by asking who is happy and feels fulfilled at the end of their lives and then looking into the common threads in the lives of those folks, researchers were able to discover what makes most people live a life that they are happy with. Most millenials want wealth and fame, but the secret to happiness is good relationships. This is well known, but relationships do not equal instant gratification, which is what the human body wants and that is why people don't recognize relationships as being the key to happiness, good health, and fulfillment.

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  136. TED Talk #4 - How to Buy Happiness - Michael Norton
    In this TED Talk, Mr. Norton transcends the concept that money can't buy happiness by making an argument for why it can. If you have a lot of money and spend it all on yourself, true, it will not make you happier. However, if you have money and you decide to spend it on others, it will actually make you much happier than if you spend it on yourself. It will boost your happiness far beyond what it was previously and this is proven in productivity return. I enjoyed this TED talk and though that Mr. Norton was a smart man and a good speaker and this talk sheds an interesting light on money, which truly is what runs the world.

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  138. The physics of the "hardest move" in ballet.

    i'm gonna be honest these are going to be very short due to my lack of motivation towards the end of the school year and the normal "fuck you" that comes along with graduating high school. This Ted talk was really cool and interesting and I found it to be related to my own life due to me being a dancer as well. and also someone who enjoys science thoroughly I really appreciate how this Ted talk mixes my passion with my favorite subject.

    A Tribute to nurses || Carolyn Jones

    In this Ted Talk Carolyn Jones discusses her admiration for nurses and everything they do for their patients. I personally am interested in the medical field however I felt that does the talk was not as exciting as a potential he could have been nonetheless it was enjoyable.

    How did Hitler Rise to Power? || Alex gendler and Anthony Hazard

    This Ted talk was not that exciting, it tended to repeat a lot of what is taught in history classes today. The animations were fun to watch but the Ted talk itself was not very exciting. All in all I did not enjoy this Ted Talk as much as I feel is possible.

    Platos Best (and worse) Ideas || Wisecrack

    this Ted talk outline the history of the great philosopher Plato's life providing a copious amount of interesting and not commonly known facts. it was cool and again the visuals were nice it's definitely something that interest people who have open minds. I personally enjoyed Plato's idea on "the world of ideas" which is the plane of existence from which we get ideas.

    Rethinking infidelity... a talk for anyone who has ever loved || Esther Perel
    Perel was a very good speaker. Her ideas were interesting but her closing was what made it a good talk. She gave off the vibes that she was very up front and confrontational when it came to addressing issues. At the same time, she didn't go on and linger about how terrible everything is/was. Strangely enough it made me want to write stories or a poem or adventure. It was a very satisfying Ted talk overall.


    The Surprisingly Logical Minds of Babies || Laura Schulz

    This Ted Talk was extremely informative as it showed me a side to babies that I never thought existed. Babies are constantly learning and adapting to their surroundings and I always absorbing the environment around them. My favorite part of this talk was when Schulz displayed babies completing simple tasks in their own unique ways showing the diversity of babies brains. I really enjoyed this Ted Talk as I am fascinated by these kinds of scientific talks.

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  139. TED Talk #1:
    How to stay clam when you know you'll be stressed by Daniel Levitin

    Daniel Levitin started off the Ted Talk with a personal story of how he had to break into his own house because he forgot his key inside. He then goes on to explain that the brain under stress releases cortical which then raises the heart beat raises Adrenalin levels and clouds your thinking. scientists have proven that under stress your rational and logic thinking disappears. David levitin explains that because your rational thinking disappears it is important to have a system that you will remember. Around the home designate a place for items that are easily lost this helps you when you are thinking irrationally to stay organized and remember where certain items are. Thought the rest of the Ted Talk he talks about how forward thinking is important to stay calm in stressful situations.

    TED Talk #2
    “Less stuff, more happiness” - Graham Hill

    This TED talk discusses the basic positives of having less stuff and less space. The less stuff and space would lower carbon emissions and debt. The decrease in space and stuff would increase the overall happiness of the person. Graham himself lives in a very small space and lives by rules to make it successful. His first rule is to edit ruthlessly and get rid of the unnecessary items. His second rule is think small to accommodate the smaller space. This could mean buying items that stack or nest in itself so that it takes up less space. The last would be to make multifunctional products that can be multiple things or appliances all in one. The benefits of living in a smaller space are apparent when truly dedicating yourself to it. He does make it clear that we can all get rid of things that we don’t need that would be smaller steps to living a smaller life. I liked how he got his point across with the slides of pictures to help visualize while also making the box a symbol for the potential lifestyle and mentality change.

    TED Talk #3
    “Two poems about what dogs think (probably)” - Billy Collins

    This TED talk was by Billy Collins who is also a poet. He performed two poems about the different thought processes of dogs. The first poem was about a dog who loved his owner and appreciated all their time together despite the age difference. He loved the connection between himself and the owner. The second poem was about a dead dog that hated its owner. It described everything they disliked such as the collar, sweaters, etc. This dog liked some things about the owner but overall did not appreciate them. He mentioned he had to refrain himself from biting the owner or disturbing them when they slept. I thought this talk was okay. I really enjoy dogs so I thought it was going to be more focused on their actual speculated thought process but was surprised by the short poems. I appreciated the two poems artistically but did not really like how they were performed by the poet.

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  140. TED Talk #4
    Patricia Ryan: "Don’t insist on English!"

    Ryan discussed the loss of languages across the world as globalization increases. I enjoyed how she spoke of her own experiences working as a British teacher to teach English in other countries. She engaged the listener by calling into question the morality of progress in business and universal communication at the cost of losing languages. She simultaneously took a stand in preserving languages across the world, while expressing that teaching English is still important as a major form of communication. I also enjoyed listening to her personal stories about English education requirements and how it creates a stratification due to access to better education. She criticizes how a universal language actually creates more boundaries but then sets a positive tone by calling for a celebration of language, and I admire her ability to both form a call to action while still appreciating all the perspectives.

    TED Talk #5
    Mariano Sigman: "Your words may predict your future mental health"

    Sigman examines how language and its evolution influences how humans think and their mental health. In spite of his accent, Sigman was easy to understand and spoke slowly to give his audience time to process his ideas. Although his ideas were fascinating, he was not the most engaging speaker, as he often spoke slowly and was not very animated in his body gestures. His use of graphics was beneficial to understanding the concepts with graphs and diagrams. Sigman includes examples from various cultures and traditions and draws parallels between the evolution of language and human thought within each of them. These examples were fascinating, and built up to his grand ideas of predicting the future of thought. He also used personal examples to draw the interest of the audience and demonstrate how his ideas are applicable to the average life. I enjoyed his passion for his subject, and found his speech to be greatly interesting.

    TED Talk #6
    Alaa Murabit: "What my religion really says about women"

    Murabit uses personal examples from her life to allow the audience to relate to her subject. She speaks about how misinterpretations of religion and culture leads to inequality of women. She uses pictures to emphasize her points while speaking of global concepts like international relations in the context of family and daily life. I was engaged by her facial expressions, hand gestures, and her tone that conveyed her passion. Murabit finds flaws in religious institutions that broadly exclude the leadership of women. Through her tone and her ideas, she expressed pride in her religion, gender, and identity, which I greatly admired. Murabit gave a highly inspirational speech about overcoming taboos and cultural restrictions to start a new, peaceful dialogue for women’s rights in religion.

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  141. Ted Talk #7: "Lessons from death row inmates" David R. Dow
    I decided to watch this ted talk because I want to peruse in law enforcement when I graduate from college, and also because death row is a very large conversional topic in United States. Dow began his ted talk by telling a very detailed story of a young boy who got abused and almost killed by his mother. By the age of nine he was living by himself and by the age of 19 he was a convicted killer on death row. Leading away from the story, Dow got into extreme death of what death row is how people get there, and the overall stages of it. He was on this topic for almost all of the video, which seemed like hours. He concluded his ted talk by finishing his story about the 19 year old and the complicity of death row. Overall this talk was extremely boring and pointless.

    TED Talk #5: "The Power of Vulnerability" Brene Brown

    Whole-hearted people: courage, compassion, and vulnerability. To be vulnerable is to allow for not only hurt and pain and detachment, but connection and belonging and warmth and love. Vulnerability is at the root of all emotions, and living in a generation in which numbing is the coping mechanism for hurt and fear and pain, the result is loss of the amazing things in life because selective numbing does not exist. All of these talks are helping me realize the beauty of the inner workings of ourselves and lives and how important it is to take time to look into yourself and those around you. The act of trying to understand, although this may not be definitively attainable, opens up the ability to grow and gain further the wealth of what this life is.

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    Replies
    1. that was supposed to be my last one -_- #8***

      Delete
  142. TED Talk #5 - How to Solve Traffic Jams - Jonas Eliasson
    This TED talk is about traffic congestion and how to best alleviate it in a way that people are still okay with. Road layouts are different all over the world, however congestion seems to follow roads anywhere. Many people travel home or to work during rush hour and that is why congestion is often so bad and so the best way to alleviate congestion is to reduce the number of people driving on the roads at a single time. Carpooling never really works, public transportation if implemented correctly can be incredibly successful, but the most effective proven way is to incentivize traveling at other times. In Stockholm Sweden, a fee at bridges during rush hour was introduced. Initially the majority did not support it but eventually people realized how effective a small fee was as far fewer people traveled during this time and it was a win win in all instances. I thought this TED talk was interesting given there was a concrete example of an effective solution. The only traffic in mu life right now is these TED Talks since I want to be having fun at project grad.

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  143. TED Talk #6 - Jeopardy - Ken Jennings
    Ken Jennings is an avid jeopardy player and game show lover and he wanted to go up against IBM's Watson. When he eventually did, it beat him badly and he realized that just like Watson beat him out, computers and AI is beginning to steal jobs and alter what a human needs to know. However, Jennings argues against AI and giving into it explaining that we still need to be knowledgable so that we can react quickly in situations and because we need the knowledge to be able to judge new knowledge. Furthermore, knowledge is something that people can bond over. This TED talk enlightened me as to why humans need to keep learning regardless of AI technology. Humans are creative and unique and are irreplaceable by computers no matter what. At least for now.

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  144. TED Talk #7 - What Future Jobs Will Look Like - Andrew McAfee
    In this talk, McAfee tries to predict what the future will look like from an economic and middle class perspective. McAfee talks a lot about blue collar jobs and how the happiness and employment of blue collar workers has declined in the last 50 years. He somewhat discusses solutions, but none of his solutions seemed all that innovative, the best I heard was making a minimum wage that was much higher so that people could not be exploited in our capitalist society. I personally would not recommend this TED talk as it did not feed me much new information other than information about blue collar workers.

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  145. TED Talk #8 - His and Hers Healthcare - Paula Johnson
    In this talk, Paula discusses the concept of healthcare for him and healthcare for her and why this actually may be something that should be explored and implemented. A lot of new knowledge and treatments are created through clinical trials yet in clinical trials, men and women are usually not differentiated between when analyzing results. However, on a cellular and DNA level, men and women are pretty different with different hormones and other differences that make men and women react differently during treatments of certain diseases. Supposedly, higher estrogen levels in women can help suppress lung cancer and there are other instances similar to this one where the differences between men and women warrant different treatments. I found this TED talk pretty interesting as I plan to venture into the medical field and I personally did not know that the analysis of clinical trials does not differentiate men and women.

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  146. 1: "Atractive odors" by Rose McDermott
    Rose McDermott is a professor at Brown University and has taught at Cornell, UC Santa Barbara, and Harvard. Her TED talk was based on her experiment whether our political views were based off of genetics. She tested hundreds of people, having them smell different odors and choosing if it was attractive or not. Her results surprisingly showed that there was indeed a correlation between what we find attractive and the political stance. Republicans found other republicans more pleasant smelling as is the same with democrats. McDermott’s research was very interesting; I definitely learned a lot and enjoyed her TED talk.

    2: "This is what it’s like to go undercover in North Korea” by Suki Kim
    Being the only current country today that is under an iron fist, North Korea is the only exception in the world to many different world phenomenons. The world wide web is not so world wide considering that the people in North Korea do not have Internet access, or do not even not what the internet is considering that they do not know who people like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates are. Everything in the country itself is based on lies surrounding the government and leaders in the country. From offensive propaganda from the government, to a harsh restriction on ideas and thoughts of the society. Everything written, said, or thought of has to based on the leader, and the speaker Suki Kim having been an English teacher at an Evangelical school saw the dissatisfaction of students in having to base all of their work on this mindset.


    3: "We train soldiers for war, let’s train them to come home” by Hector Garcia
    PTSD has been a prevalent problem in war veterans, and did not fully come to the attention of the public until the war in Vietnam. The problem with PTSD is not that the combat veterans brain is completely fried, and will not work again, but instead needs training in order to fit back in society. This training/therapy follows many of the strict discipline ideas of the Marine Corps, and Army. The speaker described the feeling when a PTSD veteran is casually watching T.V. and if a gunshot then comes on or anything to remind them of a past experience , is a “mindfuck”. The most effective way as of now to train veterans to accommodate to normal civilian life is to do a training exercise known as the exposure test. This places the subject in a various social areas such as a mall, grocery market, cafe, etc. It is seen as the most effective way to help mentally unstable veterans to ease their worries about other around them. The memories at war are never forgotten, but the purpose of this aid is to make the memory not as raw in one’s mind, and to help the veteran adjust back into day to day life in the States.

    4: "How games makes kids smarter” by Gabe Zichermann
    With the Atari 2600 coming out in 1977 is considered to many the first step towards this world based on games. The idea of gamification is how everything in the media, and industry such as nike, and chase are changing the way they appel the the public in order to fit the same idea that games do; short and sweet. Games are seen by some to be nothing more than a waste of time, and to cause violent behavior in players depending on the game. Games have show to as well increase our ability to multitask, and what is interesting is that average IQ in the U.S. has gone up about .3, every year since the 90’s. This is als when video games began to become a more prevalent phenomenon in society. Even though at times it feels like if the world is getting dumber though.

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  147. 5: "Your smartphone is a civil rights issue" by Christopher Soghoian
    I thought this talk was interesting. Soghoian stated that iPhones and Androids are the biggest smartphone companies on the market. However, Apple encrypts all data, which protects its users from people spying on them, i.e. the government. Android does not do anything to encrypt data for users, therefore leaving them unprotected. Soghoian argues that because Android phones are cheaper than iPhones, the poor and already vulnerable are exposed and taken advantage of by the government, whilst the more wealthy population’s information is stored securely. Therefore, money buys privacy rights. I agree that this is unjust, as richer people should not have more security simply because of their financial status. But, lately, iPhones have become more attainable (such as lower/older models only costing $50), which may help in partially solving this issue.


    6: "Can democracy exist without trust?" By Ivan Krastev
    Krastev discussed the problem that we have with democracy these days, while also questioning if democracy truly is the “most just” form of government. He claimed that a lot of problems within an efficient form of democracy stem from social issues that are both positive and negative, for instance, the internet. The internet is overall a positive thing, as it has allowed billions of people to connect and communicate. However, with this connection, comes questioning and many times, misunderstanding. Krastev also talked about an extremely relevant issue today, which is the turning in of blank ballots and not voting, even though people are registered as voters. He described this issue as a problem directly with democracy and the fact that people do not think the people on the ballot properly represent the public. Krastev was not the most engaging speaker, but the points he made were well thought out are still very relevant currently.


    7: "Forget Wi-Fi. Meet the new Li-Fi Internet" by Harald Haas
    This talk had an interesting concept, but I did not think Haas provided enough pretence. Haas described a new form of Wi-Fi, called Li-Fi, that works through the reception of varied light through solar cells in order to provide both energy and Wi-Fi to a device. Therefore, that device would be provided with energy to charge and Wi-Fi at the same time. He demonstrated his product, which was intriguing. But, I could not help but wonder how exactly it worked and how/if these solar cells worked differently than others. Overall, the talk was entertaining, but it did not feel long enough or well explained.

    8: "The playful wonderland behind great inventions" by Steven Johnson
    Through the medium of a children's playbook, Johnson provides a captivating and yet eye opening video to reveal how the human race becomes better."Necessity isn't always the mother of invention... simple delight and amusement eventually led us to profound breakthroughs." Although Johnson's advice to make the acquiring of knowledge and the creation of inventions a playful task is possibly a little overly optimistic, it allows me to see that possibly the goal of making work fun can be attainable because that is how many great innovations have came to be in the past: "You'll find the future, wherever people are having the most fun."

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  148. A summer school program kids want to attend-Karim Abouelnaga
    In this Ted talk, Karim talks about what it is like growing up in a low income family, attending the worst public schools the great state of New York has to offer. In these programs the students are treated very differently than many middle class family, instead of asking which college you are going to, people ask if one will be going to college. He continues on to discuss how he made it out (asking for help) and then talks about his personal achievements as an educator. He did no really explain how his system worked but The unitless graph he showed doesnt lie. A very passionate speaker, worth the watch.

    How fake news does real harm-Stephanie Busari
    She was talking about a very important topic, missing children in SOmalia. Stephanie discussed how many did not even know that the children were missing because of fake news. As I was saying, she is bringing light to the very controversial issue of alternate facts or fake news, but one can only do so much if they are not a great speaker. Yes, her topic was an excellent one and needs more attention, but would I watch it again? No. This could be a personal thing because I am having trouble being engaged with these Talks mainly because I am very tired, but the story just didn't capture me.

    A brief history of goths-Dan Adams
    So This was in a completely different format than any other ted talks. This video involved animation while someone (dan) talked over said animation. This ted talk looks at the start of gothic history and how it has progressed into what “goth” is today. As a whole, this Ted Talk was quite boring and I felt myself resting my eyes (and by resting my eyes closing my eyes knowing damn well sleep is coming). So overall a boring Ted Talk, would not recommend unless genuinely interested about what the history of goths are.

    What makes things hunny-Peter McGraw
    I ma have been tired when I watched this, but I fell straight to sleep when I did. He has one of those especially y monotonous voices. From that Peter analyzed what makes things funny. Unfortunately his video was not funny enough to capture my attention. Would not recommend.

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  149. Let's stop child marriage with education-Alinafe Botha
    Alinafe had it all, humor, passion and most of all a great accent. She talked about the troubles her home faced, where children of 12 were being sent away because the fee of a child was too much stress on that family's income. I must come back to her as a presenter now. This is not against her, but her accent while awesome was quite thick and difficult to understand. Other than that this was a great Ted talk and I would recommend it to anyone.

    Be Whoever you want at any age- Ishita Katyal
    I was not expecting a small child to be presenting this Ted Talk. She did not look the part, but she definitely did a great job. Do not get me wrong she was extremely professional while using a elevated vocabulary most adults would not be able to answer. Along with that, her ideas are hers. She writes what she thinks in her journals and finds the courage to present them in front of a large audience all while being the age of (probably) 12. It is amazing to see how far along this speaker already is, especially when comparing how she presented herself at this age compared to how I did. With all that being said, she had a very interesting topic, but it was difficult to understand her because her accent was really thick.

    Being you is about free thinking-Zoe Connolly Basdeo
    I do not know why but there have been so many children speakers throughout this batch. I fully believe that younger people have the ability to make fine presentations, but this one was way too boring. Her topic was okay, but this is TED. You cannot bring okay to TED. She did not speak very well (volume, sounded nervous) but her diction was art. Other than that her examples were not very relatable or intriguing and she really just seemed to be regurgitating love yourself philosophy. While this is a good thing, I for one do not like to waste my time and thus talk just felt so introductory. Would not recommend.

    A Young Inventors Plan to Recycle Styrofoam, Ashton Cofer
    I picked this ted talk mainly because I thought the speaker looked like Fred from iCarly. He acted a lot like fred and knew what he was talking about. Unfortunately this does not affect how good the ted talk was, and the ted talk was boring. Whenever a Ted Talk is boring it becomes very difficult to become engaged in the subject, and because of that I would not recommend this talk.

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  150. #1 Dean Ornish: The killer American diet that's sweeping the planet

    Pretty good talk, title sums it up quite nicely. Basically, heart disease,
    obesity, cancer and many other serious illnesses have been becoming much
    more common around the world, and this is because as other countries
    westernize, they adopt our health problems as well as other aspects of our
    culture. Dean was a very good speaker, but the video itself was of rather
    poor quality, it looked like a 90s VHS tape in terms of color and
    resolution.

    #2 Laura Trice: Remember to say thank you

    Like the other talk, the title sums it well: saying thank you can mean
    quite a lot to some people. If people ask for the praise that they need,
    they will very often get it. People sometimes refuse to ask for praise
    because asking for praise is admitting insecurities, which many have trouble with. Laura spoke well, but she made a bicycle maintenance metaphor and it was pretty weak. Other than that, quite nice.

    #3 Dan Dennett: Dangerous memes

    I won't lie, I picked this just because of the title. Rather than talking
    about pepe or other 4chan related topics, this was on the idea. The
    original use of the word meme, rather than its more recent internet
    bastardization. Dan talks about how there are many things, ideas, that
    humans will gladly die for. He does this very well, talking to his
    audience as though they were his grandchildren. This talk was older
    though, and it does seem to show. The video quality is still somewhat
    poor, and you can hear people cough quite a lot.

    #4 Sarah Parcak: Archaeology from space

    Pretty neat talk. When you think you Archaeology, you generally think of a
    bunch of people dressed like Indiana Jone brushing off some bones, rather
    than images of satellites. But here Sarah explains how satellite imagery was invaluable to finding ancient sites. Sarah spoke reasonably well, but she did have a bit of a lisp which was kind of distracting.

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  151. #5 Christopher "moot" Poole": The case for anonymity online

    Honestly, not the best talk. I chose this as soon as I saw it because I am
    a 4chan user, and all moot really did was just shill 4chan, rather than
    exactly what it represents. I'll fill in my opinion here, I think that 4chan is so great because with out any identification, people can say what they truly believe, rather than what they think they should say. The image
    board format works much better than a vote aggregator, in my opinion, as a
    post must stand on its merits alone, rather than simply stating an opinion
    that is accepted by the majority of users. Still RIP in peace moot, you
    will be missed.

    #6 Terry Moore: How to tie your shoes

    Pretty damn cool. This talk doesn't really fit with most of the other TED
    talks, no big society changing ideas or new ways of looking at life.
    Basically if you loop the shoelace the other way around, the bow orients
    itself perpendicular to the mouth of your shoe, so it lasts longer. While
    this talk wasn't life changing, I will tie my shoes this way from now on,
    and that's enough of a change for me.

    #7 Siegfried Woldhek: The search for the true face of Leonardo

    I learned a good deal from this talk. Quite a lot about Leonardo himself, I actually had no idea that there was a controversy about what Leo's face looked like, and it turns out there was quite a lot. Siegfried uses some pretty cool analysis of the pictures Leo drew and highlights those which could be self portraits, then further down to those make sense for the time at which they were drawn and the age Leo was.

    #8 Joy Buolamwini: How I'm fighting bias in algorithms

    Pretty cool talk, though really much too long. Basically facial recognition software isn't the best, and has tends to have trouble recognizing the faces of minorities. Joy talks about this for quite some time, and while I certainly agree that this is an issue, I feel like that this talk did not need to be as long as it was. It could be easily summed up with: We should be aware of others as we work on technology and think about how it will affect them. There, done.


    I'd like to thank you VT, as well as everyone else in my TOK class. This class really made my senior year, and I won't be forgetting any of you soon.

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