8 Must Watch TED Talks
Sam Berns is a Junior at Foxboro High School in Foxboro, Massachusetts, where he has achieved highest honors and is currently a percussion section leader in the high school marching band. He recently achieved the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America.
“John Hamilton asked me the question: ‘What is the most important thing that people should know about you?’ And my answer was simply that I have a very happy life.”
Cameron Russell admits she won "a genetic lottery": she's tall, pretty and an underwear model. But don't judge her by her looks. In this fearless talk, she takes a wry look at the industry that had her looking highly seductive at barely 16-years-old. (Filmed at TEDxMidAtlantic.)
“I’m insecure because I have to think about what I look like every day. And if you ever are wondering, ‘If I have thinner thighs and shinier hair, will I be happier?’ You just need to meet a group of models, because they have the thinnest thighs and the shiniest hair and the coolest clothes, and they’re the most physically insecure women probably on the planet.”
“Your brain at positive performs significantly better than it does at negative neutral or stressed. Your intelligence rises, your creativity rises, your energy levels rise. In fact, what we’ve found is that every single business outcome improves. Your brain at positive is 31 percent more productive than your brain at negative, neutral, or stressed”
When you look at sporting achievements over the last decades, it seems like humans have gotten faster, better and stronger in nearly every way. Yet as David Epstein points out in this delightfully counter-intuitive talk, we might want to lay off the self-congratulation.
“Have you ever seen in a movie when someone gets an electrical shock and they’re thrown across a room? There’s no explosion there. What’s happening when that happens is that the electrical impulse is causing all their muscle fibers to twitch at once, and they’re throwing themselves across the room. They’re essentially jumping. That’s the power that’s contained in the human body.”
Sir Ken Robinson outlines 3 principles crucial for the human mind to flourish -- and how current education culture works against them. In a funny, stirring talk he tells us how to get out of the educational "death valley" we now face, and how to nurture our youngest generations with a climate of possibility.
“Give people a different sense of possibility, a different set of expectations, a broader range of opportunities, you cherish and value the relationships between teachers and learners, you offer people the discretion to be creative and to innovate in what they do.”
Body language affects how others see us, but it may also change how we see ourselves. Social psychologist Amy Cuddy shows how "power posing" -- standing in a posture of confidence, even when we don't feel confident -- can affect testosterone and cortisol levels in the brain, and might even have an impact on our chances for success.
“Our bodies change our minds and our minds can change our behavior, and our behavior can change our outcomes.”
This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences. In this talk, Mark shares his remarkable journey while exploring the frontiers of spinal cord injury recovery. He is the world's leading test pilot of Esko Robotic Legs.
“I’m not excited by the problems, I’m excited by the possibilities.”
http://www.ted.com Using examples from vacations to colonoscopies, Nobel laureate and founder of behavioral economics Daniel Kahneman reveals how our "experiencing selves" and our "remembering selves" perceive happiness differently. This new insight has profound implications for economics, public policy -- and our own self-awareness.
“The more money you earn, the more satisfied you are. That does not hold for emotions.”