Lesson 1: What are ideas?

ideas change everything what we need in education is not Evolution but a revolution they have the power to unlock empathy this idea of creating a safe haven for our kids it's our excitement yeah I was somebody when I came I'll be a bet for somebody when I leave and catalyze collaboration their Collective wisdom is much greater than mine at a time with a right idea presented in the right way can Ripple across the planet at the speed of light we can't wait to see what impact your talk has on the world [Music] your number one Mission as a speaker is to take something that matters deeply to you and to rebuild it inside the minds of your listeners we'll call that something an idea a mental construct that they can hold on to walk away with value and in some sense be changed by I am using the word idea quite broadly here it doesn't have to be a scientific breakthrough a genius invention or a complex legal Theory it can be a simple how-to or a human Insight Illustrated with the power of a story or a beautiful image that has meaning or an event you wish might happen in the future or perhaps just a reminder of what matters most in life an idea is anything that can change how people see the world if you can conjure up a compelling idea in people's minds you have done something wondrous in a very real sense a little piece of you has become part of them in March 2015 a scientist named Sophie Scott stepped onto the Ted stage what I'm going to do now is just play some examples of real human beings laughing and I want you to think about the sound people make and how odd that can be and in fact how primitive laughter is as a sound it's much more like an animal call than it is like speech so here we've got some laughter for you the first one is pretty joyful [Laughter] [Music] and within two minutes the entire audience was howling with uncontrollable laughter Sophie is one of the world's leading researchers on laughter and she was showing just how weird a phenomenon it is now this next guy I need him to breathe if there's a point in this one I'm just like you've got to get some air in there mates because he just sounds like he's breathing out foreign more like an animal call than speech as she put it her talk was 17 minutes of pure delight by the end of it everyone was basking in the warm glow of a deeply pleasurable experience but there was something else none of us would ever think of laughter in quite the same way again the couples who manage that feeling of stress with laughter positive emotions like laughter not only immediately become less stressed they can see them physically feeling better they're dealing with this unpleasant situation better together they are also the couples that report higher levels of satisfaction in their relationship and they stay together for longer Sophia's core idea about laughter that its evolutionary purpose is to convert social stress into pleasurable alignment had somehow entered our heads and now whenever I see a group of people laughing I see the phenomenon through new eyes yes I feel the joy I feel the urge to join in but I also see social bonding and a strange and ancient biological phenomenon at work that makes the whole thing seem even more wondrous Sophie gave me a gift not just the pleasure of listening to her she gave me an idea that can forever be part of me I'd like to suggest that Sophie's gift is a beautiful metaphor that can apply to any talk if you can conjure up a compelling idea in people's minds you have given them a gift of incalculable value there's one other beautiful metaphor for a great talk it is a journey that speaker and audience take together speaker Tierney teeth puts it this way like all good movies or books a great talk is transporting we love to go on at Adventures travel someplace new with an informed if not quirky guide who can introduce us to things we never knew existed incite us to crawl out windows into strange worlds not fit us with new lenses to see the ordinary in an extraordinary way enrapture us and engage multiple parts of our brain simultaneously so I often try to Fashion my talks around embarking on a journey what's powerful about this metaphor is that it makes clear why the speaker like any tour guide must begin where the audience is and why they must ensure no impossible leaps or inexplicable shifts in Direction whether the journey is one of exploration explanation or persuasion the net result is to have brought the audience to a beautiful new place we shouldn't underestimate how challenging that is if we could somehow map what that idea about laughter looks like in Sophie Scott's brain it would probably involve millions of neurons interconnected in an incredibly rich and complex pattern how on Earth is it possible to recreate that whole structure in a group of strangers Minds in just a few minutes humans have developed a technology that makes this possible it's called language I want you to imagine an elephant with its trunk painted bright red waving it to and fro in sync with the shuffling steps of a giant orange parrot dancing on the elephant's head and shrieking over and over again let's do the Fandango you have just formed in your mind an image of something that has never existed in history except in my mind and in the minds of others who heard that last sentence a single sentence can do that but it depends on you the listener having a set of pre-existing Concepts you must already know what an elephant and a paratar what the color concepts of red and orange are and what painted dancing and in sync mean that sentence has prompted you to link those Concepts into a brand new pattern if I had instead started out by saying I want you to imagine a member of the species loxodontus cyclotis with proboscis pigmented Pantone o32u conducting oscillatory motions you probably would not have formed that image even though this is the same request in more precise language so language Works its magic only to the extent that it is shared by a speaker and listener at the Princeton University Dr URI Hassan has been doing groundbreaking research to try to discover how this process works it's possible to capture in real time the complex brain activity associated with building a concept or remembering a story it requires a technology called functional magnetic resonance imaging fmri in one experiment in 2015 Dr Hassan put a group of volunteers into fmri machines and played them a 50-minute film that told a story as they experienced the story their brain's response patterns were recorded some of those patterns could be matched across almost every volunteer giving concrete physical evidence of the shared experience they were having then he asked the volunteers to record their own Recollections of the film many of these recordings were quite detailed and lasted as long as 20 minutes now and this is the astounding part he played those recordings to another set of volunteers who had never seen the film and recorded their fmri data the patterns shown in the brains of the second set of volunteers those who listened to the audio Recollections only matched those patterns shown in the minds of the first set of volunteers as they watched the movie in other words the power of language alone conjured up the same mental experiences that others had while watching a movie this is amazing evidence of languages efficacy the fact that we can transfer ideas in this way is why human to human speaking matters it is how our World Views are built and shaped our ideas make us who we are speakers who have figured out how to spread their ideas into others minds are able to create Ripple effects of Untold consequence do you have ideas that deserve a wider audience whichever metaphor you use focusing on what you will give to your audience is the perfect foundation for preparing your talk the skills needed to go about creating a great talk are truly worth mastering so we hope you sign up for this course and we look forward to hearing your ideas

Channel: TED-Ed

Views: 156,501

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Id: orBYbxxrJSU

Length: 9min 38sec (578 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 18 2022