TED5分鐘英語演講稿（通用11篇）

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　　TED5分鐘英語演講稿 篇1

　　Hi. Im here to talk to you about the importance of praise, admiration and thank you, and having it be specific and genuine.

　　And the way I got interested in this was, I noticed in myself, when I was growing up, and until about a few years ago, that I would want to say thank you to someone, I would want to praise them, I would want to take in their praise of me and Id just stop it. And I asked myself, why? I felt shy, I felt embarrassed. And then my question became, am I the only one who does this? So, I decided to investigate.

　　Im fortunate enough to work in the rehab facility, so I get to see people who are facing life and death with addiction. And sometimes it comes down to something as simple as, their core wound is their father died without ever saying hes proud of them. But then, they hear from all the family and friends that the father told everybody else that he was proud of him, but he never told the son. Its because he didnt know that his son needed to hear it.

　　So my question is, why dont we ask for the things that we need? I know a gentleman, married for 25 years, whos longing to hear his wife say, "Thank you for being the breadwinner, so I can stay home with the kids," but wont ask. I know a woman whos good at this. She, once a week, meets with her husband and says, "Id really like you to thank me for all these things I did in the house and with the kids." And he goes, "Oh, this is great, this is great." And praise really does have to be genuine, but she takes responsibility for that. And a friend of mine, April, who Ive had since kindergarten, she thanks her children for doing their chores. And she said, "

　　But before I show you what’s inside,

　　I will tell you that’s going to do incredible things for you .

　　It will bring all of your family together.

　　You will feel loved and appreciated like never before.

　　And reconnect to friends and acquaintances you haven’t heard from in years.

　　Adoration and admiration will overwhelm you.

　　It will recalibrate what’s important in your life.

　　It will redefine your sense of spirituality and faith.

　　You’ll have a new understanding and trust in your body.

　　You’ll have unsurpassed vitality and energy.

　　You’ll expand your vocabulary, meet new people, and you’ll have a healthier lifestyle. And get this, you’ll have an eight-week vacation of doing absolutely nothing.

　　You’ll eat countless gourmet meals.

　　Flowers will arrive by the truck load.

　　People will say to you: “you look great! Have you had any work done?”

　　And you’ll have a life-time supply of good drugs.

　　You’ll be challenged, inspired, motivated and humbled.

　　Your life will have new meaning: peace, health, serenity, happiness, nirvana.

　　The price?

　　Fifty-five thousand dollars.

　　And that’s an incredible deal.

　　By now, I know you’re dying to know what it is and where you can get one.

　　Does Amazon carry it?

　　Dose it have the Apple logo on it?

　　Is there a waiting list?

　　Not likely.

　　This gift came to me about five months ago.

　　And looked more like this when it was all wrapped up.

　　Not quite so pretty.

　　And this.

　　And then this.

　　It was a rare jam.

　　A brain tumor.

　　Hemangioblastoma.

　　The gift that keeps on giving.

　　And while I’m ok now.

　　I wouldn’t wish this gift for you.

　　I’m not sure you’d want it.

　　But I would’t change my experience.

　　It profoundly altered my life in ways it didn’t expect.

　　In all the ways I just shared with you.

　　So the next time you are faced with something that’s unexpected, unwanted and uncertain. Consider that it just may be a gift.

　　TED5分鐘英語演講稿 篇2

　　What I'd like to do today is talk about one of my favorite subjects, and that is the neuroscience of sleep.

　　Now, there is a sound -- (Alarm clock) -- aah, it worked -- a sound that is desperately, desperately familiar to most of us, and of course it's the sound of the alarm clock. And what that truly ghastly, awful sound does is stop the single most important behavioral experience that we have, and that's sleep. If you're an average sort of person, 36 percent of your life will be spent asleep, which means that if you live to 90, then 32 years will have been spent entirely asleep.

　　Now what that 32 years is telling us is that sleep at some level is important. And yet, for most of us, we don't give sleep a second thought. We throw it away. We really just don't think about sleep. And so what I'd like to do today is change your views, change your ideas and your thoughts about sleep. And the journey that I want to take you on, we need to start by going back in time.

　　"Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber." Any ideas who said that? Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Yes, let me give you a few more quotes. "O sleep, O gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee?" Shakespeare again, from -- I won't say it -- the Scottish play. [Correction: Henry IV, Part 2] (Laughter) From the same time: "Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together." Extremely prophetic, by Thomas Dekker, another Elizabethan dramatist.

　　But if we jump forward 400 years, the tone about sleep changes somewhat. This is from Thomas Edison, from the beginning of the 20th century. "Sleep is a criminal waste of time and a heritage from our cave days." Bang. (Laughter) And if we also jump into the 1980s, some of you may remember that Margaret Thatcher was reported to have said, "Sleep is for wimps." And of course the infamous -- what was his name? -- the infamous Gordon Gekko from "Wall Street" said, "Money never sleeps."

　　What do we do in the 20th century about sleep? Well, of course, we use Thomas Edison's light bulb to invade the night, and we occupied the dark, and in the process of this occupation, we've treated sleep as an illness, almost. We've treated it as an enemy. At most now, I suppose, we tolerate the need for sleep, and at worst perhaps many of us think of sleep as an illness that needs some sort of a cure. And our ignorance about sleep is really quite profound.

　　Why is it? Why do we abandon sleep in our thoughts? Well, it's because you don't do anything much while you're asleep, it seems. You don't eat. You don't drink. And you don't have sex. Well, most of us anyway. And so therefore it's -- Sorry. It's a complete waste of time, right? Wrong. Actually, sleep is an incredibly important part of our biology, and neuroscientists are beginning to explain why it's so very important. So let's move to the brain.

　　Now, here we have a brain. This is donated by a social scientist, and they said they didn't know what it was, or indeed how to use it, so -- (Laughter) Sorry. So I borrowed it. I don't think they noticed. Okay. (Laughter)

　　The point I'm trying to make is that when you're asleep, this thing doesn't shut down. In fact, some areas of the brain are actually more active during the sleep state than during the wake state. The other thing that's really important about sleep is that it doesn't arise from a single structure within the brain, but is to some extent a network property, and if we flip the brain on its back -- I love this little bit of spinal cord here -- this bit here is the hypothalamus, and right under there is a whole raft of interesting structures, not least the biological clock. The biological clock tells us when it's good to be up, when it's good to be asleep, and what that structure does is interact with a whole raft of other areas within the hypothalamus, the lateral hypothalamus, the ventrolateral preoptic nuclei. All of those combine, and they send projections down to the brain stem here. The brain stem then projects forward and bathes the cortex, this wonderfully wrinkly bit over here, with neurotransmitters that keep us awake and essentially provide us with our consciousness. So sleep arises from a whole raft of different interactions within the brain, and essentially, sleep is turned on and off as a result of a range of

　　Okay. So where have we got to? We've said that sleep is complicated and it takes 32 years of our life. But what I haven't explained is what sleep is about. So why do we sleep? And it won't surprise any of you that, of course, the scientists, we don't have a consensus. There are dozens of different ideas about why we sleep, and I'm going to outline three of those.

　　The first is sort of the restoration idea, and it's somewhat intuitive. Essentially, all the stuff we've burned up during the day, we restore, we replace, we rebuild during the night. And indeed, as an explanation, it goes back to Aristotle, so that's, what, 2,300 years ago. It's gone in and out of fashion. It's fashionable at the moment because what's been shown is that within the brain, a whole raft of genes have been shown to be turned on only during sleep, and those genes are associated with restoration and metabolic pathways. So there's good evidence for the whole restoration hypothesis.

　　What about energy conservation? Again, perhaps intuitive. You essentially sleep to save calories. Now, when you do the sums, though, it doesn't really pan out. If you compare an individual who has slept at night, or stayed awake and hasn't moved very much, the energy saving of sleeping is about 110 calories a night. Now, that's the equivalent of a hot dog bun. Now, I would say that a hot dog bun is kind of a meager return for such a complicated and demanding behavior as sleep. So I'm less convinced by the energy conservation idea.

　　But the third idea I'm quite attracted to, which is brain processing and memory consolidation. What we know is that, if after you've tried to learn a task, and you sleep-deprive individuals, the ability to learn that task is smashed. It's really hugely attenuated. So sleep and memory consolidation is also very important. However, it's not just the laying down of memory and recalling it. What's turned out to be really exciting is that our ability to come up with novel solutions to complex problems is hugely enhanced by a night of sleep. In fact, it's been estimated to give us a threefold advantage. Sleeping at night enhances our creativity. And what seems to be going on is that, in the brain, those neural connections that are important, those synaptic connections that are important, are linked and strengthened, while those that are less important tend to fade away and be less important.

　　Okay. So we've had three explanations for why we might sleep, and I think the important thing to realize is that the details will vary, and it's probable we sleep for multiple different reasons. But sleep is not an indulgence. It's not some sort of thing that we can take on board rather casually. I think that sleep was once likened to an upgrade from economy to business class, you know, the equiavlent of. It's not even an upgrade from economy to first class. The critical thing to realize is that if you don't sleep, you don't fly. Essentially, you never get there, and what's extraordinary about much of our society these days is that we are desperately sleep-deprived.

　　So let's now look at sleep deprivation. Huge sectors of society are sleep-deprived, and let's look at our sleep-o-meter. So in the 1950s, good data suggests that most of us were getting around about eight hours of sleep a night. Nowadays, we sleep one and a half to two hours less every night, so we're in the six-and-a-half-hours-every-night league. For teenagers, it's worse, much worse. They need nine hours for full brain performance, and many of them, on a school night, are only getting five hours of sleep. It's simply not enough. If we think about other sectors of society, the aged, if you are aged, then your ability to sleep in a single block is somewhat disrupted, and many sleep, again, less than five hours a night. Shift work. Shift work is extraordinary, perhaps 20 percent of the working population, and the body clock does not shift to the demands of working at night. It's locked onto the same light-dark cycle as the rest of us. So when the poor old shift worker is going home to try and sleep during the day, desperately tired, the body clock is saying, "Wake up. This is the time to be awake." So the quality of sleep that you get as a night shift worker is usually very poor, again in that sort of five-hour region. And then, of course, tens of millions of people suffer from jet lag. So who here has jet lag? Well, my goodness gracious. Well, thank you very much indeed for not falling asleep, because that's what your brain is craving.

　　One of the things that the brain does is indulge in micro-sleeps, this involuntary falling asleep, and you have essentially no control over it. Now, micro-sleeps can be sort of somewhat embarrassing, but they can also be deadly. It's been estimated that 31 percent of drivers will fall asleep at the wheel at least once in their life, and in the U.S., the statistics are pretty good: 100,000 accidents on the freeway have been associated with tiredness, loss of vigilance, and falling asleep. A hundred thousand a year. It's extraordinary. At another level of terror, we dip into the tragic accidents at Chernobyl and indeed the space shuttle Challenger, which was so tragically lost. And in the investigations that followed those disasters, poor judgment as a result of extended shift work and loss of vigilance and tiredness was attributed to a big chunk of those disasters.

　　So when you're tired, and you lack sleep, you have poor memory, you have poor creativity, you have increased impulsiveness, and you have overall poor judgment. But my friends, it's so much worse than that.

　　(Laughter)

　　If you are a tired brain, the brain is craving things to wake it up. So drugs, stimulants. Caffeine represents the stimulant of choice across much of the Western world. Much of the day is fueled by caffeine, and if you're a really naughty tired brain, nicotine. And of course, you're fueling the waking state with these stimulants, and then of course it gets to 11 o'clock at night, and the brain says to itself, "Ah, well actually, I need to be asleep fairly shortly. What do we do about that when I'm feeling completely wired?" Well, of course, you then resort to alcohol. Now alcohol, short-term, you know, once or twice, to use to mildly sedate you, can be very useful. It can actually ease the sleep transition. But what you must be so aware of is that alcohol doesn't provide sleep, a biological mimic for sleep. It sedates you. So it actually harms some of the neural proccessing that's going on during memory consolidation and memory recall. So it's a short-term acute measure, but for goodness sake, don't become addicted to alcohol as a way of getting to sleep every night.

　　Another connection between loss of sleep is weight gain. If you sleep around about five hours or less every night, then you have a 50 percent likelihood of being obese. What's the connection here? Well, sleep loss seems to give rise to the release of the hormone ghrelin, the hunger hormone. Ghrelin is released. It gets to the brain. The brain says, "I need carbohydrates," and what it does is seek out carbohydrates and particularly sugars. So there's a link between tiredness and the metabolic predisposition for weight gain.

　　Stress. Tired people are massively stressed. And one of the things of stress, of course, is loss of memory, which is what I sort of just then had a little lapse of. But stress is so much more. So if you're acutely stressed, not a great problem, but it's sustained stress associated with sleep loss that's the problem. So sustained stress leads to suppressed immunity, and so tired people tend to have higher rates of overall infection, and there's some very good studies showing that shift workers, for example, have higher rates of cancer. Increased levels of stress throw glucose into the circulation. Glucose becomes a dominant part of the vasculature and essentially you become glucose intolerant. Therefore, diabetes 2. Stress increases cardiovascular disease as a result of raising blood pressure. So there's a whole raft of things associated with sleep loss that are more than just a mildly impaired brain, which is where I think most people think that sleep loss resides.

　　So at this point in the talk, this is a nice time to think, well, do you think on the whole I'm getting enough sleep? So a quick show of hands. Who feels that they're getting enough sleep here? Oh. Well, that's pretty impressive. Good. We'll talk more about that later, about what are your tips.

　　So most of us, of course, ask the question, "Well, how do I know whether I'm getting enough sleep?" Well, it's not rocket science. If you need an alarm clock to get you out of bed in the morning, if you are taking a long time to get up, if you need lots of stimulants, if you're grumpy, if you're irritable, if you're told by your work colleagues that you're looking tired and irritable, chances are you are sleep-deprived. Listen to them. Listen to yourself.

　　What do you do? Well -- and this is slightly offensive -- sleep for dummies: Make your bedroom a haven for sleep. The first critical thing is make it as dark as you possibly can, and also make it slightly cool. Very important. Actually, reduce your amount of light exposure at least half an hour before you go to bed. Light increases levels of alertness and will delay sleep. What's the last thing that most of us do before we go to bed? We stand in a massively lit bathroom looking into the mirror cleaning our teeth. It's the worst thing we can possibly do before we went to sleep. Turn off those mobile phones. Turn off those computers. Turn off all of those things that are also going to excite the brain. Try not to drink caffeine too late in the day, ideally not after lunch. Now, we've set about reducing light exposure before you go to bed, but light exposure in the morning is very good at setting the biological clock to the light-dark cycle. So seek out morning light. Basically, listen to yourself. Wind down. Do those sorts of things that you know are going to ease you off into the honey-heavy dew of slumber.

　　Okay. That's some facts. What about some myths?

　　Teenagers are lazy. No. Poor things. They have a biological predisposition to go to bed late and get up late, so give them a break.

　　We need eight hours of sleep a night. That's an average. Some people need more. Some people need less. And what you need to do is listen to your body. Do you need that much or do you need more? Simple as that.

　　Old people need less sleep. Not true. The sleep demands of the aged do not go down. Essentially, sleep fragments and becomes less robust, but sleep requirements do not go down.

　　And the fourth myth is, early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. Well that's wrong at so many different levels. (Laughter) There is no, no evidence that getting up early and going to bed early gives you more wealth at all. There's no difference in socioeconomic status. In my experience, the only difference between morning people and evening people is that those people that get up in the morning early are just horribly smug.

　　(Laughter) (Applause)

　　Okay. So for the last part, the last few minutes, what I want to do is change gears and talk about some really new, breaking areas of neuroscience, which is the association between mental health, mental illness and sleep disruption. We've known for 130 years that in severe mental illness, there is always, always sleep disruption, but it's been largely ignored. In the 1970s, when people started to think about this again, they said, "Yes, well, of course you have sleep disruption in schizophrenia because they're on anti-psychotics. It's the anti-psychotics causing the sleep problems," ignoring the fact that for a hundred years previously, sleep disruption had been reported before anti-psychotics.

　　So what's going on? Lots of groups, several groups are studying conditions like depression, schizophrenia and bipolar, and what's going on in terms of sleep disruption. We have a big study which we published last year on schizophrenia, and the data were quite extraordinary. In those individuals with schizophrenia, much of the time, they were awake during the night phase and then they were asleep during the day. Other groups showed no 24-hour patterns whatsoever. Their sleep was absolutely smashed. And some had no ability to regulate their sleep by the light-dark cycle. They were getting up later and later and later and later each night. It was smashed.

　　So what's going on? And the really exciting news is that mental illness and sleep are not simply associated but they are physically linked within the brain. The neural networks that predispose you to normal sleep, give you normal sleep, and those that give you normal mental health are overlapping. And what's the evidence for that? Well, genes that have been shown to be very important in the generation of normal sleep, when mutated, when changed, also predispose individuals to mental health problems. And last year, we published a study which showed that a gene that's been linked to schizophrenia, which, when mutated, also smashes the sleep. So we have evidence of a genuine mechanistic overlap between these two important systems.

　　Other work flowed from these studies. The first was that sleep disruption actually precedes certain types of mental illness, and we've shown that in those young individuals who are at high risk of developing bipolar disorder, they already have a sleep abnormality prior to any clinical diagnosis of bipolar. The other bit of data was that sleep disruption may actually exacerbate, make worse the mental illness state. My colleague Dan Freeman has used a range of agents which have stabilized sleep and reduced levels of paranoia in those individuals by 50 percent.

　　So what have we got? We've got, in these connections, some really exciting things. In terms of the neuroscience, by understanding the neuroscience of these two systems, we're really beginning to understand how both sleep and mental illness are generated and regulated within the brain. The second area is that if we can use sleep and sleep disruption as an early warning signal, then we have the chance of going in. If we know that these individuals are vulnerable, early intervention then becomes possible. And the third, which I think is the most exciting, is that we can think of the sleep centers within the brain as a new therapeutic target. Stabilize sleep in those individuals who are vulnerable, we can certainly make them healthier, but also alleviate some of the appalling symptoms of mental illness.

　　So let me just finish. What I started by saying is take sleep seriously. Our attitudes toward sleep are so very different from a pre-industrial age, when we were almost wrapped in a duvet. We used to understand intuitively the importance of sleep. And this isn't some sort of crystal-waving nonsense. This is a pragmatic response to good health. If you have good sleep, it increases your concentration, attention, decision-making, creativity, social skills, health. If you get sleep, it reduces your mood changes, your stress, your levels of anger, your impulsivity, and your tendency to drink and take drugs. And we finished by saying that an understanding of the neuroscience of sleep is really informing the way we think about some of the causes of mental illness, and indeed is providing us new ways to treat these incredibly debilitating conditions.

　　Jim Butcher, the fantasy writer, said, "Sleep is God. Go worship." And I can only recommend that you do the same.

　　Thank you for your attention.

　　(Applause)

　　TED5分鐘英語演講稿 篇3

　　My subject today is learning. And in that spirit, I want to spring on you all a pop quiz. Ready? When does learning begin? Now as you ponder that question, maybe you're thinking about the first day of preschool or kindergarten, the first time that kids are in a classroom with a teacher. Or maybe you've called to mind the toddler phase when children are learning how to walk and talk and use a fork. Maybe you've encountered the Zero-to-Three movement, which asserts that the most important years for learning are the earliest ones. And so your answer to my question would be: Learning begins at birth.

　　Well today I want to present to you an idea that may be surprising and may even seem implausible, but which is supported by the latest evidence from psychology and biology. And that is that some of the most important learning we ever do happens before we're born, while we're still in the womb. Now I'm a science reporter. I write books and magazine articles. And I'm also a mother. And those two roles came together for me in a book that I wrote called "Origins." "Origins" is a report from the front lines of an exciting new field called fetal origins. Fetal origins is a scientific discipline that emerged just about two decades ago, and it's based on the theory that our health and well-being throughout our lives is crucially affected by the nine months we spend in the womb. Now this theory was of more than just intellectual interest to me. I was myself pregnant while I was doing the research for the book. And one of the most fascinating insights I took from this work is that we're all learning about the world even before we enter it.

　　When we hold our babies for the first time, we might imagine that they're clean slates, unmarked by life, when in fact, they've already been shaped by us and by the particular world we live in. Today I want to share with you some of the amazing things that scientists are discovering about what fetuses learn while they're still in their mothers' bellies.

　　First of all, they learn the sound of their mothers' voices. Because sounds from the outside world have to travel through the mother's abdominal tissue and through the amniotic fluid that surrounds the fetus, the voices fetuses hear, starting around the fourth month of gestation, are muted and muffled. One researcher says that they probably sound a lot like the the voice of Charlie Brown's teacher in the old "Peanuts" cartoon. But the pregnant woman's own voice reverberates through her body, reaching the fetus much more readily. And because the fetus is with her all the time, it hears her voice a lot. Once the baby's born, it recognizes her voice and it prefers listening to her voice over anyone else's.

　　How can we know this? Newborn babies can't do much, but one thing they're really good at is sucking. Researchers take advantage of this fact by rigging up two rubber nipples, so that if a baby sucks on one, it hears a recording of its mother's voice on a pair of headphones, and if it sucks on the other nipple, it hears a recording of a female stranger's voice. Babies quickly show their preference by choosing the first one. Scientists also take advantage of the fact that babies will slow down their sucking when something interests them and resume their fast sucking when they get bored. This is how researchers discovered that, after women repeatedly read aloud a section of Dr. Seuss' "The Cat in the Hat" while they were pregnant, their newborn babies recognized that passage when they hear it outside the womb. My favorite experiment of this kind is the one that showed that the babies of women who watched a certain soap opera every day during pregnancy recognized the theme song of that show once they were born. So fetuses are even learning about the particular language that's spoken in the world that they'll be born into.

　　A study published last year found that from birth, from the moment of birth, babies cry in the accent of their mother's native language. French babies cry on a rising note while German babies end on a falling note, imitating the melodic contours of those languages. Now why would this kind of fetal learning be useful? It may have evolved to aid the baby's survival. From the moment of birth, the baby responds most to the voice of the person who is most likely to care for it -- its mother. It even makes its cries sound like the mother's language, which may further endear the baby to the mother, and which may give the baby a head start in the critical task of learning how to understand and speak its native language.

　　But it's not just sounds that fetuses are learning about in utero. It's also tastes and smells. By seven months of gestation, the fetus' taste buds are fully developed, and its olfactory receptors, which allow it to smell, are functioning. The flavors of the food a pregnant woman eats find their way into the amniotic fluid, which is continuously swallowed by the fetus. Babies seem to remember and prefer these tastes once they're out in the world. In one experiment, a group of pregnant women was asked to drink a lot of carrot juice during their third trimester of pregnancy, while another group of pregnant women drank only water. Six months later, the women's infants were offered cereal mixed with carrot juice, and their facial expressions were observed while they ate it. The offspring of the carrot juice drinking women ate more carrot-flavored cereal, and from the looks of it, they seemed to enjoy it more.

　　A sort of French version of this experiment was carried out in Dijon, France where researchers found that mothers who consumed food and drink flavored with licorice-flavored anise during pregnancy showed a preference for anise on their first day of life, and again, when they were tested later, on their fourth day of life. Babies whose mothers did not eat anise during pregnancy showed a reaction that translated roughly as "yuck." What this means is that fetuses are effectively being taught by their mothers about what is safe and good to eat. Fetuses are also being taught about the particular culture that they'll be joining through one of culture's most powerful expressions, which is food. They're being introduced to the characteristic flavors and spices of their culture's cuisine even before birth.

　　Now it turns out that fetuses are learning even bigger lessons. But before I get to that, I want to address something that you may be wondering about. The notion of fetal learning may conjure up for you attempts to enrich the fetus -- like playing Mozart through headphones placed on a pregnant belly. But actually, the nine-month-long process of molding and shaping that goes on in the womb is a lot more visceral and consequential than that. Much of what a pregnant woman encounters in her daily life -- the air she breathes, the food and drink she consumes, the chemicals she's exposed to, even the emotions she feels -- are shared in some fashion with her fetus. They make up a mix of influences as individual and idiosyncratic as the woman herself. The fetus incorporates these offerings into its own body, makes them part of its flesh and blood. And often it does something more. It treats these maternal contributions as information, as what I like to call biological postcards from the world outside.

　　So what a fetus is learning about in utero is not Mozart's "Magic Flute" but answers to questions much more critical to its survival. Will it be born into a world of abundance or scarcity? Will it be safe and protected, or will it face constant dangers and threats? Will it live a long, fruitful life or a short, harried one? The pregnant woman's diet and stress level in particular provide important clues to prevailing conditions like a finger lifted to the wind. The resulting tuning and tweaking of a fetus' brain and other organs are part of what give us humans our enormous flexibility, our ability to thrive in a huge variety of environments, from the country to the city, from the tundra to the desert.

　　To conclude, I want to tell you two stories about how mothers teach their children about the world even before they're born. In the autumn of 1944, the darkest days of World War II, German troops blockaded Western Holland, turning away all shipments of food. The opening of the Nazi's siege was followed by one of the harshest winters in decades -- so cold the water in the canals froze solid. Soon food became scarce, with many Dutch surviving on just 500 calories a day -- a quarter of what they consumed before the war. As weeks of deprivation stretched into months, some resorted to eating tulip bulbs. By the beginning of May, the nation's carefully rationed food reserve was completely exhausted. The specter of mass starvation loomed. And then on May 5th, 1945, the siege came to a sudden end when Holland was liberated by the Allies.

　　The "Hunger Winter," as it came to be known, killed some 10,000 people and weakened thousands more. But there was another population that was affected -- the 40,000 fetuses in utero during the siege. Some of the effects of malnutrition during pregnancy were immediately apparent in higher rates of stillbirths, birth defects, low birth weights and infant mortality. But others wouldn't be discovered for many years. Decades after the "Hunger Winter," researchers documented that people whose mothers were pregnant during the siege have more obesity, more diabetes and more heart disease in later life than individuals who were gestated under normal conditions. These individuals' prenatal experience of starvation seems to have changed their bodies in myriad ways. They have higher blood pressure, poorer cholesterol profiles and reduced glucose tolerance -- a precursor of diabetes.

　　Why would undernutrition in the womb result in disease later? One explanation is that fetuses are making the best of a bad situation. When food is scarce, they divert nutrients towards the really critical organ, the brain, and away from other organs like the heart and liver. This keeps the fetus alive in the short-term, but the bill comes due later on in life when those other organs, deprived early on, become more susceptible to disease.

　　But that may not be all that's going on. It seems that fetuses are taking cues from the intrauterine environment and tailoring their physiology accordingly. They're preparing themselves for the kind of world they will encounter on the other side of the womb. The fetus adjusts its metabolism and other physiological processes in anticipation of the environment that awaits it. And the basis of the fetus' prediction is what its mother eats. The meals a pregnant woman consumes constitute a kind of story, a fairy tale of abundance or a grim chronicle of deprivation. This story imparts information that the fetus uses to organize its body and its systems -- an adaptation to prevailing circumstances that facilitates its future survival. Faced with severely limited resources, a smaller-sized child with reduced energy requirements will, in fact, have a better chance of living to adulthood.

　　The real trouble comes when pregnant women are, in a sense, unreliable narrators, when fetuses are led to expect a world of scarcity and are born instead into a world of plenty. This is what happened to the children of the Dutch "Hunger Winter." And their higher rates of obesity, diabetes and heart disease are the result. Bodies that were built to hang onto every calorie found themselves swimming in the superfluous calories of the post-war Western diet. The world they had learned about while in utero was not the same as the world into which they were born.

　　Here's another story. At 8:46 a.m. on September 11th, 2019, there were tens of thousands of people in the vicinity of the World Trade Center in New York -- commuters spilling off trains, waitresses setting tables for the morning rush, brokers already working the phones on Wall Street. 1,700 of these people were pregnant women. When the planes struck and the towers collapsed, many of these women experienced the same horrors inflicted on other survivors of the disaster -- the overwhelming chaos and confusion, the rolling clouds of potentially toxic dust and debris, the heart-pounding fear for their lives.

　　About a year after 9/11, researchers examined a group of women who were pregnant when they were exposed to the World Trade Center attack. In the babies of those women who developed post-traumatic stress syndrome, or PTSD, following their ordeal, researchers discovered a biological marker of susceptibility to PTSD -- an effect that was most pronounced in infants whose mothers experienced the catastrophe in their third trimester. In other words, the mothers with post-traumatic stress syndrome had passed on a vulnerability to the condition to their children while they were still in utero.

　　Now consider this: post-traumatic stress syndrome appears to be a reaction to stress gone very wrong, causing its victims tremendous unnecessary suffering. But there's another way of thinking about PTSD. What looks like pathology to us may actually be a useful adaptation in some circumstances. In a particularly dangerous environment, the characteristic manifestations of PTSD -- a hyper-awareness of one's surroundings, a quick-trigger response to danger -- could save someone's life. The notion that the prenatal transmission of PTSD risk is adaptive is still speculative, but I find it rather poignant. It would mean that, even before birth, mothers are warning their children that it's a wild world out there, telling them, "Be careful."

　　Let me be clear. Fetal origins research is not about blaming women for what happens during pregnancy. It's about discovering how best to promote the health and well-being of the next generation. That important effort must include a focus on what fetuses learn during the nine months they spend in the womb. Learning is one of life's most essential activities, and it begins much earlier than we ever imagined.

　　Thank you.

　　TED5分鐘英語演講稿 篇4

　　People returning to work after a career break: I call them relaunchers. These are people who have taken career breaks for elder care, for childcare reasons, pursuing a personal interest or a personal health issue. Closely related are career transitioners of all kinds: veterans, military spouses, retirees coming out of retirement or repatriating expats. Returning to work after a career break is hard because of a disconnect between the employers and the relaunchers. Employers can view hiring people with a gap on their resume as a high-risk proposition, and individuals on career break can have doubts about their abilities to relaunch their careers, especially if they've been out for a long time. This disconnect is a problem that I'm trying to help solve.

　　有些人經(jīng)過離職長假之后 重新投入到工作中來， 我稱他們?yōu)椤霸購臉I(yè)者”。 這些人選擇休離職長假， 有些是要照顧老人， 有些是要照顧孩子， 也有些是追求個人愛好， 或是健康因素。 各行各業(yè)轉(zhuǎn)業(yè)的人 都與之緊密相關(guān)： 退伍軍人、軍嫂， 退休返聘的人， 或遣返回國者。 離職長假后重返工作 是非常困難的， 因?yàn)楣椭骱驮購臉I(yè)者之間 有了隔閡。 雇主們認(rèn)為，雇傭這些 簡歷上工作時間不連貫的人 是風(fēng)險極高的決策， 而正在離職長假中的人 可能對自己再從業(yè)的能力產(chǎn)生疑慮， 特別是那些離職時間較長者。 兩者間的缺乏聯(lián)系 是我在嘗試解決的問題。

　　Now, successful relaunchers are everywhere and in every field. This is Sami Kafala. He's a nuclear physicist in the UK who took a five-year career break to be home with his five children. The Singapore press recently wrote about nurses returning to work after long career breaks. And speaking of long career breaks, this is Mimi Kahn. She's a social worker in Orange County, California, who returned to work in a social services organization after a 25-year career break. That's the longest career break that I'm aware of. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor took a five-year career break early in her career.

　　如今，我們在各行各業(yè) 都能見到成功的再從業(yè)者。 這位是薩米·科法拉， 他是英國的一位核物理學(xué)家， 因?yàn)橐�在家照顧五個孩子 而度過了五年的離職長假。 新加坡的媒體最近發(fā)表了文章， 內(nèi)容是有關(guān)離職長假后再從業(yè)的護(hù)士。 提到長時間的離職假期， 這位是米米·卡恩, 她是加州奧蘭治縣的一位社工， 她在度過20xx年的離職長假后 回到了一個社會服務(wù)組織工作。 這是據(jù)我所知最長的離職假期。 最高法院法官桑德拉·戴·奧康納， 在其職業(yè)生涯早期 度過了五年離職長假。

　　And this is Tracy Shapiro, who took a 13-year career break. Tracy answered a call for essays by the Today Show from people who were trying to return to work but having a difficult time of it. Tracy wrote in that she was a mom of five who loved her time at home, but she had gone through a divorce and needed to return to work, plus she really wanted to bring work back into her life because she loved working. Tracy was doing what so many of us do when we feel like we've put in a good day in the job search. She was looking for a finance or accounting role, and she had just spent the last nine months very diligently researching companies online and applying for jobs with no results.

　　這位是特蕾西·莎碧羅， 她度過了20xx年的離職長假。 特蕾西答復(fù)了從“今日秀”節(jié)目觀眾中 征集到的問題， 他們想要重返工作， 卻發(fā)現(xiàn)很難做到。 特蕾西寫道：自己是五個孩子的母親， 也很享受居家的時間， 但是她歷經(jīng)了一次離婚， 并且急需回到工作狀態(tài)， 另外，她很想把工作 帶回她的生活中， 因?yàn)樗�也很享受工作�?特蕾西也曾做過 我們很多人所做的事， 每天不停的搜尋合適的工作。 她找過財經(jīng)、會計領(lǐng)域的職位， 她在那之前花掉了九個月時間， 很努力地調(diào)查網(wǎng)上的公司， 然后投放簡歷，卻一無所獲。

　　I met Tracy in June of 20xx, when the Today Show asked me if I could work with her to see if I could help her turn things around. The first thing I told Tracy was she had to get out of the house. I told her she had to go public with her job search and tell everyone she knew about her interest in returning to work. I also told her, "You are going to have a lot of conversations that don't go anywhere. Expect that, and don't be discouraged by it. There will be a handful that ultimately lead to a job opportunity."

　　我在20xx年六月見到了特蕾西， 那時“今日秀”節(jié)目 問我可否與她合作， 看我能不能幫她走出困境。 我告訴特蕾西的第一件事， 就是她必須走出家門。 我告訴她，她必須 公開自己求職的想法， 然后告訴她認(rèn)識的所有人， 自己再從業(yè)的強(qiáng)烈意愿。 我還告訴她， “有很多你參與的對話 是對你完全沒有幫助的。 你要做好心理準(zhǔn)備， 別因?yàn)槟切┒�灰心喪氣�?找到工作機(jī)會之前， 確實(shí)要經(jīng)歷很多瑣事�！�

　　I'll tell you what happened with Tracy in a little bit, but I want to share with you a discovery that I made when I was returning to work after my own career break of 11 years out of the full-time workforce. And that is, that people's view of you is frozen in time. What I mean by this is, when you start to get in touch with people and you get back in touch with those people from the past, the people with whom you worked or went to school, they are going to remember you as you were before your career break. And that's even if your sense of self has diminished over time, as happens with so many of us the farther removed we are from our professional identities. So for example, you might think of yourself as someone who looks like this. This is me, crazy after a day of driving around in my minivan. Or here I am in the kitchen. But those people from the past, they don't know about any of this. They only remember you as you were, and it's a great confidence boost to be back in touch with these people and hear their enthusiasm about your interest in returning to work.

　　我稍后再告訴你們 特蕾西是如何處理的， 我想先跟大家分享 我的一個發(fā)現(xiàn)， 那時我剛剛回到工作中， 結(jié)束了自己離開全職工作大軍 20xx年的`長假。 這個發(fā)現(xiàn)就是， 人們對你的印象凝固在過去。 我的意思是， 當(dāng)你再次開始與人打交道， 與曾經(jīng)合作過的人重新接觸， 例如跟你一起上學(xué)、工作過的人， 他們對你的印象是 離職長假之前的你。 我們的自我意識 隨著時間推移逐漸淡化， 我們很多人都會這樣， 我們距離我們的職業(yè)身份 也就越來越遠(yuǎn)。 舉個例子， 你可能把你自己看成這樣。 這就是我，開了一天小面包車， 整個人感覺很瘋狂。 這是我在廚房里的樣子。 但是從前的那些人， 他們對這些一無所知。 他們只記得你曾經(jīng)的樣子， 當(dāng)你重新與這些人溝通時， 真是大大的增強(qiáng)了自信心， 而且他們對你有再從業(yè)的興趣 感到非常的開心。

　　There's one more thing I remember vividly from my own career break. And that was that I hardly kept up with the business news. My background is in finance, and I hardly kept up with any news when I was home caring for my four young children. So I was afraid I'd go into an interview and start talking about a company that didn't exist anymore. So I had to resubscribe to the Wall Street Journal and read it for a good six months cover to cover before I felt like I had a handle on what was going on in the business world again.

　　我還清晰地記得發(fā)生在 我離職長假中的一件事。 那時我?guī)缀跬耆�不關(guān)注經(jīng)濟(jì)新聞。 我曾是財經(jīng)行業(yè)出身， 然而我在家照顧四個孩子時， 我?guī)缀醪魂P(guān)注任何的新聞。 所以我很害怕， 自己去參加面試的時候， 會講到一個不復(fù)存在的公司。 所以我重新訂閱了華爾街日報， 然后連續(xù)看了六個月， 之后我才覺得自己對經(jīng)濟(jì) 又有了點(diǎn)解了。

　　I believe relaunchers are a gem of the workforce, and here's why. Think about our life stage: for those of us who took career breaks for childcare reasons, we have fewer or no maternity leaves. We did that already. We have fewer spousal or partner job relocations. We're in a more settled time of life. We have great work experience. We have a more mature perspective. We're not trying to find ourselves at an employer's expense. Plus we have an energy, an enthusiasm about returning to work precisely because we've been away from it for a while.

　　我相信再從業(yè)者是 勞動大軍中的精英， 原因如下。 想想我們?nèi)松�的階段： 對于那些因?yàn)橐�照顧孩�?而休離職假期的人， 大都沒有產(chǎn)假，或是產(chǎn)假很短。 我們早就做過這些了。 我們離婚率較低， 也很少因伴侶而調(diào)整工作。 我們的生活更穩(wěn)定。 我們有很棒的工作經(jīng)歷， 更成熟的眼光， 我們不會成為雇主的犧牲品。 此外，我們有一種能量 - 重返崗位的熱情， 正是因?yàn)槲覀冸x職一段時間了。 另外，我也跟雇主討論，

　　On the flip side, I speak with employers, and here are two concerns that employers have about hiring relaunchers.

　　以下是雇主們 關(guān)于雇傭再從業(yè)者的兩個擔(dān)憂。

　　The first one is, employers are worried that relaunchers are technologically obsolete. Now, I can tell you, having been technologically obsolete myself at one point, that it's a temporary condition. I had done my financial analysis so long ago that I used Lotus 1-2-3. I don't know if anyone can even remember back that far, but I had to relearn it on Excel. It actually wasn't that hard. A lot of the commands are the same. I found PowerPoint much more challenging, but now I use PowerPoint all the time. I tell relaunchers that employers expect them to come to the table with a working knowledge of basic office management software. And if they're not up to speed, then it's their responsibility to get there. And they do.

　　其一，雇主擔(dān)心這些再從業(yè)者 技術(shù)方面比較落后。 我可以告訴各位， 雖然有段時間我自己技術(shù)確實(shí)落后， 但那只是暫時的。 很早以前我用“蓮花123”軟件 來做財經(jīng)分析， 我不知道有沒有人還記得 那么早以前的事了， 這些技能我得在 Excel上重新拾起。 其實(shí)這并并非難事， 很多的操作指令是一樣的。 我發(fā)現(xiàn)PowerPoint更具挑戰(zhàn)性， 但現(xiàn)在我對PowerPoint駕輕就熟。 我告訴再從業(yè)者們， 雇主希望找工作的人 對基本的辦公管理軟件 有實(shí)踐經(jīng)驗(yàn)。 如果他們操作速度不夠快， 那他們就必須變得更高效。 而他們確實(shí)做得到。

　　The second area of concern that employers have about relaunchers is they're worried that relaunchers don't know what they want to do. I tell relaunchers that they need to do the hard work to figure out whether their interests and skills have changed or have not changed while they have been on career break. That's not the employer's job. It's the relauncher's responsibility to demonstrate to the employer where they can add the most value.

　　雇主對再從業(yè)者的第二種憂慮， 就是他們擔(dān)心再從業(yè)者 不清楚他們想要做什么。 我告訴再從業(yè)者， 他們必須仔細(xì)研究， 了解自己的愛好或者技能 在離職長假的過程中 是否發(fā)生了變化。 這不是雇主的職責(zé)。 這個是再從業(yè)者的責(zé)任， 把自己展現(xiàn)給雇主， 來充分展示自己可創(chuàng)造的價值。

　　Back in 20xx I started noticing something. I had been tracking return to work programs since 20xx, and in 20xx, I started noticing the use of a short-term paid work opportunity, whether it was called an internship or not, but an internship-like experience, as a way for professionals to return to work. I saw Goldman Sachs and Sara Lee start corporate reentry internship programs. I saw a returning engineer, a nontraditional reentry candidate, apply for an entry-level internship program in the military, and then get a permanent job afterward. I saw two universities integrate internships into mid-career executive education programs.

　　20xx年，我開始注意到一件事。 我從20xx年開始追蹤 人們重返崗位的情況， 然而在20xx年，我開始注意到， 一種短期、帶薪的工作機(jī)會開始出現(xiàn)， 不論它是不是名叫“實(shí)習(xí)”， 但總之是一個很像實(shí)習(xí)的經(jīng)歷， 這為重回崗位的專業(yè)人士 開辟了一條道路。 我看到高盛和莎莉集團(tuán) 都開始了此類 二次從業(yè)的實(shí)習(xí)項目。 我看到一個再從業(yè)的工程師， 算是不太傳統(tǒng)的再從業(yè)人士， 申請了一個 軍方的初級實(shí)習(xí)項目， 后來他獲得了一個永久的工作。 我看到兩所大學(xué) 將實(shí)習(xí)項目整合到 職業(yè)中期管理學(xué)教育項目中。

　　So I wrote a report about what I was seeing, and it became this article for Harvard Business Review called "The 40-Year-Old Intern." I have to thank the editors there for that title, and also for this artwork where you can see the 40-year-old intern in the midst of all the college interns. And then, courtesy of Fox Business News, they called the concept "The 50-Year-Old Intern."

　　于是，就我所觀察到的現(xiàn)象， 我寫了一篇報告， 后來它發(fā)表在了 《哈佛商業(yè)評論》中， 名字叫《40歲的實(shí)習(xí)生》。 我必須得感謝編者擬的標(biāo)題， 還有這個很棒的配圖， 你們可以看到那個40歲的實(shí)習(xí)生 出現(xiàn)在一群大學(xué)實(shí)習(xí)生中。 后來，還得感謝福克斯商業(yè)新聞， 他們把這個概念稱為 “50歲的實(shí)習(xí)生”。

　　So five of the biggest financial services companies have reentry internship programs for returning finance professionals. And at this point, hundreds of people have participated. These internships are paid, and the people who move on to permanent roles are commanding competitive salaries. And now, seven of the biggest engineering companies are piloting reentry internship programs for returning engineers as part of an initiative with the Society of Women Engineers. Now, why are companies embracing the reentry internship? Because the internship allows the employer to base their hiring decision on an actual work sample instead of a series of interviews, and the employer does not have to make that permanent hiring decision until the internship period is over. This testing out period removes the perceived risk that some managers attach to hiring relaunchers, and they are attracting excellent candidates who are turning into great hires.

　　五家最大的金融服務(wù)公司 都設(shè)立了再從業(yè)實(shí)習(xí)項目， 專為重回崗位的金融精英。 截至目前，數(shù)百人參與了這些項目。 這些實(shí)習(xí)項目是帶薪的， 而且那些晉升到永久崗位的人， 都有極具競爭力的薪資。 現(xiàn)在，七家最大的工程公司， 也在推行再從業(yè)實(shí)習(xí)項目， 來幫助重返崗位的工程師， 這也是女性工程師協(xié)會 新方案的一部分。 那么，為什么這些企業(yè) 大力支持再從業(yè)實(shí)習(xí)呢? 因?yàn)檫@種實(shí)習(xí)可以讓雇主 基于參與者實(shí)際工作成效 來做出雇傭決策， 而非一系列的面試， 而且雇主不必在實(shí)習(xí)結(jié)束之前 就做出永久雇傭的決定。 這段試驗(yàn)期消除了一定的風(fēng)險， 這關(guān)乎某些經(jīng)理人 對雇傭再從業(yè)者的擔(dān)憂， 同時，這也吸引了大量再從業(yè)人士， 他們成為了出色的雇傭?qū)ο蟆?/p>

　　Think about how far we have come. Before this, most employers were not interested in engaging with relaunchers at all. But now, not only are programs being developed specifically with relaunchers in mind, but you can't even apply for these programs unless you have a gap on your resume.

　　各位,想一想我們?nèi)〉玫倪M(jìn)步， 在此之前，大多數(shù)雇主 根本沒興趣與再從業(yè)者打交道。 然而現(xiàn)在，有許多項目在開展實(shí)施， 特別是針對再從業(yè)者的項目， 如果簡歷上沒有一段空檔期， 你根本不能申請這些項目。

　　This is the mark of real change, of true institutional shift, because if we can solve this problem for relaunchers, we can solve it for other career transitioners too. In fact, an employer just told me that their veterans return to work program is based on their reentry internship program. And there's no reason why there can't be a retiree internship program. Different pool, same concept.

　　這標(biāo)志著一種實(shí)質(zhì)變化， 一種真正的制度變革， 因?yàn)槿绻�我們可�?為再從業(yè)者解決這個問題， 我們亦可為其他的職業(yè)轉(zhuǎn)型者 解決同樣的問題。 事實(shí)上，一位雇主剛剛告訴我， 他們的“退伍軍人再從業(yè)項目”， 就是基于他們的再從業(yè)實(shí)習(xí)項目。 我們也沒有理由不去設(shè)立 一個“退休人士實(shí)習(xí)項目”。 不同的對象，相同的概念。

　　So let me tell you what happened with Tracy Shapiro. Remember that she had to tell everyone she knew about her interest in returning to work. Well, one critical conversation with another parent in her community led to a job offer for Tracy, and it was an accounting job in a finance department. But it was a temp job. The company told her there was a possibility it could turn into something more, but no guarantees. This was in the fall of 20xx. Tracy loved this company, and she loved the people and the office was less than 10 minutes from her house. So even though she had a second job offer at another company for a permanent full-time role, she decided to take her chances with this internship and hope for the best. Well, she ended up blowing away all of their expectations, and the company not only made her a permanent offer at the beginning of 20xx, but they made it even more interesting and challenging, because they knew what Tracy could handle.

　　讓我告訴你們特蕾西·莎碧羅 最后發(fā)生了什么。 各位回想一下， 她必須告訴她認(rèn)識的每一個人， 自己對重返工作崗位很有興趣。 結(jié)果，她與自己社區(qū)里的長輩 進(jìn)行了一次關(guān)鍵的談話， 這讓她找到了一份工作邀請。 那是一個金融部門的會計工作。 但那是臨時的。 公司告訴她， 有可能有崗位晉升的機(jī)會， 但是不能保證。 那是20xx年的秋天。 特蕾西很愛那個公司， 而且她喜歡那里的員工， 從辦公室去她家只需10分鐘。 所以即使她后來得到了 第二份工作邀請， 來自另一家公司， 而且有永久、全職的保證， 她決定在這份實(shí)習(xí)項目中冒冒險， 盡人事，聽天命。 最后，她的業(yè)績 遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超出了所有人的期望值， 公司不但提供了她永久崗位， 那是在20xx年初， 而且他們還讓她的工作 更加有趣、有挑戰(zhàn)性， 因?yàn)樗麄冎�道特蕾西可以辦得到。

　　Fast forward to 20xx, Tracy's been promoted. They've paid for her to get her MBA at night. She's even hired another relauncher to work for her. Tracy's temp job was a tryout, just like an internship, and it ended up being a win for both Tracy and her employer.

　　時間快進(jìn)到20xx年， 特蕾西獲得了晉升。 公司為她的夜校工商管理課程買單。 她甚至雇傭了 另一位再從業(yè)者為她工作。 特蕾西的臨時工作像是一個試驗(yàn)， 就像實(shí)習(xí)項目， 而最終，特蕾西和她的雇主 達(dá)到了雙贏局面。

　　Now, my goal is to bring the reentry internship concept to more and more employers. But in the meantime, if you are returning to work after a career break, don't hesitate to suggest an internship or an internship-like arrangement to an employer that does not have a formal reentry internship program. Be their first success story, and you can be the example for more relaunchers to come.

　　我的目標(biāo)是將這種 再從業(yè)實(shí)習(xí)的概念 推薦給越來越多的雇主。 但是與此同時， 如果你在離職長假后重返崗位， 別猶豫向雇主提議設(shè)立實(shí)習(xí)項目， 或者類似實(shí)習(xí)項目的想法， 特別是那些沒有 正式的再從業(yè)實(shí)習(xí)項目的公司。 爭當(dāng)他們的第一個成功故事， 而你們都可以成為 未來更多再從業(yè)者的楷模。

　　Thank you.

　　謝謝大家。

　　TED5分鐘英語演講稿 篇5

　　I'm a lifelong traveler. Even as a little kid, I was actually working out that it would be cheaper to go to boarding school in England than just to the best school down the road from my parents' house in California.

　　我這輩子都是個旅行者。 即使還是一個小孩子的時候， 我便了解，事實(shí)上， 去讀英國寄宿學(xué)校會比 去加州父母家附近 最好的學(xué)校就讀還來得便宜。

　　So, from the time I was nine years old I was flying alone several times a year over the North Pole, just to go to school. And of course the more I flew the more I came to love to fly, so the very week after I graduated from high school, I got a job mopping tables so that I could spend every season of my 18th year on a different continent.

　　所以，當(dāng)我 9 歲時， 我在一年中，會獨(dú)自飛行幾回， 穿越北極，就只是去上學(xué)。 當(dāng)然，飛得越頻繁， 我越是愛上旅行， 所以就在我高中畢業(yè)后一周， 我找到一份清理桌子的工作， 為了讓自己可以在 18 歲那年， 在地球不同的大陸上， 分別待上一季。

　　And then, almost inevitably, I became a travel writer so my job and my joy could become one.

　　接著，幾乎不可避免地 我成了一個旅游作家， 使我的工作和志趣 可以結(jié)合在一塊兒。

　　And I really began to feel that if you were lucky enough to walk around the candlelit temples of Tibet or to wander along the seafronts in Havana with music passing all around you, you could bring those sounds and the high cobalt skies and the flash of the blue ocean back to your friends at home, and really bring some magic and clarity to your own life.

　　我真的開始發(fā)覺 如果你可以幸運(yùn)地 漫步于西藏的燭光寺廟， 或者在音樂的繚繞間 悠然信步于哈瓦那海岸， 你便能將那聲音、天際 與靛藍(lán)海洋的閃爍光芒 帶給你家鄉(xiāng)的朋友， 真確地捎來些許神奇， 點(diǎn)亮自身生命。

　　Except, as you all know, one of the first things you learn when you travel is that nowhere is magical unless you can bring the right eyes to it.

　　除了，如你們所知， 當(dāng)旅行時，你學(xué)到的第一件事情是 你必須以正確的視角看世界， 否則大地依然黯淡無光。

　　You take an angry man to the Himalayas, he just starts complaining about the food. And I found that the best way that I could develop more attentive and more appreciative eyes was, oddly, by going nowhere, just by sitting still.

　　你帶一個易怒的男人爬喜馬拉雅山， 他只會抱怨那兒的'食物。 我發(fā)現(xiàn)，有點(diǎn)怪異的是， 最好的讓自己可以培養(yǎng) 更專注和更珍惜世界的視角的訣竅是 哪兒都不去，靜止于原處即可。

　　And of course sitting still is how many of us get what we most crave and need in our accelerated lives, a break. But it was also the only way that I could find to sift through the slideshow of my experience and make sense of the future and the past.

　　當(dāng)然呆在原地正是我們許多人 尋常所得到的東西， 我們都渴望在快速的生活中獲得休息。 但那卻是我唯一的方法， 讓自己可以重歷自身的經(jīng)驗(yàn)幻燈， 理解未來與過去。

　　And so, to my great surprise, I found that going nowhere was at least as exciting as going to Tibet or to Cuba.

　　如此，我驚異地發(fā)現(xiàn)， 我發(fā)現(xiàn)無所去處 和游覽西藏或古巴一樣，令人興奮。

　　And by going nowhere, I mean nothing more intimidating than taking a few minutes out of every day or a few days out of every season, or even, as some people do, a few years out of a life in order to sit still long enough to find out what moves you most, to recall where your truest happiness lies and to remember that sometimes making a living and making a life point in opposite directions.

　　無所去處，只不過意謂著 每天花幾分鐘， 或每季花幾天， 甚至，如同有些人所做的， 在生命中花上幾年 長久地靜思于某處， 尋找感動你最多的一瞬， 回憶你最真實(shí)的幸福時刻， 同時記住， 有時候，謀生與生活 彼此是處于光譜線上的兩端的。

　　And of course, this is what wise beings through the centuries from every tradition have been telling us.

　　當(dāng)然，這是明智的眾生歷經(jīng)幾百年 從每個傳統(tǒng)中所告訴我們的。

　　It's an old idea. More than 2,000 years ago, the Stoics were reminding us it's not our experience that makes our lives, it's what we do with it.

　　這是一個古老的概念。 早在兩千多年前， 斯多葛學(xué)派提醒我們 并不是我們的經(jīng)驗(yàn) 成就了我們的生命， 而是我們用那經(jīng)驗(yàn)做了什么。

　　Imagine a hurricane suddenly sweeps through your town and reduces every last thing to rubble. One man is traumatized for life.

　　想象一下，一陣颶風(fēng) 迅速撲向你的城市， 將所有一切化為廢墟。 某個人身心遭受終身頓挫

　　But another, maybe even his brother, almost feels liberated, and decides this is a great chance to start his life anew. It's exactly the same event, but radically different responses. There is nothing either good or bad, as Shakespeare told us in "Hamlet," but thinking makes it so.

　　但另一個人，也許甚至是他的兄弟， 卻幾乎感覺釋懷， 并認(rèn)定，這是一個可以 使自己重獲新生的重要機(jī)會。 這是同樣的事件， 截然不同的回應(yīng)。 沒有什么是絕對的好壞， 正如莎士比亞 在《哈姆雷特》中所告訴我們的， 好壞由思維決定。

　　And this has certainly been my experience as a traveler. Twenty-four years ago I took the most mind-bending trip across North Korea. But the trip lasted a few days.

　　TED5分鐘英語演講稿 篇6

　　When you are a kid, you get asked this one particular question a lot, it really gets kind of annoying. What do you want to be when you grow up? Now, adults are hoping for answers like, I want to be an astronaut or I want to be a neurosurgeon, you’re adults in your imaginations.

　　Kids, they’re most likely to answer with pro-skateboarder, surfer or minecraft player. I asked my little brother, and he said, seriously dude, I’m 10, I have no idea, probably a pro-skier, let’s go get some ice cream.

　　See, us kids are going to answer something we’re stoked on, what we think is cool, what we have experience with, and that’s typically the opposite of what adults want to hear.

　　But if you ask a little kid, sometimes you’ll get the best answer, something so simple, so obvious and really profound. When I grow up, I want to be happy.

　　For me, when I grow up, I want to continue to be happy like I am now. I’m stoked to be here at TedEx, I mean, I’ve been watching Ted videos for as long as I can remember, but I never thought I’d make it on the stage here so soon. I mean, I just became a teenager, and like most teenage boys, I spend most of my time wondering, how did my room get so messy all on its own.

　　Did I take a shower today? And the most perplexing of all, how do I get girls to like me? Neurosciences say that the teenage brain is pretty weird, our prefrontal cortex is underdeveloped, but we actually have more neurons than adults, which is why we can be so creative, and impulsive and moody and get bummed out.

　　But what bums me out is to know that, a lot of kids today are just wishing to be happy, to be healthy, to be safe, not bullied, and be loved for who they are. So it seems to me when adults say, what do you want to be when you grow up? They just assume that you’ll automatically be happy and healthy.

　　Well, maybe that’s not the case, go to school, go to college, get a job, get married, boom, then you’ll be happy, right? You don’t seem to make learning how to be happy and healthy a priority in our schools, it’s separate from schools. And for some kids, it doesn’t exists at all? But what if we didn’t make it separate? What if we based education on the study and practice of being happy and healthy, because that’s what it is, a practice, and a simple practice at that?

　　Education is important, but why is being happy and healthy not considered education, I just don’t get it. So I’ve been studying the science of being happy and healthy. It really comes down to practicing these eight things. Exercise, diet and nutrition, time in nature, contribution, service to others, relationships, recreation, relaxation and stress management, and religious or spiritual involvement, yes, got that one.

　　So these eight things come from Dr. Roger Walsh, he calls them Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes or TLCs for short. He is a scientist that studies how to be happy and healthy. In researching this talk, I got a chance to ask him a few questions like; do you think that our schools today are making these eight TLCs a priority? His response was no surprise, it was essentially no. But he did say that many people do try to get this kind of education outside of the traditional arena, through reading and practices such as meditation or yoga.

　　But what I thought was his best response was that, much of education is oriented for better or worse towards making a living rather than making a life.

　　In 2006, Sir Ken Robinson gave the most popular Ted talk of all time. Schools kill creativity. His message is that creativity is as important as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.

　　A lot of parents watched those videos, some of those parents like mine counted it as one of the reasons they felt confident to pull their kids from traditional school to try something different. I realized I’m part of this small, but growing revolution of kids who are going about their education differently, and you know what? It freaks a lot of people out.

　　Even though I was only nine, when my parents pulled me out of the school system, I can still remember my mom being in tears when some of her friends told her she was crazy and it was a stupid idea.

　　Looking back, I’m thankful she didn’t cave to peer pressure, and I think she is too. So, out of the 200 million people that have watched Sir Ken Robinson’s talk, why aren’t there more kids like me out there?

　　Shane McConkey is my hero. I loved him because he was the world’s best skier. But then, one day I realized what I really loved about Shane, he was a hacker. Not a computer hacker, he hacked skiing. His creativity and inventions made skiing what it is today, and why I love to ski. A lot of people think of hackers as geeky computer nerds who live in their parent’s basement and spread computer viruses, but I don’t see it that way.

　　TED5分鐘英語演講稿 篇7

　　When you are a kid, you get asked this one particular question a lot, it really gets kind of annoying. What do you want to be when you grow up? Now, adults are hoping for answers like, I want to be an astronaut or I want to be a neurosurgeon, you’re adults in your imaginations.

　　Kids, they’re most likely to answer with pro-skateboarder, surfer or minecraft player. I asked my little brother, and he said, seriously dude, I’m 10, I have no idea, probably a pro-skier, let’s go get some ice cream.

　　See, us kids are going to answer something we’re stoked on, what we think is cool, what we have experience with, and that’s typically the opposite of what adults want to hear.

　　But if you ask a little kid, sometimes you’ll get the best answer, something so simple, so obvious and really profound. When I grow up, I want to be happy.

　　For me, when I grow up, I want to continue to be happy like I am now. I’m stoked to be here at TedEx, I mean, I’ve been watching Ted videos for as long as I can remember, but I never thought I’d make it on the stage here so soon. I mean, I just became a teenager, and like most teenage boys, I spend most of my time wondering, how did my room get so messy all on its own.

　　Did I take a shower today? And the most perplexing of all, how do I get girls to like me? Neurosciences say that the teenage brain is pretty weird, our prefrontal cortex is underdeveloped, but we actually have more neurons than adults, which is why we can be so creative, and impulsive and moody and get bummed out.

　　But what bums me out is to know that, a lot of kids today are just wishing to be happy, to be healthy, to be safe, not bullied, and be loved for who they are. So it seems to me when adults say, what do you want to be when you grow up? They just assume that you’ll automatically be happy and healthy.

　　Well, maybe that’s not the case, go to school, go to college, get a job, get married, boom, then you’ll be happy, right? You don’t seem to make learning how to be happy and healthy a priority in our schools, it’s separate from schools. And for some kids, it doesn’t exists at all? But what if we didn’t make it separate? What if we based education on the study and practice of being happy and healthy, because that’s what it is, a practice, and a simple practice at that?

　　Education is important, but why is being happy and healthy not considered education, I just don’t get it. So I’ve been studying the science of being happy and healthy. It really comes down to practicing these eight things. Exercise, diet and nutrition, time in nature, contribution, service to others, relationships, recreation, relaxation and stress management, and religious or spiritual involvement, yes, got that one.

　　So these eight things come from Dr. Roger Walsh, he calls them Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes or TLCs for short. He is a scientist that studies how to be happy and healthy. In researching this talk, I got a chance to ask him a few questions like; do you think that our schools today are making these eight TLCs a priority? His response was no surprise, it was essentially no. But he did say that many people do try to get this kind of education outside of the traditional arena, through reading and practices such as meditation or yoga.

　　But what I thought was his best response was that, much of education is oriented for better or worse towards making a living rather than making a life.

　　In 2006, Sir Ken Robinson gave the most popular Ted talk of all time. Schools kill creativity. His message is that creativity is as important as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.

　　A lot of parents watched those videos, some of those parents like mine counted it as one of the reasons they felt confident to pull their kids from traditional school to try something different. I realized I’m part of this small, but growing revolution of kids who are going about their education differently, and you know what? It freaks a lot of people out.

　　Even though I was only nine, when my parents pulled me out of the school system, I can still remember my mom being in tears when some of her friends told her she was crazy and it was a stupid idea.

　　Looking back, I’m thankful she didn’t cave to peer pressure, and I think she is too. So, out of the 200 million people that have watched Sir Ken Robinson’s talk, why aren’t there more kids like me out there?

　　Shane McConkey is my hero. I loved him because he was the world’s best skier. But then, one day I realized what I really loved about Shane, he was a hacker. Not a computer hacker, he hacked skiing. His creativity and inventions made skiing what it is today, and why I love to ski. A lot of people think of hackers as geeky computer nerds who live in their parent’s basement and spread computer viruses, but I don’t see it that way.

　　Hackers are innovators, hackers are people who challenge and change the systems to make them work differently, to make them work better, it’s just how they think, it’s a mindset.

　　I’m growing up in a world that needs more people with the hacker mindset, and not just for technology, everything is up for being hacked, even skiing, even education. So whether it’s Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg or Shane McConkey having the hacker mindset can change the world.

　　Healthy, happy, creativity in the hacker mindset are all a large part of my education. I call it Hackschooling, I don’t use any one particular curriculum, and I’m not dedicated to any one particular approach, I hack my education.

　　I take advantage of opportunities in my community, and through a network of my friends and family. I take advantage of opportunities to experience what I’m learning, and I’m not afraid to look for shortcuts or hacks to get a better faster result. It’s like a remix or a mash-up of learning. It’s flexible, opportunistic, and it never loses sight of making happy, healthy and creativity a priority.

　　And here is the cool part, because it’s a mindset, not a system. Hackschooling can be used anyone, even traditional schools. Soo what does my school look like? Well, it looks like Starbucks a lot of the time, but like most kids I study lot of math, science, history and writing. I didn’t used to like to write because my teachers made me write about butterflies and rainbows, and I wanted to write about skiing.

　　It was a relief for my good friend’s mom, started the Squaw Valley Kids Institute, where I got to write through my experiences and my interests, while, connecting with great speakers from around the nation, and that sparked my love of writing.

　　I realized that once you’re motivated to learn something, you can get a lot done in a short amount of time, and on your own, Starbucks is pretty great for that. Hacking physics was fun, we learned all about Newton and Galileo, and we experienced some basic physics concepts like kinetic energy through experimenting and making mistakes.

　　My favorite was the giant Newton’s cradle that we made out of bowling balls, no bocce balls. We experimented with lot of other things like bowling balls and event giant jawbreakers.

　　Project Discovery’s ropes course is awesome, and slightly stressful. When you’re 60 feet off the ground, you have to learn how to handle your fears, communicate clearly, and most importantly, trust each other.

　　Community organizations play a big part in my education, High Fives Foundation’s Basics Program being aware and safe in critical situations. We spent a day with the Squaw Valley Ski Patrol to learn more about mountain safety, then the next day we switched to science of snow, weather and avalanches.

　　But most importantly, we learned that making bad decisions puts you and your friends at risk. Young should talk, well brings history to life. You study a famous character in history, and so that you can stand on stage and perform as that character, and answer any question about their lifetime.

　　In this photo, you see Al Capone and Bob Marley getting grilled with questions at the historical Piper’s Opera House in Virginia City, the same stage where Harry Houdini got his start.

　　Time and nature is really important to me, it’s calm, quiet and I get to just log out of reality. I spend one day a week, outside all day. At my Fox Walkers classes, our goal is to be able to survive in the wilderness with just a knife. We learn to listen to nature, we learn to sense our surroundings, and I’ve gained a spiritual connection to nature that, I never knew existed.

　　But the best part is that we get to make spears, bows and arrows, fires with just a bow drill and survival shelters for the snowy nights when we camp out. Hanging out at the Moment Factory where they hand make skis and design clothes, has really inspired me to one day have my own business. The guys at the factory showed me why I need to be good at math, be creative and get good at selling.

　　So I got an internship at Big Shark Print to get better at design and selling. Between fetching lunch, scrubbing toilets and breaking their vacuum cleaner, I’m getting to contribute to clothing design, customizing hats and selling them. The people who work there are happy, healthy, creative, and stoked to be doing what they are doing, this is by far my favorite class.

　　So, this is why I’m really happy, powder days, and it’s a good metaphor for my life, my education, my hackschooling. If everyone ski this mountain, like most people think of education, everyone will be skiing the same line, probably the safest and most of the powder would go untouched.

　　I look at this, and see a thousand possibilities, dropping the corners, shredding the spine, looking for a churning from cliff-to-cliff. Skiing to me is freedom, and so is my education, it’s about being creative; doing things differently, it’s about community and helping each other. It’s about being happy and healthy among my very best friends.

　　So I’m starting to think, I know what I might want to do when I grow up, but if you ask me what do I want to be when I grow up? I’ll always know that I want to be happy. Thank you.

　　TED5分鐘英語演講稿 篇8

　　I'd like to share with you a discovery that I made a few months ago while writing an article for Italian Wired. I always keep my thesaurus handy whenever I'm writing anything, but I'd already finished editing the piece, and I realized that I had never once in my life looked up the word "disabled" to see what I'd find.

　　Let me read you the entry. "Disabled, adjective: crippled, helpless, useless, wrecked, stalled, maimed, wounded, mangled, lame, mutilated, run-down, worn-out, weakened, impotent, castrated, paralyzed, handicapped, senile, decrepit, laid-up, done-up, done-for, done-in cracked-up, counted-out; see also hurt, useless and weak. Antonyms, healthy, strong, capable." I was reading this list out loud to a friend and at first was laughing, it was so ludicrous, but I'd just gotten past "mangled," and my voice broke, and I had to stop and collect myself from the emotional shock and impact that the assault from these words unleashed.

　　You know, of course, this is my raggedy old thesaurus so I'm thinking this must be an ancient print date, right? But, in fact, the print date was the early 1980s, when I would have been starting primary school and forming an understanding of myself outside the family unit and as related to the other kids and the world around me. And, needless to say, thank God I wasn't using a thesaurus back then. I mean, from this entry, it would seem that I was born into a world that perceived someone like me to have nothing positive whatsoever going for them, when in fact, today I'm celebrated for the opportunities and adventures my life has procured.

　　So, I immediately went to look up the 2009 online edition, expecting to find a revision worth noting. Here's the updated version of this entry. Unfortunately, it's not much better. I find the last two words under "Near Antonyms," particularly unsettling: "whole" and "wholesome."

　　So, it's not just about the words. It's what we believe about people when we name them with these words. It's about the values behind the words, and how we construct those values. Our language affects our thinking and how we view the world and how we view other people. In fact, many ancient societies, including the Greeks and the Romans, believed that to utter a curse verbally was so powerful, because to say the thing out loud brought it into existence. So, what reality do we want to call into existence: a person who is limited, or a person who's empowered? By casually doing something as simple as naming a person, a child, we might be putting lids and casting shadows on their power. Wouldn't we want to open doors for them instead?

　　One such person who opened doors for me was my childhood doctor at the A.I. duPont Institute in Wilmington, Delaware. His name was Dr. Pizzutillo, an Italian American, whose name, apparently, was too difficult for most Americans to pronounce, so he went by Dr. P. And Dr. P always wore really colorful bow ties and had the very perfect disposition to work with children.

　　I loved almost everything about my time spent at this hospital, with the exception of my physical therapy sessions. I had to do what seemed like innumerable repetitions of exercises with these thick, elastic bands -- different colors, you know -- to help build up my leg muscles, and I hated these bands more than anything -- I hated them, had names for them. I hated them. And, you know, I was already bargaining, as a five year-old child, with Dr. P to try to get out of doing these exercises, unsuccessfully, of course. And, one day, he came in to my session -- exhaustive and unforgiving, these sessions -- and he said to me, "Wow. Aimee, you are such a strong and powerful little girl, I think you're going to break one of those bands. When you do break it, I'm going to give you a hundred bucks."

　　Now, of course, this was a simple ploy on Dr. P's part to get me to do the exercises I didn't want to do before the prospect of being the richest five-year-old in the second floor ward, but what he effectively did for me was reshape an awful daily occurrence into a new and promising experience for me. And I have to wonder today to what extent his vision and his declaration of me as a strong and powerful little girl shaped my own view of myself as an inherently strong, powerful and athletic person well into the future.

　　This is an example of how adults in positions of power can ignite the power of a child. But, in the previous instances of those thesaurus entries, our language isn't allowing us to evolve into the reality that we would all want, the possibility of an individual to see themselves as capable. Our language hasn't caught up with the changes in our society, many of which have been brought about by technology. Certainly, from a medical standpoint, my legs, laser surgery for vision impairment, titanium knees and hip replacements for aging bodies that are allowing people to more fully engage with their abilities, and move beyond the limits that nature has imposed on them -- not to mention social networking platforms allow people to self-identify, to claim their own descriptions of themselves, so they can go align with global groups of their own choosing. So, perhaps technology is revealing more clearly to us now what has always been a truth: that everyone has something rare and powerful to offer our society, and that the human ability to adapt is our greatest asset.

　　TED5分鐘英語演講稿 篇9

　　Have you ever held a question in mind for so long that it becomes part of how you think? Maybe even part of who you are as a person? Well I’ve had a question in my mind for many, many years and that is: how can you speed up learning? Now, this is an interesting question because if you speed up learning you can spend less time at school. And if you learn really fast, you probably wouldn’t have to go to school at all.

　　Now, when I was young, school was sort of okay but I found quite often that school got in the way of learning so I had this question in mind: how do you learn faster? And this began when I was very, very young, when I was about eleven years old I wrote a letter to researchers in the Soviet Union, asking about hypnopaedia, this is sleep learning, where you get a tape recorder, you put it beside your bed and it turns on in the middle of the night when you’re sleeping, and you’re supposed to be learning from this.

　　A good idea, unfortunately it doesn’t work. But, hypnopaedia did open the doors to research in other areas and we’ve had incredible discoveries about learning that began with that first question. I went on from there to become passionate about psychology and I have been involved in psychology in many ways for the rest of my life up until this point. In 1981 I took myself to China and I decided that I was going to be native level in Chinese inside two years.

　　Now, you need to understand that in 1981, everybody thought Chinese was really, really difficult and that a westerner could study for ten years or more and never really get very good at it. And I also went in with a different idea which was: taking all of the conclusions from psychological research up to that point and applying them to the learning process. What was really cool was that in six months I was fluent in Mandarin Chinese and took a little bit longer to get up to native. But I looked around and I saw all of these people from different countries struggling terribly with Chinese, I saw Chinese people struggling terribly to learn English and other languages, and so my question got refined down to: how can you help a normal adult learn a new language quickly, easily and effectively?

　　Now this a really, really important question in today’s world. We have massive challenges with environment we have massive challenges with social dislocation, with wars, all sorts of things going on and if we can’t communicate we’re really going to have difficulty solving these problems. So we need to be able to speak each other’s languages, this is really, really important.

　　The question then is how do you do that. Well, it’s actually really easy. You look around for people who can already do it, you look for situations where it’s already working and then you identify the principles and apply them. It’s called modelling and I’ve been looking at language learning and modelling language learning for about fifteen to twenty years now.

　　And my conclusion, my observation from this is that any adult can learn a second language to fluency inside six months. Now when I say this, most people think I’m crazy, this is not possible. So let me remind everybody of the history of human progress, it’s all about expanding our limits.

　　In 1950 everybody believed that running one mile in four minutes was impossible and then Roger Bannister did it in 1956 and from there it’s got shorter and shorter. 100 years ago everybody believed that heavy stuff doesn’t fly. Except it does and we all know this. How does heavy stuff fly? We reorganise the materials using principles that we have learned from observing nature, birds in this case. And today we’ve gone ever further, so you can fly a car. You can buy one of these for a couple hundred thousand US dollars. We now have cars in the world that can fly. And there’s a different way to fly that we’ve learned from squirrels. So all you need to do is copy what a flying squirrel does, build a suit called a wing suit and off you go, you can fly like a squirrel.

　　No, most people, a lot of people, I wouldn’t say everybody but a lot of people think they can’t draw. However there are some key principles, five principles that you can apply to learning to draw and you can 2 actually learn to draw in five days. So, if you draw like this, you learn these principles for five days and apply them and after five days you can draw something like this. Now I know this is true because that was my first drawing and after five days of applying these principles that was what I was able to do. And I looked at this and I went ‘wow,’ so that’s how I look like when I’m concentrating so intensely that my brain is exploding. So, anybody can learn to draw in five days and in the same way, with the same logic, anybody can learn a second language in six months.

　　TED5分鐘英語演講稿 篇10

　　the night before i was heading for scotland, i was invited to host the final of “china’s got talent” show in shanghai with the 80,000 live audience in the stadium. guess who was the performing guest? susan boyle. and i told her, “i’m going to scotland the next day.” she sang beautifully, and she even managed to say a few words in chinese. [chinese] soit’s not like “hello” or “thank you,” that ordinary stuff. it means “greenonion for free.” why did she say that? because it was a line from our chinese parallel susan boyle — a 50-some year-old woman, a vegetable vendor inshanghai, who loves singing western opera, but she didn’t understand anyenglish or french or italian, so she managed to fill in the lyrics with vegetable names in chinese. (laughter) and the last sentence of nessun dormathat she was singing in the stadium was “green onion for free.” so [as] susanboyle was saying that, 80,000 live audience sang together. that was hilarious.

　　so i guess both susan boyle and this vegetable vendor in shanghai belonged to otherness. they were the least expected to be successful in the business called entertainment, yet their courage and talent brought themthrough. and a show and a platform gave them the stage to realize their dreams.well, being different is not that difficult. we are all different from different perspectives. but i think being different is good, because you present a different point of view. you may have the chance to make a difference.

　　my generation has been very fortunate to witness and participate in the historic transformation of china that has made so many changes in the past 20, 30 years. i remember that in the year of 1990, when i was graduating from college, i was applying for a job in the sales department of the first five-star hotel in beijing, great wall sheraton — it’s still there. so after being interrogated by this japanese manager for a half an hour,he finally said, “so, miss yang, do you have any questions to ask me?” i summoned my courage and poise and said, “yes, but could you let me know, what actually do you sell?” i didn’t have a clue what a sales department was about in a five-star hotel. that was the first day i set my foot in a five-star hotel.

　　around the same time, i was going through an audition —the first ever open audition by national television in china — with another thousand college girls. the producer told us they were looking for some sweet,innocent and beautiful fresh face. so when it was my turn, i stood up and said,“why [do] women’s personalities on television always have to be beautiful,sweet, innocent and, you know, supportive? why can’t they have their own ideas and their own voice?” i thought i kind of offended them. but actually, they were impressed by my words. and so i was in the second round of competition,and then the third and the fourth. after seven rounds of competition, i was the last one to survive it. so i was on a national television prime-time show. and believe it or not, that was the first show on chinese television that allowed its hosts to speak out of their own minds without reading an approved script.(applause) and my weekly audience at that time was between 200 to 300 million people.

　　well after a few years, i decided to go to the u.s. and columbia university to pursue my postgraduate studies, and then started my ownmedia company, which was unthought of during the years that i started mycareer. so we do a lot of things. i’ve interviewed more than a thousand peoplein the past. and sometimes i have young people approaching me say, “l(fā)an, you changed my life,” and i feel proud of that. but then we are also so fortunate to witness the transformation of the whole country. i was in beijing’s bidding for the olympic games. i was representing the shanghai expo. i saw china embracing the world and vice versa. but then sometimes i’m thinking, what are today’s young generation up to? how are they different, and what are the differences they are going to make to shape the future of china, or at large,the world?

　　so today i want to talk about young people through the platform of social media. first of all, who are they? [what] do they look like?well this is a girl called guo meimei — 20 years old, beautiful. she showed offher expensive bags, clothes and car on her microblog, which is the chinese version of twitter. and she claimed to be the general manager of red cross at the chamber of commerce. she didn’t realize that she stepped on a sensitive nerve and aroused national questioning, almost a turmoil, against the credibility of red cross. the controversy was so heated that the red cross had to open a press conference to clarify it, and the investigation is going on.

　　so far, as of today, we know that she herself made up that title — probably because she feels proud to be associated with charity.all those expensive items were given to her as gifts by her boyfriend, who used to be a board member in a subdivision of red cross at chamber of commerce. it’s very complicated to explain. but anyway, the public still doesn’t buy it. it is still boiling. it shows us a general mistrust of government or government-backed institutions, which lacked transparency in the past. and also it showed us the power and the impact of social media as microblog.

　　microblog boomed in the year of , with visitors doubled and time spent on it tripled. a major news portal, alone hasmore than 140 million microbloggers. on tencent, 200 million. the most popular blogger — it’s not me — it’s a movie star, and she has more than 9.5 million followers, or fans. about 80 percent of those microbloggers are young people,under 30 years old. and because, as you know, the traditional media is still heavily controlled by the government, social media offers an opening to let thesteam out a little bit. but because you don’t have many other openings, theheat coming out of this opening is sometimes very strong, active and even violent.

　　so through microblogging, we are able to understand chinese youth even better. so how are they different? first of all, most of them were born in the 80s and 90s, under the one-child policy. and because of selected abortion by families who favored boys to girls, now we have ended up with 30 million more young men than women. that could pose a potential danger to the society, but who knows; we’re in a globalized world, so they can look for girlfriends from other countries. most of them have fairly good education.the illiteracy rate in china among this generation is under one percent. incities, 80 percent of kids go to college. but they are facing an aging china with a population above 65 years old coming up with seven-point-some percent this year, and about to be 15 percent by the year of 2030. and you know we have the tradition that younger generations support the elders financially, and taking care of them when they’re sick. so it means young couples will have to support four parents who have a life expectancy of 73 years old.

　　so making a living is not that easy for young people.college graduates are not in short supply. in urban areas, college graduates find the starting salary is about 400 u.s. dollars a month, while the average rent is above $500. so what do they do? they have to share space — squeezed invery limited space to save money — and they call themselves “tribe of ants.”and for those who are ready to get married and buy their apartment, they figured out they have to work for 30 to 40 years to afford their firstapartment. that ratio in america would only cost a couple five years to earn,but in china it’s 30 to 40 years with the skyrocketing real estate price.

　　among the 200 million migrant workers, 60 percent of them are young people. they find themselves sort of sandwiched between the urban areas and the rural areas. most of them don’t want to go back to the countryside, but they don’t have the sense of belonging. they work for longer hours with less income, less social welfare. and they’re more vulnerable to joblosses, subject to inflation, tightening loans from banks, appreciation of the renminbi, or decline of demand from europe or america for the products theyproduce. last year, though, an appalling incident in a southern oemmanufacturing compound in china: 13 young workers in their late teens and early 20s committed suicide, just one by one like causing a contagious disease. but they died because of all different personal reasons. but this whole incident aroused a huge outcry from society about the isolation, both physical and mental, ofthese migrant workers.

　　for those who do return back to the countryside, they find themselves very welcome locally, because with the knowledge, skills and networks they have learned in the cities, with the assistance of the internet,they’re able to create more jobs, upgrade local agriculture and create newbusiness in the less developed market. so for the past few years, the coastal areas, they found themselves in a shortage of labor.

　　these diagrams show a more general social background. the first one is the engels coefficient, which explains that the cost of dailynecessities has dropped its percentage all through the past decade, in terms offamily income, to about 37-some percent. but then in the last two years, it goes up again to 39 percent, indicating a rising living cost. the gini coefficient has already passed the dangerous line of 0.4. now it’s 0.5 — even worse than that in america — showing us the income inequality. and so you see this whole society getting frustrated about losing some of its mobility. and also, the bitterness and even resentment towards the rich and the powerful isquite widespread. so any accusations of corruption or backdoor dealings between authorities or business would arouse a social outcry or even unrest.

　　so through some of the hottest topics on microblogging,we can see what young people care most about. social justice and governmentaccountability runs the first in what they demand. for the past decade or so, amassive urbanization and development have let us witness a lot of reports onthe forced demolition of private property. and it has aroused huge anger and frustration among our young generation. sometimes people get killed, and sometimes people set themselves on fire to protest. so when these incidents are reported more and more frequently on the internet, people cry for thegovernment to take actions to stop this.

　　so the good news is that earlier this year, the state council passed a new regulation on house requisition and demolition and passedthe right to order forced demolition from local governments to the court.similarly, many other issues concerning public safety is a hot topic on the internet. we heard about polluted air, polluted water, poisoned food. and guesswhat, we have faked beef. they have sorts of ingredients that you brush on apiece of chicken or fish, and it turns it to look like beef. and then lately,people are very concerned about cooking oil, because thousands of people have been found [refining] cooking oil from restaurant slop. so all these things have aroused a huge outcry from the internet. and fortunately, we have seen the government responding more timely and also more frequently to the public concerns.

　　while young people seem to be very sure about their participation in public policy-making, but sometimes they’re a little bit lost in terms of what they want for their personal life. china is soon to pass the u.s. as the number one market for luxury brands — that’s not including the chinese expenditures in europe and elsewhere. but you know what, half of those consumers are earning a salary below 2,000 u.s. dollars. they’re not rich atall. they’re taking those bags and clothes as a sense of identity and social status. and this is a girl explicitly saying on a tv dating show that she would rather cry in a bmw than smile on a bicycle. but of course, we do have young people who would still prefer to smile, whether in a bmw or [on] a bicycle.

　　so in the next picture, you see a very popular phenomenon called “naked” wedding, or “naked” marriage. it does not mean they will wear nothing in the wedding, but it shows that these young couples are ready to get married without a house, without a car, without a diamond ring and without a wedding banquet, to show their commitment to true love. and also, people are doing good through social media. and the first picture showed us that a truck caging 500 homeless and kidnapped dogs for food processing was spotted andstopped on the highway with the whole country watching through microblogging.people were donating money, dog food and offering volunteer work to stop that truck. and after hours of negotiation, 500 dogs were rescued. and here also people are helping to find missing children. a father posted his son’s picture onto the internet. after thousands of [unclear], the child was found, and we witnessed the reunion of the family through microblogging.

　　so happiness is the most popular word we have heardthrough the past two years. happiness is not only related to personal experiences and personal values, but also, it’s about the environment. people are thinking about the following questions: are we going to sacrifice our environment further to produce higher gdp? how are we going to perform our social and political reform to keep pace with economic growth, to keep sustainability and stability? and also, how capable is the system ofself-correctness to keep more people content with all sorts of friction goingon at the same time? i guess these are the questions people are going to answer. and our younger generation are going to transform this country while at the same time being transformed themselves.

　　thank you very much.

　　譯文：

　　來蘇格蘭(做ted講演)的前夜，我被邀請去上海做”中國達(dá)人秀“決賽的評委。在裝有八萬現(xiàn)場觀眾的演播廳里，在臺上的表演嘉賓居然是(來自蘇格蘭的，因參加英國達(dá)人秀走紅的)蘇珊大媽(susan boyle)。我告訴她，“我明天就要啟程去蘇格蘭�！彼�唱得很動聽，還對觀眾說了幾句中文，她并沒有說簡單的”你好“或者”謝謝“，她說的是——“送你蔥”。為什么?這句話其實(shí)來源于中國版的“蘇珊大媽”——一位五十歲的以賣菜為生，卻對西方歌劇有出奇愛好的上海中年婦女(蔡洪平)。這位中國的蘇珊大媽并不懂英文，法語或意大利文，所以她將歌劇中的詞匯都換做中文中的蔬菜名，并且演唱出來。在她口中，歌劇《圖蘭朵》的最后一句便是“song ni cong”。當(dāng)真正的英國蘇珊大媽唱出這一句“中文的”《圖蘭朵》時，全場的八萬觀眾也一起高聲歌唱，場面的確有些滑稽。

　　我想susan boyle和這位上海的買菜農(nóng)婦的確屬于人群中的少數(shù)。她們是最不可能在演藝界成功的，而她們的勇氣和才華讓她們成功了，這個節(jié)目和舞臺給予了她們一個實(shí)現(xiàn)個人夢想的機(jī)會。這樣看來，與眾不同好像沒有那么難。從不同的方面審視，我們每個人都是不同的。但是我想，與眾不同是一件好事，因?yàn)槟愦�表了不一樣的觀點(diǎn)，你擁有了做改變的機(jī)會。

　　我這一代中國人很幸運(yùn)的目睹并且參與了中國在過去二三十年中經(jīng)歷的巨變。我記得1990年，當(dāng)我剛大學(xué)畢業(yè)時，我申請了當(dāng)時北京的第一家五星級酒店——長城喜來登酒店的銷售部門的工作。這家酒店現(xiàn)在仍在北京。當(dāng)我被一位日本籍經(jīng)理面試了一個半小時之后，他問到，“楊小姐，你有什么想問我的嗎?”，我屏住呼吸，問道“是的，你能告訴我，具體我需要銷售些什么嗎?”當(dāng)時的我，對五星級酒店的銷售部門沒有任何概念，事實(shí)上，那是我第一次進(jìn)到一家五星級酒店。

　　我當(dāng)時也在參加另一場“面試”，中國國家電視臺的首次公開試鏡，與我一起參與選拔的還有另外1000名大學(xué)女畢業(yè)生。節(jié)目制作人說，他們希望找到一位甜美，無辜(lol)，漂亮的新鮮面孔。輪到我的時候，我問道“為什么在電視屏幕上，女性總應(yīng)該表現(xiàn)出甜美漂亮，甚至是服從性的一面?為什么她們不能有她們自己的想法和聲音?“我覺得我的問題甚至有點(diǎn)冒犯到了他。但實(shí)際上，他們對我的表現(xiàn)印象深刻。我進(jìn)入了第二輪選拔，第三輪，第四輪，直至最后的第七場選拔，我是唯一一個走到最后的試鏡者。我從此走上了國家電視臺黃金時段的熒幕。你可能不相信，但在當(dāng)時，我所主持的電視節(jié)目是中國第一個，不讓主持人念已經(jīng)審核過的稿件的節(jié)目(掌聲)。我每周需要面對兩億到三億左右的.電視觀眾。

　　幾年以后，我決定來美國哥倫比亞大學(xué)繼續(xù)深造，之后也開始運(yùn)營自己的媒體公司，這也是我在職業(yè)生涯初始時所沒有預(yù)料到的。我的公司做很多不同的業(yè)務(wù)，在過去這些年里，我訪談過一千多人。經(jīng)常有年輕人對我說，“楊瀾，你改變了我的人生”，我對此感到非常自豪。我也幸運(yùn)的目睹了整個國家的轉(zhuǎn)變：我參與了北京申奧和上海世博會。我看到中國在擁抱這個世界，而世界也進(jìn)一步的接受中國。但有時我也在想，今天的年輕人的生活是什么樣的?他們(與我們相比)有什么不同?他們將帶給中國，甚至整個世界的未來一些怎樣的變化?

　　我想通過社交媒體來談一談中國的年輕人們。首先，他們是誰，他們是什么樣子?這是一位叫郭美美的女孩兒，20歲，年輕漂亮。她在中國版的twitter上——新浪微博上，炫耀她所擁有的奢侈品，衣服，包和車。她甚至宣稱她是中國紅十字會的工作人員。她沒有意識到她的行為觸及了中國民眾極為敏感的神經(jīng)，這引發(fā)了一場全民大討論，民眾開始質(zhì)疑紅十字會的公信力。中國紅十字會為了平息這場爭議甚至舉辦了一場記者會來澄清，直至今日，對于”郭美美事件“的調(diào)查仍在繼續(xù)。

　　時至今日，我們所知道的事實(shí)是，她謊報了她的頭銜，可能是因?yàn)樗�的虛榮心，希望把自己和慈善機(jī)構(gòu)聯(lián)系起來。所有那些奢侈品都是她的男朋友給她買的，而那位”男朋友“的確曾經(jīng)是紅十字會的工作人員。這解釋起來很復(fù)雜，總之，公眾對他們的解釋仍然不滿意，這仍然是在風(fēng)口浪尖的一件事。這件事體現(xiàn)出(中國社會)對長期不透明的政府機(jī)關(guān)的不信任，同時也表現(xiàn)出社交媒體(微博)巨大的社會影響力。

　　微博在XX年得到了爆炸性的增長，微博的訪問用戶增長了一倍，用戶的訪問時間是XX年的三倍。一個最主要的微博平臺，擁有1.4億的微博用戶，而騰訊擁有兩億用戶。(在中國)最有名的微博主——不是我——是一位電影明星，她擁有近九百五十萬”粉絲“。接近80%的微博用戶是年輕人，三十歲以下。因?yàn)閭鹘y(tǒng)媒體還在政府的強(qiáng)力控制之下，社交媒體提供了一個開放的平臺進(jìn)行了一些(民眾觀點(diǎn)的)分流。因?yàn)檫@樣分流的渠道并不多，從這個平臺上爆發(fā)出的能量往往非常強(qiáng)烈，有時候甚至過于強(qiáng)烈。

　　通過微博，我們可以更好的了解到中國的年輕一代。首先，他們中的大多數(shù)都出生在八零九零年代，在獨(dú)生子女的生育政策的大背景下長大。因?yàn)槠�好男孩的家庭會選擇性的墮胎，現(xiàn)在(中國)的年輕男性的數(shù)量多過年輕女性三千萬，這可能帶來社會的不穩(wěn)定(危險)，但是我們知道，在這個全球化的社會中，他們可能可以去其他國家找女朋友。大多數(shù)人都擁有良好的教育。這一代中國人中的文盲率已經(jīng)低于1%。在城市中，80%的孩子可以上大學(xué)，但他們將要面對的是一個，有接近7%的人口都是老年人的社會，這個數(shù)字在2030年會增長到15%。在這個國家，傳統(tǒng)是讓年輕人來從經(jīng)濟(jì)上和醫(yī)療上來支持老年人，這意味著，一對年輕的夫妻將需要支持四個平均年齡是73歲的老人。

　　所以對于年輕人而言，生活并不是容易。本科畢業(yè)生也不在是緊缺資源。在城市中，本科生的月起薪通常是400美元(2500人民幣)，而公寓的平均月租金卻是500美元。所以他們的解決方式是合租——擠在有限的空間中以節(jié)省開支，他們叫自己”蟻?zhàn)�。“對于那些�?zhǔn)備好結(jié)婚并希望購買一套公寓的中國年輕夫婦而言，他們發(fā)現(xiàn)他們必須要不間斷的工作30到40年才可以負(fù)擔(dān)得起一套公寓。對于同樣的美國年輕夫婦而言，他們只需要五年時間。

　　在近兩億的涌入城市的農(nóng)民工中，他們中的60%都是年輕人。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)自己被夾在了城市和農(nóng)村中，大多數(shù)人不愿意回到農(nóng)村，但他們在城市也找不到歸屬感。他們工作更長的時間卻獲得更少的薪水和社會福利。他們也更容易面臨失業(yè)，受到通貨膨脹，銀行利率，人民幣升值的影響，甚至美國和歐盟對于中國制造產(chǎn)品的抵制也會影響到他們。去年，在中國南方的一個制造工廠里，有十三位年輕的工人選擇了結(jié)束自己的生命，一個接一個，像一場傳染病。他們輕生的原因各有不同，但整個事件提醒了中國社會和政府，需要更多的關(guān)注這些在精神上和生理上都與外界脫節(jié)的年輕農(nóng)民工人。

　　對于那些回到農(nóng)村的年輕人，他們所經(jīng)歷的城市生活，所學(xué)到的知識，技巧和建立的社會網(wǎng)絡(luò)，讓他們通常更受歡迎。特別是在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)的幫助下，他們更有可能獲得工作，提升農(nóng)村的農(nóng)業(yè)水平和發(fā)展新的商業(yè)機(jī)會。在過去的一些年中，一些沿海的城鎮(zhèn)甚至出現(xiàn)了勞動力短缺。

　　這些圖片展現(xiàn)出整體的社會背景。第一張圖片是恩格斯系數(shù)(食品支出占總消費(fèi)支出的比例)，可以看到在過去的十年中，食物和生活必需品在家庭消費(fèi)中的比例有所下降(37%)，然后在過去的兩年中，這項指數(shù)上升到39%，說明近兩年中生活成本的攀升�；�尼系數(shù)早已越過了危險的0.4，到達(dá)0.5——這甚至高過了美國——體現(xiàn)出極大的貧富差距，所以我們才看到整個社會的失衡。同時，“仇富心態(tài)”也開始在整個社會蔓延，任何與腐敗和走后門相關(guān)的政府或商業(yè)丑聞都會引發(fā)社會危機(jī)和不穩(wěn)定。

　　通過微博上很火的話題，我們可以看到年輕人的關(guān)注點(diǎn)。社會公正和政府的公信力是他們首要需求的。在過去的十年中，急速的城市化讓民眾讀到太多強(qiáng)制私人住戶拆遷的新聞，這引發(fā)了年輕一代的憤怒和不理解。有時候，被拆遷的住戶以自殺和自焚的方式來抗議(強(qiáng)制拆遷行為)。當(dāng)這些事件越來越常在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上被揭露出來，人們期待政府可以采取一些更積極的制止行動。

　　好消息是，今年早些時候，人民代表大會通過了一項關(guān)于房屋征用和拆遷的新法規(guī)，將征用和拆遷的權(quán)利從當(dāng)?shù)卣�府移交到了法庭。相同的，很多其他與公共安全相關(guān)的問題也在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上被熱烈討論。我們聽到有太多空氣污染，水污染，有毒食品的報道。你甚至都想不到，我們還有假牛肉。人們用一種特殊的材料加入雞肉和魚肉中，然后以牛肉的價格進(jìn)行出售。最近，人們對食用油也很擔(dān)憂，大量的餐館被發(fā)現(xiàn)在使用“地溝油“。所有這些事件引發(fā)了互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上民眾觀點(diǎn)的大爆發(fā)。幸運(yùn)的是，我們看到了政府正在更積極和更及時的對這些民眾的質(zhì)疑給予回應(yīng)。

　　一方面，年輕人越來越積極的參與到公共事務(wù)中;另一方面，他們也在尋找或者說迷失與個人生活的價值和定位。中國很快就要超過美國，成為世界上第一大奢侈品消費(fèi)國——這還不包括中國人在國外的消費(fèi)。但你知道嗎，超過半數(shù)中國的奢侈品消費(fèi)者的(年)收入都低于兩千美元。他們其實(shí)并不富裕，他們用那些奢侈品牌的服裝和包體現(xiàn)身份和社會地位。這是一位在電視節(jié)目上公然表明，自己寧愿在寶馬車?yán)锟抟膊蛔�在自行車后笑的年輕女孩。當(dāng)然，我們也有更多的年輕人，喜歡微笑，不管是在寶馬還是在自行車上。

　　在下一幅圖中，你看到的是現(xiàn)在非常流行的”裸婚“，這并不代表這“裸露出席婚禮”，這體現(xiàn)的是年輕人愿意接受結(jié)婚不買房，不買車，不買鉆戒，甚至不辦婚宴的這個現(xiàn)實(shí)，作為對純樸的真愛的致敬。但同時，人們也在通過社交媒體做一些善事。這副圖片里，這輛車上裝有500只被”綁架“來，準(zhǔn)備被送去屠宰的狗，這輛車被網(wǎng)友們發(fā)現(xiàn)后，人們開始通過微博關(guān)注事態(tài)的進(jìn)展，并且通過捐錢，捐食物和做義工來試圖攔截該車。在幾個小時的周旋后，這500條狗獲救并被放生。有更多的人在通過微博尋找丟失的孩子。一位父親將他失散的兒子的照片發(fā)布到微博上，在幾千條”轉(zhuǎn)發(fā)“之后，他的兒子被找到，家庭的團(tuán)聚也在微博上被報道出來。

　　“幸福(感)”是近兩年中國的流行詞匯。幸福感不僅僅與個人體驗(yàn)和價值觀相關(guān)，更多的，它與環(huán)境息息相關(guān)。人們在思考：我們是否要犧牲環(huán)境來提升gdp?我們要怎樣進(jìn)行社會和政治體制的改革來應(yīng)對經(jīng)濟(jì)的發(fā)展，保持穩(wěn)定性和可持續(xù)性發(fā)展?同時，這個系統(tǒng)的自我修正能力是否足夠強(qiáng)大，是否能夠讓生活在其中的人民接受在前進(jìn)過程中的各種壓力和困難?我想這些都是中國人民需要回答的問題，而中國的年輕一代將在改變這個國家的過程中也改變自己。

　　非常感謝。

　　TED5分鐘英語演講稿 篇11

　　do you think it's possible to control someone's attention? even more than that, what about predicting human behavior? i think those are interesting ideas, if you could. i mean, for me, that would be the perfect superpower, actually kind of an evil way of approaching it. but for myself, in the past, i've spent the last 20 years studying human behavior from a rather unorthodox way: picking pockets. when we think of misdirection, we think of something as looking off to the side, when actually it's often the things that are right in front of us that are the hardest things to see, the things that you look at every day that you're blinded to.

　　for example, how many of you still have your cell phones on you right now? great. double-check. make sure you still have them on you. i was doing some shopping beforehand. now you've looked at them probably a few times today, but i'm going to ask you a question about them. without looking at your cell phone directly yet, can you remember the icon in the bottom right corner? bring them out, check, and see how accurate you were. how'd you do? show of hands. did we get it?

　　now that you're done looking at those, close them down, because every phone has something in common. no matter how you organize the icons, you still have a clock on the front. so, without looking at your phone, what time was it? you just looked at your clock, right? it's an interesting idea. now, i'll ask you to take that a step further with a game of trust. close your eyes. i realize i'm asking you to do that while you just heard there's a pickpocket in the room, but close your eyes.

　　now, you've been watching me for about 30 seconds. with your eyes closed, what am i wearing? make your best guess. what color is my shirt? what color is my tie? now open your eyes. by a show of hands, were you right?

　　it's interesting, isn't it? some of us are a little bit more perceptive than others. it seems that way. but i have a different theory about that, that model of attention. they have fancy models of attention, posner's trinity model of attention. for me, i like to think of it very simple, like a surveillance system. it's kind of like you have all these fancy sensors, and inside your brain is a little security guard. for me, i like to call him frank. so frank is sitting at a desk. he's got all sorts of cool information in front of him, high-tech equipment, he's got cameras, he's got a little phone that he can pick up, listen to the ears, all these senses, all these perceptions. but attention is what steers your perceptions, is what controls your reality. it's the gateway to the mind. if you don't attend to something, you can't be aware of it. but ironically, you can attend to something without being aware of it. that's why there's the cocktail effect: when you're in a party, you're having conversations with someone, and yet you can recognize your name and you didn't even realize you were listening to that.

　　now, for my job, i have to play with techniques to exploit this, to play with your attention as a limited resource. so if i could control how you spend your attention, if i could maybe steal your attention through a distraction. now, instead of doing it like misdirection and throwing it off to the side, instead, what i choose to focus on is frank, to be able to play with the frank inside your head, your little security guard, and get you, instead of focusing on your external senses, just to go internal for a second. so if i ask you to access a memory, like, what is that? what just happened? do you have a wallet? do you have an american express in your wallet? and when i do that, your frank turns around. he accesses the file. he has to rewind the tape. and what's interesting is, he can't rewind the tape at the same time that he's trying to process new data.

　　now, i mean, this sounds like a good theory, but i could talk for a long time and tell you lots of things, and they may be true, a portion of them, but i think it's better if i tried to show that to you here live. so if i come down, i'm going to do a little bit of shopping. just hold still where you are.

　　hello, how are you? it's lovely to see you. you did a wonderful job onstage. you have a lovely watch that doesn't come off very well. do you have your ring as well? good. just taking inventory. you're like a buffet. it's hard to tell where to start, there's so many great things.

　　hi, how are you? good to see you.

　　hi, sir, could you stand up for me, please? just right where you are. oh, you're married. you follow directions well. that's nice to meet you, sir. you don't have a whole lot inside your pockets. anything down by the pocket over here? hopefully so. have a seat. there you go. you're doing well.

　　hi, sir, how are you? good to see you, sir. you have a ring, a watch. do you have a wallet on you? joe: i don't. apollo robbins: well, we'll find one for you. come on up this way, joe. give joe a round of applause. come on up joe. let's play a game.

　　(applause)

　　pardon me.

　　i don't think i need this clicker anymore. you can have that. thank you very much. i appreciate that.

　　come on up to the stage, joe. let's play a little game now. do you have anything in your front pockets? joe: money. ar: money. all right, let's try that. can you stand right over this way for me? turn around and, let's see, if i give you something that belongs to me, this is just something i have, a poker chip. hold out your hand for me. watch it kind of closely. now this is a task for you to focus on. now you have your money in your front pocket here? joe: yup. ar: good. i'm not going to actually put my hand in your pocket. i'm not ready for that kind of commitment. one time a guy had a hole in his pocket, and that was rather traumatizing for me. i was looking for his wallet and he gave me his phone number. it was a big miscommunication.

　　so let's do this simply. squeeze your hand. squeeze it tight. do you feel the poker chip in your hand? joe: i do. ar: would you be surprised if i could take it out of your hand? say yes. joe: very. ar: good. open your hand. thank you very much. i'll cheat if you give me a chance. make it harder for me. just use your hand. grab my wrist, but squeeze, squeeze firm. did you see it go? joe: no. ar: no, it's not here. open your hand. see, while we're focused on the hand, it's sitting on your shoulder right now. go ahead and take it off. now, let's try that again. hold your hand out flat. open it up all the way. put your hand up a little bit higher, but watch it close there, joe. see, if i did it slowly, it'd be back on your shoulder. (laughter) joe, we're going to keep doing this till you catch it. you're going to get it eventually. i have faith in you. squeeze firm. you're human, you're not slow. it's back on your shoulder. you were focused on your hand. that's why you were distracted. while you were watching this, i couldn't quite get your watch off. it was difficult. yet you had something inside your front pocket. do you remember what it was? joe: money. ar: check your pocket. see if it's still there. is it still there? (laughter) oh, that's where it was. go ahead and put it away. we're just shopping. this trick's more about the timing, really. i'm going to try to push it inside your hand. put your other hand on top for me, would you? it's amazingly obvious now, isn't it? it looks a lot like the watch i was wearing, doesn't it?

　　(laughter) (applause)

　　joe: that's pretty good. that's pretty good. ar: oh, thanks. but it's only a start. let's try it again, a little bit differently. hold your hands together. put your other hand on top. now if you're watching this little token, this obviously has become a little target. it's like a red herring. if we watch this kind of close, it looks like it goes away. it's not back on your shoulder. it falls out of the air, lands right back in the hand. did you see it go? yeah, it's funny. we've got a little guy. he's union. he works up there all day. if i did it slowly, if it goes straightaway, it lands down by your pocket. i believe is it in this pocket, sir? no, don't reach in your pocket. that's a different show. so -- (squeaking noise) -- that's rather strange. they have shots for that. can i show them what that is? that's rather bizarre. is this yours, sir? i have no idea how that works. we'll just send that over there.

　　that's great. i need help with this one. step over this way for me. now don't run away. you had something down by your pants pocket. i was checking mine. i couldn't find everything, but i noticed you had something here. can i feel the outside of your pocket for a moment? down here i noticed this. is this something of yours, sir? is this? i have no idea. that's a shrimp.

　　joe: yeah. i'm saving it for later.

　　ar: you've entertained all of these people in a wonderful way, better than you know. so we'd love to give you this lovely watch as a gift. (laughter) hopefully it matches his taste. but also, we have a couple of other things, a little bit of cash, and then we have a few other things. these all belong to you, along with a big round of applause from all your friends. (applause)

　　oe, thank you very much.

　　(applause)

　　so, same question i asked you before, but this time you don't have to close your eyes. what am i wearing?

　　(laughter)

　　(applause)

　　attention is a powerful thing. like i said, it shapes your reality. so, i guess i'd like to pose that question to you. if you could control somebody's attention, what would you do with it?

　　thank you.

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