My Favorite TED Talk
TED Talk: Alau Arthur’s “Why Thinking About Death Helps You Live a Better Life”
I enjoy this TED Talk for many different reasons. The title is extremely intriguing, to start. It immediately drew me in, and it made me want to watch the entire talk to understand what the speaker meant when she said that.
In the beginning of the speech, she starts with, “I want to die at sunset”. She continues to explain her perfect death setting and what that would look like for her. She spent several minutes talking about why we as people should embrace the idea of death. This was very interesting to me because, as far as I understand, death is an extremely scary concept for most people to come to terms with.
Alau Arthur, the speaker, is a death doula who supports people when they are preparing for death. She then told the audience the story about how she got into her career, and it was an extremely emotional and moving story.
Unit Two Brainstorm
- How the topic of mental health has changed throughout the years. I think this could work really well because there is no doubt that people are more open to talking about their mental health issues now than ever before.
- How the Western diet has changed. This one could work because I could definitely tie the diet patterns throughout the years to statistics that support a rise in obesity in America and other western cultures.
- Running. I am not totally sure where I would go with this one. Running is a hobby and passion of mine and it has been around for a very long time. I could potentially compare the running shoe brands throughout the years, or how shoe models have changed to suit a more modern runner.
Thank you.
I think that running could actually turn out to be a good TED talk discussion. Specifically, technology in running has really raised some big questions when it comes to defining what records have and have not been broken. Shoe technology has made runners more efficient, diet changes, training methodology, you could talk about all this and make a really interesting TED talk I think.
That TedTalk sounds like something that would send me into an existential crisis LOL. I personally do not like thinking about death because I find it very scary, but maybe I need to revaluate my feelings on it. Changes in the western diet is a really cool topic idea, and I think you will definitely be able to find lots of statistics to support your arguments. The topic of public perceptions of mental health could also be really interesting!
Oh I am definitely going to watch that TED Talk. My sister and I always talk about death, not in like a scary sad way, but in a way where like yeah it’s going to happen, it happens to all of us. My sister and I always quote this phrase from Emily Dickinson “That it will never come again, is what makes life so sweet” like WOWWWWW she ate with that one. I think your ideas for the evolving ideas project sound really good, I’d want to read about the evolution of mental health the most, personally.
That topic is really interesting, death seems to be a really taboo topic that a lot of people struggle to come to terms with. Your brainstorming topics are really interesting, the mental health one would be really interesting to learn about, I know only recently mental health has been taken seriously and I’d personally love to learn more about that.