Everyone knows what a TED talk is, and the basis of what one consists of. I watched a few while I was in High School. If you ask me what they consist of I think there is a common theme in most TED talks. Each TED talk starts off with a compelling story that is based off of real events that happened to them or someone they know. They draw the audience in by sharing their story while trying to connect to the audience in an emotional or logical way. Whenever I have watched a TED talk I noticed that I feel more drawn to their story and feel more open to what they are saying when they share a story about a personal experience.
For the first TED talk I watched, i_stepped_out_of_grief_by_dancing_with_fire, Danielle Torley starts off with an opening statement followed by her directly diving into her childhood story of being trapped in her house that caught on fire when she was only 6 years old which caused her mother to pass away. She drew in her audience by sharing a traumatic story and how she felt after the incident. She described how she had nightmares and how she was trying to get better from all the stress the incident had caused, but how even after years had passed she was in college, and she still had nightmares and terrors about the incident. She went on to talk about how she found a person that participated in dancing with fire with batons. She talked about how it terrified her, but after a lot of practice for months she decided to light the baton on fire ad try it. She did it, and danced with fire. She described how she was terrified, but after more practices she realized her perspective changed. She no longer felt utter fear from fire, but instead felt control over the fire. She said the more time that passed the more the nightmares and panic started to fade. She took something traumatic that happened to her and found a way to move passed it almost two decades later.
The second TED talk, why_children_stay_silent_following_sexual_violence, Kristin Jones starts off her TED talk by opening up about her own personal experience of being sexually assaulted and how it affected her. She draws in her audience by being very personal about what she went through and how it made her feel. Kristin Jones says it took her 22 years to open up about what happened to her mom. She talks about the shame she felt and how she felt it was her fault. She ties all her entire story into how she is now a mother and how she has caught herself telling her children to not let anyone touch them, to not put themselves into a situation where they can be taken advantage in, and to not let anyone do anything to them. She then proceeds to talk about how it is such an unrealistic thing that is said because it makes it seem like they are in control of what happens to them. Jones talks about how as much as she told that to her children it is not necessarily even up to them for what happens, but how it is in fact left up to the person that doesn’t respect boundaries and can’t take no for an answer. She talks about how she heard the message as something that she could have stopped what was happening to her, believed that it was her own fault, and that she was in control of the other persons actions, and she turned it around to how people shouldn’t feel the shame, hatred and blame they feel on themselves when it was not their fault for what happened.
The third TED talk I watched for this blog is different from the first two. In Aparna Nancherla’s TED talk about the_joy_of_taking_out_the_trash, she draws in the audience by talking about taking out the trash in a comical way. She brings in personal experiences and moments of the trash she feels the need to take out. She mentions how it can be the ball of hair on the floor, friends, or even family that you don’t need in your life while also talking about how it can be done to be beneficial for the world in a sense of recycling and reusing. It’s a different TED talk from the other two TED talks I mentioned because the first two shared a very traumatic and personal story and how they got over it and what they believe helped them and connected to the audience in a very deep way. While this TED talk connected to people in a whimsical way about trash and forms of trash in your own life, and how it should be taken out.
All TED talks have a similar compound that set up the basis of what they are talking about and how to appeal to the audience. All three talks I included appealed to the audience in one form or another. Whether it was emotionally or logically, all TED talks share a common theme.
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