TED Talk Analysis

The TED talk I chose to watch was one by Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist and author. He was speaking at a TED conference in London in September of 2015. The title of his talk is “How to stay calm when you know you’ll be stressed out.” His purpose was to inform others of the science behind stress and how to avoid situations that lead you to make poor decisions because of stress. I personally am fascinated by the science behind stress because stress isn’t a disease or infection yet it makes us sick more than we realize. In psychology, I studied the negative effects of stress and it actually stressed me out thinking about all the horrible things happening to my body when I am stressed. Obviously, I think this is a relevant topic that is worth covering and a great way to inform others how to prevent stressful situations.

 Levitin began his talk with a personal story that was extremely effective. He told a relatable story about how he was locked outside of his house, so he broke a window to get inside because it was -40 degrees and in the middle of the night. He added some humorous aspects to the story so it was funny, yet a good way to show the audience he makes poor decisions when stressed as well. He then moved into the main body of the talk which was about how stress causes clouded thinking and poor decision making. Levitin talked about ways to prevent stressful situations, like having a designated place for commonly lost items, and gave scientific support for it. He discussed how the hippocampus helps us remember where we put things and that it only works if we put things in the same place. He then concluded his talk by bringing the story full circle and telling the audience how he installed a lockbox with a house key inside to prevent having to break windows in the future. Levitin appeared to be passionate about this topic and was a fairly animated speaker. This lead to a good delivery and an audience that also cared about what he had to say. He used some shocking statistics such as only 1 in 300 people are actually helped by a certain medicine and that 15 of those 300 are actually hurt by it. Jaw dropping moments like this kept the audience interested and passionate about the topic as well.

One thing he could have improved was he stayed in the same place the whole time instead of walking around. He also didn’t use any visual aids or props which could have been very useful in his talk. His talk was very organized though; I could tell exactly what his intro, body, and conclusion were and his thesis was clearly stated. Overall I think it was a very interesting TED talk and he did a great job of telling a story and delivering a talk on a relatable topic.

https://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_levitin_how_to_stay_calm_when_you_know_you_ll_be_stressed?language=en