Ted Talk Break Down

              For my Ted Talks I watched, "How to Not be Ignorant About the World," "Why Does the Universe Exist?" and "A Park Underneath the Hustle and Bustle of New York City."  Each of these talks were absolutely fascinating, some were presented better than others however.
              In "How to Not be Ignorant About the World," the ideas were elementary but well formed and made sense witht the speech. The basics of the talk being that everyone assumes he worst when in general things are getting better. Basically do not worry as much, things will get better and are currently better than they seem. The first speaker, Hans Rosling, was a perfect speaker, he joked, got people laughing, had the audience do little activities, and exuded a great public view of himself. He is obviously a well versed public speaker and was not nervous during his speech. His son, Ola Rosling, on the other hand was not as well-spoken as his father. He was visibly more nervous, did not possess the same on-stage presence as his father, was a little bit harder to understand (mostly due to the accent) and did not involve the audience in the same way as his father did. Over-all I think that if Ola had done the presentation on his own it would have worked more to his favor because he is not the caliber as his father when it comes to public-speaking and presenting right after him brings this to light.
           "Why Does the Universe Exist?" this talk I was quite excited to watch. I always find existance lectures to be interesting but this one was not my favorite. The speaker although confident and knowledgable came off nervous at times beause he stuttered, which is usually pretty common with science lectures because the speaker gets so hyped up that its like their mouth short circuits. Another thing is that the lecturer seemed very uppity as he was lecturing. He constantly dropped names and referenced various scientists and experiments the average person would not know about. His thought pattern in presenting this piece was also kind of scattered. I sadly have this problem when I give speeches too but still it makes it harder for the audience to follow along.
           The last one I watched was "A Park Underneath the Hustle and Bustle of New York." This one was quite interesting actually. Thy are attempting to create a green space in an old underground warehouse and leave it open for the public. I found this to be an awesome idea! But the speaker came off a little nervous and also a little dull. He got up presented and left in pretty short order. Although the idea and project he is working on is revolutionary and mind-blowing, his presentation does not show that. I would suggest that they get a more charismatic speaker the next time they have to give a lecture on their project.
            All of the videos I watched were fascinating in their own way but some stood out more than the others purely because their speaker was much more personable to the audience than the other speakers were. A good presenter can make any speech (good or bad) fly where even the best idea can be sunk by a bad presentation.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_barasch_a_park_underneath_the_hustle_and_bustle_of_new_york_city
http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_and_ola_rosling_how_not_to_be_ignorant_about_the_world
http://www.ted.com/talks/jim_holt_why_does_the_universe_exist