Review 6: "Love Letters to Strangers" by Hannah Brencher

Originally, I chose this talk not because of the fact that it's only five minutes (that was an added perk), but because I was really intrigued. I thought that the whole idea of writing love letters to strangers sounded confusing, but was also kind of novel. So, to sum it up, I went in to this talk looking for something that wasn't too in-depth, but sort of a basic structure about whatever this 'writing love letters to strangers' thing was.
Although this talk was short, it was really powerful. Hannah Brencher first describes how her mother used to send her letters in college rather than texts or electronic messages. She then goes in to, after she moved to New York City, how she was 'sucker-punched in the face by depression', and started sending out letters similar to those from her mother across the city. This movement apparently gained steam quickly, as people across the country began sending Brencher 'love letters'. Brencher then goes into examples of how this movement was implemented in other situations, such as on a college campus in Iowa. The most powerful example for me was when Brencher mentions a man who had planned to commit suicide. After saying goodbye to his loved ones via Facebook, the man was flooded with love letters, and he eventually decided not to kill himself because of the kindheartedness of others.
Personally, I feel like we should do this at some point during the school year. If we just placed random letters of kindness around the school, it would make each of us comparable to Johnny Barnes. I feel like there's a lot of negativity and discord in our class, and I really think that writing these random love letters and placing them on campus could really unite us and make us all feel better about ourselves. That's just my opinion, though. If you do happen to comment on this post, please communicate if you think this is a good idea for the future.
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Link to Brencher's talk

Review 5: "How the Worst Moments in Our Lives Make Us Who We Are" by Andrew Solomon

Like with the "Dangerous Memes" talk, I completely misinterpreted this talk simply because of the title. I came in to this talk believing that it would mainly cover the topics of loss and/or failure - stuff that could easily be defined as 'the worst moments in our lives'. However, this talk was not really about those issues in particular. For the most part, it covers how Solomon has dealt with prejudice regarding his homosexuality. Solomon explains how his homosexuality led to him getting bullied at school, going to a 'doctor' to attempt to 'fix' his sexuality, and how many countries punish people for being gay (an example he uses is how, in Nigeria, gay people can be stoned to death).
To me, the main thing I picked up from this talk is not that Solomon has overcome a lot of struggle, but that he has embraced what many others would not. Solomon brings up many other examples of how people have gained happiness in situations where most people would not feel happy, such as when a rape victim he met said that she felt pity for her assaulter because he didn't get to see his daughter (who was born because of the rape incident) and grandchildren (who are also essentially alive because of this incident) grow up. I'm really happy for Solomon; it seems he's created a life that he enjoys, because, although some people may disagree with his choices, Solomon doesn't really mind. He now has a family and children of his own, which is a really happy ending to this story of overcoming adversity.

Personally, I would recommend this talk to most people. I'm not personally gay, but I do know some people who are and the challenges that they face. It's really inspiring to see how Solomon, who was incredibly sensitive to these challenges as a child, has decided to follow the path he wants to follow rather than the one other people want him to follow. The one main problem I had with this TED talk was that it was really long - Solomon rambles on for about twenty minutes, so make sure you have some free time if you want to watch this in one sitting. I would consider this, along with Hans Rosling's talk about statistics, to be the most memorable talk I have seen so far.

Link to Solomon's Talk

(NOTE: the talk is the second one down on the list. Sorry that I couldn't get a direct link to the talk, but this one is good enough)

Review 4: "The Best Stats You've Ever Seen" by Hans Rosling

As a whole, I really liked this talk, and I felt it presented a pretty strong argument. Basically, Rosling attempts to debunk the preconceived conceptions that global citizens believe. First, he explains how he gave a multiple choice quiz to some of his students about which of two countries had a higher child mortality rate. There were five questions on the quiz, and the students got an average of 1.8 correct. Rosling notes how chimpanzees would get 2.5 correct, on average, and then remarks that he gave the same quiz to professors, who scored an average of 2.4 - still less than the chimpanzees. This really is an important piece of evidence for Rosling, as it shows that humans generally have misconceptions about the world as a whole.
Rosling then backs up his initial statement by showing how the life expectancies and family sizes of countries has changed since the early 1960s. Based on Rosling's findings, it appears that countries with smaller family sizes have higher life expectancy rates. It's always been perceived that first-world countries have smaller families and higher life expectancies, whereas third-world countries have larger families and lower life expectancies. Rosling explains that, although this was true back in the 1960s, the data shows that third-world countries such as China have moved closer and closer to the first-world countries on both levels, which I find really interesting.
Rosling then looks to shoot down another popular theory, which is that richer people should send aid to only the poorest percentage of the population. Rosling shows that the top 20% of the population, when looking at income, gets 74% of the world's income. The bottom 20% gets only 2% of the world's income. This means that the middle 60% gets only 24% of the world's income - a very small amount. Rosling then explains that we shouldn't just focus on that bottom 20%, as the middle 60% also appears to need financial aid.
Following these two arguments, Rosling shows some other models, but I found the beginning of his talk more interesting than the end of the talk, so I'll only refer to the two models mentioned above for now. As a whole, I find that Rosling's argument is really strong. A vast majority of the globe really thinks wrongly about developing countries, which I find really interesting. Although this talk was made more than 10 years ago, I still feel that it accurately represents the feelings we have towards these third-world populations. We think that they have really low life expectancies and that only African countries are poor. Rosling's data proves that these theories are both wrong. I would recommend this talk to most people, as Rosling's enthusiasm, mixed with his strong arguments, make for a pretty strong talk.

Link to Rosling's talk

Review 3 - "Dangerous Memes" by Dan Dennett

When I first saw the name of this talk and the picture associated, I almost immediately thought, "What the heck is THIS?" It appeared to be an older gentleman doing an entire TED talk on memes, which I thought was almost certainly worth a look. Unfortunately (or fortunately, if you're not a fan of my frivolity), this talk was not actually about the Harambe/Pepe/Dat Boi type of meme. Dennett's definition of 'meme' is completely different from the more modern take on the word (granted, this TED talk was published in 2002, so the modern type of 'meme' likely did not exist yet). 

So, when Dennett is referring to a 'meme', he's talking about something completely different than what I would label a 'meme'. Dennett's version of a meme is sort of like a parasitic, toxic idea - something, positive or negative, that essentially takes over the minds of people around the world. One example of a meme in humans that Dennett talks about is the religion of Islam. Apparently, according to Dennett, the word 'Islam' directly means 'surrender' or 'submission of self-interest to the will of Allah'. Another more comical example is New Hampshire's state motto, which is "Live free or die". Essentially, these are ideas and ideals that a vast majority of the world would risk their lives for. Some other memes include Communism, justice, and truth - all ideas people have laid down their lives for. It's a strange concept, but it makes some sense. The fact that these ideas are essentially hijacking our brains and influencing some people to risk their lives simply for beliefs is really interesting. 

So, to sum up my thoughts on this TED talk, I was disappointed, but I also found it to be pretty eye-opening. I was hoping immensely that the talk would cover the pop-culture type of memes, but it unfortunately went on a completely different and unexpected path. My thoughts on Dennett are that he has a good sense of humor, but his voice is a little boring. I would say that, if you aren't into philosophy or psychology, you should give this talk a hard pass. However, if you are into philosophy or psychology, give this talk a try - it's a little long, but the concept of memes is interesting. Also,  from now on, I'll be putting a link to the talk along with a picture of the talk below my review.

Link to Dennett's talk

Review 2: "A Simple New Blood Test that Can Catch Cancer Early" by Jimmy Lin

Originally, I chose to listen to this talk because of my interest in biology. I find the subject of disease especially interesting, so when I first saw the headline "A Simple New Blood Test that Can Catch Cancer Early",  I was instantly intrigued.
In this TED talk, Jimmy Lin explains how we are beginning to 'win the war against cancer'. I found the beginning of the talk a little uninteresting. However, after a couple of minutes, Lin shows a picture of a melanoma patient before treatment, after treatment, and after the cancer returns. This was kind of a turning point of the talk, in my opinion. From that point forward, I was interested. Lin then talks about how he, among a large group of scientists, is working to detect cancers earlier. Stage 1 cancers are much easier to cure than other types of cancer, but stage 3 and 4 cancers make up a large portion of diagnoses. Then, Lin talks about how blood tests have been used to detect cancers up to 100 days earlier in some specific patients than when symptoms occur. Although this is definitely interesting and hope-inducing, there are some problems I have with this. First off, in order to detect cancers via blood, we would need to take blood samples quite often, which would be costly and largely ineffective, as the majority of samples would likely be healthy. Secondly, Lin only explains one example of how blood sampling can help detect cancer, meaning that it still may be an unreliable technique - 1 example cannot stand for every type of cancer.
Despite the fact that the talk was very interesting, there was one glaring issue to me. Lin seems to trip up a lot and make a lot of errors while talking. This makes the talk seem a little clunky at points. Along with this, you may need to use subtitles, as Lin has an accent which can be hard to understand at points, which isn't a fault with the talk, but just makes it a little bit harder to comprehend. In my personal opinion, the first talk I watched was less interesting than this one, but the orator was much better. I would recommend this talk for anyone who is interested in biology or diseases in general, but, if you have different interests, you should probably watch a different TED talk.

Review 1: "Why Work Doesn't Happen at Work" by Jason Fried

I originally chose to listen to this TED talk in particular for two main reasons. It's one of the more popular TED talks, and the idea is something that I find interesting and somewhat agreed with from the get-go. Fried begins the talk by explaining that a 'work day' really isn't a day of work, it's more of a series of 'work moments'. I completely agree with this. When you look back on your day, it's almost like you got nothing done. You need long stretches of time to do actual work, as well as quiet locations where distractions aren't common. I really relate with this. Usually, I just work in a large armchair at my house with no music on so that I can simply have peace and quiet.
Fried then relates work with sleep, as they're both phase-based events. In order to get to the deep stages of sleep, you have to go through the early ones. If you're interrupted in the middle of the night, you have to start over. That's similar to work, as if you're interrupted at the office (or school), you essentially have to restart the process to working towards productive work. Personally, I completely see what Fried is saying. Whenever I'm interrupted while in the middle of working, whether it be by hunger, a restroom break, or something else, I always find it hard to get back to work.
Following this, Fried then further explains distractions. He relates social media sites with smoke breaks - voluntary breaks where you choose to stop working. Fried believes that the two main distractions in the office are the M&Ms - the managers and the meetings. Managers simply interrupt people at the wrong time. Personally, I experience this sometimes in school. Whenever a teach or another student interrupts a session of deep thought or hard work, it's really hard to return to that state. Meetings are disruptive to all of the employees - they're all called together at a random time, likely when at least some of the employees are being productive. Again, I experience this a lot at school. Whenever we have some sort of meeting, it completely disrupts my train of thought. I see exactly where Fried is coming from.
Fried has three suggestions to improve productivity at the office. The first of these is by banning communication between employees. If nobody talks to each other, there are no distractions and a much larger amount of work gets done. A couple of quiet hours can be incredibly productive. I agree with this wholeheartedly. If you want more work to get done, communication will disrupt that flow. Banning communication, although it might seem harsh, seems like a useful alternative. A second proposal by Fried is email communication rather than active communication (i.e. tapping people on the shoulder). Although Fried believes that passive communication is something you can check voluntarily, I personally disagree with this. Although when this TED talk was first recorded (2010 - a full 7 years ago), messages may have been less disruptive, the fact that, whenever you receive a message on your phone, the phone vibrates or makes a noise, seems like an involuntary distraction, at least to me. Fried's last suggestion is to cancel meetings. He says that everything will be just fine, even if you don't make decisions.
Personally, I didn't love this TED talk, but I found it to be constructive and generally true to my personal beliefs. I would recommend it to those who are interested in improving their productivity or the productivity of others, but, although it is thought-provoking, this is probably not one of my favorite TED talks.