TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

Your number-one mission as a speaker is to take something that matters deeply to you and to rebuild it inside the minds of your listeners. We’ll call that something an idea.

Ants shape each other’s behavior by exchanging chemicals. We do it by standing in front of each other, peering into each other’s eyes, waving our hands and emitting strange sounds from our mouths. Human-to-human

Presentation literacy isn’t an optional extra for the few. It’s a core skill for the twenty-first century.

Knowledge can’t be pushed into a brain. It has to be pulled in.

We're strange creatures, we humans. At one level, we just want to eat, drink, play, and acquire more stuff. But life on the hedonic treadmill is ultimately dissatisfying. A beautiful remedy is to hop off it and instead begin pursuing an idea that's bigger than you are.

First there is the 10-second war: can you do something in your first moments on stage to ensure people’s eager attention while you set up your talk topic? Second is the 1-minute war: can you then use that first minute to ensure that they’re committed to coming on the full talk journey with you?

We live in an era where the best way to make a dent on the world may no longer be to write a letter to the editor or publish a book. It may be simply to stand up and say something . . . because both the words and the passion with which they are delivered can now spread across the world at warp speed.

Many people approach a talk thinking they will just outline their work or describe their organization or explore an issue. That’s not a great plan. The talk is likely to end up unfocused and without much impact.

El conocimiento no puede meterse a la fuerza en los cerebros ajenos. Debe hacerse entrar.

Go and work on that dream as long as it takes to achieve something worthwhile. And then humbly come and share what you’ve learned. Inspiration can’t be performed.

President Woodrow Wilson was once asked about how long it took him to prepare for a speech. He replied: That depends on the length of the speech. If it is a 10-minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; if it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week; if I can talk as long as I want to it requires no preparation at all. I am ready now.

If a boy with Albert Einstein's brain had been born in Germany in the dark ages, there would have been no scientific revolution emanating from him. If a girl with Marie Curie's mind had been born in a remote Indian village twenty years ago, today she'd probably be harvesting rice and struggling to raise her children.

Every field of knowledge is different, but they are all connected. And they often rhyme. This means that something in the way you describe your process may give me a crucial insight or catalyze a new thought in me. This is how ideas form when we spark off each other.

We discovered this when we invited the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman to TED. Known as the father of behavioral economics, he’s an extraordinary thinker with a toolkit of ideas that can change any worldview. We had originally asked him to speak in the traditional TED way. No lectern. Just stand on the stage, with some note cards if need be, and give the talk. But in rehearsal, it was clear that he was uncomfortable. He hadn’t been able to fully memorize the talk and so kept pausing and glancing down awkwardly to catch himself up. Finally I said to him, “Danny, you’ve given thousands of talks in your time. How are you most comfortable speaking?” He said he liked to put his computer on a lectern so that he could refer to his notes more readily. We tried that, and he relaxed immediately. But he was also looking down at the screen a little too much. The deal we struck was to give him the lectern in return for looking out at the audience as much as he could. And that’s exactly what he did. His excellent talk did not come across as a recited or read speech at all. It felt connected. And he said everything he wanted to say, with no awkwardness.

rehearsing the transitions is especially important. The audience needs to hear in your voice when you’re doubling down on an idea, versus when you’re changing subjects.

The central thesis of this book is that anyone who has an idea worth sharing is capable of giving a powerful talk. The only thing that truly matters in public speaking is not confidence, stage presence, or smooth talking. It’s having something worth saying.

The future is not yet written. We are all, collectively, in the process of writing it.

TED Talk by Julian Treasure called, “How to speak so that people want to listen.

six tools you can use: volume, pitch, pace, timbre, tone, and something called prosody,

Hans Rosling: The best stats you’ve ever seen.

you have the throughline, the talk content, and have woven together your own artful mix of connection, narration, explanation, persuasion, and revelation.

An initial tease Necessary background, context, and/or the invention story The demo itself (the more visual and dramatic the better, so long as you’re not faking it) The implications of the technology