2016阿兰德波顿ted演讲稿

阿兰德波顿ted演讲稿为大家整理英伦才子作家阿兰德波顿在TED大舞台上的励志演讲，他说在人生路上不要放弃对成功的想象，在这个演讲中，阿兰德波顿陈述自己对成功的理解，下面是这篇阿兰德波顿ted演讲稿

阿兰德波顿ted演讲稿我们不该放弃对成功的想象

我经常对事业感到恐慌。

周日下午，晚霞洒满天空，我的理想和现实的差距却是这样残酷，令我沮丧的只想抱头痛哭。我提出这件事是因为，我认为不只有我这么感觉。

你可能不这么认为，但我感觉我们活在一个充满事业恐慌的时代，就在我们认为我们已经理解我们的人生和事业时，真实便来恐吓我们。

现在或许比以前更容易过上好生活，但却比以前更难保持冷静，或不为事业感到焦虑。今天我想要检视，我们对事业感到焦虑的一些原因，为何我们会变成事业焦虑的囚徒。 不时抱头痛哭，折磨人的因素之一是，我们身边的那些势利鬼。

对那些来访牛津大学的外国友人，我有一个坏消息，这里的人都很势利。有时候，英国以外的人会想象，势利是英国人特有的个性，来自那些乡间别墅和头衔爵位。

坏消息是，并不只是这样，势利是一个全球性的问题，我们是个全球性的组织，这是个全球性的问题，它确实存在。

势利是什么?势利是以一小部分的你，来判别你的全部价值，那就是势利。 今日最主要的势利，就是对职业的势利。

你在派对中不用一分钟就能体会到，当你被问到这个21世纪初，最有代表性的问题：你是做什么的?

你的答案将会决定对方接下来的反应，对方可能对你在场感到荣幸，或是开始看表，然后想个借口离开。

势利鬼的另一个极端，是你的母亲。不一定是你我的母亲，而是一个理想母亲的想象，一个永远义无反顾的爱你，不在乎你是否功成名就的人。

不幸地，大部分世人都不怀有这种母爱，大部分世人决定要花费多少时间，给予多少爱，不一定是浪漫的那种爱，虽然那也包括在内。

世人所愿意给我们的关爱、尊重，取决于我们的社会地位。这就是为什么我们如此在乎事业和成就，以及看重金钱和物质。

我们时常被告知我们处在一个物质挂帅的时代，我们都是贪婪的人。

我并不认为我们特别看重物质，而是活在一个物质能带来大量情感反馈的时代，我们想要的不是物质，而是背后的情感反馈。

这赋予奢侈品一个崭新的意义。下次你看到那些开着法拉利跑车的人，你不要想"这个人很贪婪"，而是"这是一个无比脆弱、急需爱的人"，也就是说，同情他们，不要鄙视他们。

还有一些其他的理由，使得我们更难获得平静。这有些矛盾，因为拥有自己的事业，是一件不错的事，但同时，人们也从未对自己的短暂一生有过这么高的期待。

这个世界用许多方法告诉我们，我们无所不能，我们不再受限于阶级，而是只要靠着努力就能攀上我们想到的高度。

这是个美丽的理想，出于一种生而平等的精神，我们基本上是平等的，没有任何明显的阶级存在。

这造成了一个严重的问题，这个问题是嫉妒。

嫉妒在今日是一种禁忌话题，但这个社会上最普遍的感受，便是嫉妒。嫉妒来自生而平等的精神。

这么说吧，我想在场的各位，或是观看这个影片的众位，很少有人会嫉妒英国女皇。虽然她比我们都更加富有，住在一个巨大的房子里，我们不会嫉妒她的原因是她太怪异了。 她太怪了，我们无法想象自己与她扯上关系，她的语调令人发噱，来自一个奇怪的地方，我们与她毫无关联。当你认为你与这个人毫无关联时，你便不会嫉妒。

越是两个年龄、背景相近的人，越容易陷入嫉妒的苦海，所以千万避免去参加同学会。因为没有比同学，更强烈的参照点了。

今日社会的问题是，它把全世界变成了一个学校，每个人都穿着牛仔裤，每个人都一样。但并非如此，当生而平等的概念遇上现实中悬殊的不平等，巨大的压力就出现了。 今日你变得像比尔·盖茨一样，有钱又出名的机会，大概就跟你在十七世纪，成为法国贵族一样困难。但重点是，感觉却差别很大。

今日的杂志和其它媒体让我们感觉，只要你有冲劲、对科技有一些新颖的想法，再加上一个车库，你就可以踏上比尔的道路。

我们可以从书店中感受到这些问题所造成的后果，当你像我一样到大型书店里的自我帮助书籍类。

如果你分析现在出版的这些自我帮助类书籍，它们基本上分成两种，第一种告诉你"你做得到!你能成功!没有不可能!"

另外一种则教导你如何处理，我们婉转地称呼为"缺乏自信"，或是直接了当地称为"自我感觉极差"。

这两者中间有着绝对的关联，一个告诉人们他们无所不能的社会，和缺乏自信有着绝对的关联。

另一件好事也会带来坏影响的例子，还有一些其它原因造成我们对事业，对我们在世上的地位感到前所未有的焦虑，再一次地，它也和好的概念有关，这个好概念叫做"功绩主义"。

现在，无论是左倾还是右倾的政治人物，都同意"功绩主义"是个好事。我们应该尽力让我们的社会崇尚"功绩主义"，换句话说，一个崇尚"功绩主义"的社会是什么样的呢? 一个崇尚功绩主义的社会相信，如果你有才能、精力和技术，你就会飞黄腾达，没有什么能阻止你，这是个美好的想法。

问题是，如果你打从心里相信，那些在社会顶层的人都是精英，同时你也暗示着，以一种残忍的方法，相信那些在社会底层的人，天生就该在社会底层，换句话说，你在社会的地位不是偶然，而都是你配得的，这种想法让失败变得更残忍。

你知道，在中世纪的英国，但你遇见一个非常穷苦的人，你会认为他"不走运"，直接地说，那些不被幸运之神眷顾的人。

不幸的人，尤其在美国，如果人们遇见一些社会底层的人，他们被刻薄地形容成"失败者"。

"不走运"和"失败者"中间有很大的差别，这表现了四百年的社会演变，我们对谁该为人生负责看法的改变，神不再掌握我们的命运，我们掌握自己的人生。

如果你做的很好，这是件令人愉快的事。相反的情况，就很令人沮丧。社会学家分析发现，这提高了自杀率。

追求个人主义的发达国家的自杀率，高过于世界上其它地方，原因是人们把发生在自己身上的事情，全当作自己的责任，人们拥有成功，也拥有失败。

有什么方法可以解决刚才提到的这些焦虑呢?是有的。我想提出几项，先说"功绩主义"，也就是相信每个人的地位忠实呈现他的能力，我认为这种想法太疯狂了。

我可以支持所有相信这个想法的，无论是左倾还是右倾的政治家，我同样相信功绩主义，但我认为一个完全彻底以能力取决地位的社会，是个不可能的梦想。

这种我们能创造一个每个人的能力都忠实地被分级，好的就到顶端，坏的就到底部，而且保证过程毫无差错，这是不可能的。

这世上有太多偶然的契机，不同的机运，出身，疾病，从天而降的意外等等，我们却无法将这些因素分级，无法完全忠实的将人分级。

我很喜欢圣奥古斯丁在"上帝之城"里的一句话，他说"以社会地位评价人是一种罪"。 用现在的口吻说，看一个人的名片来决定你是否要和他交谈是罪。

对圣奥古斯丁来说，人的价值不在他的社会地位，只有神可以决定一个人的价值，他将在天使围绕、小号奏鸣，天空破开的世界末日给于最后审判，如果你是像我一样的世俗论者，这想法太疯狂了，但这想法有它的价值。

换句话说，最好在你开口评论他人之前悬崖勒马，你很有可能不知道他人的真正价值，这是不可测的。

于是，我们不该为人下定论，还有另一种慰藉，当我们想象人生中的失败，我们恐惧的原因并不只是失去收入，失去地位，我们害怕的是他人的评论和嘲笑，它的确存在。 今日世界上最会嘲笑人的便是报纸。每天我们打开报纸，都能看到那些把生活搞砸的人，他们与错误对象共枕，使用错误药物，通过错误法案种种，让人在茶余饭后拿来挖苦的新闻。

这些人失败了，我们称他们为"失败者"，还有其它做法吗?西方传统给了我们一个光荣的选择，就是"悲剧"。

悲剧的艺术来自古希腊。西元前五世纪，这是一个专属于描绘人类失败过程的艺术，同时也加入某种程度的同情。

在现代生活并不常给于同情时，几年前我思考着这件事，我去见"周日运动期刊"，如果你还不认识这个小报，我建议你也别去读，我去找他们聊聊，西方艺术中最伟大的几个悲剧故事，我想知道他们会如何露骨地以新闻的方式，在周日下午的新闻台上，呈现这些经典悲剧故事。

我谈到他们从未耳闻的《奥赛罗》，他们啧啧称奇。我要求他们以奥赛罗的故事写一句头条，他们写道"移民因爱生恨，刺杀参议员之女"大头条，我告诉他们《包法利夫人》的故事，他们再一次感到惊异万分，写道"不伦购物狂信用欺诈，出墙妇女吞砒霜"。 我最喜欢的是，这些记者真的很有才，我最喜欢的是索福克勒斯的《俄狄浦斯王》，"与母亲的盲目性爱"。

如果同情心的一个极端，是这些八卦小报。另一个极端便是悲剧和悲剧艺术，我想说的是或许我们该从悲剧艺术中学习。

你不会说汉姆雷特是个失败者，虽然他失败了，他却不是一个失败者。我想这就是悲剧所要告诉我们的，也是我认为非常重要的一点。

现代社会让我们焦虑的另一个缘故是，我们除了人类以外没有其它重心。

我们是从古至今的第一个无神社会，除了我们自己以外，我们不膜拜任何事物，我们对自己评价极高，为什么不呢，我们把人送上月球，达成了许多不可思议的事，我们习惯崇拜自己。

我们的英雄是人类，这是一个崭新的情况。历史中大部分的社会重心都是敬拜一位人类以外的灵体，神，自然力、宇宙，总之是人类以外的什么。

我们逐渐失去了这种习惯，我想这也是我们越来越被大自然吸引的原因，虽然我们时常显示是为了健康，但我不这么认为，我认为是为了逃避人群的蚁丘，逃避人们的疯狂竞争，我们的戏剧化。

这便是为什么我们如此喜欢看海、观赏冰山，从外太空观赏地球等等，我们希望重新和那些"非人类"的事物有所连接，那对我们来说很重要。

我一直在谈论成功和失败。成功的有趣之处是，我们时常以为我们知道成功是什么，如果我现在说，这个屏幕后面站着一个非常成功的人，你心里马上就会产生一些想法。你会想，这个人可能很有钱，在某些领域赫赫有名。

我对成功的理解是——首先，我是一个对成功非常有兴趣的人，我想要成功，我总是想着"要怎样我才能更成功?"，但当我渐渐长大，我越来越疑惑，究竟什么是"成功"的真正意义。

我对成功有一些观察，你不可能在所有事情上成功。我们常听到有关工作和休闲的平衡，鬼话。你不可能全部拥有。你就是不能。

所有对成功的想象，必须承认他们同时也失去了一些东西，放弃了一些东西。我想一个智者能接受，如我所说，总是有什么是我们得不到的。

常常，我们对一个成功人生的想象，不是来自我们自己，而是来自他人。

如果你是个男人，你会以父亲做榜样，如果你是个女人，你会以母亲做榜样，精神分析已经重复说了80年，但很少有人真正听进去。但我的确相信这件事。

我们也会从电视、广告，各样的市场宣传中得到我们对成功的想象。这些东西影响了我们，对我们自己的看法、我们想要什么。

当我们听说银行业是个受人尊敬的行业，许多人便加入银行业，当银行业不再受人尊敬，我们便对银行业失去兴趣，我们很能接受建议。

我想说的是，我们不该放弃，我们对成功的想象，但必须确定那些都是我们自己想要的，我们应该专注于我们自己的目标，确定这目标是我们真正想要的，确定这个梦想蓝图出自自己笔下。

因为得不到自己想要的已经够糟糕了，更糟糕的是，在人生旅程的终点，发觉你所追求的从来就不是你真正想要的。

我必须在这里做个总结，但我真正想说的是，成功是必要的，但请接受自己怪异的想法，朝着自己对成功的定义出发，确定我们对成功的定义都是出于自己的真心，非常谢谢各位。

阿兰·德波顿简介：

阿兰·德波顿，英伦才子型作家，通晓英、法、德、西班牙数种语言，深得欧洲人文传统之精髓。他左手小说，右手散文，在文学、艺术、哲学、评论中自由进退。著有《爱情笔记》、《拥抱似水年华》等。

他以敏锐的视角观察当今社会的喧嚣与浮躁，以清透有力的言语剖析时下青年人的焦虑与渴望，让你得以梳理自己内心的真正想法。

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第二篇：ted 演讲稿

I have been teaching for a long time, and in doing so have acquired a body of knowledge about kids and learning that I really wish more people would understand about the potential of students. In 1931, my grandmother -- bottom left for you guys over here -- graduated from the eighth grade. She went to school to get the information because that's where the

information lived. It was in the books, it was inside the teacher's head, and she needed to go there to get the information, because that's how you learned. Fast-forward a generation: this is the one room schoolhouse, Oak Grove, where my father went to a one room schoolhouse. And he again had to travel to the school to get the information from the teacher, store it in the only portable memory he has, which is inside his own head, and take it with him, because that is how information was being transported from teacher to student and then used in the world. When I was a kid, we had a set of encyclopedias at my house. It was purchased the year I was born, and it was extraordinary, because I did not have to wait to go to the library to get to the information; the information was inside my house and it was awesome. This was different than either generation had

experienced before, and it changed the way I interacted with information even at just a small level. But the information was closer to me. I could get access to it. In the time that passes between when I was a kid in high school and when I started teaching, we really see the advent of the internet. Right about the time the internet gets going as an educational tool, I take off from Wisconsin and move to Kansas, small town Kansas, where I had an opportunity to teach in a lovely, small town rural Kansas school district, where I was teaching my favorite subject, American government. My first year -- super gung ho -- going to teach American government, loved political system. Kids in the 12th grade: not exactly all that enthusiastic about the American government system. Year two: learned a few things -- had to change my tactic. And I put in front of them an authentic experience that allowed them to learn for themselves. I didn't tell them what to do, or how to do it. I posed a problem in front of them, which was to put on an election forum for their own community. They produced fliers, they called offices, they checked schedules, they were meeting with secretaries, they produced an election forum booklet for the entire town to learn more about their candidates. They invited everyone into the school for an evening of conversation about government and politics and whether or not the streets were done well, and really had this robust experiential learning. The older teachers -- more experienced -- looked at me and went, "Oh, there she is. That's so cute. She's trying to get that done." (Laughter) "She doesn't know what she's in for." But I knew that the kids would show up. And I believed it. And

I told them every week what I expected out of them. And that night, all 90 kids -- dressed appropriately, doing their job, owning it. I had to just sit and watch. It was theirs. It was experiential. It was authentic. It meant something to them. And they will step up. From Kansas, I moved on to lovely Arizona, where I taught in Flagstaff for a number of years, this time with middle school students. Luckily I didn't have to teach them American government. Could teach them the more exciting topic of geography. Again, thrilled to learn. But what was interesting about this position I found myself in in Arizona, was I had this really extraordinarily eclectic group of kids to work with in a truly public school. And we got to have these moments where we would get these opportunities. And one opportunity was we got to go and meet Paul Rusesabagina, which is the gentleman that the movie "Hotel Rwanda" is based after. And he was going to speak at the high school next door to us. We could walk there; we didn't even have to pay for the buses. There was no expense cost. Perfect field trip. The problem then becomes how do you take seventh- and eighth-graders to a talk about genocide and deal with the subject in a way that is responsible and respectful, and they know what to do with it. And so we chose to look at Paul Rusesabagina as an example of a gentleman who singularly used his life to do something positive. I then challenged the kids to identify someone in their own life, or in their own story, or in their own world, that they could identify that had done a similar thing. I asked them to produce a little movie about it. It's the first time we'd done this. Nobody really knew how to make these little movies on the computer. But they were into it. And I asked them to put their own voice over it. It was the most awesome moment of revelation that when you ask kids to use their own voice and ask them to speak for themselves, what they're willing to share. The last question of the assignment is: how do you plan to use your life to positively impact other people? The things that kids will say when you ask them and take the time to listen is extraordinary. Fast-forward to Pennsylvania, where I find myself today. I teach at the Science Leadership Academy, which is a partnership school between the Franklin Institute and the school district of Philadelphia. We are a nine through 12 public school, but we do school quite differently. I moved there primarily to be part of a learning environment that validated the way that I knew that kids learned, and that really wanted to investigate what was possible when you are willing to let go of some of the paradigms of the past, of information scarcity when my grandmother was in school and when my father was in school and even when I was in school, and to a moment when we have information surplus. So what do you do when the information

is all around you? Why do you have kids come to school if they no longer have to come there to get the information? In Philadelphia we have a one-to-one laptop program, so the kids are bringing laptops with them everyday, taking them home, getting access to information. And here's the thing that you need to get comfortable with when you've given the tool to acquire information to students, is that you have to be comfortable with this idea of allowing kids to fail as part of the learning process. We deal right now in the educational landscape with an infatuation with the culture of one right answer that can be properly bubbled on the average multiple choice test, and I am here to share with you, it is not learning. That is the absolute wrong thing to ask, to tell kids to never be wrong. To ask them to always have the right answer doesn't allow them to learn. So we did this project, and this is one of the artifacts of the project. I almost never show them off because of the issue of the idea of failure. My students produced these info-graphics as a result of a unit that we decided to do at the end of the year responding to the oil spill. I asked them to take the examples that we were seeing of the info-graphics that existed in a lot of mass media, and take a look at what were the interesting components of it, and produce one for themselves from a different man-made disaster from American history. And they had certain criteria to do it. They were a little uncomfortable with it, because we'd never done this before, and they didn't know exactly how to do it. They can talk -- they're very smooth, and they can write very, very well, but asking them to communicate ideas in a different way was a little uncomfortable for them. But I gave them the room to just do the thing. Go create. Go figure it out. Let's see what we can do. And the student that persistently turns out the best visual product did not disappoint. This was done in like two or three days. And this is the work of the student that consistently did it. And when I sat the students down, I said, "Who's got the best one?" And they immediately went, "There it is." Didn't read anything. "There it is." And I said, "Well what makes it great?" And they're like, "Oh, the design's good, and he's using good color. And there's some ... " And they went through all that we processed out loud. And I said, "Go read it." And they're like, "Oh, that one wasn't so awesome." And then we went to another one -- it didn't have great visuals, but it had great information -- and spent an hour talking about the learning process, because it wasn't about whether or not it was perfect, or whether or not it was what I could create; it asked them to create for themselves. And it allowed them to fail, process, learn from. And when we do another round of this in my class this

year, they will do better this time. Because learning has to include an amount of failure, because failure is instructional in the process. There are a million pictures that I could click through here, and had to choose carefully -- this is one of my favorites -- of students learning, of what learning can look like in a landscape where we let go of the idea that kids have to come to school to get the information, but instead, ask them what they can do with it. Ask them really interesting questions. They will not disappoint. Ask them to go to places, to see things for themselves, to actually experience the learning, to play, to inquire. This is one of my favorite photos, because this was taken on Tuesday, when I asked the students to go to the polls. This is Robbie, and this was his first day of voting, and he wanted to share that with everybody and do that. But this is learning too, because we asked them to go out into real spaces. The main point is that, if we continue to look at education as if it's about coming to school to get the information and not about experiential learning, empowering student voice and embracing failure, we're missing the mark. And everything that everybody is talking about today isn't possible if we keep having an educational system that does not value these qualities, because we won't get there with a standardized test, and we won't get there with a culture of one right answer. We know how to do this better, and it's time to do better. (Applause)

stereotypically rigid

So I'm here to tell you that we have a problem with boys, and it's a serious problem with boys. Their culture isn't working in schools. And I'm going to share with you ways that we can think about overcoming that problem. First, I want to start by saying, this is a boy, and this is a girl. And

this is probably stereotypically what you think of as a boy and a girl. If I essentialize gender for you today, then you can dismiss what I have to say. So I'm not going to do that; I'm not interested in doing that. This is a different kind of boy and a different kind of girl. So the point here is that not all boys exist within these rigid boundaries of what we think of as boys and girls. And not all girls exist within those rigid boundaries of what we think of as girls. But, in fact, most boys tend to be a certain way, and most girls tend to be a certain way. And the point is that, for boys, the way that they exist and the culture that they embrace isn't working well in schools now. How do we know that? The 100 Girls Project tells us some really nice statistics. For example: For every 100 girls that are suspended from school, there are 250 boys that are suspended from school. For every 100 girls who are expelled from school, there are 335 boys who are expelled from school. For every 100 girls in special education, there are 217 boys. For every 100 girls with a learning disability, there are 276 boys. For every 100 girls with an emotional disturbance diagnosed, we have 324 boys. And by the way, all of these numbers are significantly higher if you happen to be black, if you happen to be poor, if you happen to exist in an overcrowded school. And if you are a boy, you're four times as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD -- attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Now there is another side to this. And it is important that we recognize that women still need help in school, that salaries are still significantly lower, even when controlled for job types, and that girls have continued to struggle in math and science for years. That's all true. Nothing about that prevents us from paying attention to the literacy needs of our boys between ages three and 13. And so we should. In fact, what we ought to do is take a page from their playbook剧本集, because the initiatives主动性，首创精神 and programs that have been set in place for women in science and engineering and mathematics are fantastic. They've done a lot of good for girls in these situations. And we ought to be thinking about how we can make that happen for boys too in their younger years. Even in their older years, what we find is that there's still a problem. When we look at the universities, 60 percent of baccalaureate 中学毕业会考degrees are going to women now, which is a significant shift. And in fact, university administrators are a little uncomfortable about the idea that we may be getting close to 70 percent female population in universities. This makes university administrators very nervous, because girls don't want to go to schools that don't have boys. And so we're starting to see the establishment of men centers and men studies to think

about how do we engage men in their experiences in the university. If you talk to faculty能力，才能，技巧，系。系。部；全体教职工，全体从业人员, they may say, "Ugh. Yeah, well, they're playing video games, and they're gambling online all night long, and they're playing World of Warcraft. And that's affecting their academic achievement." Guess what? Video games are not the cause. Video games are a symptom征兆. They were turned off a long time before they got here. So let's talk about why they got turned off when they were between the ages of three and 13. There are three reasons that I believe that boys are out of sync名词：同步 with the culture of schools today. The first is zero tolerance偏差，公差. Kindergarten teacher I know, her son donated all of his toys to her, and when he did, she had to go through and pull out all the little plastic guns. You can't have plastic knives and swords and axes and all that kind of thing in a kindergarten classroom. What is it that we're afraid that this young man is going to do with this gun? I mean, really. But here he stands as实际证明，遗嘱 testament to the fact that you can't roughhouse on the playground today. Now I'm not advocating for bullies. I'm not suggesting that we need to be allowing guns and knives into school. But when we say that an Eagle Scout in a high school classroom who has a locked parked car in the parking lot and a penknife in it has to be suspended from school, I think we may have gone a little too far with zero tolerance.

Another way that zero tolerance lives itself out is in the writing of boys. In a lot of classrooms today you're not allowed to write about anything that's violent. You're not allowed to write about anything that has to do with video games -- these topics are banned. Boy comes home from school, and he says, "I hate writing." "Why do you hate writing, son? What's wrong with writing?" "Now I have to write what she tells me to write." "Okay, what is she telling you to write?" "Poems. I have to write poems. And little moments in my life. I don't want to write that stuff." "All right. Well what do you want to write? What do you want to write about?" "I want to write about video games. I want to write about leveling-up. I want to write about this really interesting world. I want to write about a tornado that comes into our house and blows all the windows out and ruins all the furniture and kills everybody." "All right. Okay." You tell a teacher that, and they'll ask you, in all seriousness, "Should we send this child to the psychologist?" And the answer is no, he's just a boy. He's just a little boy. It's not okay to write these kinds of things in classrooms today. So that's the first reason: zero tolerance policies and the way they're lived out. The next reason that boys' cultures are out of sync with school cultures: there are fewer male teachers. Anybody who's over 15 doesn't know what this means, because in the last 10 years, the number of

elementary school classroom teachers has been cut in half. We went from 14 percent to seven percent. That means that 93 percent of the teachers that our young men get in elementary classrooms are women. Now what's the problem with this? Women are great. Yep, absolutely. But male role models for boys that say it's all right to be smart -- they've got dads, they've got pastors牧师, they've got Cub Scout leaders, but ultimately, six hours a day, five days a week, they're spending in a classroom. And most of those classrooms are not places where men exist. And so they say, I guess this really isn't a place for boys. This is a place for girls. And I'm not very good at this, so I guess I'd better go play video games or get into sports, or something like that, because I obviously don't belong here. Men don't belong here, that's pretty obvious.

So that may be a very direct way that we see it happen. But less directly, the lack of male presence in the culture -- you've got a teachers' lounge, and they're having a conversation about Joey and Johnny who beat each other up on the playground. "What are we going to do with these boys?" The answer to that question changes depending on who's sitting around that table. Are there men around that table? Are there moms who who've raised boys around that table? You'll see, the conversation changes depending upon who's sitting around the table. Third reason that boys are out of sync with school today: kindergarten is the old second grade, folks. We have a serious compression of the curriculum happening out there. When you're three, you better be able to write your name legibly易读, or else we'll consider it a developmental delay. By the time you're in first grade, you should be able to read paragraphs of text with maybe a picture, maybe not, in a book of maybe 25 to 30 pages. If you don't, we're probably going to be putting you into a Title 1 special reading program. And if you ask Title 1 teachers, they'll tell you: they've got about four or five boys for every girl that's in their program, in the elementary grades. The reason that this is a problem is because the message that boys are getting is "you need to do what the teacher asks you to do all the time." The teacher's salary depends on No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top and accountability and testing and all of this. So she has to figure out a way to get all these boys through this curriculum -- and girls. This compressed curriculum is bad for all active kids. And what happens is, she says, "Please, sit down, be quiet, do what you're told, follow the rules, manage your time, focus, be a girl." That's what she tells them. Indirectly, that's what she tells them. And so this is a very serious problem. Where is it coming from? It's coming from us. (Laughter) We want our babies to read when they are six months old. Have you seen the ads? We want to live in Lake Wobegon where every child is above average. But

what this does to our children is really not healthy. It's not developmentally appropriate, and it's particularly bad for boys. So what do we do? We need to meet them where they are. We need to put ourselves into boy culture. We need to change the mindset of acceptance in boys in elementary schools. More specifically, we can do some very specific things. We can design better games. Most of the educational games that are out there today are really flashcards. They're glorified drill and practice. They don't have the depth, the rich narrative that really engaging video games have, that the boys are really interested in. So we need to design better games. We need to talk to teachers and parents and school board members and politicians. We need to make sure that people see that we need more men in the classroom. We need to look carefully at our zero tolerance policies. Do they make sense? We need to think about how to uncompress this curriculum if we can, trying to bring boys back into a space that is comfortable for them. All of those conversations need to be happening. There are some great examples out there of schools -- the New York Times just talked about a school recently. A game designer from the New School put together a wonderful video gaming school. But it only treats a few kids. And so this isn't very scalable. We have to change the culture and the feelings that politicians and school board members and parents have about the way we accept and what we accept in our schools today. We have to find more money for game design. Because good games, really good games, cost money, and World of Warcraft has quite a budget. Most of the

educational games do not. Where we started: my colleagues -- Mike Petner, Shawn Vashaw, myself -- we started by trying to look at the teachers' attitudes and find out how do they really feel about gaming, what do they say about it. And we discovered that they talk about the kids in their school, who talk about gaming, in pretty demeaning ways. They say, "Oh, yeah. They're always talking about that stuff. They're talking about their little action figures and their little achievements or merit badges, or whatever it is that they get. And they're always talking about this stuff." And they say these things as if it's okay. But if it were your culture, think of how that might feel. It's very uncomfortable to be on the receiving end of that kind of language. They're nervous about anything that has anything to do with violence because of the zero tolerance policies. They are sure that parents and administrators will never accept anything.

So we really need to think about looking at teacher attitudes and finding ways to change the attitudes so that teachers are much more open and accepting of boy cultures in their classrooms. Because, ultimately, if we don't, then we're going to have boys who leave elementary school saying,

"Well I guess that was just a place for girls; it wasn't for me. So I've got to do gaming, or I've got to do sports." If we change these things, if we pay attention to these things, and we re-engage boys in their learning, they will leave the elementary schools saying, "I'm smart." Thank you. (Applause)

aimee mullins the opportunity of adversit 不幸的机会

I'd like to share with you a discovery that I made a few months ago while writing an article for Italian Wired. I always keep my thesaurus handy whenever I'm writing anything, but I'd already finished editing the piece, and I realized that I had never once in my life looked up the word "disabled" to see what I'd find. Let me read you the entry. "Disabled," adjective: "crippled, helpless, useless, wrecked, stalled, maimed, wounded, mangled, lame, mutilated, rundown, worn-out, weakened, impotent, castrated, paralyzed, handicapped, senile, decrepit, laid-up, done-up, done-for, done-in cracked-up, counted-out; see also hurt, useless and weak. Antonyms, healthy, strong, capable." I was reading this list out loud to a friend and at first was laughing, it was so ludicrous, but I just I'd just gotten past mangled, and my voice broke, and I had to stop and collect myself from the emotional shock and impact that the assault from these words unleashed. You know, of course this is my raggedy old thesaurus. I'm thinking this must be an ancient print date, right. But, in fact, the print date was the early 1980's, when I would have been starting primary school and forming an understanding of myself outside the family unit and as related to the other kids and the world around me. And, needless to say, thank God I wasn't using a thesaurus back then. I mean, from this entry, it would seem that I was born into a world that perceived someone like me to have nothing positive whatsoever going for them, when, in fact, today I'm celebrated for the opportunities and adventures my life has procured. So, I immediately went to look up the 2009 online edition, expecting to find a revision worth noting. Here's the updated version of this entry. Unfortunately, it's not much better. I find the last two words under "Near Antonyms" particularly unsettling, "whole" and "wholesome."

So, it's not just about the words. It's what we believe about people when we name them with these words. It's about the values behind the words, and how we construct those values. Our language affects our thinking and how we view the world and how we view other people. In fact, many ancient societies, including the Greeks and the Romans, believed that to utter a curse verbally was so powerful, because to say the thing out loud brought it into existence. So, what reality do we want to call into existence, a person who is limited, or a person who's empowered? By casually doing something as simple as naming a person, a child, we might be putting lids and casting shadows on their power. Wouldn't we want to open doors for them instead? One such person, who opened doors for me, was my childhood doctor at the

A.I. Dupont Institute in Wilmington, Delaware. His name is Dr. Pizzutillo. Italian American, whose name, apparently, was too difficult for most Americans to pronounce, so he went by Dr. P. And Dr. P always wore really colorful bow ties and had the very perfect disposition to work with children.

I loved almost everything about my time spent at this hospital, with the exception of my physical therapy sessions. I had to do what seemed like innumerable repetitions of exercises with these thick, elastic bands -- different colors -- you know, to help build up my leg muscles. And I hated these bands more than anything. I hated them, had names for them. I hated them. And, you know, I was already bargaining, as a five year-old child, with Dr. P to try to get out of doing these exercises, unsuccessfully, of course. And, one day, he came in to my session -- exhaustive and unforgiving, these sessions -- and he said to me, "Wow. Aimee, you are such a strong, powerful little girl, I think you're going to break one of those bands. When you do break it, I'm going to give you a hundred bucks." Now, of course, this was a simple ploy on Dr. P's part to get me to do the exercises I didn't want to do before the prospect of being the richest five year-old in the second floor ward, but what he effectively did for me was reshape an awful daily occurrence into a new and promising

experience for me. And I have to wonder today, to what extent his vision, and his declaration of me as a strong and powerful little girl, shaped my own view of myself as an inherently strong, powerful and athletic person well into the future.

This is an example of how adults in positions of power can ignite the power of a child. But, in the previous instances of those thesaurus entries, our language isn't allowing us to evolve into the reality that we would all want, the possibility of an individual to see themselves as capable.

Our language hasn't caught up with the changes in our society, many of which have been brought about by technology. Certainly, from a medical standpoint, my legs, laser surgery for vision impairment, titanium knee and hip replacements for aging bodies that are allowing people to more fully engage with their abilities, and move beyond the limits that nature has imposed on them, not to mention social networking platforms, allow people to self-identify, to claim their own descriptions of themselves, so they can go align with global groups of their own choosing. So, perhaps technology is revealing more clearly to us now what has always been a truth, that everyone has something rare and powerful to offer our society, and that the human ability to adapt is our greatest asset.

The human ability to adapt, it's an interesting thing, because people have continually wanted to talk to me about overcoming adversity, and I'm going to make an admission. This phrase never sat right with me, and I always felt uneasy trying to answer people's questions about it, and I think I'm starting to figure out why. Implicit in this phrase of overcoming adversity, is the idea that success, or happiness, is about emerging on the other side of a challenging experience unscathed or unmarked by the experience, as if my successes in life have come about from an ability to sidestep or circumnavigate the presumed pitfalls of a life with prosthetics, or what other people perceive as my disability. But, in fact, we are changed. We are marked, of course, by a challenge, whether physically, emotionally or both. And I am going to suggest that this is a good thing. Adversity isn't an obstacle that we need to get around in order to resume living our life. It's part of our life. And I tend to think of it like my shadow. Sometimes I see a lot of it, sometimes there's very little, but it's always with me. And, certainly, I'm not trying to diminish the impact, the weight, of a person's struggle. There is adversity and challenge in life, and it's all very real and relative to every single person, but the question isn't whether or not you're going to meet adversity, but how you're going to meet it. So, our responsibility is not simply shielding those we care for from adversity, but preparing them to meet it well. And we do a disservice to our kids when we make them feel that they're not equipped to adapt. There's an important difference and distinction between the objective medical fact of my being an amputee and the subjective societal opinion of whether or not I'm disabled. And, truthfully, the only real and consistent disability I've had to confront is the world ever thinking that I could be described by those definitions.

In our desire to protect those we care about by giving them the cold, hard truth about their medical prognosis, or, indeed, a prognosis on the expected quality of their life, we have to make sure that we don't put

the first brick in a wall that will actually disable someone. Perhaps the existing model of only looking at what is broken in you and how do we fix it, serves to be more disabling to the individual than the pathology itself. By not treating the wholeness of a person, by not acknowledging their potency, we are creating another ill on top of whatever natural struggle they might have. We are effectively grading someone's worth to our community. So we need to see through the pathology and into the range of human capability. And, most importantly, there's a partnership between those perceived deficiencies and our greatest creative ability. So it's not about devaluing, or negating, these more trying times as something we want to avoid or sweep under the rug, but instead to find those opportunities wrapped in the adversity. So maybe the idea I want to put out there is, not so much overcoming adversity, as it is opening ourselves up to it, embracing it, grappling with it, to use a wrestling term, maybe even dancing with it. And, perhaps, if we see adversity as natural, consistent and useful, we're less burdened by the presence of it. This year we celebrate 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, and it was 150 years ago, when writing about evolution, that Darwin illustrated, I think, a truth about the human character. To paraphrase, it's not the strongest of the species that survives, nor is it the most intelligent that survives, it is the one that is most adaptable to change. Conflict is the genesis of creation. From Darwin's work, amongst others, we can recognize that the human ability to survive and flourish is driven by the struggle of the human spirit through conflict into transformation. So, again, transformation, adaptation, is our greatest human skill. And, perhaps, until we're tested, we don't know what we're made of. Maybe that's what adversity gives us, a sense of self, a sense of our own power. So, we can give ourselves a gift. We can re-imagine adversity as something more than just tough times. Maybe we can see it as change. Adversity is just change that we haven't adapted ourselves to yet. I think the greatest adversity that we've created for ourselves is this idea of normalcy. Now, who's normal? There's no normal. There's common. There's typical. There's no normal. And would you want to meet that poor, beige person if they existed? (Laughter) I don't think so. If we can change this paradigm from one of achieving normalcy to one of possibility, or potency, to be even a little bit more dangerous, we can release the power of so many more children, and invite them to engage their rare and valuable abilities with the community. Anthropologists tell us that the one thing we as humans have always required of our community members is to be of use, to be able to contribute.

There's evidence that Neanderthals, 60,000 years ago, carried their elderly and those with serious physical injury, and, perhaps, because the life experience of survival of these people proved of value to the community: they didn't view these people as broken and useless; they were seen as rare and valuable. A few years ago, I was in a food market in the town where I grew up in that red zone in northeastern Pennsylvania, and I was standing over a bushel of tomatoes. It was summer time. I had shorts on. I hear this guy, his voice behind me say, "Well, if it isn't Aimee Mullins." And I turn around, and it's this older man. I have no idea who he is. And I said, "I'm sorry, sir, have we met? I don't remember meeting you." He said, "Well, you wouldn't remember meeting me. I mean, when we met I was delivering you from your mother's womb." (Laughter) Oh, that guy. And, but of course, actually, it did click. This man was Dr. Kean, a man I had only known about through my mother's stories of that day, because, of course, typical fashion, I arrived late for my birthday by two weeks. An so, my mother's prenatal physician had gone on vacation, so the man who delivered me was a complete stranger to my parents. And, because I was born without the fibula bone, and had feet turned in, and a few toes in this foot, and a few toes in that, he had to be the bearer, this stranger had to be the bearer of bad news.

He said to me, "I had to give this prognosis to your parents that you would never walk, and you would never have the kind of mobility that other kids have or any kind of life of independence, and you've been making liar out of me ever since." (Laughter) (Applause) The extraordinary thing is that he said he had saved newspaper clipping throughout my whole childhood, whether it was winning a second grade spelling bee, marching with the Girl Scouts, you know, the Halloween parade, winning my college scholarship, or any of my sports victories, and he was using it, and integrating it into teaching resident students, med students from Hahnemann medical school and Hershey medical school. And he called this part of the course the X Factor, the potential of the human will. No prognosis can account for how powerful this could be as a determinant in the quality of someone's life. And Dr. Kean went on to tell me, he said, "In my experience, unless repeatedly told otherwise, and even if given a modicum of support, if left to their own devices, a child will achieve."

See, Dr. Kean made that shift in thinking. He understood that there's a difference between the medical condition and what someone might do with it. And there's been a shift in my thinking over time, in that, if you had asked me at 15 years old, if I would have traded prosthetics for flesh and bone legs, I wouldn't have hesitated for a second. I aspired to that kind of normalcy back then. If you ask me today, I'm not so sure. And it's because of the experiences I've had with them, not in spite of the

experiences I've had with them. And, perhaps, this shift in me has happened because I've been exposed to more people who have opened doors for me than those who have put lids and cast shadows on me. See, all you really need is one person to show you the epiphany of your own power, and you're off. If you can hand somebody the key to their own power, the human spirit is so receptive, if you can do that and open a door for someone at a crucial moment, you are educating them in the best sense. You're teaching them to open doors for themselves. In fact, the exact meaning of the word educate comes from the root word "educe." It means, to bring forth what is within, to bring out potential. So again, which potential do we want to bring out?

There was a case study done in 1960's Britain, when they were moving from grammar schools to comprehensive schools. It's called the streaming trials. We call it tracking here in the States. It's separating students from A, B, C, D and so on. And the A students get the tougher curriculum, the best teachers, etc. Well, they took, over a three month period, D level students, gave them A's, told them they were A's, told them they were bright. And at the end of this three month period, they were performing at A level.

And, of course, the heartbreaking, flip side of this study, is that they took the A students and told them they were D's. And that's what happened at the end of that three month period. Those who were still around in school, besides the people who had dropped out. A crucial part of this case study was that the teachers were duped too. The teachers didn't know a switch had been made. They were simply told these are the A students, these are the D students. And that's how they went about teaching them and treating them. So, I think that the only true disability is a crushed spirit, a spirit that's been crushed doesn't have hope. It doesn't see beauty. It no longer has our natural, childlike curiosity and our innate ability to imagine. If instead, we can bolster a human spirit to keep hope, to see beauty in themselves and others, to be curious and imaginative, then we are truly using our power well. When a spirit has those qualities, we are able to create new realities and new ways of being.

I'd like to leave you with a poem by a fourteenth-century Persian poet named Hafiz that my friend, Jacques Dembois told me about. And the poem is called "The God Who Only Knows Four Words." "Every child has known God, not the God of names, not the God of don'ts, but the God who only knows four words and keeps repeating them, saying, come dance with me" Come dance with me. Thank you. (Applause)

艾米?穆林斯谈跑步 Cheryl: Aimee and I thought -- Hi, Aimee. Aimee Mullins: Hi

Cheryl: Aimee and I thought we'd just talk a little bit, and I wanted her to tell all of you what makes her a distinctive athlete. AM: Well, for those of you who have seen the picture in the little bio, it might have given it away. I'm a double amputee, and I was born without fibulas in both legs. I was amputated at age one, and I've been running like hell ever since, all over the place. Cheryl: Well, why don't you tell them, like, how you got to Georgetown? Why don't we start there? AM: I'm a senior in Georgetown in the Foreign Service program. I won a full academic scholarship out of high school. They pick three students out of the nation every year to get involved in international affairs, and so I won a full ride to Georgetown and I've been there for four years. Love it. Cheryl: When Aimee got there, she decided that she's, kind of, curious about track and field, so she decided to call someone and start asking about it. So, why don't you tell that story? AM: Yeah. Well, I guess I've always been involved in sports. I played softball for five years growing up. I skied competitively throughout high school, and I got a little restless in college because I wasn't doing anything for about a year or two sports-wise. And I'd never competed on a disabled level, you know. I'd always competed against other able-bodied athletes. That's all I'd ever known. In fact, I'd never even met another amputee until I was 17. And I heard, you know, that they do these track meets with all disabled runners, and I figured, oh, I don't know about

this, but before I judge it, let me go see what it's all about. So, I booked myself a flight to Boston in '95, 19 years old, and definitely the dark horse candidate at this race. I'd never done it before. I went out on a gravel track a couple of weeks before this meet to see how far I could run, and about 50 meters was enough for me, panting and heaving. And I had these legs that were made of, like, a wood and plastic compound, attached with Velcro straps -- big, thick, five-ply wool socks on -- you know, not the most comfortable things, but all I'd ever known.

And I'm up there in Boston against people wearing legs made of all things carbon graphite and, you know, shock absorbers in them and all sorts of things, and they're all looking at me like, okay, we know who's not going to win this race, you know. And, I mean, I went up there expecting -- I don't know what I was expecting -- but, you know, when I saw a man who was missing an entire leg go up to the high jump, hop on one leg to the high jump and clear it at six feet, two inches ... Dan O'Brien jumped 5'11" in '96 in Atlanta, I mean, if it just gives you a comparison of -- these are, you know, truly accomplished athletes without qualifying that word "athlete." And so I decided to give this a shot and, you know, heart pounding, I ran my first race, and I beat the national record-holder by three hundredths of a second and became the new national record-holder on my first tryout. And, you know, people said that, "Aimee, you know, you've got speed -- you've got natural speed -- but you don't have any skill or finesse going down that track. You were all over the place. We all saw how hard you were working." And so I decided to call the track coach at Georgetown. And I thank god I didn't know just how huge this man is in the track and field world. He's coached five Olympians and, you know, the man's office is lined from floor to ceiling with All America certificates, you know, of all these athletes he's coached, and just a rather intimidating figure. And I called him up and said, "Listen, I ran one race and I won, and ... (Laughter) I want to see if I can, you know -- I need to just see if I can sit in on some of your practices, see what drills you do and whatever." That's all I wanted -- just two practices. Can I just sit in and see what you do? And he said, "Well, we should meet first, before we decide anything." You know, he's thinking, "What am I getting myself into?" So, I met the man, walked in his office, and saw these posters and magazine covers of people he's coached. And we sat and we got talking, and it turned out to be a great partnership because he'd never coached a disabled athlete, so therefore he had no preconceived notions of what I was or wasn't capable

of, and I'd never been coached before, so this was, like, here we go -- let's start on this trip.

So he started giving me four days a week of his lunch break, his free time, that I would come up to the track and train with him. So that's how I met Frank. But that was fall of '95, and then, by the winter rolling around, he said, "You know, you're good enough. You can run on our women's track team here." And I said, "No, come on." And he said, "No, no, really. You can. You can run with our women's track team." So spring of 1996, with my goal of making the U.S. Paralympic team that May coming up full speed, I joined the women's track team. And no disabled person had ever done that -- run at a collegiate level. So I don't know, it started to become an interesting mix.

Cheryl: Well, why don't you tell them, like -- on your way to the Olympics -- but a couple of memorable events happened at Georgetown. Why don't you just tell them? AM: Yes, well, you know, I'd won everything as far as the disabled meets everything I competed in -- and, you know, training in Georgetown and knowing that I was going to have to get used to seeing the backs of all these women's shirts -- you know, I'm running against the next Flo-Jo -- and they're all looking at me, like, Hmm, what is, you know, what's going on here? And, you know, putting on my Georgetown uniform and going out there and knowing that, you know, in order to become better -- and I'm already the best in the country -- you know, you have to train with people who are inherently better than you. And I went out there and made it to the Big East which was, sort of, the championship race at the end of the season, and really, really hot. And it's the first -- I had just gotten these new sprinting legs that you see in that bio -- and I didn't realize at that time that, you know, the amount of sweating that I would be doing in the sock, it actually acted like a lubricant and I'd be, kind of, pistoning in the socket. And at about 85 meters of my 100 meters sprint, in all my glory, I came out of my leg. Like, I almost came out of it, in front of, like, 5,000 people. And I, I mean, just mortified, and -- because I was signed up for the 200, you know, which went off in a half hour. (Laughter) I went to my coach. I'm ... "Please, don't make me do this." I can't do this in front of all those people. My legs will come off. And if it came off at 85 there's no way I'm going 200 meters. And he just sat there like this. And, you know, my pleas fell on deaf ears -- thank god -- because he was, like -- you know, the man's from Brooklyn -- he's a big man --

he says, "Aimee, so what if your leg falls off? You pick it up, you put the damn thing back on, and finish the goddamn race!" (Applause) And I did. So, you know, it, sort of, he kept me in line. He kept me on the right track. Cheryl: So, then Aimee makes it to the 1996 Paralympics, and she's all excited. Her family's coming down -- it's a big deal. She's now -- two years you've been running? AM: No, a year. Cheryl: A year. And why don't you tell them what happened right before you go run your race? AM: Okay, well, Atlanta. The Paralympics, just for a little bit of

clarification, are the Olympics for people with physical disabilities -- amputees, persons with cerebral palsy, and wheelchair athletes -- as opposed the the Special Olympics which deals with people with mental disabilities. So, here we are, like, a week after the Olympics, and down at Atlanta, and I'm just blown away by the fact that, you know, just a year ago I got out on a gravel track and couldn't run 50 meters. And so, here I am -- never lost. I set new records at the U.S. Nationals -- the Olympic trials -- that May, and was just, you know, sure that I was coming home with the gold. I was also the only, what they call, bilateral BK -- below the knee. I was the only woman who would be doing the long jump. I had just done the long jump, and a guy who was missing two legs came up to me and says, "How do you do that? You know, we're supposed to have a planar foot, so we can't get off on the springboard." I said, "Well, I just did it. No one told me that." So, it's funny -- I'm three inches within the world record -- and kept on from that point, you know, so I'm signed up in the long jump -- signed up? -- no, I made it for the long jump and the 100 meter. And I'm sure of it, you know. I made the front page of my hometown paper that I delivered for six years, you know. It was, like, this is my time for shine. And we're at the warm-up stadium -- trainee warm-up track, which is a few blocks away from the Olympic stadium. And these legs that I was on -- which I'll take out right now. I was the first person in the world on these legs -- I was the guinea pig -- and, I'm telling you, this was, like, talk about a tourist attraction.

Everyone was taking pictures of, "What is this girl running on?" And I'm always looking around, like, where is my competition? It's my first international meet. I tried to get out of anybody I could, you know, who,

what kind of, you know, who'm I running against here? "Oh, Aimee, we'll have to get back to you on that one." I wanted to find out times. "Don't worry, you're, you know, you're doing great." This is 20 minutes before my race in the Olympic stadium, and they post the heat sheets. And I go over and look. And my fastest time, which was world record, was 15.77. Then I'm looking -- the next lane, lane two, is 12.8. Lane three is 12.5. Lane 4 is 12.2. I said, "What's going on?" And they shove us all into the shuttle bus, and all the women there are missing a hand. (Laughter)

So, I'm just, like -- And their all looking at me like which one of these is not like the other, you know? I'm sitting there, like, "Oh, my god. Oh, my god." You know, I'd never lost anything, like, whether it would be the scholarship or, you know, I'd won five golds when I skied. And everything, I came in first. And Georgetown, you know, that was great. I was losing, but it was the best training because this was Atlanta. Here we are, like, crème de la crème, and there is no doubt about it, that I'm going to lose big. And, you know, I just thinking, "Oh, my god, my whole family, you know, got in a van and drove down here from Pennsylvania." And, you know, I was the only female U.S. sprinter. So, you know, they call us out and, you know, "Ladies, you have one minute." And when I was putting my blocks in and just feeling horrified because there was just this murmur coming over the crowd, like, the ones who are close enough to the starting line to see. And I'm like, "I know! Look! you know. This isn't right." And I'm thinking that's my last card to play here, is, at least, you know, if I'm not going to beat these girls I'm going to mess their heads a little, okay, you know? (Laughter)

I mean, it was definitely the Rocky IV sensation of me versus Germany and, you know, everyone else -- Estonia and Poland -- was in this heat. And, you know, the gun went off, and all I remember was, you know, finishing last and, you know, fighting back tears of frustration and incredible, incredible, this feeling of just being overwhelmed. And I had to think about why did I do this, you know, if I had won everything, and it was, like, what was the point? All this training, and I transformed my life. I became a collegiate athlete, you know. I became an Olympic athlete. And it made me really think about how, you know, the achievement was getting there. I mean, the fact that I set my sight just a year and three months before that on becoming an Olympic athlete and saying, you know, here's my life going in this direction, and I want to take it here for a while, and just seeing how far I could push it.

And the fact that I asked for help -- how many people jumped on board? How many people gave of their time and their expertise, you know, and their patience, you know, to deal with me? And that was, like, this collective glory -- that there was, you know, 50 people behind me that had joined in this incredible experience of going to Atlanta. So, I mean, it's, I apply this sort of philosophy now to everything I do about, like, this, you know, sitting back and realizing the progression, like, how far you've come at this day to this goal, you know. It's important to focus on a goal, I think, but, you know, also recognize the progression on the way there and how you've grown as a person, you know. That's the achievement, I think. That's the real achievement. Cheryl: Why don't you show them your legs? AM: Oh, sure. Cheryl: You know, show us more than one set of legs. AM: Well, these are my pretty legs. (Laughter)

No, these are my cosmetic legs, actually, and they're absolutely beautiful. You've got to come up and see them. There are hair follicles on them, and I can paint my toenails. And, seriously, like, I can wear heels. Like, you guys don't understand what that's like to be able to just go into a shoe store and buy whatever you want. Cheryl: You got to pick your height? AM: I got to pick my height, exactly. (Laughter) Patrick Ewing, who played for Georgetown in the '80s, comes back every summer. And I had incessant fun making fun of him in the training room because he'd come in with foot injuries. I'm like, "Get it off! Don't worry about it, you know. You can be eight feet tall. Just take them off." (Laughter) He didn't find it so humorous as I did, anyway. Okay, now, these are my sprinting legs, made of carbon graphite, like I said, and I've got to make sure I've got the right socket. No, I've got so many legs in here. These are -- do you want to hold that actually? That's another leg I have for, like, tennis and softball. It has a shock absorber in it so it, like, "Shhhh," makes this neat sound when you jump around on it. All right. And then this is the silicon thing that I roll over, the silicon sheath I roll over to keep it on which, when I sweat, you know, I'm pistoning out of it.

Cheryl: Are you a different height? AM: In these? Cheryl: In these. AM: I don't know. I don't think so. I don't think so. I may be a little taller. I actually can put both of them on.

Cheryl: She can't really stand on these legs. She has to be moving, so ... AM: Yeah, I definitely have to be moving, and balance is, sort of, a little bit of an art in them. But without having the silicon sock, I'm just going to try slip in it. And so, I run on these, and have shocked half the world on these. (Applause) These are supposed to simulate the actual form of a sprinter when they run. If you ever watch a sprinter, the ball of their foot is the only thing that ever hits the track, so when I stand in these legs, my hamstring and my glutes are contracted as I would be had I had feet and were standing on the ball of my feet. (Audience: Who made them?) AM: It's a company in San Diego called Flex-Foot. And I was a guinea pig and, as I hope to continue to be in every new form of prosthetic limbs that come out. But actually these, like I said, are still the actual prototype. I need to get some new ones because the last meet I was at, you know, it's like a big... It's come full circle.

Moderator: Aimee and the designer of them will be at TED Med 2, and we'll talk about the design of them. AM: Yes, we'll do that. Cheryl: Yes, there you go. AM: So, these are the sprint legs, and I can put my other... Cheryl: Can you tell about who designed your other legs? AM: Yes. These I got in a place called Bournemouth, England, about two hours south of London, and I'm the only person in the United States with these, which is a crime because they are so beautiful. And I don't even

mean, like, because of the toes and everything -- it's, you know, for me, while I'm such a serious athlete on the track, I want to be feminine off the track, and I think it's so important, you know, not to be limited in any capacity, whether it's, you know, your mobility or, you know, even fashion. I mean, I love the fact that I can go in anywhere and pick out what I want and the shoes I want, the skirts I want, and I'm hoping to try to bring these over here and make them accessible to a lot of people. They're also silicon. This is like a really basic, basic prosthetic limb under here. It's like a Barbie foot under this. (Laughter)

It is. I mean, it's just stuck in this position, so I have to wear a two-inch heel. And, I mean, it's really -- let me take this off so you can see it. I don't know how good you can see it, but, like, it really is. There's veins on the feet, and then my heel's, like, pink, you know, and my Achilles' tendon -- that moves a little bit. And it's really an amazing sort. I got them a year and two weeks ago. And this is just a silicon piece of skin. I mean, what happened was, two years ago this man in Belgium was saying, you know, god, if I can go to Madame Tussauds wax museum and see Jerry Hall replicated down to the color of her eyes, looking so real as if she breathed, why can't they build a limb for someone that looks like a leg, you know, or an arm, or a hand? I mean, they make ears for burn victims. They do amazing stuff with silicon.

Cheryl: Two weeks ago, Aimee was up for the Arthur Ashe award at the ESPYs. And she came into town and she rushed around and she said, "I have to buy some new shoes!" We're an hour before the ESPYs, and she thought she'd gotten a two-inch heel but she'd actually bought a three-inch heel. AM: And this poses a problem for me because it means I'm walking like that all night long.

Cheryl: For 45 minutes, we ha -- luckily the hotel was terrific. They got someone to come in and saw off the shoes. (Laughter) AM: I said to the receptionist, I mean, I am just harried, and Cheryl's at my side. I said, "Look, do you have anybody here who could help me because I have this problem?" You know, at first they were just going to write me off, like, look, you know: if you don't like your shoes, sorry. It's too late. "No, no, no, no. I've got these special feet, okay, that need a two-inch heel. I have a three-inch heel. I need a little bit off." Okay. You know, they didn't even want to go there. They didn't even want

to touch that one. They just did it. No, these legs are great. I'm doing, I'm actually going back in a couple of weeks to get some improvements. I want to get legs like these made for flat feet so I can wear sneakers because I can't with these ones. So... Moderator: That's it. Cheryl: That's Aimee Mullins. (Applause)

Lies, damned lies and statistics (about TEDTalks) If you go on the TED website, you can currently find there over a full week of TED Talk videos, over 1.3 million words of transcripts and millions of user ratings. And that's a huge amount of data. And it got me wondering: If you took all this data and put it through statistical analysis, could you reverse engineer a TED Talk? Could you create the ultimate TED Talk? (Applause) And also, could you create the worst possible TED Talk that they would still let you get away with? To find this out, I looked at three things. I looked at the topic that you should choose. I looked at how you should deliver it and the visuals onstage. Now, with the topic -- there's a whole range of topics you can choose, but you should choose wisely, because your topic strongly correlates with how users will react to your Talk. Now, to make this more concrete, let's look at the list of top 10 words that statistically stick out in the most favorite TED Talks and in the least favorite TED Talks. So if you came here to talk about how French coffee will spread happiness in our brains, that's a go. (Applause) Whereas, if you wanted to talk about your project involving oxygen, girls, aircraft -- actually, I would like to hear that talk, but statistics say it's not so good. Oh, well. If you generalize this, the most favorite TED Talks are those that feature topics we can connect with, both easily and deeply, such as happiness, our own body, food, emotions. And the more technical topics, such as architecture, materials and, strangely enough, men, those are not good topics to talk about. How should you deliver your Talk? TED is famous for keeping a very sharp eye on the clock, so they're going to hate me for revealing this, because, actually, you should talk as long as they will let you, because the most favorite TED Talks are, on average, over 50 percent longer than the least favorite ones. And this holds true for all ranking lists on TED.com except if you want to have a Talk that's beautiful, inspiring or funny. Then, you should be brief. But other than that, talk until they drag you off the stage.

(Laughter) Now, while -- (Applause) While you're pushing the clock, there's a few rules to obey. I found these rules out by comparing the statistics of four-word phrases that appear more often in the most favorite TED Talks, as opposed to the least favorite TED Talks. I'll give you three examples. First of all, I must, as a speaker, provide a service to the audience and talk about what I will give you, instead of saying what I can't have. Secondly, it's imperative that you do not cite the New York Times. (Laughter) And finally, it's okay for the speaker -- that's the good news -- to fake intellectual capacity. If I don't understand something, I can just say, "et cetera, et cetera." You'll all stay with me. It's perfectly fine. (Applause) Now, let's go to the visuals. The most obvious visual thing on stage is the speaker. And analysis shows, if you want to be among the most favorite TED speakers, you should let your hair grow a little bit longer than average, make sure you wear your glasses and be slightly more dressed-up than the average TED speaker. Slides are okay, though you might consider going for props. And now the most important thing, that is the mood onstage. Color plays a very important role. Color closely correlates with the ratings that Talks get on the website. (Applause) For example, fascinating Talks contain a statistically high amount of exactly this blue color, much more than the average TED Talk. Ingenious TED Talks, much more this green color, et cetera, et cetera. (Applause) Now, personally, I think I'm not the first one who has done this analysis, but I'll leave this to your good judgment.

So, now it's time to put it all together and design the ultimate TED Talk. Now, since this is TED Active, and I learned from my analysis that I should actually give you something, I will not impose the ultimate or worst TED Talk on you, but rather give you a tool to create your own. And I call this tool the TED Pad. (Laughter) And the TED Pad is a matrix of 100 specifically selected, highly curated sentences that you can easily piece together to get your own TED Talk. You only have to make one decision and that is: Are you going to use the white version for very good TED Talks, about creativity, human genius? Or are you going to go with a black version, which will allow you to create really bad TED Talks, mostly about blogs, politics and stuff? So, download it, and have fun with it. Now I hope you enjoy the session. I hope you enjoy designing your own ultimate and worst possible TED Talks. And I hope some of you will be inspired for next year to create this, which I really want to see. Thank you very much.

(Applause)