每天一小段英语（2）

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Over the last couple years, as I’ve done a small amount of Wait But Why-related public speaking, I’ve been able to slowly get over the fear. I’ve learned that if you just be yourself and talk like you normally do, it’s usually received well by the audience, even if you’re clearly nervous.

And that was all fine until August of 2015, when I was invited to do a TED Talk.

The issue is, a TED Talk is not a speaking gig. In a speaking gig, I stand in front of a group of people and say stuff. That’s not what a TED Talk is. A TED Talk is a widely-distributed short film, except the only actor is my face and the only plot is me saying words out of my face and the only choreographer is my nervous pacing and awkward arm-flailing, and instead of a bunch of cuts and different shots and a long editing process, there’s just one do-or-die take, with no second chances.

No, what? No. Obviously not. Who would

ever

agree to do something like that.

But here’s the problem: Who turns down TED? Not really an option, right? Let’s pause to go through some background:

TED actually started way back in 1984, founded by

Richard Saul Wurman

, as a small, Silicon Valley annual gathering. The name is an acronym for

Wurman’s intention for the focus of the conference: Technology, Entertainment, Design. Through the 1990s, the conference grew both in attendance and in the scope of its topics.

In 2002, media entrepreneur Chris Anderson bought TED from Wurman (through a non-profit he owns) and has run it ever since. He broadened TED’s

content focus to “ideas worth spreading,” and in 2006, TED began doing something that would launch the brand into the stratosphere—they put the

talks online.

I first heard of TED in 2008, when someone sent me Jill Bolte Taylor’s

amazing talk

about what she learned from the experience of having a stroke. You probably first heard of TED around the same time. And a few years later, almost everyone knew what a TED Talk was. Anderson describes TED’s

rise to global prominence like this:

这几年我做过几个有关

Wait But Why

的演讲，我慢慢地克服了恐惧，敢于演讲了。我认识到演讲的时候只要讲好自己的，像平常说话一样，这样的话就算你很紧张也很容易被观众接受。

这样演讲到了2015年8月份，我受邀参加TED演讲。

实际上，TED不是演讲类演出现场。在演出现场我是站在一群人前面说一些东西，TED不是这样，TED是一种范围广泛的小视频，唯一的演员是我的脸，情节只有我从脸上蹦出的话，我紧张地踱步，挥舞着胳膊作为舞蹈。没有暂停、不同角度的镜头，不需要很复杂的视频处理，只有去做或失败，没有第二种选择。

不做了？嗯，不做了。谁会接受这样的邀请呢。

这正是问题所在，谁拒绝过TED？这不是一个选择题。让我们停下来看看TED的背景资料。

1984年，

Richard Saul Wurman

创立了TED，当初它只是一个在硅谷的小型年度集会。TED是

Technology, Entertainment, Design

的首字缩略。1990年以后，TED的观众和话题范围逐渐扩大。

2002年，媒体企业家

Chris Anderson

通过自己的非盈利中介收购了TED并运行到现在。他把TED的主题扩展到“传播有价值的想法”，2006年TED走进互联网。

我第一次听说TED是在2008年，一个朋友分享给我一个视频，讲的是

Jill Bolte Taylor

在TED讲述她在中风时候的经历。你可能也是那时候听说的TED。从那之后，几乎每个人都知道TED是啥。

Anderson

这样描述TED的快速成长：

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