演讲观点清晰，内容鼓舞人心。如今，演讲稿的应用越来越广泛，但是说到演讲稿的写作，你却毫无头绪吗？白话文为大家精心整理了9篇精彩的TED演讲。您的肯定和分享是对小编最大的鼓励。
我什至都没有注意到男人的手仍然举着，女人的手仍然举着，我们作为我们公司和我们组织的管理者有多善于看到男人的手比女性更能争取机会？”我们必须让女性坐在第二位：让你的伴侣成为真正的伴侣。我确信我们在劳动力方面取得的进步比在家庭中取得的进步更多数据很清楚地表明了这一点，如果一个女人和一个男人全职工作并且有了孩子，女人做的家务量是男人的两倍，女人做的育儿量是男人的三倍。所以她有三份工作或两份工作，而他只有一份。当有人需要更多时间在家时，你认为谁会辍学？造成这种情况的原因非常复杂，我没有时间去深究。而且我不知道不要认为周日看足球比赛和普遍的懒惰是原因。
大家好！我今天演讲的题目是《青春》
青春如流水，从指间流过。你无法抓住它或牢牢握住它。所以，青春是极其宝贵的，不能浪费。但亲爱的朋友们，请不要感叹青春的脆弱和易逝。她太有钱了。充满活力和令人兴奋。她可以支持你坚定自己的立场，承担好自己的责任，争取自己想要的生活。所以年轻的时候，我们应该趁青春旺季，草长莺飞，满怀激情，勇敢地面对生活，放飞自我，用逝去的青春去换取我们想要的明天。
你还记得刚来大学的日子吗？回想起来，那件事并不遥远，仿佛就在昨天，但再仔细想想，却又觉得那么遥远，仿佛已经是很久以前的事情了。回顾这一路，我欣慰的是高考后我的汗水没有白费，考上大学时的激动，还有离家后见到他们的激动。当然，也有过伤心失落的时候，或者悲伤失落的时候，因为学校里没有绿树成荫的小路，食堂阿姨的手艺不合我们的胃口，教室里的桌椅都是然而，当我们一起上课、吃饭、玩耍、开玩笑时，多余的胡茬已经悄然留下了岁月的痕迹。两年来，我们渐渐熟悉了逝去的青春，有了熟悉的笑脸和友善的亲情。言语可以称为人，可以称为家庭，也可以称为世界。慢慢地，那些小小的不满和沮丧，就被图书馆里的书香完全掩盖了。翻阅书页，学习充满了我们青春的每一个角落。看似如此简单琐碎，却依然努力勾画出我们多彩的青春。
此时，那些流年的场景也非常美丽。原来，拥有青春的我们是如此富有，因为年轻的时候，我们拥有资本，我们用资本来投资明天，投资下一个美丽的自己。想想自己的梦想，一步一步去实践，才能越走越远。放弃喊叫，学会低下头。我降低了身躯，学会了打坐。认清自己要走的路，学自己想学的专业。收拾几本书，收拾行囊，走在从左到右的知识路上，保持紧致的身材，只因追求学问的博大。握几支笔，弯曲双手，面朝里朝外画出一幅美丽的蓝图。沙沙作响，只为设计更美好的明天。花前月色下无甘甜，牡丹下不羡香。虽然单调，但我不会等到将来的某一天，用完的时候我会后悔自己的青春被浪费了。我们年轻，我们简单，我们用不合时宜的时间，纯粹酿造属于我们自己的舞酒。
亲爱的朋友们，不可否认，我们都曾经迷茫过。因为这样那样，我们曾沉迷过，悲伤过，矛盾过，愤怒过，莫名其妙过，但每一个夜晚过后，新的一天都如期而至，又有了改变和进步的一天，那么我们还有什么理由呢？继续愤怒、纵容……以至于浪费了我们宝贵的青春。青春虽然短暂，但无论时间多么短暂，我们都没有理由在生命中浪费它。我们要发挥青春的能量，承担人生的责任，奉献自己，奉献礼物，收获人生的财富，为我们在未来的岁月里提供成长和成熟的机会。所以同学，如果你还迷茫，就抛弃迷茫，把握人生航向，牢记“勤”字在前，坚持不懈地划桨，与大浪搏斗，扬帆人生。用我们的青春和生命奏响时代的强音，用我们的智慧和勇气扬起理想的风帆，打开成功的阀门，让美好的下一刻顺利流淌，谱写人生的精彩篇章。
我的演讲结束了，谢谢！
听着，我真的重新考虑了是否可以向像你们这样充满活力的观众谈论这个问题。然后我想起了格洛丽亚·斯泰纳姆的一句话，“真相会让你自由，但首先它会让你生气。” （笑声）那么——（笑声）
因此，考虑到这一点，我将开始尝试在这里做这些事情，并谈论 21 世纪的死亡。现在，毫无疑问，让你生气的第一件事是，事实上，我们所有人都将在 21 世纪死去。不会有任何例外。调查显示，显然，大约八分之一的人认为自己是不朽的，但是——（笑声）不幸的是，这不会发生。
当我做这个演讲时，在接下来的 10 分钟内，我的一亿个细胞将死亡，而在今天的过程中，我的 2,000 个脑细胞将死亡并且永远不会回来，所以你可以说死亡阅读过程在作品的早期就开始了。
无论如何，关于 21 世纪的死亡，我想说的第二件事除了会发生在每个人身上之外，就是对我们大多数人来说，它会像火车失事一样，除非我们采取一些措施尝试将这个过程从当前不可阻挡的轨迹中恢复过来。
所以就这样吧。这是事实。毫无疑问，这会让你生气，现在让我们看看是否可以让你自由。我不承诺任何事情。现在，正如您在简介中所听到的，我在重症监护室工作，我想我已经经历了重症监护室的鼎盛时期。这是一段旅程，伙计。这太棒了。我们有可以 ping 的机器。上面有很多。我们有一些巫术技术，我认为效果非常好，在我在重症监护室工作的这段时间里，澳大利亚男性的死亡率减半了，重症监护室已经有了一些东西与此有关。当然，我们使用的许多技术都与此有关。
所以我们取得了巨大的成功，我们有点沉迷于自己的成功，我们开始使用“拯救生命”这样的表达方式。我真的为这样做而向大家道歉，因为显然我们不这样做。我们所做的是延长人们的生命，延缓死亡，改变死亡方向，但严格来说，我们不能永久地拯救生命。
我在重症监护室工作的这段时间里，真正发生的事情是，我们在 70 年代、80 年代和 90 年代开始挽救生命的人们，现在正在死去。 21 世纪的疾病，我们不再像以前那样找到答案。
所以现在发生的事情是人们的死亡方式发生了巨大的转变，他们现在的大部分死亡方式并不像我们能做的那样顺从以前就像我在 80 年代和 90 年代这样做的时候一样。
所以我们有点陷入了这个困境，我们还没有真正与你们就现在真正发生的事情达成一致，现在是我们这样做的时候了。上世纪 90 年代末，当我遇到这个人时，我才意识到这一点。这个家伙叫吉姆，吉姆·史密斯，他长得像这样。我被叫到病房去看他。他的是那只小手。呼吸科医生叫我去病房看他。他说：“看，下面有一个人。他得了肺炎，看起来需要重症监护。他女儿在这里，她希望尽一切努力。”这是我们熟悉的短语。所以我去病房看到吉姆，他的皮肤像这样半透明。透过皮肤你可以看到他的骨头。他非常非常瘦，他确实患有肺炎，病得很重，无法跟我说话，所以我和他的女儿凯瑟琳说话，我对她说，“你和吉姆有没有讨论过，如果他陷入这种境地，你们想要做什么？”她看着我说，
“不，当然不！”我想：“好吧，稳住。”我和她说话，过了一会儿，她对我说，“你知道，我们一直以为会有时间。”
吉姆 94 岁了。（笑声）我意识到这里没有发生什么事情。我想象中的对话并没有发生。因此，我们一群人开始做调查工作，我们观察了纽卡斯尔地区纽卡斯尔四千名疗养院居民，发现只有百分之一的人制定了当他们的心脏出现问题时该怎么办的计划。停止了跳动。百分之一。其中只有五百人中只有一个人计划好如果自己得了重病该怎么办。当然，我意识到这种对话绝对不会在公众中发生。
20年——不久前——一位教授当时在哥伦比亚大学的老师接手了这个案子，并将其命名为[霍华德]罗伊森。他把这个案例分发给两组学生。他整整改了一个词：“海蒂”改为“霍华德”。但这一个词确实产生了很大的影响。然后他对学生进行了调查，好消息是学生们，无论男女，都认为海蒂和霍华德同样有能力，这很好。坏消息是，每个人都喜欢霍华德。他是一个很棒的人。你想为他工作。你想和他一起去钓鱼。但是海蒂呢？不太确定。她有点不顾自己了。她有点政治倾向。你不确定自己是否愿意为她工作。这就是复杂之处。我们必须告诉我们的女儿和同事，我们必须告诉自己相信我们得到了A，争取晋升，坐在桌子旁，我们必须在一个对他们来说有他们会为此做出牺牲，即使是为了他们的兄弟s，没有。最可悲的是，这一切真的很难记住。我要讲一个对我来说确实很尴尬但我认为很重要的故事。
春秋时期，楚国有一个人，名叫杨伯，擅长射箭。他可以在百步之外射击杨树枝上的叶子，而且每次都击中目标。楚王很羡慕叔叔的射箭技术，就请叔叔教他射箭。杨伯伯将射箭的全部技巧传授给他。楚王饶有兴致地练习了一段时间，渐渐地越来越熟练，就邀请叔叔一起去野外打猎。
狩猎开始，楚王让人赶出躲在芦苇丛中的野鸭。野鸭们拍打着翅膀，飞了出去。楚王拉弓搭箭，正要射出，突然从他的左侧跳出一只山羊。楚王认为，一箭射死一只山羊，比射杀一只野鸭便宜多了！于是楚王又把箭瞄准了山羊，准备射杀。可就在这时，右侧突然跳出另一只梅花鹿。楚王还认为，如果射死这种稀有的梅花鹿，它的价值会比山羊高得多，于是又把箭瞄准了梅花鹿。顿时，众人一阵惊呼。原来，一只珍贵的苍鹰从树梢飞出，扇动翅膀，飞到了空中。楚王认为还是射死苍鹰为好。
可当他准备瞄准苍鹰时，苍鹰却很快飞走了。楚王无奈，只好转身射杀梅花鹿，梅花鹿也逃走了。我只好回去寻找山羊，可是山羊已经逃走了，连那群鸭子也消失得无影无踪。
楚王持弓箭久久，却什么也没有发生。
机会稍纵即逝，一定要抓住你一直在追求的机会来实现你的目标。
当你还是个孩子的时候，你会经常被问到这个特定的问题，这真的有点烦人。你长大后想做什么？现在，成年人希望得到诸如“我想成为一名宇航员或我想成为一名神经外科医生”之类的答案，你们在你们的想象中都是成年人。
孩子们，他们最有可能回答职业滑板手、冲浪者或我的世界玩家。我问我弟弟，他说，说真的，伙计，我10岁了，我不知道，可能是个职业滑雪者，我们去买点冰淇淋吧。
看，我们孩子会回答一些我们感兴趣的事情，我们认为很酷的事情，我们有经验的事情，而这通常与成年人想听到的相反。
但是如果你问一个小孩子，有时你会得到最好的答案，一些如此简单、如此明显且非常深刻的答案。长大后我要幸福。
对于我来说，长大后我想继续像现在一样快乐。我很激动来到 TedEx，我的意思是，从我记事起，我就一直在看 Ted 视频，但我从未想过我会这么快登上这里的舞台。我的意思是，我刚刚成为一名青少年，和大多数十几岁的男孩一样，我大部分时间都在想，我的房间怎么自己变得这么乱。
我今天洗澡了吗？最令人困惑的是，如何让女孩喜欢我？神经科学家说，青少年的大脑很奇怪，我们的前额叶皮层不发达，但我们实际上比成年人拥有更多的神经元，这就是为什么我们会如此有创造力，并且容易冲动、喜怒无常、沮丧。
但让我感到沮丧的是，今天的很多孩子只是希望快乐、健康、安全、不被欺负，并因为他们是谁而被爱。所以在我看来，当成年人说，你长大后想做什么？他们只是假设你会自动快乐和健康。
好吧，也许事实并非如此，上学，上大学，找工作，结婚，轰，然后你就会幸福了，对吧？在我们的学校里，你似乎并没有把学习如何快乐和健康作为优先事项，它与学校是分开的。而对于一些孩子来说，它根本不存在？但如果我们不把它分开怎么办？如果我们将教育建立在快乐和健康的学习和实践的基础上，因为这就是它的本质，一种实践，而且是一种简单的实践？
教育很重要，但为什么快乐和健康不被视为教育，我就是不明白。所以我一直在研究快乐和健康的科学。归根结底就是练习这八件事。锻炼、饮食和营养、亲近自然、贡献、为他人服务、人际关系、娱乐、放松和压力管理，以及宗教或精神参与，是的，明白了。
这八件事来自 Roger Walsh 博士，他称之为治疗生活方式e 变更或简称 TLC。他是一位研究如何快乐和健康的科学家。在研究这次演讲时，我有机会问他几个问题，例如：您认为我们今天的学校是否将这八项 TLC 列为优先事项？他的回答并不令人意外，基本上是否定的。但他确实表示，许多人确实尝试通过阅读和冥想或瑜伽等练习，在传统领域之外获得这种教育。
但我认为他最好的回应是，大部分教育都是为了谋生，而不是为了谋生。
In 2006, Sir Ken Robinson gave the most popular Ted talk of all time. Schools kill creativity. His message is that creativity is as important as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.
A lot of parents watched those videos, some of those parents like mine counted it as one of the reasons they felt confident to pull their kids from traditional school to try something different. I realized I’m part of this small, but growing revolution of kids who are going about their education differently, and you know what? It freaks a lot of people out.
Even though I was only nine, when my parents pulled me out of the school system, I can still remember my mom being in tears when some of her friends told her she was crazy and it was a stupid idea.
Looking back, I’m thankful she didn’t cave to peer pressure, and I think she is too. So, out of the 200 million people that have watched Sir Ken Robinson’s talk, why aren’t there more kids like me out there?
Shane McConkey is my hero. I loved him because he was the world’s best skier. But then, one day I realized what I really loved about Shane, he was a hacker. Not a computer hacker, he hacked skiing. His creativity and inventions made skiing what it is today, and why I love to ski. A lot of people think of hackers as geeky computer nerds who live in their parent’s basement and spread computer viruses, but I don’t see it that way.
Hackers are innovators, hackers are people who challenge and change the systems to make them work differently, to make them work better, it’s just how they think, it’s a mindset.
I’m growing up in a world that needs more people with the hacker mindset, and not just for technology, everything is up for being hacked, even skiing, even education. So whether it’s Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg or Shane McConkey having the hacker mindset can change the world.
Healthy, happy, creativity in the hacker mindset are all a large part of my education. I call it Hackschooling, I don’t use any one particular curriculum, and I’m not dedicated to any one particular approach, I hack my education.
I take advantage of opportunities in my community, and through a network of my friends and family. I take advantage of opportunities to experience what I’m learning, and I’m not afraid to look for shortcuts or hacks to get a better faster result. It’s like a remix or a mash-up of learning. It’s flexible, opportunistic, and it never loses sight of making happy, healthy and creativity a priority.
And here is the cool part, because it’s a mindset, not a system. Hackschooling can be used anyone, even traditional schools. Soo what does my school look like? Well, it looks like Starbucks a lot of the time, but like most kids I study lot of math, science, history and writing. I didn’t used to like to write because my teachers made me write about butterflies and rainbows, and I wanted to write about skiing.
It was a relief for my good friend’s mom, started the Squaw Valley Kids Institute, where I got to write through my experiences and my interests, while, connecting with great speakers from around the nation, and that sparked my love of writing.
I realized that once you’re motivated to learn something, you can get a lot done in a short amount of time, and on your own, Starbucks is pretty great for that. Hacking physics was fun, we learned all about Newton and Galileo, and we experienced some basic physics concepts like kinetic energy through experimenting and making mistakes.
My favorite was the giant Newton’s cradle that we made out of bowling balls, no bocce balls. We experimented with lot of other things like bowling balls and event giant jawbreakers.
Project Discovery’s ropes course is awesome, and slightly stressful. When you’re 60 feet off the ground, you have to learn how to handle your fears, communicate clearly, and most importantly, trust each other.
Community organizations play a big part in my education, High Fives Foundation’s Basics Program being aware and safe in critical situations. We spent a day with the Squaw Valley Ski Patrol to learn more about mountain safety, then the next day we switched to science of snow, weather and avalanches.
But most importantly, we learned that making bad decisions puts you and your friends at risk. Young should talk, well brings history to life. You study a famous character in history, and so that you can stand on stage and perform as that character, and answer any question about their lifetime.
In this photo, you see Al Capone and Bob Marley getting grilled with questions at the historical Piper’s Opera House in Virginia City, the same stage where Harry Houdini got his start.
Time and nature is really important to me, it’s calm, quiet and I get to just log out of reality. I spend one day a week, outside all day. At my Fox Walkers classes, our goal is to be able to survive in the wilderness with just a knife. We learn to listen to nature, we learn to sense our surroundings, and I’ve gained a spiritual connection to nature that, I never knew existed.
But the best part is that we get to make spears, bows and arrows, fires with just a bow drill and survival shelters for the snowy nights when we camp out. Hanging out at the Moment Factory where they hand make skis and design clothes, has really inspired me to one day have my own business. The guys at the factory showed me why I need to be good at math, be creative and get good at selling.
So I got an internship at Big Shark Print to get better at design and selling. Between fetching lunch, scrubbing toilets and breaking their vacuum cleaner, I’m getting to contribute to clothing design, customizing hats and selling them. The people who work there are happy, healthy, creative, and stoked to be doing what they are doing, this is by far my favorite class.
So, this is why I’m really happy, powder days, and it’s a good metaphor for my life, my education, my hackschooling. If everyone ski this mountain, like most people think of education, everyone will be skiing the same line, probably the safest and most of the powder would go untouched.
I look at this, and see a thousand possibilities, dropping the corners, shredding the spine, looking for a churning from cliff-to-cliff. Skiing to me is freedom, and so is my education, it’s about being creative; doing things differently, it’s about community and helping each other. It’s about being happy and healthy among my very best friends.
So I’m starting to think, I know what I might want to do when I grow up, but if you ask me what do I want to be when I grow up? I’ll always know that I want to be happy. Thank you.
毛遂在平原君门下三年，一直默默无闻，总得不到施展才能的机会。
一次，秦国大举进攻赵国，情况危急。赵王派平原君向楚国求救。平原君决定挑选出20名足智多谋的人随同前往，可是只有19人合乎条件。这时，毛遂主动站了出来说：“我愿随平原君前往楚国。”
平原君一开始不以为然：“一个有才能的人在世上，就好像锥子装在口袋里，锥尖子很快就会穿破口袋钻出来，人们很快就能发现他。而你一直未能出头露面显示你的本事，我怎么能够带上没有本事的人同我去楚国行使如此重大的使命呢？”
毛遂并不生气，他心平气和地据理力争说：“我之所以没有像锥子从口袋里钻出锥尖，是因为我从来就没有像锥子一样放进您的口袋里呀。”平原君便答应毛遂作为自己的随从，连夜赶往楚国。
平原君到了楚国，可是这次商谈很不顺利。只有毛遂面对楚王，慷慨陈词，对楚王晓之以理动之以情。楚王终于被说服了，与平原君缔结盟约。赵国于是解围。
事后，平原君说：“毛遂原来真是了不起的人啊！他的三寸不烂之舌，真抵得过百万大军呀！可是以前我竟没发现他。若不是毛先生挺身而出，我可要埋没一个人才呢！”
不要总是等着别人去推荐，只要有才干，不妨自己主动站出来，做出自己应有的贡献。
When you are a kid, you get asked this one particular question a lot, it really gets kind of annoying. What do you want to be when you grow up? Now, adults are hoping for answers like, I want to be an astronaut or I want to be a neurosurgeon, you’re adults in your imaginations.
Kids, they’re most likely to answer with pro-skateboarder, surfer or minecraft player. I asked my little brother, and he said, seriously dude, I’m 10, I have no idea, probably a pro-skier, let’s go get some ice cream.
See, us kids are going to answer something we’re stoked on, what we think is cool, what we have experience with, and that’s typically the opposite of what adults want to hear.
But if you ask a little kid, sometimes you’ll get the best answer, something so simple, so obvious and really profound. When I grow up, I want to be happy.
For me, when I grow up, I want to continue to be happy like I am now. I’m stoked to be here at TedEx, I mean, I’ve been watching Ted videos for as long as I can remember, but I never thought I’d make it on the stage here so soon. I mean, I just became a teenager, and like most teenage boys, I spend most of my time wondering, how did my room get so messy all on its own.
Did I take a shower today? And the most perplexing of all, how do I get girls to like me? Neurosciences say that the teenage brain is pretty weird, our prefrontal cortex is underdeveloped, but we actually have more neurons than adults, which is why we can be so creative, and impulsive and moody and get bummed out.
But what bums me out is to know that, a lot of kids today are just wishing to be happy, to be healthy, to be safe, not bullied, and be loved for who they are. So it seems to me when adults say, what do you want to be when you grow up? They just assume that you’ll automatically be happy and healthy.
Well, maybe that’s not the case, go to school, go to college, get a job, get married, boom, then you’ll be happy, right? You don’t seem to make learning how to be happy and healthy a priority in our schools, it’s separate from schools. And for some kids, it doesn’t exists at all? But what if we didn’t make it separate? What if we based education on the study and practice of being happy and healthy, because that’s what it is, a practice, and a simple practice at that?
Education is important, but why is being happy and healthy not considered education, I just don’t get it. So I’ve been studying the science of being happy and healthy. It really comes down to practicing these eight things. Exercise, diet and nutrition, time in nature, contribution, service to others, relationships, recreation, relaxation and stress management, and religious or spiritual involvement, yes, got that one.
So these eight things come from Dr. Roger Walsh, he calls them Therapeutic Lifestyle Changes or TLCs for short. He is a scientist that studies how to be happy and healthy. In researching this talk, I got a chance to ask him a few questions like; do you think that our schools today are making these eight TLCs a priority? His response was no surprise, it was essentially no. But he did say that many people do try to get this kind of education outside of the traditional arena, through reading and practices such as meditation or yoga.
But what I thought was his best response was that, much of education is oriented for better or worse towards making a living rather than making a life.
In 2006, Sir Ken Robinson gave the most popular Ted talk of all time. Schools kill creativity. His message is that creativity is as important as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.
A lot of parents watched those videos, some of those parents like mine counted it as one of the reasons they felt confident to pull their kids from traditional school to try something different. I realized I’m part of this small, but growing revolution of kids who are going about their education differently, and you know what? It freaks a lot of people out.
Even though I was only nine, when my parents pulled me out of the school system, I can still remember my mom being in tears when some of her friends told her she was crazy and it was a stupid idea.
Looking back, I’m thankful she didn’t cave to peer pressure, and I think she is too. So, out of the 200 million people that have watched Sir Ken Robinson’s talk, why aren’t there more kids like me out there?
Shane McConkey is my hero. I loved him because he was the world’s best skier. But then, one day I realized what I really loved about Shane, he was a hacker. Not a computer hacker, he hacked skiing. His creativity and inventions made skiing what it is today, and why I love to ski. A lot of people think of hackers as geeky computer nerds who live in their parent’s basement and spread computer viruses, but I don’t see it that way.
Over the next five minutes, my intention is to transform your relationship with sound. Let me start with the observation that most of the sound around us is accidental, and much of it is unpleasant. (Traffic noise) We stand on street corners, shouting over noise like this, and pretending that it doesn't exist. Well, this habit of suppressing sound has meant that our relationship with sound has become largely unconscious.
There are four major ways sound is affecting you all the time, and I'd like to raise them in your consciousness today. First is physiological. (Loud alarm clocks) Sorry about that. I've just given you a shot of cortisol, your fight/flight hormone. Sounds are affecting your hormone secretions all the time, but also your breathing, your heart rate -- which I just also did -- and your brainwaves.
It's not just unpleasant sounds like that that do it. This is surf. (Ocean waves) It has the frequency of roughly 12 cycles per minute. Most people find that very soothing, and, interestingly, 12 cycles per minute is roughly the frequency of the breathing of a sleeping human. There is a deep resonance with being at rest. We also associate it with being stress-free and on holiday.
The second way in which sound affects you is psychological. Music is the most powerful form of sound that we know that affects our emotional state. (Albinoni's Adagio) This is guaranteed to make most of you feel pretty sad if I leave it on. Music is not the only kind of sound, however, which affects your emotions.
Natural sound can do that too. Birdsong, for example, is a sound which most people find reassuring. (Birds chirping) There is a reason for that. Over hundreds of thousands of years we've learned that when the birds are singing, things are safe. It's when they stop you need to be worried.
The third way in which sound affects you is cognitively. You can't understand two people talking at once （"If you're listening to this version of"） （"me you're on the wrong track."） or in this case one person talking twice. Try and listen to the other one. （"You have to choose which me you're going to listen to."）
We have a very small amount of bandwidth for processing auditory input, which is why noise like this -- (Office noise) -- is extremely damaging for productivity. If you have to work in an open-plan office like this, your productivity is greatly reduced. And whatever number you're thinking of, it probably isn't as bad as this. (Ominous music) You are one third as productive in open-plan offices as in quiet rooms. And I have a tip for you. If you have to work in spaces like that, carry headphones with you, with a soothing sound like birdsong. Put them on and your productivity goes back up to triple what it would be.
The fourth way in which sound affects us is behaviorally. With all that other stuff going on, it would be amazing if our behavior didn't change. (Techno music inside a car) So, ask yourself: Is this person ever going to drive at a steady 28 miles per hour? I don't think so. At the simplest, you move away from unpleasant sound and towards pleasant sounds. So if I were to play this -- (Jackhammer) -- for more than a few seconds, you'd feel uncomfortable; for more than a few minutes, you'd be leaving the room in droves. For people who can't get away from noise like that, it's extremely damaging for their health.
And that's not the only thing that bad sound damages. Most retail sound is inappropriate and accidental, and even hostile, and it has a dramatic effect on sales. For those of you who are retailers, you may want to look away before I show this slide. They are losing up to 30 percent of their business with people leaving shops faster, or just turning around on the door. We all have done it, leaving the area because the sound in there is so dreadful.
I want to spend just a moment talking about the model that we've developed, which allows us to start at the top and look at the drivers of sound, analyze the soundscape and then predict the four outcomes I've just talked about. Or start at the bottom, and say what outcomes do we want, and then design a soundscape to have a desired effect. At last we've got some science we can apply. And we're in the business of designing soundscapes.
Just a word on music. Music is the most powerful sound there is, often inappropriately deployed. It's powerful for two reasons. You recognize it fast, and you associate it very powerfully. I'll give you two examples. （First chord of The Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night"） Most of you recognize that immediately. The younger, maybe not. (Laughter) (First two notes of "Jaws" theme) And most of you associate that with something! Now, those are one-second samples of music. Music is very powerful. And unfortunately it's veneering commercial spaces, often inappropriately. I hope that's going to change over the next few years.
