ted演讲稿高中生（精选4篇）
over the ne_t five minutes, my intention is to transform your relationshipwith sound. let me start with the observation that most of the sound around usis accidental, and much of it is unpleasant. (traffic noise) we stand on streetcorners, shouting over noise like this, and pretending that it doesn't e_ist.well, this habit of suppressing sound has meant that our relationship with soundhas become largely unconscious.
there are four major ways sound is affecting you all the time, and i'd liketo raise them in your consciousness today. first is physiological. (loud alarmclocks) sorry about that. i've just given you a shot of cortisol, yourfight/flight hormone. sounds are affecting your hormone secretions all the time,but also your breathing, your heart rate -- which i just also did -- and yourbrainwaves.
it's not just unpleasant sounds like that that do it. this is surf. (oceanwaves) it has the frequency of roughly 12 cycles per minute. most people findthat very soothing, and, interestingly, 12 cycles per minute is roughly thefrequency of the breathing of a sleeping human. there is a deep resonance withbeing 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 themost 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 ileave it on. music is not the only kind of sound, however, which affects youremotions.
natural sound can do that too. birdsong, for e_ample, is a sound which mostpeople find reassuring. (birds chirping) there is a reason for that. overhundreds 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'tunderstand 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. tryand listen to the other one. ("you have to choose which me you're going tolisten to.")
we have a very small amount of bandwidth for processing auditory input,which is why noise like this -- (office noise) -- is e_tremely damaging forproductivity. if you have to work in an open-plan office like this, yourproductivity is greatly reduced. and whatever number you're thinking of, itprobably isn't as bad as this. (ominous music) you are one third as productivein open-plan offices as in quiet rooms. and i have a tip for you. if you have towork in spaces like that, carry headphones with you, with a soothing sound likebirdsong. put them on and your productivity goes back up to triple what it wouldbe.
the fourth way in which sound affects us is behaviorally. with all thatother stuff going on, it would be amazing if our behavior didn't change. (technomusic inside a car) so, ask yourself: is this person ever going to drive at asteady 28 miles per hour? i don't think so. at the simplest, you move away fromunpleasant sound and towards pleasant sounds. so if i were to play this --(jackhammer) -- for more than a few seconds, you'd feel uncomfortable; for morethan a few minutes, you'd be leaving the room in droves. for people who can'tget away from noise like that, it's e_tremely damaging for their health.
and that's not the only thing that bad sound damages. most retail sound isinappropriate and accidental, and even hostile, and it has a dramatic effect onsales. for those of you who are retailers, you may want to look away before ishow this slide. they are losing up to 30 percent of their business with peopleleaving 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, analyzethe soundscape and then predict the four outcomes i've just talked about. orstart at the bottom, and say what outcomes do we want, and then design asoundscape to have a desired effect. at last we've got some science we canapply. and we're in the business of designing soundscapes.
just a word on music. music is the most powerful sound there is, ofteninappropriately deployed. it's powerful for two reasons. you recognize it fast,and you associate it very powerfully. i'll give you two e_amples. (first chordof 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 ofyou 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 ne_t fewyears.
let me just talk about brands for a moment, because some of you run brands.every brand is out there making sound right now. there are eight e_pressions ofa brand in sound. they are all important. and every brand needs to haveguidelines at the center. i'm glad to say that is starting to happen now. (intelad jingle) you all recognize that one. (nokia ringtone) this is the most-playedtune in the world today. 1.8 billion times a day, that tune is played. and itcost nokia absolutely nothing.
just leave you with four golden rules, for those of you who run businesses,for commercial sound. first, make it congruent, pointing in the same directionas your visual communication. that increases impact by over 1,100 percent. ifyour sound is pointing the opposite direction, incongruent, you reduce impact by86 percent. that's an order of magnitude, up or down. this is important.secondly, make it appropriate to the situation. thirdly, make it valuable. givepeople something with the sound. don't just bombard them with stuff. and,finally, test and test it again. sound is comple_. there are many countervailinginfluences. it can be a bit like a bowl of spaghetti: sometimes you just have toeat it and see what happens.
so i hope this talk has raised sound in your consciousness. if you'relistening consciously, you can take control of the sound around you. it's goodfor your health. it's good for your productivity. if we all do that we move to astate that i like to think will be sound living in the world. i'm going to leaveyou with a little bit more birdsong. (birds chirping) i recommend at least fiveminutes a day, but there is no ma_imum dose. thank you for lending me your earstoday. (applause)
压力大，怎么办?压力会让你心跳加速、呼吸加快、额头冒汗!当压力成为全民健康公敌时，有研究显示只有当你与压力为敌时，它才会危害你的健康。心理学家kellymcgonigal 从积极的一面分析压力，教你如何使压力变成你的朋友!
stress. it makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your foreheadsweat. but while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new researchsuggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case.psychologist kelly mcgonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, andintroduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out toothers.
kelly mcgonigal translates academic research into practical strategies forhealth, happiness and personal success.
why you should listen to her：
stanford university psychologist kelly mcgonigal is a leader in the growingfield of “science-help.” through books, articles, courses and workshops,mcgonigal works to help us understand and implement the latest scientificfindings in psychology, neuroscience and medicine.
straddling the worlds of research and practice, mcgonigal holds positionsin both the stanford graduate school of business and the school of medicine. hermost recent book, the willpower instinct, e_plores the latest research onmotivation, temptation and procrastination, as well as what it takes totransform habits, persevere at challenges and make a successful change.
she is now researching a new book about the "upside of stress," which willlook at both why stress is good for us, and what makes us good at stress. in herwords: "the old understanding of stress as a unhelpful relic of our animalinstincts is being replaced by the understanding that stress actually makes ussocially smart -- it's what allows us to be fully human."
i have a confession to make, but first, i want you to make a littleconfession to me. in the past year, i want you to just raise your hand
if you've e_perienced relatively little stress. anyone?
how about a moderate amount of stress?
who has e_perienced a lot of stress? yeah. me too.
but that is not my confession. my confession is this: i am a healthpsychologist, and my mission is to help people be happier and healthier. but ifear that something i've been teaching for the last 10 years is doing more harmthan good, and it has to do with stress. for years i've been telling people,stress makes you sick. it increases the risk of everything from the common coldto cardiovascular disease. basically, i've turned stress into the enemy. but ihave changed my mind about stress, and today, i want to change yours.
let me start with the study that made me rethink my whole approach tostress. this study tracked 30,000 adults in the united states for eight years,and they started by asking people, "how much stress have you e_perienced in thelast year?" they also asked, "do you believe that stress is harmful for yourhealth?" and then they used public death records to find out who died.
(laughter)
okay. some bad news first. people who e_perienced a lot of stress in theprevious year had a 43 percent increased risk of dying. but that was only truefor the people who also believed that stress is harmful for your health.(laughter) people who e_perienced a lot of stress but did not view stress asharmful were no more likely to die. in fact, they had the lowest risk of dyingof anyone in the study, including people who had relatively little stress.
now the researchers estimated that over the eight years they were trackingdeaths, 182,000 americans died prematurely, not from stress, but from the beliefthat stress is bad for you. (laughter) that is over 20,000 deaths a year. now,if that estimate is correct, that would make believing stress is bad for you the15th largest cause of death in the united states last year, killing more peoplethan skin cancer, hiv/aids and homicide.
(laughter)
you can see why this study freaked me out. here i've been spending so muchenergy telling people stress is bad for your health.
so this study got me wondering: can changing how you think about stressmake you healthier? and here the science says yes. when you change your mindabout stress, you can change your body's response to stress.
now to e_plain how this works, i want you all to pretend that you areparticipants in a study designed to stress you out. it's called the socialstress test. you come into the laboratory, and you're told you have to give afive-minute impromptu speech on your personal weaknesses to a panel of e_pertevaluators sitting right in front of you, and to make sure you feel thepressure, there are bright lights and a camera in your face, kind of like this.and the evaluators have been trained to give you discouraging, non-verbalfeedback like this.
(laughter)
now that you're sufficiently demoralized, time for part two: a math test.and unbeknownst to you, the e_perimenter has been trained to harass you duringit. now we're going to all do this together. it's going to be fun. for me.
okay. i want you all to count backwards from 996 in increments of seven.you're going to do this out loud as fast as you can, starting with 996. go!audience: (counting) go faster. faster please. you're going too slow. stop.stop, stop, stop. that guy made a mistake. we are going to have to start allover again. (laughter) you're not very good at this, are you? okay, so you getthe idea. now, if you were actually in this study, you'd probably be a littlestressed out. your heart might be pounding, you might be breathing faster, maybebreaking out into a sweat. and normally, we interpret these physical changes asan_iety or signs that we aren't coping very well with the pressure.
but what if you viewed them instead as signs that your body was energized,was preparing you to meet this challenge? now that is e_actly what participantswere told in a study conducted at harvard university. before they went throughthe social stress test, they were taught to rethink their stress response ashelpful. that pounding heart is preparing you for action. if you're breathingfaster, it's no problem. it's getting more o_ygen to your brain. andparticipants who learned to view the stress response as helpful for theirperformance, well, they were less stressed out, less an_ious, more confident,but the most fascinating finding to me was how their physical stress responsechanged. now, in a typical stress response, your heart rate goes up, and yourblood vessels constrict like this. and this is one of the reasons that chronicstress is sometimes associated with cardiovascular disease. it's not reallyhealthy to be in this state all the time. but in the study, when participantsviewed their stress response as helpful, their blood vessels stayed rela_ed likethis. their heart was still pounding, but this is a much healthiercardiovascular profile. it actually looks a lot like what happens in moments ofjoy and courage. over a lifetime of stressful e_periences, this one biologicalchange could be the difference between a stress-induced heart attack at age 50and living well into your 90s. and this is really what the new science of stressreveals, that how you think about stress matters.
so my goal as a health psychologist has changed. i no longer want to getrid of your stress. i want to make you better at stress. and we just did alittle intervention. if you raised your hand and said you'd had a lot of stressin the last year, we could have saved your life, because hopefully the ne_t timeyour heart is pounding from stress, you're going to remember this talk andyou're going to think to yourself, this is my body helping me rise to thischallenge. and when you view stress in that way, your body believes you, andyour stress response becomes healthier.
now i said i have over a decade of demonizing stress to redeem myself from,so we are going to do one more intervention. i want to tell you about one of themost under-appreciated aspects of the stress response, and the idea is this:stress makes you social.
to understand this side of stress, we need to talk about a hormone,o_ytocin, and i know o_ytocin has already gotten as much hype as a hormone canget. it even has its own cute nickname, the cuddle hormone, because it'sreleased when you hug someone. but this is a very small part of what o_ytocin isinvolved in. o_ytocin is a neuro-hormone. it fine-tunes your brain's socialinstincts. it primes you to do things that strengthen close relationships.o_ytocin makes you crave physical contact with your friends and family. itenhances your empathy. it even makes you more willing to help and support thepeople you care about. some people have even suggested we should snort o_ytocinto become more compassionate and caring. but here's what most people don'tunderstand about o_ytocin. it's a stress hormone. your pituitary gland pumpsthis stuff out as part of the stress response. it's as much a part of yourstress response as the adrenaline that makes your heart pound. and when o_ytocinis released in the stress response, it is motivating you to seek support. yourbiological stress response is nudging you to tell someone how you feel insteadof bottling it up. your stress response wants to make sure you notice whensomeone else in your life is struggling so that you can support each other. whenlife is difficult, your stress response wants you to be surrounded by people whocare about you.
okay, so how is knowing this side of stress going to make you healthier?well, o_ytocin doesn't only act on your brain. it also acts on your body, andone of its main roles in your body is to protect your cardiovascular system fromthe effects of stress. it's a natural anti-inflammatory. it also helps yourblood vessels stay rela_ed during stress. but my favorite effect on the body isactually on the heart. your heart has receptors for this hormone, and o_ytocinhelps heart cells regenerate and heal from any stress-induced damage. thisstress hormone strengthens your heart, and the cool thing is that all of thesephysical benefits of o_ytocin are enhanced by social contact and social support,so when you reach out to others under stress, either to seek support or to helpsomeone else, you release more of this hormone, your stress response becomeshealthier, and you actually recover faster from stress. i find this amazing,that your stress response has a built-in mechanism for stress resilience, andthat mechanism is human connection.
i want to finish by telling you about one more study. and listen up,because this study could also save a life. this study tracked about 1,000 adultsin the united states, and they ranged in age from 34 to 93, and they started thestudy by asking, "how much stress have you e_perienced in the last year?" theyalso asked, "how much time have you spent helping out friends, neighbors, peoplein your community?" and then they used public records for the ne_t five years tofind out who died.
okay, so the bad news first: for every major stressful life e_perience,like financial difficulties or family crisis, that increased the risk of dyingby 30 percent. but -- and i hope you are e_pecting a but by now -- but thatwasn't true for everyone. people who spent time caring for others showedabsolutely no stress-related increase in dying. zero. caring created resilience.and so we see once again that the harmful effects of stress on your health arenot inevitable. how you think and how you act can transform your e_perience ofstress. when you choose to view your stress response as helpful, you create thebiology of courage. and when you choose to connect with others under stress, youcan create resilience. now i wouldn't necessarily ask for more stressfule_periences in my life, but this science has given me a whole new appreciationfor stress. stress gives us access to our hearts. the compassionate heart thatfinds joy and meaning in connecting with others, and yes, your pounding physicalheart, working so hard to give you strength and energy, and when you choose toview stress in this way, you're not just getting better at stress, you'reactually making a pretty profound statement. you're saying that you can trustyourself to handle life's challenges, and you're remembering that you don't haveto face them alone.
thank you.
(applause)
chris anderson: this is kind of amazing, what you're telling us. it seemsamazing to me that a belief about stress can make so much difference tosomeone's life e_pectancy. how would that e_tend to advice, like, if someone ismaking a lifestyle choice between, say, a stressful job and a non-stressful job,does it matter which way they go? it's equally wise to go for the stressful jobso long as you believe that you can handle it, in some sense?
kelly mcgonigal: yeah, and one thing we know for certain is that chasingmeaning is better for your health than trying to avoid discomfort. and so iwould say that's really the best way to make decisions, is go after what it isthat creates meaning in your life and then trust yourself to handle the stressthat follows.
ca: thank you so much, kelly. it's pretty cool. km: thank you.
(applause)
one day in 1819, 3,000 miles off the coast of chile, in one of the mostremote regions of the pacific ocean, 20 american sailors watched their shipflood with seawater.
1819年的某一天， 在距离智利海岸3000英里的地方， 有一个太平洋上的最偏远的水域， 20名美国船员目睹了他们的船只进水的场面。
they'd been struck by a sperm whale, which had ripped a catastrophic holein the ship's hull. as their ship began to sink beneath the swells, the menhuddled together in three small whaleboats.
他们和一头抹香鲸相撞，给船体撞了 一个毁灭性的大洞。 当船在巨浪中开始沉没时， 人们在三条救生小艇中抱作一团。
these men were 10,000 miles from home, more than 1,000 miles from thenearest scrap of land. in their small boats, they carried only rudimentarynavigational equipment and limited supplies of food and water.
这些人在离家10000万英里的地方， 离最近的陆地也超过1000英里。 在他们的小艇中，他们只带了 落后的导航设备 和有限的食物和饮水。
these were the men of the whaleship esse_, whose story would later inspireparts of "moby dick."
他们就是捕鲸船esse_上的人们， 后来的他们的故事成为《白鲸记》的一部分。
even in today's world, their situation would be really dire, but thinkabout how much worse it would have been then.
即使在当今的世界，碰上这种情况也够杯具的，更不用说在当时的情况有多糟糕。
no one on land had any idea that anything had gone wrong. no search partywas coming to look for these men. so most of us have never e_perienced asituation as frightening as the one in which these sailors found themselves, butwe all know what it's like to be afraid.
岸上的人根本就还没意识到出了什么问题。 没有任何人来搜寻他们。 我们当中大部分人没有经历过 这些船员所处的可怕情景，但我们都知道害怕是什么感觉。
we know how fear feels, but i'm not sure we spend enough time thinkingabout what our fears mean.
我们知道恐惧的感觉， 但是我不能肯定我们会花很多时间想过 我们的恐惧到底意味着什么。
as we grow up, we're often encouraged to think of fear as a weakness, justanother childish thing to discard like baby teeth or roller skates.
我们长大以后，我们总是会被鼓励把恐惧 视为软弱，需要像乳牙或轮滑鞋一样 扔掉的幼稚的东西。
and i think it's no accident that we think this way. neuroscientists haveactually shown that human beings are hard-wired to be optimists.
我想意外事故并非我们所想的那样。 神经系统科学家已经知道人类 生来就是乐观主义者。
so maybe that's why we think of fear, sometimes, as a danger in and ofitself. "don't worry," we like to say to one another. "don't panic." in english,fear is something we conquer. it's something we fight.
这也许就是为什么我们认为有时候恐惧， 本身就是一种危险或带来危险。 “不要愁。”我们总是对别人说。“不要慌”。 英语中，恐惧是我们需要征服的东西。是我们必须对抗的东西，是我们必须克服的东西。
it's something we overcome. but what if we looked at fear in a fresh way?what if we thought of fear as an amazing act of the imagination, something thatcan be as profound and insightful as storytelling itself?
但是我们如果换个视角看恐惧会如何呢? 如果我们把恐惧当做是想象力的一个惊人成果， 是和我们讲故事一样 精妙而有见地的东西，又会如何呢?
it's easiest to see this link between fear and the imagination in youngchildren, whose fears are often e_traordinarily vivid.
在小孩子当中，我们最容易看到恐惧与想象之间的联系， 他们的恐惧经常是超级生动的。
when i was a child, i lived in california, which is, you know, mostly avery nice place to live, but for me as a child, california could also be alittle scary.
我小时候住在加利福尼亚， 你们都知道，是非常适合居住的位置， 但是对一个小孩来说，加利福尼亚也会有点吓人。
i remember how frightening it was to see the chandelier that hung above ourdining table swing back and forth during every minor earthquake, and i sometimescouldn't sleep at night, terrified that the big one might strike while we weresleeping.
我记得每次小地震的时候 当我看到我们餐桌上的吊灯 晃来晃去的时候是多么的吓人， 我经常会彻夜难眠，担心大地震 会在我们睡觉的时候突然袭来。
and what we say about kids who have fears like that is that they have avivid imagination. but at a certain point, most of us learn to leave these kindsof visions behind and grow up.
我们说小孩子感受到这种恐惧 是因为他们有生动的想象力。 但是在某个时候，我们大多数学会了 抛弃这种想法而变得成熟。
we learn that there are no monsters hiding under the bed, and not everyearthquake brings buildings down. but maybe it's no coincidence that some of ourmost creative minds fail to leave these kinds of fears behind as adults.
我们都知道床下没有魔鬼， 也不是每个地震都会震垮房子。但是我们当中最有想象力的人们 并没有因为成年而抛弃这种恐惧，这也许并不是巧合。
the same incredible imaginations that produced "the origin of species,""jane eyre" and "the remembrance of things past," also generated intense worriesthat haunted the adult lives of charles darwin, charlotte bront and marcelproust. so the question is, what can the rest of us learn about fear fromvisionaries and young children?
同样不可思议的想象力创造了《物种起源》， 《简·爱》和《追忆似水年华》， 也就是这种与生俱来的深深的担忧一直缠绕着成年的 查尔斯·达尔文，夏洛特·勃朗特和马塞尔·普罗斯特。 问题就来了， 我们其他人如何能从这些 梦想家和小孩子身上学会恐惧?
well let's return to the year 1819 for a moment, to the situation facingthe crew of the whaleship esse_. let's take a look at the fears that theirimaginations were generating as they drifted in the middle of the pacific.
让我们暂时回到1819年， 回到esse_捕鲸船的水手们面对的情况。 让我们看看他们漂流在太平洋中央时 他们的想象力给他们带来的恐惧感觉。
twenty-four hours had now passed since the capsizing of the ship. the timehad come for the men to make a plan, but they had very few options.
船倾覆后已经过了24个小时。 这时人们制定了一个计划， 但是其实他们没什么太多的选择。
in his fascinating account of the disaster, nathaniel philbrick wrote thatthese men were just about as far from land as it was possible to be anywhere onearth.
在纳撒尼尔·菲尔布里克(nathaniel philbrick)描述这场灾难的 动人文章中，他写到“这些人离陆地如此之远，似乎永远都不可能到达地球上的任何一块陆地。”
the men knew that the nearest islands they could reach were the marquesasislands, 1,200 miles away. but they'd heard some frightening rumors.
这些人知道离他们最近的岛 是1200英里以外的马克萨斯群岛(marquesas islands)。 但是他们听到了让人恐怖的谣言。
they'd been told that these islands, and several others nearby, werepopulated by cannibals. so the men pictured coming ashore only to be murderedand eaten for dinner. another possible destination was hawaii, but given theseason, the captain was afraid they'd be struck by severe storms.
他们听说这些群岛， 以及附近的一些岛屿上都住着食人族。 所以他们脑中都是上岸以后就会被杀掉 被人当做盘中餐的画面。 另一个可行的目的地是夏威夷，但是船长担心 他们会被困在风暴当中。
now the last option was the longest, and the most difficult: to sail 1,500miles due south in hopes of reaching a certain band of winds that couldeventually push them toward the coast of south america.
所以最后的选择是到最远，也是最艰险的地方： 往南走1500英里希望某股风 能最终把他们 吹到南美洲的海岸。
but they knew that the sheer length of this journey would stretch theirsupplies of food and water. to be eaten by cannibals, to be battered by storms,to starve to death before reaching land.
但是他们知道这个行程中一旦偏航 将会耗尽他们食物和饮水的供给。 被食人族吃掉，被风暴掀翻， 在登陆前饿死。
these were the fears that danced in the imaginations of these poor men, andas it turned out, the fear they chose to listen to would govern whether theylived or died.
这就是萦绕在这群可怜的人想象中的恐惧， 事实证明，他们选择听从的恐惧 将决定他们的生死。
now we might just as easily call these fears by a different name. what ifinstead of calling them fears, we called them stories?
也许我们可以很容易的用别的名称来称呼这些恐惧。 我们不称之为恐惧， 而是称它们为故事如何?
because that's really what fear is, if you think about it. it's a kind ofunintentional storytelling that we are all born knowing how to do. and fears andstorytelling have the same components.
如果你仔细想想，这是恐惧真正的意义。 这是一种与生俱来的， 无意识的讲故事的能力。 恐惧和讲故事有着同样的构成。
they have the same architecture. like all stories, fears have characters.in our fears, the characters are us. fears also have plots. they have beginningsand middles and ends. you board the plane.
他们有同样的结构。 如同所有的故事，恐惧中有角色。 在恐惧中，角色就是我们自己。 恐惧也有情节。他们有开头，有中间，有结尾。 你登上飞机。
the plane takes off. the engine fails. our fears also tend to containimagery that can be every bit as vivid as what you might find in the pages of anovel. picture a cannibal, human teeth sinking into human skin, human fleshroasting over a fire.
飞机起飞。结果引擎故障。 我们的恐惧会包括各种生动的想象， 不比你看到的任何一个小说逊色。 想象食人族，人类牙齿 咬在人类皮肤上，人肉在火上烤。
fears also have suspense. if i've done my job as a storyteller today, youshould be wondering what happened to the men of the whaleship esse_. our fearsprovoke in us a very similar form of suspense.
恐惧中也有悬念。 如果我今天像讲故事一样，留个悬念不说了， 你们也许会很想知道 esse_捕鲸船上，人们到底怎么样了。我们的恐惧用悬念一样的方式刺激我们。
just like all great stories, our fears focus our attention on a questionthat is as important in life as it is in literature: what will happen ne_t?
就像一个很好的故事，我们的恐惧也如同一部好的文学作品一样， 将我们的注意力集中在对我们生命至关重要的问题上： 后来发生了什么?
in other words, our fears make us think about the future. and humans, bythe way, are the only creatures capable of thinking about the future in thisway, of projecting ourselves forward in time, and this mental time travel isjust one more thing that fears have in common with storytelling.
换而言之，我们的恐惧让我们想到未来。 另外，人来是唯一有能力 通过这种方式想到未来的生物， 就是预测时间推移后我们的状况， 这种精神上的时间旅行是恐惧与讲故事的另一个共同点。
as a writer, i can tell you that a big part of writing fiction is learningto predict how one event in a story will affect all the other events, and fearworks in that same way.
我是一个作家，我要告诉你们写小说一个很重要的部分 就是学会预测故事中一件 事情如何影响另一件事情， 恐惧也是同样这么做的。
in fear, just like in fiction, one thing always leads to another. when iwas writing my first novel, "the age of miracles," i spent months trying tofigure out what would happen if the rotation of the earth suddenly began to slowdown. what would happen to our days?
恐惧中，如同小说一样，一件事情总是导致另一件事情。 我写我的第一部小说《奇迹时代》的时候， 我花了数月的时间想象如果地球旋转突然变慢了之后会发生什么。 我们的一天变得如何?
what would happen to our crops? what would happen to our minds? and then itwas only later that i realized how very similar these questions were to the onesi used to ask myself as a child frightened in the night.
我们身体会怎样? 我们的思想会有什么变化? 也就是在那之后，我意识到 我过去总是问自己的那些些问题 和孩子们在夜里害怕是多么的相像。
if an earthquake strikes tonight, i used to worry, what will happen to ourhouse? what will happen to my family? and the answer to those questions alwaystook the form of a story.
要是在过去，如果今晚发生地震，我会很担心， 我的房子会怎么样啊?家里人会怎样啊? 这类问题的答案通常都会和故事一样。
so if we think of our fears as more than just fears but as stories, weshould think of ourselves as the authors of those stories. but just asimportantly, we need to think of ourselves as the readers of our fears, and howwe choose to read our fears can have a profound effect on our lives.
所以我们认为我们的恐惧不仅仅是恐惧 还是故事，我们应该把自己当作 这些故事的作者。 但是同样重要的是，我们需要想象我们自己是我们恐惧的解读者，我们选择如何 去解读这些恐惧会对我们的生活产生深远的影响。
now, some of us naturally read our fears more closely than others. i readabout a study recently of successful entrepreneurs, and the author found thatthese people shared a habit that he called "productive paranoia," which meantthat these people, instead of dismissing their fears, these people read themclosely, they studied them, and then they translated that fear into preparationand action.
现在，我们中有些人比其他人更自然的解读自己的恐惧。 最近我看过一个关于成功的企业家的研究， 作者发现这些人都有个习惯 叫做“未雨绸缪“，意思是，这些人，不回避自己的恐惧， 而是认真解读并研究恐惧， 然后把恐惧转换成准备和行动。
so that way, if their worst fears came true, their businesses wereready.
这样，如果最坏的事情发生了， 他们的企业也有所准备。
and sometimes, of course, our worst fears do come true. that's one of thethings that is so e_traordinary about fear. once in a while, our fears canpredict the future.
当然，很多时候，最坏的事情确实发生了。 这是恐惧非凡的一面。 曾几何时，我们的恐惧预测将来。
but we can't possibly prepare for all of the fears that our imaginationsconcoct. so how can we tell the difference between the fears worth listening toand all the others? i think the end of the story of the whaleship esse_ offersan illuminating, if tragic, e_ample.
但是我们不可能为我们想象力构建的所有 恐惧来做准备。 所以，如何区分值得听从的恐惧 和不值得的呢? 我想捕鲸船esse_的故事结局提供了一个有启发性，同时又悲惨的例子。
after much deliberation, the men finally made a decision. terrified ofcannibals, they decided to forgo the closest islands and instead embarked on thelonger and much more difficult route to south america.
经过数次权衡，他们最终做出了决定。 由于害怕食人族，他们决定放弃最近的群岛 而是开始更长 更艰难的南美洲之旅。
after more than two months at sea, the men ran out of food as they knewthey might, and they were still quite far from land. when the last of thesurvivors were finally picked up by two passing ships, less than half of the menwere left alive, and some of them had resorted to their own form ofcannibalism.
在海上呆了两个多月后，他们 的食物如预料之中消耗殆尽， 而且他们仍然离陆地那么远。 当最后的幸存者最终被过往船只救起时， 只有一小半的人还活着，实际上他们中的一些人自己变成了食人族。
herman melville, who used this story as research for "moby dick," wroteyears later, and from dry land, quote, "all the sufferings of these miserablemen of the esse_ might in all human probability have been avoided had they,immediately after leaving the wreck, steered straight for tahiti.
赫尔曼·梅尔维尔(herman melville)将这个故事作为 《白鲸记》的素材，在数年后写到： esse_船上遇难者的悲惨结局或许是可以通过人为的努力避免的， 如果他们当机立断地离开沉船， 直奔塔西提群岛。
but," as melville put it, "they dreaded cannibals." so the question is, whydid these men dread cannibals so much more than the e_treme likelihood ofstarvation?
“但是”，梅尔维尔说道：“他们害怕食人族” 问题是，为什么这些人对于食人族的恐惧 超过了更有可能的饥饿威胁呢?
why were they swayed by one story so much more than the other? looked atfrom this angle, theirs becomes a story about reading. the novelist vladimirnabokov said that the best reader has a combination of two very differenttemperaments, the artistic and the scientific.
为什么他们会被一个故事 影响如此之大呢? 从另一个角度来看， 这是一个关于解读的故事。 小说家弗拉基米尔·纳博科夫(vladimirnabokov)说 最好的读者能把两种截然不同的性格结合起来， 一个是艺术气质，一个是科学精神。
a good reader has an artist's passion, a willingness to get caught up inthe story, but just as importantly, the readers also needs the coolness ofjudgment of a scientist, which acts to temper and complicate the reader'sintuitive reactions to the story. as we've seen, the men of the esse_ had notrouble with the artistic part.
好的读者有艺术家的热情， 愿意融入故事当中， 但是同样重要的是，这些读者还要 有科学家的冷静判断， 这能帮助他们稳定情绪并分析 其对故事的直觉反应。我们可以看出来，esse_上的人在艺术部分一点问题都没有。
they dreamed up a variety of horrifying scenarios. the problem was thatthey listened to the wrong story. of all the narratives their fears wrote, theyresponded only to the most lurid, the most vivid, the one that was easiest fortheir imaginations to picture: cannibals.
他们梦想到一系列恐怖的场景。 问题在于他们听从了一个错误的故事。 所有他们恐惧中 他们只对其中最耸人听闻，最生动的故事，也是他们想象中最早出现的场景： 食人族。
but perhaps if they'd been able to read their fears more like a scientist,with more coolness of judgment, they would have listened instead to the lessviolent but the more likely tale, the story of starvation, and headed fortahiti, just as melville's sad commentary suggests.
也许，如果他们能像科学家那样 稍微冷静一点解读这个故事， 如果他们能听从不太惊悚但是更可能发生的 半路饿死的故事，他们可能就会直奔塔西提群岛，如梅尔维尔充满惋惜的评论所建议的那样。
and maybe if we all tried to read our fears, we too would be less oftenswayed by the most salacious among them.
也许如果我们都试着解读自己的恐惧， 我们就能少被 其中的一些幻象所迷惑。
maybe then we'd spend less time worrying about serial killers and planecrashes, and more time concerned with the subtler and slower disasters we face:the silent buildup of plaque in our arteries, the gradual changes in ourclimate.
我们也就能少花一点时间在 为系列杀手或者飞机失事方面的担忧， 而是更多的关心那些悄然而至 的灾难： 动脉血小板的逐渐堆积， 气候的逐渐变迁。
just as the most nuanced stories in literature are often the richest, sotoo might our subtlest fears be the truest. read in the right way, our fears arean amazing gift of the imagination, a kind of everyday clairvoyance, a way ofglimpsing what might be the future when there's still time to influence how thatfuture will play out.
如同文学中最精妙的故事通常是最丰富的故事， 我们最细微的恐惧才是最真实的恐惧。 用正确的方法的解读，我们的恐惧就是我们想象力赐给我们的礼物，借此一双慧眼， 让我们能管窥未来 甚至影响未来。
properly read, our fears can offer us something as precious as our favoriteworks of literature: a little wisdom, a bit of insight and a version of thatmost elusive thing -- the truth. thank you.
如果能得到正确的解读，我们的恐惧能 和我们最喜欢的文学作品一样给我们珍贵的东西： 一点点智慧，一点点洞悉 以及对最玄妙东西—— 真相的诠释。谢谢。
(applause)
(掌声)
my subject today is learning. and in that spirit, i want to spring on youall a pop quiz. ready? when does learning begin? now as you ponder thatquestion, maybe you're thinking about the first day of preschool orkindergarten, the first time that kids are in a classroom with a teacher. ormaybe you've called to mind the toddler phase when children are learning how towalk and talk and use a fork. maybe you've encountered the zero-to-threemovement, which asserts that the most important years for learning are theearliest ones. and so your answer to my question would be: learning begins atbirth.
well today i want to present to you an idea that may be surprising and mayeven seem implausible, but which is supported by the latest evidence frompsychology and biology. and that is that some of the most important learning weever do happens before we're born, while we're still in the womb. now i'm ascience reporter. i write books and magazine articles. and i'm also a mother.and those two roles came together for me in a book that i wrote called"origins." "origins" is a report from the front lines of an e_citing new fieldcalled fetal origins. fetal origins is a scientific discipline that emerged justabout two decades ago, and it's based on the theory that our health andwell-being throughout our lives is crucially affected by the nine months wespend in the womb. now this theory was of more than just intellectual interestto me. i was myself pregnant while i was doing the research for the book. andone of the most fascinating insights i took from this work is that we're alllearning about the world even before we enter it.
when we hold our babies for the first time, we might imagine that they'reclean slates, unmarked by life, when in fact, they've already been shaped by usand by the particular world we live in. today i want to share with you some ofthe amazing things that scientists are discovering about what fetuses learnwhile they're still in their mothers' bellies.
first of all, they learn the sound of their mothers' voices. because soundsfrom the outside world have to travel through the mother's abdominal tissue andthrough the amniotic fluid that surrounds the fetus, the voices fetuses hear,starting around the fourth month of gestation, are muted and muffled. oneresearcher says that they probably sound a lot like the the voice of charliebrown's teacher in the old "peanuts" cartoon. but the pregnant woman's own voicereverberates through her body, reaching the fetus much more readily. and becausethe fetus is with her all the time, it hears her voice a lot. once the baby'sborn, it recognizes her voice and it prefers listening to her voice over anyoneelse's.
how can we know this? newborn babies can't do much, but one thing they'rereally good at is sucking. researchers take advantage of this fact by rigging uptwo rubber nipples, so that if a baby sucks on one, it hears a recording of itsmother's voice on a pair of headphones, and if it sucks on the other nipple, ithears a recording of a female stranger's voice. babies quickly show theirpreference by choosing the first one. scientists also take advantage of the factthat babies will slow down their sucking when something interests them andresume their fast sucking when they get bored. this is how researchersdiscovered that, after women repeatedly read aloud a section of dr. seuss' "thecat in the hat" while they were pregnant, their newborn babies recognized thatpassage when they hear it outside the womb. my favorite e_periment of this kindis the one that showed that the babies of women who watched a certain soap operaevery day during pregnancy recognized the theme song of that show once they wereborn. so fetuses are even learning about the particular language that's spokenin the world that they'll be born into.
a study published last year found that from birth, from the moment ofbirth, babies cry in the accent of their mother's native language. french babiescry on a rising note while german babies end on a falling note, imitating themelodic contours of those languages. now why would this kind of fetal learningbe useful? it may have evolved to aid the baby's survival. from the moment ofbirth, the baby responds most to the voice of the person who is most likely tocare for it -- its mother. it even makes its cries sound like the mother'slanguage, which may further endear the baby to the mother, and which may givethe baby a head start in the critical task of learning how to understand andspeak its native language.
but it's not just sounds that fetuses are learning about in utero. it'salso tastes and smells. by seven months of gestation, the fetus' taste buds arefully developed, and its olfactory receptors, which allow it to smell, arefunctioning. the flavors of the food a pregnant woman eats find their way intothe amniotic fluid, which is continuously swallowed by the fetus. babies seem toremember and prefer these tastes once they're out in the world. in onee_periment, a group of pregnant women was asked to drink a lot of carrot juiceduring their third trimester of pregnancy, while another group of pregnant womendrank only water. si_ months later, the women's infants were offered cerealmi_ed with carrot juice, and their facial e_pressions were observed while theyate it. the offspring of the carrot juice drinking women ate morecarrot-flavored cereal, and from the looks of it, they seemed to enjoy itmore.
a sort of french version of this e_periment was carried out in dijon,france where researchers found that mothers who consumed food and drink flavoredwith licorice-flavored anise during pregnancy showed a preference for anise ontheir first day of life, and again, when they were tested later, on their fourthday of life. babies whose mothers did not eat anise during pregnancy showed areaction that translated roughly as "yuck." what this means is that fetuses areeffectively being taught by their mothers about what is safe and good to eat.fetuses are also being taught about the particular culture that they'll bejoining through one of culture's most powerful e_pressions, which is food.they're being introduced to the characteristic flavors and spices of theirculture's cuisine even before birth.
now it turns out that fetuses are learning even bigger lessons. but beforei get to that, i want to address something that you may be wondering about. thenotion of fetal learning may conjure up for you attempts to enrich the fetus --like playing mozart through headphones placed on a pregnant belly. but actually,the nine-month-long process of molding and shaping that goes on in the womb is alot more visceral and consequential than that. much of what a pregnant womanencounters in her daily life -- the air she breathes, the food and drink sheconsumes, the chemicals she's e_posed to, even the emotions she feels -- areshared in some fashion with her fetus. they make up a mi_ of influences asindividual and idiosyncratic as the woman herself. the fetus incorporates theseofferings into its own body, makes them part of its flesh and blood. and oftenit does something more. it treats these maternal contributions as information,as what i like to call biological postcards from the world outside.
so what a fetus is learning about in utero is not mozart's "magic flute"but answers to questions much more critical to its survival. will it be borninto a world of abundance or scarcity? will it be safe and protected, or will itface constant dangers and threats? will it live a long, fruitful life or ashort, harried one? the pregnant woman's diet and stress level in particularprovide important clues to prevailing conditions like a finger lifted to thewind. the resulting tuning and tweaking of a fetus' brain and other organs arepart of what give us humans our enormous fle_ibility, our ability to thrive in ahuge variety of environments, from the country to the city, from the tundra tothe desert.
to conclude, i want to tell you two stories about how mothers teach theirchildren about the world even before they're born. in the autumn of 1944, thedarkest days of world war ii, german troops blockaded western holland, turningaway all shipments of food. the opening of the nazi's siege was followed by oneof the harshest winters in decades -- so cold the water in the canals frozesolid. soon food became scarce, with many dutch surviving on just 500 calories aday -- a quarter of what they consumed before the war. as weeks of deprivationstretched into months, some resorted to eating tulip bulbs. by the beginning ofmay, the nation's carefully rationed food reserve was completely e_hausted. thespecter of mass starvation loomed. and then on may 5th, 1945, the siege came toa sudden end when holland was liberated by the allies.
the "hunger winter," as it came to be known, killed some 10,000 people andweakened thousands more. but there was another population that was affected --the 40,000 fetuses in utero during the siege. some of the effects ofmalnutrition during pregnancy were immediately apparent in higher rates ofstillbirths, birth defects, low birth weights and infant mortality. but otherswouldn't be discovered for many years. decades after the "hunger winter,"researchers documented that people whose mothers were pregnant during the siegehave more obesity, more diabetes and more heart disease in later life thanindividuals who were gestated under normal conditions. these individuals'prenatal e_perience of starvation seems to have changed their bodies in myriadways. they have higher blood pressure, poorer cholesterol profiles and reducedglucose tolerance -- a precursor of diabetes.
why would undernutrition in the womb result in disease later? onee_planation is that fetuses are making the best of a bad situation. when food isscarce, they divert nutrients towards the really critical organ, the brain, andaway from other organs like the heart and liver. this keeps the fetus alive inthe short-term, but the bill comes due later on in life when those other organs,deprived early on, become more susceptible to disease.
but that may not be all that's going on. it seems that fetuses are takingcues from the intrauterine environment and tailoring their physiologyaccordingly. they're preparing themselves for the kind of world they willencounter on the other side of the womb. the fetus adjusts its metabolism andother physiological processes in anticipation of the environment that awaits it.and the basis of the fetus' prediction is what its mother eats. the meals apregnant woman consumes constitute a kind of story, a fairy tale of abundance ora grim chronicle of deprivation. this story imparts information that the fetususes to organize its body and its systems -- an adaptation to prevailingcircumstances that facilitates its future survival. faced with severely limitedresources, a smaller-sized child with reduced energy requirements will, in fact,have a better chance of living to adulthood.
the real trouble comes when pregnant women are, in a sense, unreliablenarrators, when fetuses are led to e_pect a world of scarcity and are borninstead into a world of plenty. this is what happened to the children of thedutch "hunger winter." and their higher rates of obesity, diabetes and heartdisease are the result. bodies that were built to hang onto every calorie foundthemselves swimming in the superfluous calories of the post-war western diet.the world they had learned about while in utero was not the same as the worldinto which they were born.
here's another story. at 8:46 a.m. on september 11th, __, there were tensof thousands of people in the vicinity of the world trade center in new york --commuters spilling off trains, waitresses setting tables for the morning rush,brokers already working the phones on wall street. 1,700 of these people werepregnant women. when the planes struck and the towers collapsed, many of thesewomen e_perienced the same horrors inflicted on other survivors of the disaster-- the overwhelming chaos and confusion, the rolling clouds of potentially to_icdust and debris, the heart-pounding fear for their lives.
about a year after 9/11, researchers e_amined a group of women who werepregnant when they were e_posed to the world trade center attack. in the babiesof those women who developed post-traumatic stress syndrome, or ptsd, followingtheir ordeal, researchers discovered a biological marker of susceptibility toptsd -- an effect that was most pronounced in infants whose mothers e_periencedthe catastrophe in their third trimester. in other words, the mothers withpost-traumatic stress syndrome had passed on a vulnerability to the condition totheir children while they were still in utero.
now consider this: post-traumatic stress syndrome appears to be a reactionto stress gone very wrong, causing its victims tremendous unnecessary suffering.but there's another way of thinking about ptsd. what looks like pathology to usmay actually be a useful adaptation in some circumstances. in a particularlydangerous environment, the characteristic manifestations of ptsd -- ahyper-awareness of one's surroundings, a quick-trigger response to danger --could save someone's life. the notion that the prenatal transmission of ptsdrisk is adaptive is still speculative, but i find it rather poignant. it wouldmean that, even before birth, mothers are warning their children that it's awild world out there, telling them, "be careful."
let me be clear. fetal origins research is not about blaming women for whathappens during pregnancy. it's about discovering how best to promote the healthand well-being of the ne_t generation. that important effort must include afocus on what fetuses learn during the nine months they spend in the womb.learning is one of life's most essential activities, and it begins much earlierthan we ever imagined.
thank you.