If Memory Serves

Is it possible that one of the things we find so gratifying about TED talks, besides their content, is the way they're delivered? Every one that I've seen seems to flow so naturally, and there's something very appealing about that. I may not have noticed it consciously, but notice it I did, and now I know what it's all about. TED talker Alexis Madrigal, the Silicon Valley bureau chief of Fusion, leaked the secret. "The strangest thing about TED," he writes, "is not the four-figure price tag or earnest, almost cultish following. It’s that almost everyone on stage has memorized their lines. At most conferences, you get a mix of people reading from PowerPoint decks, using teleprompters, or simply ad-libbing around loose outlines. But not at TED. Here, memory reigns." And that, I think, is what makes the speakers seem so personable, so human to us in the audience. Because they're on autopilot as far as the words are concerned, they're able to notice and connect with their audience. But memorizing their talks benefits them in other ways as well. As Madrigal puts it, "Memorization, I realized, is a place where the mind learns to cope with the body. Consciously, we want to remember something, but that’s not sufficient to embed information in the networks of the brain. We have to earn the memories we want": http://fusion.net/story/106690/what-memorizing-a-ted-talk-did-to-my-brain/
   And speaking of memorization, a while back I posted a great little poem used to help English children learn the names and order of their monarchs: http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2012/12/royallist.html
   One thing leads to another, and as the above-referenced poem starts with William the Conqueror, who won the throne in 1066 (remember the Battle of Hastings?), I am reminded of the famous but unfinished Bayeux Tapestry, made in his honor. There is a beautiful animated version of it, and a group of dedicated embroiderers led by an American expat living in England spent a year completing it: http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-final-chapter.html