Story Laboratory: TED Talk Videos

Image Source

This week I decided to do a story lab instead of writing a story. I had never done a story lab before so I was excited to see what it was about! I chose to watch two Ted Talk videos and I really enjoyed each of them. The first video was The danger of a single story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I had remembered watching this video in my high school English class and I was very impressed once again by it. I love the idea of gaining other perspectives instead of hearing one single story. I think she has a great point that if we only focus on a single story there is a chance for many misunderstandings to occur. She states that if we could listen to other stories and perspectives, we could have the chance to gather the idea as a whole of the topic.

The second Ted Talk I chose to listen to I had never heard before so it was fun to get to watch. The Ted Talk was Imaginary friends and real-world consequences by Jennifer Barnes. I thought it was a cool detail that Jennifer Barnes is a professor at OU. This video really stuck out to me because I related to many of the points she made in the story. She had mentioned that sometimes with fiction novels we attach to a character and feel as though that we are a part of their lives. We also do this with celebrities where we read so much about them or follow them on social media and feel a connection to them. She had mentioned that since she is a fiction novelist, that sometimes when bad things happen to characters she receives a lot of criticism because the reader is so upset that something happened to this fictional character. Jennifer Barnes also mentioned a study conducted at OU where people named their favorite fictional character and then someone they sort of knew at OU. They were supposed to range how upset they would be if each of those people died and found that most would be way more upset if the fictional character died than the real-life acquaintance.


I really enjoyed both videos and was glad to watch both.