Russell Foster studies sleep and its role in our lives, examining how our perception of light influences our sleep-wake rhythms. His favorite subject as he said in the beginning of the speech is neuroscience of sleep. He gave his speech to educate and to inform everyone on why we sleep, hence the name of his speech why do we sleep. It seemed that he had a goal for a wider view of people seeing his speak, mostly by it being up on the internet. His goal is to change our views, change our ideas and our thoughts about sleep. Sleep is important and we take it for granted.
This speech “Why Do We Sleep” was filmed June 2013 and put on ted talks for anybody and everybody to see it. Foster didn’t really have a specific key demographic group he was aiming this speech to. The audience size was not specified for the speech Russell Foster. But throughout his speech he talked about the effects of lack of sleep on teenagers and adults, so maybe that was who he was speaking to.
Foster opens the speech up with a dry “what I’d like to do today is…” and then he used a connection between a sound of an alarm clock and sleep and how the sound of an alarm clock stops the single most important behavioral experience we have. He in the beginning is walking back and forth among the stage. After he states a statistic that 36% of your life your sleeping, so if you live to be 90 you would of slept for 32 years, but did not give a source to site where he found his statistic. He began talking with his hands to add emphasize to what he had just said, for why sleep is so important. Also throughout his speech he used quotes to show how the tone on sleep has changed over the years. Some of his remarks after the quotes brought laughter among the audience. He used the laughter to change the tone of his speech gradually and smoothly. He became very enthusiastic throughout the speech. He began laughing at his own jokes and began speaking very fast due to over excitement. You could just tell he was very passionate in his topic and informing us of the importance of sleeping. As he used the quotes "Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber." Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. A few more quotes. "O sleep, O gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse, how have I frighted thee?" Shakespeare again and from the same time: "Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together” by Thomas Dekker. In his speech he read the quotes them off of a piece of paper which took away from his passion and enthusiasm.
Russell supported his evidence with research on the brain and how it doesn’t sleep while we sleep. He followed an organized and outlined speech. Russell used the rule of threes. He said “There are dozens of different ideas about why we sleep, and I'm going to outline three of those.” The rule of three were the points he wanted to make were restoration ideas, energy conservation, and brain processing and memory consolidation. These were the three explanations for why we might sleep. We need nine hours of sleep and are only getting about five hours of sleep a night. This results in micro sleep which is the involuntary falling asleep. When one does not sleep you have poor memory, increased impulsiveness, and poor judgment.
He said exactly what he would us to back up his argument on why sleep was so important. He began with a fast pace but as he began giving supporting details he became very easy to understand and connect with. Russell used smooth transitions between the points he wanted to make that it wasn’t even noticeable from the first few times I watched his speech I only noticed them as I read the transcript.
Visual aids were used throughout the speech on a slide show that projected behind him. It hit and showed the points he was about to talk about, and the points on the slides were timed very well for his presentation of his speech. The slides were simple and easy to see and understand. His posture as he spoke was pretty sturdy, but he looked restless as he
