 Most people think that the most important part of any TED event are the people standing here on the red dots, the speakers. That is particularly believed by the speakers. But I know that's not true. I know the most important part of any TED event or any conversation is not the speaker, but the listener. After all, if an idea falls in the woods, but no one's there to spread it, was there ever an idea? Listening is the key to communication. Listening is the key to every relationship, every friendship, every team, and certainly every event like this. I am concerned with the lack of listening in the world, the lack of active listening. Certainly in my home country, the United States, and even more and more here in the Netherlands, you see a lack of good, clear political debate because there's a lack of good, clear listening to one another. And I'm not talking about passive listening or defensive listening where you're sort of fending off the idea so you don't really have to deal with it or like, yeah, I'm listening and tweeting and texting, sure. I'm talking about active listening. Sometimes you get into a conversation with someone, and it can be someone real close to you or a teammate or a colleague at work, and they start talking and you get that thought of like, oh right, we've had this conversation before. I know where it's going. And you do one of two things, either you just sort of tune out and think of your shopping list like you're a stripper or, who knows what they think about, or else, even worse, you do that thing where you kind of finish their sentence for them, which either you're right and you were merely rude or you're wrong and you were rude and they now offended have to go, no, that's not what I was going to say, and start over. The TED version of that by the way is when you listen to one sentence and then tweet during the next, and then listen to one sentence and tweet during the next, and this is true of every TED event, you know, whether it's Amsterdam or London or Madrid or Baltimore, it's true everywhere. I want people to focus more on active listening. Active listening is when you look someone in the eye or maybe even say, I'm sorry, I've got to write down what you're saying. I'm going to break eye contact to take notes. Active listening is where you hungrily try to take in that information. Now, what I do mostly is improvisation, improvisational comedy, which is when you work together with a teammate on stage using ideas to create brand new comedy. The only way you can do that is to listen. Otherwise, what you have is two stand-up comedians both trying to do their own stand-up routine, but they never really connect. I want to demonstrate this right now. I want to invite Kelly to join me on stage. Let's bring Kelly up for a sec. Kelly, thanks for joining me. Kelly and I are going to improvise a story. We're going to make up a story from scratch. So could someone out there just shout out a name, anybody's first name, like Chris or Kelly or Sean. Sean is fantastic. I'm old enough to be thinking about James Bond right now. Now, somebody shout out an object, an interesting object like a fire extinguisher, a piano, fantastic. Kelly and I are now going to make up a story about Sean and the piano. But to make sure that we don't sort of think to ourselves, oh, Sean and the piano, all right, Sean, he goes to a concert, he plays, and then he marries a doctor. So we don't tell the story we're already thinking of so that we give up the idea that we already know how it goes and so that we really actively focus on what the other one is saying. We're not going to tell this story the normal way. We're going to tell it one word at a time. So let's actually practice by explaining how we're going to tell the story. We're not going to tell it the normal way. We're going to tell it one word at a time. Nicely done, Kelly. The one word at a time story of Sean and the piano. Sean once decided to become a famous pianist. He went to Spain and took piano lessons in the home of a Spanish flamenco. Period. Spanish dancing is very popular in Spain among flamengos who enjoy dancing. Sean then tried to play the piano along with other pianists. Together they made magical music. And the story has a moral and the moral of the story is always remember when someone wants to play the piano or dance, they should always go to Spain. You know, you hear people talk about synergy. Oh, synergy, one plus one equals three. I'm a math nerd. I always thought, no, one plus one is two. But this is a case where one plus one really takes you to what a creative place you wouldn't have gotten before unless you surrender the idea that you know where the story is going and build it together. I challenge you during the break to do your own story with someone in this room. Three rules. One, pick someone you don't know at the break. Two, you really have to do it one word at a time. You can't go like, say sneak two words in. You can't go like, say pencil. No, no, it's got to be their choice. Third rule is all stories start. Susie missed the train. After that, it can go anywhere. So compare notes because you're going to go to different places when you work together. Thank you for listening. And by the way, can you remember the four cities I named at the beginning of the talk or were you tweeting? Thanks again.