Inside North Korea BBC Panorama News Programme

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zDYrFE985g

This week I wanted to watch something different. I found this feature about North Korea, which created uproar because it was  broadcasted by a reporter who hid himself in a group of tourists who were doing a tour in North Korea.
The period of the journey was last year and in that moment there was tension enough to open fire again between the two states of the Korean peninsula.
In this video there is one speaker, who is the reporter. He describes in a clear english the takes commenting them with the impressions of his experience.
Sometimes there are momments in which the two guides of the tour are recorded speaking, explaining the places visited and answering to the questions. They obviously do not speak like two londoners, not being able to go away legally from North Korea, but they are quite clear.
The reportage is well done and shows very well what the dictatorship wants to show to foreigners and also what a real person can see if s/he is there.
Is very interesting to see the pressing use of propaganda by dictatorship in private and public life of its citizens. Moreover the nation controls not only the citizens but also the foreigners who are currently in the state.
At the moment in which the reporter stops to Seul it is possible to have a very good idea of the differences between the two states of the peninsula, but also you can catch better how work the effects of a particular form of governament in a country like North Korea.

Arianna Huffington: How to succeed? Get more sleep

http://www.ted.com/talks/arianna_huffington_how_to_succeed_get_more_sleep.html

When I read the title of this talk I believed it was a banal lecture, but after watching it I was very caught by the type of message that Arianna wanted do give.

First of all she was very clear and she spoke with a very simple lexis. She has a good accent when she speaks and her talk lasted for only four minutes (there was not time to get bored).

She was ironic and used gestures and expressions to be catchy.

The message was simple, but she developed it beginning from her personal experience and then making a more general speech.

It was an interesting talk with a clear point of view.
She said that is very important to sleep because it let us discover new big ideas that can solve our problems.
Arianna explained about how her personal experience (the faint) changed his opinion about sleep.

Moreover she was talking to a an audience principally composed of women, her speech was addressed to women, and she had a feminist perspective of the issue.
In fact she made a comparison with men and important leaders, who boast of their few hour of sleep and then make terrible decisions, while women, who are commonly sleep-deprived, should sleep more to find the right ideas to solve or prevent the problems that men actually do not.

For example, she mentioned particular events like the Titanic shipwreck and Lehman Brothers bankruptcy to affirm that if women had been there at the command they could have solved or prevented them.
 

Kevin Breel: Confessions of a depressed comic

http://www.ted.com/talks/kevin_breel_confessions_of_a_depressed_comic.html

Listening to Kevin Breel speaking's speech was not very difficult.
Even though every person has her/his own accent when s/he speaks, the issue about he talked was quite simple to catch, in my opinion.
The speaker used a simple lexicon, in fact he talks about depression describing essencial aspects of common life.
Anyway a possible hardle to the comprehension could have been the speed through which Kevin pronounced his sentences.
The title of the video was quite captivating, but when I began watching the talk I remained a bit deluded, cause I was thinking it could be only a vent by the comic. Then I realized he wanted to develop his issue in a more general point of view focusing on the reactions by society, the idea of people of this psycological condition and taking the stock of what can nowaday's people do to beat this problem.