TED held a talk on how to come off as smart in a TED Talk

TED is to be commended for making the masses think a little deeper, but it’s also fair to say that it’s bite-sized Talks are a little reductive.

With speakers having to pack their insights into as little as five minutes, various speech and body language tricks are necessary to make an impact on the audience and this often leads to overwrought dispatches.

Back in 2015, Saturday Night Live writer Will Stephen laid this bare with a speech at TED Talks about how to sound smart in a TED Talk.

“I have absolutely nothing to say whatsoever and yet through my manner of speaking I will make it seem like I do,” he told the audience, though it’s all really in the way he delivers his sentences, “like what I’m saying is brilliant and maybe, just maybe, you will feel like you’ve learned something."

Adjusting his (unnecessary) glasses, asking questions the crowd will be able to answer so they feel included, offering personal anecdotes to endear himself, showing photos of random scientists and projecting random numbers, he walks through a number of methods of impressing people.

Stephen still writes for SNL, recently contributing the ‘Drake’s Beef’ sketch.