Elise Hu

In his talk, he explains why media literacy, which he defines as the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media in various forms, is a crucial skill in an age of proliferating misinformation.

But it doesn't mean you can't have a bit of fun doing it.

With his absurdist sketches that he makes to explain the news, he shows us how humor can cut through fear, spark curiosity, and cool down hot takes in order to explore more nuanced truths.

And since this talk is quite visual, I'll jump in throughout to describe a few of the videos and images that Dave shares during his talk.

I'd also recommend going to watch the video on TED.com.

Hey, y'all.

Elise here.

So Dave is sharing an image of this Kipu, in English often spelled Q-U-I-P-U, which, as he said, was a record keeping device.

It looks almost like a half circle with long rays of string of different lengths coming down or a large necklace.

The string is colorful, different earthy oranges, blues and yellows.

At this point, Dave shows us a photo of a piece of papyrus scroll with tiny ancient Greek writing on it.

It's hard to read and clearly very old.

Imagine an ancient manuscript you might see behind glass at a museum.

This film that Dave is playing is an iconic 1896 French short silent documentary film, and I mean really short, about 50 seconds long, directed and produced by Auguste and Louis Lumiere.

The audience sees the train hurtling towards the camera.

To prove his point, Dave starts to react the way that early observers of the film did.

He freaks out and ducks, literally throwing his body on the floor of the stage, only to realize that the train remained in the fully 2D space of the film.

And he was safe the whole time.

Oh, okay.

This video ends with scrolling text of a number of claims that have been made on the internet that are not true.