Question:
A TED talk (the acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is one of the routes to academic stardom that didn't exist a decade ago. (The 30th anniversary celebration aside, curators only began posting fame-making free online videos in 2006.) Although TED plays an inordinate role in setting the tone for how ideas are conveyed, not only because of the reach of its videos but also through spinoffs like regional "TEDx" events and the TED Radio Hour, one of the few places nonpolicy intellectuals get substantial on-air time, it's just one of a number of platforms that are changing the ecology of academic celebrity. These include similar ideas-in-nuggets conclaves, such as the Aspen Ideas Festival and PopTech, along with huge online courses and, yes, still, blogs. These new, or at least newish, forms are upending traditional hierarchies of academic visibility and helping to change which ideas gain purchase in the public discourse.
In a famous essay, "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos," first published in the early 90s, the literary scholar Stanley Fish wrote that "the flourishing of the lecture circuit has brought with it new sources of extra income ... [and] an ever-growing list of stages on which to showcase one's talents, and geometric increase in the availability of the commodities for which academics yearn, attention, applause, fame, and ultimately, adulation of a kind usually reserved for the icons of popular culture." Fish was Exhibit A among professors taking advantage of such trends, and his trailblazing as a lit-crit celebrity inspired the dapper, globe-trotting lit-theory operator Morris Zapp, a character in David Lodge's academic satire Small World. But the world Fish was describing, where no one could live-tweet the lectures, let alone post the talks for worldwide distribution, now seems sepia-toned. "If David Lodge's Morris Zapp were alive and kicking today," observes John Holbo, an associate professor of philosophy at the National University of Singapore, and blogger at Crooked Timber and the Valve, "he'd be giving a TED talk, not an MLA talk. Which is to say: He wouldn't be doing Theory. He probably wouldn't be in an English department."
Q71. The passage is mainly about:
A TED talk (the acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design) is one of the routes to academic stardom that didn't exist a decade ago. (The 30th anniversary celebration aside, curators only began posting fame-making free online videos in 2006.) Although TED plays an inordinate role in setting the tone for how ideas are conveyed, not only because of the reach of its videos but also through spinoffs like regional "TEDx" events and the TED Radio Hour, one of the few places nonpolicy intellectuals get substantial on-air time, it's just one of a number of platforms that are changing the ecology of academic celebrity. These include similar ideas-in-nuggets conclaves, such as the Aspen Ideas Festival and PopTech, along with huge online courses and, yes, still, blogs. These new, or at least newish, forms are upending traditional hierarchies of academic visibility and helping to change which ideas gain purchase in the public discourse.
In a famous essay, "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos," first published in the early 90s, the literary scholar Stanley Fish wrote that "the flourishing of the lecture circuit has brought with it new sources of extra income ... [and] an ever-growing list of stages on which to showcase one's talents, and geometric increase in the availability of the commodities for which academics yearn, attention, applause, fame, and ultimately, adulation of a kind usually reserved for the icons of popular culture." Fish was Exhibit A among professors taking advantage of such trends, and his trailblazing as a lit-crit celebrity inspired the dapper, globe-trotting lit-theory operator Morris Zapp, a character in David Lodge's academic satire Small World. But the world Fish was describing, where no one could live-tweet the lectures, let alone post the talks for worldwide distribution, now seems sepia-toned. "If David Lodge's Morris Zapp were alive and kicking today," observes John Holbo, an associate professor of philosophy at the National University of Singapore, and blogger at Crooked Timber and the Valve, "he'd be giving a TED talk, not an MLA talk. Which is to say: He wouldn't be doing Theory. He probably wouldn't be in an English department."
Q71. The passage is mainly about:
In a famous essay, "The Unbearable Ugliness of Volvos," first published in the early 90s, the literary scholar Stanley Fish wrote that "the flourishing of the lecture circuit has brought with it new sources of extra income ... [and] an ever-growing list of stages on which to showcase one's talents, and geometric increase in the availability of the commodities for which academics yearn, attention, applause, fame, and ultimately, adulation of a kind usually reserved for the icons of popular culture." Fish was Exhibit A among professors taking advantage of such trends, and his trailblazing as a lit-crit celebrity inspired the dapper, globe-trotting lit-theory operator Morris Zapp, a character in David Lodge's academic satire Small World. But the world Fish was describing, where no one could live-tweet the lectures, let alone post the talks for worldwide distribution, now seems sepia-toned. "If David Lodge's Morris Zapp were alive and kicking today," observes John Holbo, an associate professor of philosophy at the National University of Singapore, and blogger at Crooked Timber and the Valve, "he'd be giving a TED talk, not an MLA talk. Which is to say: He wouldn't be doing Theory. He probably wouldn't be in an English department."
Q71. The passage is mainly about:
Show Hint
Look for the theme running through the whole passage, not just one example in it.
Updated On: Jul 16, 2026
- Technology, Entertainment, and Design
- Turning over the conventional
- Gaining popular adulation
- Changing presentations
Show Solution
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The Correct Option is B
Solution and Explanation
This is a main idea question, so before jumping to the options you need to step back from the specific examples (TED, Stanley Fish, Morris Zapp) and ask what larger point the author is making by stringing them together.
- A. Technology, Entertainment, and Design: this is simply what the letters TED stand for. It is a definition mentioned in the first line, not the point of the whole passage, so it is too narrow to be the main idea.
- B. Turning over the conventional: the passage opens by saying TED talks are a route to academic stardom that didn't exist a decade ago, goes on to list other new platforms (Aspen Ideas Festival, PopTech, online courses, blogs), and says these are upending traditional hierarchies of academic visibility. The Fish and Holbo material then shows a concrete before-and-after: the old world of lecture circuits and MLA talks giving way to TED talks and live-tweeting. Every part of the passage supports this one idea, that established, conventional ways of building academic reputation are being overturned by new formats.
- C. Gaining popular adulation: adulation is mentioned only inside the Stanley Fish quotation, as one of the things academics chase on the lecture circuit. It describes a motive touched on in one part of the passage, not what the whole passage is built around.
- D. Changing presentations: this captures a surface detail, that talks are now delivered differently (TEDx, TED Radio Hour, live-tweeting), but it misses the deeper point that it is the whole system of academic recognition and visibility that is being reshaped, not just the format of a talk.
Option B is the only choice broad enough to cover the passage's opening claim, its list of new platforms, and its closing example, while staying tied to what the author is actually arguing rather than a detail mentioned along the way.
Let's summarize:
- Main idea questions need an option that accounts for the whole passage, not just one paragraph or one quotation.
- Here the throughline is old, conventional routes to academic fame being displaced by new platforms like TED.
The correct answer is option B, turning over the conventional.
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