I stumbled onto Winston's advice as I was preparing for my Ph.D. defence which took place in early March (right before the COVID-19 shutdowns began). For the public presentation portion--a 45 minute talk aimed at a general audience--I took his suggestion to add a few props and regular 'breaks' from the technical content (as well as turning on all the lights in the lecture hall).

My dissertation dealt with robot navigation so I dug up an aeronautical chart and a 'flight computer' (circular slide rule) to motivate dead reckoning. The breaks were mostly pictures from conferences/trips where I presented my work. Both of these additions seemed to be quite well received based on some (somewhat impartial) feedback :).

One suggestion I'm still not completely sold on is to avoid saying 'thank you' at the very end. Ending on a visual that summarizes the work makes sense, but avoiding thanking the audience so as to not appear too deferential seems to me to be a stretch--isn't this just a simple courtesy? Wilson makes the analogy to political speeches which almost always end in some form of 'God bless America!', but I struggle to see an analogous sign-off that could be used in more academic settings.