For those of you not familiar, I highly recommend a visit to Ted.com for entertainment and information about what’s new in technology and culture, and what may be new in another 29 or 30 years. Ted is a non-profit that has sponsored lectures and presentations on literally thousands of subjects since it’s start in 1984. Most of them are collected and available for free on their website. And one of the best things about them is their brevity – virtually all of them are 20 minutes or less. It works for me – they always leave me wanting more. FYI, there are probably a couple hundred of them packaged up in related lectured on Netflix Streaming.
It’s very hard for me to pick a favorite as I’ve seen hundreds, but my most recent viewing prompted this thread. Mary Roach delivers the lecture “10 things you didn’t know about orgasm”, nothing particularly profound or deep, but tremendous fun nevertheless. She provides us with difficult to find information about how far men can shoot sperm, and how best to sexually stimulate sows (it turn out a satisfied sow produces more piglets than an unsatisfied one!). Another FYI, this one was bundled with a bunch of other fun lectures about sex on Netflix.
I will watch the first, but I’ve already seen and greatly enjoyed Hans Rosling’s talk. And we’ve also had more than one thread about his Gapminder website, which turns demographic date into dynamic and revealing … stories about history, really.
While I have never been a fan of Ze Frank or his type of music (just not my thing), I am a huge fan of him as a person and the message he spreads with his time. Thank you for posting this, it made me smile tonight
I haven’t watched his talk, but I did recently read Jonathan Heidt’s book on the subject, The Righteous Mind, and recommend it. He also has a website, http://www.yourmorals.org.
The TED talk that I remember the most vividly is this one by Hans Rosling. Hard to believe it’s from 2006 - it might have even been the first TED talk I ever saw.
Has anyone else seen the “Onion Talks” video series that satirizes TED? As much as I like TED, I have to admit that the Onion does a fantastic job of mocking some of the more common quirks and styles of TED talks. My favorite Onion Talks videos are “Ducks Go Quack, Chickens Say Cluck” and “What Is The Biggest Rock?”
I want to thank you all for these links. I’ve watched every one of them that I haven’t already seen, and they are all very enjoyable and informative. I hope people contribute some more.
Like yourself I’ve watched hundreds, but here are a few of my latest favourites for you; a fairly random selection of inspirational, architectural and techy talks that I found interesting.
I liked A Darwinian Theory of Beauty. It takes an evolutionary perspective into why we find things beautiful (art and jewely and so on, not certain people).
