TED

Where to begin? TED (which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design) is a yearly conference designed, in the words of their mission statement, to "offer free knowledge and inspiration from the world's most inspired thinkers". They do this by first inviting a great number of great minds and giving each of them 18 minutes max (no matter how famous they are) to tell the audience about "ideas worth spreading". Then, they put each one of those talks online, absolutely free and open. The talks are all fascinating, and they cover a huge amount of subject matter. You can check out the list of all talks, but here's a list of some of my favorites.




Benjamin Zander, a charismatic conductor who firmly believes that everyone loves classical music, whether they know it or not. He explains a Chopin prelude to the audience, leading up a performance that gets the audience on their feet (original here).



Evelyn Glennie, a Scottish percussionist who went nearly completely deaf by the age of 12, shows us that there's more to playing and listening to music than just your ears. She talks about what makes music more than just the notes on the page, how to make it real artistic expression and not just robotic playing.



Nobel-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann talks about the question of whether a more "beautiful" or "simple" physical theory is actually more likely to be right. Despite his genius, he's got a great sense of humor and is very good at interacting with an audience of laymen.



Barry Schwartz, who studies the links between economics and psychology, calls for more practical wisdom and less bureaucracy.


I'm writing this from a train station, about to not have any internet for the weekend, so I might add some more good talks to this later.