Do you have a favourite TED talk?

Terrrific question. I’m trying to track down one we watched during a dance class I take. It had to do with the development of musicality (or at least the part we watched focused on that).

edit: found it Benjamin Zander

I have pretty much sworn of TED.

Why @ARE_you_kidding_me?

And thank you @BellaB. I’ll have a listen.

Mainly TEDX some of them are just pitiful. I miss the clever articulation and real topics of the earlier ones.

I agree with @ARE_you_kidding_me that TED has kind of lost its way, but the old stuff is still available on Ted dot-com if you “browse” and then sort by “oldest”.

I could, predictably, list the ones I listen to most often: the Richard Dawkins talks, the Dan Dennett talks, Jane Goodall, etc. but you guys know me well enough so I won’t bother.

Here’s a good one, and under 6 minutes. William Kamkwamba, talking about the windmill he built for his family out of literal junk, which enabled his tiny Malawian village to have electricity for the first time.

He learned how to build the windmill by reading engineering textbooks at a library that the American government had built nearby.

He was 14 years old.

I liked Ted 2 better.

I like this one on algorithms and high frequency trading. But I agree that TEDx has cheapened the brand.

I recently enjoyed this TED talk that shows how to draw some basic cartoons. It was simple, stupid, and wonderful at the same time.

This one is my new favorite.

I really like the happiness talk by Shawn Archor, and I found this one on “multipotentialism” pretty interesting, too.

@SavoirFaire It’s definitely one of mine, now, too.

Look for any of Philip Zimbardo’s on good, evil and bystanders. I particularly like the one where he talks about Abu Ghraib and systemic evil. And how to teach people to speak out.