TED Talk Podcast

Since I linked to Dave Egger's Pirate Store and Tutoring Center Ted Talk in the previous post, I figure this would be a good time to mention the TedTalk Podcast. According to the web site, TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. The annual conference was started in 1984 to bring together people from those three worlds and has since broadened its scope.

More than a thousand people now attend — indeed, the event sells out a year in advance — and the content has expanded to include science, business, the arts and the global issues facing our world. Over four days, 50 speakers each take an 18-minute slot, and there are many shorter pieces of content, including music, performance and comedy. There are no breakout groups. Everyone shares the same experience. It shouldn’t work, but it does. It works because all of knowledge is connected. Every so often it makes sense to emerge from the trenches we dig for a living, and ascend to a 30,000-foot view, where we see, to our astonishment, an intricately interconnected whole.

The TED motto is “Ideas Worth Spreading” and since 2006 has been making the best talks and performances available for free online. Each week they make more of the talks available from their archive. I have found many of these talks very interesting and would definitely recommend them.

The following rss podcast feeds are available if you have an mp3 player:

• RSS: audio | video | high-res video
• iPod: audio | video | high-res video