Best of TED Talks

The talks at TED, the annual technology, entertainment and design conference at Monterey, California are incredibly addictive.

If you want to be inspired and mature overnight, I would recommend getting to a fast connection and downloading every video on this page.

Bravo to Chris Anderson and BMW for putting all this for free online and allowing us to peek into the minds of some of most brilliant and talented people in the world.

Every 20-minute presentation is mind-blowing. A quick and arbitrary top 20:
1. Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce and the marketing genius of Howard Moskowitz.
2. Ray Kurzweil on exponential growth of information processing that will enable us to reengineer the brain and extend aging.
3. Hans Rosling on the creation of GapMinder and how stats when visualized correctly brings better understanding to big issues of economics.
4.Sir Ken Robinson on how traditional education is failing our children.
5. Rick Warren, author of The Purpose-Driven Life, for a non-religious view of his book.
6. Larry Brilliant on the eradication of smallpox.
7.Jeff Han for his amazing demo of the multi-touch screen.
8.Eve Ensler on the Vagina Monologues.
9.Mena Trott on her very personal blogging journey and the creation of Six Apart.
10. Ze Frank who is just plain funny.
11.Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics, on the economics of drug dealing.
12.Eva Vertes, on how a young mind thinking out of the box can make a difference.
13.Michael Shermer of Skeptic Magazine that debunks alien kidnappings and mysterious apparitions.
14. Rives for his fresh take on the Internet via poetry.
15.Richard St John for his 3-minute powerpoint on how to succeed in life.
16. Dr Dean Ornish on how a few small lifestyle changes can save lives.
17.Anna Deveare-Smith for her theatrics.
18.Janine Benyus for biomimicry and how we need to learn from our older cousins on Earth on how to stay here.
19. Wade Davis on the preservation of the diversity of cultures.
20. Iqbal Quadir on the GrameenPhone.

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