I mentioned this in conversation last week; any subject becomes interesting when presented by a super passionate person. Here are a few examples from the ever excellent TED conference.
Robert Ballard
If you only watch one of these, make it this one. This is a guy who’s PASSIONATE about his work. Extremely interesting stuff about our oceans and some crazy numbers and examples on what we don’t know about them.
Nathan Myhrvold
The former Microsoftie and bonified genius on his life of fascinations. (side note : must have made for an annoying sound level when he was having conversations with Bill Gates, how come nerds have voices like these?)
Benjamin Zander
Music, the love of music and how to interpret / appreciate classical music.
Wade Davis
He’s got a bit of a weird rythm to his speech but some great experiences and thoughts concerning the Worldwide web of belief and ritual.
2 Comments
To be honest, I go back and forth with TED. Some talks are quite useful but some others are quite frustrating and many of them are very superficial. In general, there seems to be a Jobs-type Reality Distortion Field involved, and there’s a lot of Valley-type groupthink. It might be a good idea to use Baillargeon’s approach to intellectual self-defence while watching some of those talks.
No offence intended. I do agree with you on passion. I just wish TED didn’t work against critical thinking.
“Baillargeon’s approach to intellectual self-defence”
Which is?
“I just wish TED didn’t work against critical thinking”
Huh?