TED Talks You Should Watch Now

TED talks are inspiring, often mind-blowing, short talks by fascinating people, available as free videos (often around 10-15 min) or audio clips online (translated into numerous languages).  I used to watch them online, or on my ipad from time to time, but ever since I dropped Time Warner Cable and picked up a Roku and Boxee Box, I’ve been watching a lot more interesting content (and enjoying it on my TV, as a respite from being on my computer) – here are two talks that are guaranteed to inspire you, blow your mind, and make you want to watch more (along with an interesting bonus talk on TV and the American Psyche).

Justin Hall-Tipping: Freeing energy from the grid
Mike Biddle: We can recycle plastic
Lauren Zalaznick: The conscience of television

Justin Hall-Tipping: Freeing energy from the grid
This definitely falls into the inspiring and mind-blowing category. They figured out (in a lab – not yet commercially available) how to extract electrons from the world around us, store them until needed (an efficient battery) and use them for energy to power and light our lives – eliminating the need for power plants, energy grids, etc. and providing free energy for the world all while reducing our consumption levels (i.e. by making our homes more efficient to heat and cool).

And then he goes on to explain  how we can use technology like this to solve other critical problems to our society that are otherwise economically impossible i.e. in a world where energy is freed, easily transmittable, we can take salt-water, or polluted water,  anywhere we are and turn it into water we can drink.  At the end, when he pulls out the photo of the young girl dying of thirst in the Sudan, with the Vulture waiting for her to die in the background, and you don’t choke up and feel the need to change our world – you should check to see if you have a pulse and are human.

Mike Biddle: We can recycle plastic
Biddle runs an amazing business, “above ground mining”. They handle 1 million pounds of "discarded stuff" (garbage), every day at their recycling facilities. This represents less then 1% of the waste our society generates every year! 85 billion pounds of JUST electronic waste is created each year. By extracting raw materials from our waste – instead of continuing to rape our planet we can stop and reuse what we’ve already taken and live more in harmony like nature, and we can save a ton of money in the process.

Lauren Zalaznick: The conscience of television
Most of us watch some TV each week. Shit, the average American watches five hours a day! WTF? I’m nowhere close to that, but I watch more then I’d like to admit (my family too called it the idiot box, the boob tube, etc.). Whether you love it or hate it, this is a great TED talk about popular tv (good or bad) as the psyche & collective conscious of the American people, reflecting our moral, emotional, political, etc needs: