âÂÂGuilt--IâÂÂm sorry I made a mistake. Shame--I am sorry for what I amâ -Brené Brown

from a Ted talk

Check your local stations, we get a once-a-week hour show on NPR based on the TED talks. The show will take one topic and use maybe a couple of TED talks to discuss that topic, plus interview the speakers.

Here is a link that might be useful: The TED Radio Hour

At a game night last night, friends and I were discussing the difference between guilt and shame. (Someone brought it up by comparing two religions.)

This would be a funny coincidence . . . if I believed in coincidence.

I'm another huge fan of the TED talks. The one you shared was very meaningful to me. I learned to practice those techniques back in my post university days and hugely rewarded for it.

A recent phenomenon in public communication - creating a delivery that has more impact than the reality of the subject matter. Shock, stun, surprise, head-scratching at the first instance. But then you realize that the message offers no new insight or was simply made-up . To me, that's what TED is all about.

Practitioners include Malcolm Gladwell, Michael Pollen (a journalist who has knighted himself as an expert in matters biological and scientific), the writers behind Freakonomics, etc. There's a lot of money in this business (and my congrats to those who can capitalize on the opportunity) but most of it doesn't interest me.

I would love to attend some of them live. But I have and do listen and watch many of them. Most are of interest and quite well done.

sorry snidely I don't agree. Perhaps, you've too much hubris to think there are other answers to life than such as you've decided? Or not.

Too often, they have the answers for which I have searchd and asked, but gotten no answers. Like the guilt/shame question. One is quite healthy and the other isn't, but can be overcome. Like a lightswitch that went on.

Nah, not the case rob. I think I'm comfortably confident but also humble and inquisitive. I try not to be gullible, this may be a case of that?

To me, the TED talks are a confluence of what Click and Clack would call "shameless self promotion". The presenters all have books and services to sell and/or reputations to enhance. Check it out next time you listen to one, you'll understand they do these talks for public exposure. Great effort is made to have their comments seem insightful or provocative. If you enjoy them, great.

The formula and presentation style from one to the next are so similar, I find them boring.

The really bright people doing important work are too busy to spend time with such broad-market, popular culture fluff.

I recently came across one by Malcolm Gladwell, when I was looking for information about Norden Bombsights after finding a couple of them in my father's stuff after he passed away recently.

It was a fascinating synopsis and overview of the device, its history, its development and use, its successes and failures. The speaker did a great job of making a obscure, esoteric device both interesting and entertaining.

I don't know that that talk was trying to convey any message other than "The government spent a lot of money for something that didn't turn out to be so great" --- Well duh, that's what the government does best.

I like them. I find them interesting and entertaining. That said, one talk is not going to be life changing for me.

Yes, they are probably all self promoting, but so what?
They get you thinking, talking and questioning.

"The really bright people doing important work are too busy to spend time with such broad-market, popular culture fluff."

Or, maybe they just weren't asked yet to do a TED talk? :)

Bob, I took a look at that presentation. First I did a google search on Carl Nordon. Combining the two, I realized:

- Gladwell's parable regarding Swiss characteristics and how it affected Nordon is nonsense - he was Dutch, not Swiss.

-Nordon didn't emigrate to the US "just before WW1" - in fact it was 1904.

-Nordon didn't begin working on bomb sights at that time, there were no airplanes.

I'll stop there. Gladwell is a great example to cite, his product is entertainment, not enlightenment. Truth is bent to make a better story. Many can enjoy such misinformation, that's fine, it's not my thing.

It's a "self-improvement" and information market and delivery system of that market. Many will read books, magazines or sites but, for many, these TED talks are an easier way of getting information.

Writing a book or a blog or going on a talk show is self-promoting. How else do you get what you want to say or get what you want people to hear out there.

Disinformation can be delivered in all sorts of ways - including research papers.

If it gets people thinking and perhaps looking for more information, I see nothing wrong with them. I won't go to an actual talk but will occassionally watch one on the internet.

Rob or Robin with an R. I'm female. But you proved my point. Good for a laugh! So not for you; however, Ted is good for the rest of the world. Boils it down in, well, a more palatable way.

If you have streaming from Netflix, you will find many Ted talks there.

rob333, if your comment was directed at me, I was responding to bob cville, not you.

I'm not sure what Gladwell is boiling down other than baloney. He does more harm than good, don't you think?

Rob, I checked out your link & liked it a lot, both the content as well as the delivery style of Amy Cuddy. Didn't strike me as self promotional, at all. Interesting & informative, yes.

A Masai youth of about 13, charged with protecting his family's cattle from lions, which are becoming an endangered species, but big tourist attracters in Kenya, also but killed by the Masai as cattle-killers, made a discovery.

He found that when there were blinking, moving lights at night, the lion's favourite hunting time ... the lions stayed away.

So he tried this, using simple materials readily available, and it worked for him, then passed it around to others, who also used it.

Resulting in quite a few of the Masai then killing way fewer lions.

Didn't patent the idea, considering it a gift from God, and is not making any money from it.

He was brought to the U.S. to give a TED talk.

The story that I heard about this did not mention that many of the Masai are on the edge of starvation, as the drought in the area and the expansion of the Sahara has caused almost no grazing for their cattle, resulting in most of them dying, and the loss of the Masai's traditional way of life, with few alternative prospects available.

ole joyful

The Sahara is NOWHERE near where the Maasai live (in Kenya and Tanzania), it's perhaps 1000 miles away. Maasai Mara Reserve, in the heart of their region, is a high plain (altitude >4000 ft) that receives abundant rainfall for half the year or more. Some might call the climate damp. I've been there.

Did this well informed soul also comment that the melting of the Arctic ice pack was making polar bear hunting more difficult for the Maasai?

People are too gullible, ready to swallow any BS story.

We would have them at work and most in the audience were thrilled and somewhat enlightened. Me, not so much. The talks are basically paid speakers stating the obvious of common sense. Since most of us are too busy to sit down and think things through, the podcast are something of a forced sit down.

Common sense has declined among many so they need to learn it now. JMHO.