If you haven’t heard of TED talks, you’re truly missing out on some amazing, empowering, inspring, and mind blowing information out there. In an incredibly brief summary, TED conferences are held worldwide where geniuses (in my opinion) speak for 18-25 minutes about an idea, a solution, a breakthrough, or even just an uplifting story about anything from science, religion, art, sex, writing, etc. These conferences are by invitation only, and carry a hefty ticket price of up to $7,500 per person to attend. The audience members will typically contain powerful people who have the ability to help fund, implement, or spread these ideas to the rest of the world. What’s great about TED is that most of the conferences are made available to us for free online here. It is wonderfully organized and searchable for any subject that thrills you.

I had the privilege of attending my very first TED talk last month in Portland. If I wasn’t before, I am completely hooked now. The theme of this conference was Velocity. Information was being shared by wonderful speakers about moving forward- as a person, a population, and as a species. We heard stories of struggle and conquer from speakers who had triumphed emotional turmoil, enlightened cities to collaborate, to a doctor who built a school in Afghanistan for women, only to have the building bombed and destroyed- then rebuilt again by the families, brick by brick. Such powerful inspiration occurred in that conference; I can’t wait for my opportunity to attend the next one! (And hopefully one day be a speaker with my own idea worth spreading….)

Dr. Mohammad Khan Kharoti: Surgeon. Builder. Inspirer.
He was one of my favorite speakers at the TEDxConcordiaUPortland conference. His Velocity talk is viewable here.

I seriously encourage everyone to pour yourself a cup of [insert favorite liquid here], jump onto TED’s website, type in any subject that interests you, sit back and enjoy the brain-gasm. Netflix also offers a plethora of TED talks in a nicely organized, categorical fashion based on subject.

One night over too much wine, a good friend and I were discussing the possibilities and implications of the evolution of Homo sapiens. Has this already occurred in multiple places around the world? What type of “upgrade” would Homo sapiens have to develop for it be considered evolutionary? How would mankind outside of the field of science accept this? A couple weeks later I found myself browsing through TED talks using the search term “evolution”. And wouldn’t you know it….there was a TED talk discussing the exact thing my boozy friend and I were fantasizing about. It is now one of my all time favorite TED talks. If you are even remotely interested in this topic, check out the video below!

(Hmm…it might be worth while for me to start a whole TED section on my blog for my favorites!)