Challenging lectures on-line at TED

Yesterday I was having dinner with a friend. He mentioned that he had become addicted to the lectures posted on the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) web site. I found this interesting description of TED on their site:

TED is all about connections. The connections of ideas and the connections of people. It is based on the insight that to truly understand anything, you need to understand a little bit of everything that surrounds it. And that by allowing ourselves to be exposed each year to a diverse group of some of the most remarkable people on the planet, we transplant ourselves out of the one-dimensional mind-set of much of our working lives and into fertile country that will allow us - actually, almost force us - to grow.

TED also is a valuable source of ideas about innovation and creativity. A quick glance at the list of short lectures just mesmerizes you. It is hard to point one out, I am just going trough them right now, but my first pick was Dan Dennett—most famous for his books, Consciousness Explained (1991) and Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995). I still recall sitting in the lecture he gave at the Barcelona Biomedical Research Park more than four years ago. Mesmerizing.