When taking my courses at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute during the Fall of 2019, a couple of the courses were designed around presentation followed by discussion. TED Talks, because of their diversity and expertise, provided much of the focus, though I didn't know what they were. Some of the speakers were known to me by reputation, all were articulate and presumably experienced at solo speeches to large audiences. While I took a liking to them and included myself in the followup discussions, the resource remained dormant. My Spring 2020 classes had a different format, mostly too large for meaningful verbal exchange or too lecture focused. As Covid-19 became dominant with connection to the world primarily by screen, I again sought out some type of entry to the idea marketplace. Zoom seminars became a destination. And OLLI classes have resumed online in Zoom format. But I missed the TED Talks, those presentations designed to stimulate thinking more than present factual material. Many were experience based, experiences that we do not have ourselves but can still share.
I started exploring what has been assembled. It's massive. When subdivided by topic, most subjects do not stimulate me but they stimulate others. The program allows me to select my own interests and sifts through lectures their algorithms think I might enjoy, though my own style has been more surfing and sampling, not entirely randomly but with enough curiosity to tap subjects that were really on my B-List, perhaps unfairly. Nearly all are less than a half-hour, well within my restricted attention span. A new addition to my daily task list.
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