Where in the world am I today?: Winnipeg, MB, Canada

It was about a year ago that I went out to my friend Robin Chestnut’s place in Teulon, Manitoba and not only had a great time riding horses with he and his wife Rhonda, but also got introduced to TED TALKS. If you swing by the TED Talks Website you’re greeted with this simple concept –

Riveting talks by remarkable people, free to the world

Last year Robin introduced me to a few of the talks via the TED Websites and the ones that really stood out were –

The amazing intelligence of crows: Joshua Klein

And

Paul Stamets on 6 ways mushrooms can save the world

These two talks were just awesome, but all of the stuff I’ve watched on TED has been excellent and opened my eyes to a different way of looking at things.

Right after I got back from Robin’s place last year I downloaded a few of the talks and was right into it, but sort of lost steam as the regular day-to-day chaos I’ve surrounded myself with filtered back in and I didn’t continue my pursuit for knowledge via TED because of other distractions in life.

Well… I went out to Robin’s house again this year and again TED talks were a featured part of the evening. This time around the two talks that really stood out were –

Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity

And

James Cameron: Before Avatar … a curious boy

Both of which I thoroughly enjoyed, but beyond my enjoyment of of the talks, the think I took away from our evening was that TED Talks have been made available on iTunes as a Video Podcast. This means that all I had to do to have TED infiltrate my life on a more regular basis was to subscribe to the feed via iTunes and let the talks come to me.

I think these talks along with the stories I was also recently introduced to via “The Moth” both sort of fall into the same general category in that they’ll provide an outlet for my brain to be exposed to new ideas and new ways of thinking in a manner that I know I need. Some people do sudoku, hopefully a steady diet of new ideas will help keep my brain young. We’ll see how it goes.