2009 Hans Rosling (short talk)

Always de-average

2009 Arthur Benjamin (short talk)

School math curriculum requires a dramatic shift -- place probability and statistics at the pinnacle, rather than calculus.

2009 Nina Jablonski

Barack Obama is the first moderately pigmented president of the United States.

2009 Yann Arthus-Bertrand

It's too late to be pessimistic.

2009 Jake Eberts

Declarations by politicians accumulate and get lost but the work of storytellers persist ("Oceans" documentary on the state of our oceans to be released in 2009).

2009 Seth Godin

You don't need charisma to be a leader, leading gives you charisma.

2009 Ray Anderson

Take from the earth only what it can remake naturally and quickly because it's good business.

2009 Tim Berners-Lee

Everyone should take up the chant, "Linked data NOW!" -- raw data is better than processed, now is better than later.

2009 Bill Gates

More research money is spent on baldness than on malaria!

2009 Peter Singer

The ability to run robotic wars ends mankind's monopoly on war and will inure us to its horrors.

2009 Juan Enriquez

Trends show that artifical body parts will not just overcome handicap and illness but will soon provide superior ability -- opening up a slew of new issues.

2008 Josh Klein

"Don't hate the crows -- just let them save you..." -- certain species intertwine in human environments: roaches, crows and rats become parasitic relationships that continuously adapt for their betterment in survival with immunity, breeding, tactical change; instead, use the intelligence of some (like corvids) to create interspecies harmony (trash pickup, electronics sorting, search and rescue!)

2008 Paul Stamets

Exploring the mycelial world, where networks are hyphae of fungal, earth restorative recyclers -- some of the largest living entities on the planet -- Stamets leads the hunt in rethinking the mushroom as the fungi perfecti, a new universe of healing, remediation, human and ecological enhancement -- and a network of all networks -- "a neurological landscape that looks like mycelium...brain neurons and astrocytes... the Internet is similarly arranged -- the earth's natural Internet is mycelia."

2008 Wade Davis

There is a profound, if evanescent, richness in the "ethnosphere" of the planet -- our ancient speaking cultures, "an old-growth forest of the mind"; explore, slip into, the archetypes of human experience, language and story --"the sum total of all thoughts and dreams, myths, ideas, inspirations, intuitions brought into being by the human imagination."

2008 Jill Bolte Taylor

The more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right brains, the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be. 

2008 Peter Schwartz

The future isn't what it used to be -- The three drivers of conflict (honor, fear, interest) are different in the new geopolitical reality

2008 Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Two worlds: mediocristan (average rules) and extremistan (outliers rule - never take advice from anyone in a tie). In extremistan the whole idea is to not be the turkey.

2008 Yves Behar

Advertising is the price companies pay for being unoriginal

2008 Doug Wilson

Beware the downside of technology -- internet enabled opportunity to communicate out of repressive regimes is not as anonymous as you might think.

2008 Philip Zimbardo

Evil starts at 15 volts