Westerly Sun Column | Get Your TED Talk Fix Through the Library

If you’re somewhere between the ages of 11 and 90, chances are you’ve viewed a TED talk video at some point in your life. The short (less than 18-minute) videos are freely available on the TED website and are meant to make information on all manner of subjects not only interesting, but accessible to the masses. The annual Ted Conference is being held this week, but ticket prices (even to view it live online) run steep. If you’re a lifelong learner looking to gain more TED-esque knowledge, though, many of the most popular speakers have also published books — available for free through the library!

One of the most popular talks of all time belongs to Simon Sinek, and is entitled “How Great Leaders Inspire Action.” Originally posted in 2010, it has since racked up over 60 million views and been played in virtually every leadership class and conference in the last 13 years (seriously, I attended a training last month that played it, and it was NOT the first for me). Sinek has published a number of books since, including “Find Your Why” (2017) and “The Infinite Game” (2019), which expand on the message in his TED talk.

Steven Pinker is another intellectual who had hugely successful TED talks, including his 2018 presentation “Is the World Getting Better or Worse: A Look at the Numbers.” It certainly isn’t the only thing Pinker is known for, though: he’s a cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist and Harvard professor who has been winning awards for his work since the ’90s. On top of all of his academic work, he’s somehow found time to publish nine books as well, including his most recent: “Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters” (2021).

Many popular figures have given TED talks over the years, including musicians, actors, politicians and (my favorite!) writers. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a prolific Nigerian author who is known for such books as “Half of a Yellow Sun” (2009) and most recently “Notes on Grief” (2021). Her 2009 talk, “The Danger of a Single Story” is one of the top 25 most popular TED talks of all time. She followed it up with another in 2012, “We Should All Be Feminists”, which was later published as a book-length essay under the same title.

If you’re interested in more about TED in general, curator (and head of TED) Chris Anderson published his own book on how to craft your own talk and become an effective speaker: “TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking.” He adapted the same book to appeal to young adults, under the title “Thank You for Coming to My TED Talk: A Teen Guide to Great Public Speaking.”

If you’re simply a curious mind who has no interest in public speaking (ever), you may be better off checking out his personal TED Talk: “Questions No One Knows the Answer To.” Happy learning!