Where did all the TED talks go?

Pilot issue of Fictitious Fridays 💌

Welcome to the first edition of Fictitious Fridays. It’s a new section I’m testing in March — a weekly collection of notes, observations, recommendations, links and thoughts. Nothing too deep or too shallow. Something to serve as a record of things that fascinate, intrigue or amuse me, and things I want to share with others. If I like this format and the readers like it as well, this section might become its own thing. Essays and stories will be coming out as usual — pretty frequently.

I. What happened to TED talks? Formats keep emerging and fading away, and each format is intrinsically tied to a specific period in time. Radio dramas, flash animation, rage comics, MP3s — different eras, different layers of meaning. And you only notice the role a format played once it becomes a shadow of its past self.

Remember TED talks? A month ago I watched one. Well, a TEDx talk, to be more precise. It was a cool one, about collecting moments and creating art out of mundane things:

But it wasn’t the video itself that piqued my interest. It was the realization that I hadn’t seen a TED talk in months, if not years. And there was a time and place where I would actively seek them out, discuss them with people I knew, even assign them as homework to my students. Back then, giving a TED talk was everybody’s dream and thousands of authorized and knock-off TEDx events brought many people to the stage. If you lived in a bigger town with a significant student population in the 2010s, chances are you probably took part in one of these events yourself, as a speaker, volunteer or attendee.

According to a 2013 article in the Harvard Business Review by Nilofer Merchant titled When TED Lost Control of Its Crowd: “In 2009, TED, an organizer of highly respected conferences on “ideas worth spreading,” threw its doors open, allowing anyone, anywhere, to manage and stage local, independent events under its banner. In the next few years, an army of volunteers produced some 5,000 such TEDx events in more than 130 countries.“ It was a cultural phenomenon that helped, for better or worse, propel such people like Brené Brown into the mainstream.

TED talks were motivational, engaging, memorable, funny, and thought-provoking. Or so they seemed to many, including myself, at the time. Books would get published based on these 13-minute presentations viewed by millions. HR practices and policies in large corporations would change the latest trends delivered in an impeccable fashion. The nature of public speaking changed as well. There were scandals, of course, like Amy Cuddy’s influential talk about Power Posing — a theory that got caught in the maw of the Replication Crisis. As you might expect, a lot of the things shared on those stages weren’t entirely true. A lot of it was pure bullshit.

I can’t pinpoint the exact moment when TED talks disappeared from my feeds, but it must have been a few years now. And if we look at the TOP-10 TED talks of all time, we can see that all of them fall into the 2006-2014 timeframe. Google Trends, a great source for lazy journalists and bloggers, shows that interest in the subject peaked around 2013-2015 and has been declining ever since:

Is it our changing media consumption habits that should be blamed? Maybe, in a world of 15-second reels and 4-hour podcasts, there’s no place for short inspirational presentations? Or maybe, with the rise of influencers, a Powerpoint-assisted presentation just doesn’t sell? Even though TED talks were flawed, at least they weren’t too pushy or in your face. And there was something wholesome about them, even if there often wasn’t much substance underneath the surface.

II. Wandering stars. I spent 33 years on our planet (πλανῆται in Greek literally means wandering star) without realizing that you can see both Jupiter and Venice side by side with your naked eye. And in the last two weeks, I’ve seen something similar to the image above almost every day we had a clear sky:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/avlxyz/19638436969 | CC BY-NC 2.0

Still, my favorite thing to see in the night sky is the Orion belt. Maybe it’s because of how neatly the three stars align. Or how recognizable it is. Or how it’s usually right above my house when I get home after walking the dog. The Big Dipper is easier to miss than the belt. And, of course, there’s also the Orion from Men in Black:

III. Flashcards against feeds. There’s little in this world as addictive as social media feeds. Well, maybe fentanyl. In a losing battle with internet addiction, I think I’ve found a new weapon. ANKI decks.

To those new to the game, ANKI is just another app for Spaced Repetition — a memorization method popular with language learners (Duolingo runs a similar algorithm), medical students, and geeks. To me, the thrill of guessing a card tickles the same part of my brain as browsing does. And I get to learn a thing or two.

I’m going through two decks at the moment — Great Works of Art and Ultimate Everything. The first one is great, as I get to stare at paintings and read about them. The second one feels too much like trivia night, and I don’t really feel that knowing the first verse of A Midsummer’s Night Dream makes me a better person. If you think it would make you a better person, here’s how it sounds: “Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour draws on apace.“

Note to self: Things to learn with flashcards — local birds, constellations, cockney rhyming slang.

IV. Vending machine vendetta. I love vending machines. There’s just something about getting a desired item by pressing a button or cranking a lever. A Twix bar hits differently when dispensed from an airport snack machine.

Online, there are listicles upon listicles with the wackiest vending machines selling everything from live crabs to CDB joints. Hip libraries put bestsellers behind a glass pane, and on the outskirts of my hometown every decent non-chain petrol station has a machine selling spinners, jigs, poppers, flies, spoons and other fishing lures.

But I never thought I’d ever see a vending machine selling crutches:

V. Friday drabble. Drabbles are stories of just 100 words. Last month, I published a small compilation on the topic of Childhood with a dozen other people contributing. You can find it here, and here’s another one just for you:

As you leap over the tracks, the two-carriage train to the airport passes at full speed right behind you, the gust of air ruffling your oversized windbreaker. A near-death experience you could tell your grandkids about, maybe even turn your life around before it's too late. Absorbed in a podcast blasting from shoddy earbuds and the antics of your dog, you don't hear the horn. Listening to two grey-haired men discuss free will, you miss your date with accidental death – the scytheless, robeless emanation that's always on your left shoulder, just like Castaneda wrote in those books you can't unread.

Until next time?

Let me know if you found this edition worth your while. TED talk over.