Arkansas-born artist Shea Hembrey kicks off his TED talk by confessing to a hick childhood in which he and his sister “would compete to see who could eat the most squirrel brains.

Since the break-up of Talking Heads in 1991, David Byrne has made a good career for himself as a solo artist, working in film and music, and also becoming an active supporter of cycling.

Morgan Spurlock’s newest documentary, The Greatest Movie Ever Sold, exposes the myriad ways in which popular media is almost wholly sponsored, leased, bought and branded by powerful corporations.

Deb Roy is the director of the Cognitive Machines group at the MIT Media Lab. For the first few years of his son’s life, Roy installed cameras in every room of the family home. Now he jokes that he has the “largest home video collection ever made” – roughly 90,000 hours of images and footage of the growing baby’s world.

10 Harvard professors. 10 fascinating ideas. 10 minutes each. That was the gist of Harvard Thinks Big, a TED-esque event held on February 11th. Now fast forward several weeks, and the talks all appear online for free. Find them on YouTube, iTunes, or Harvard’s dedicated web site.

Where will the Middle East go from here? Towards democracy, as many hope? Towards a more theocratic model, as some despair? Or, towards more of the same disillusioning autocracy?
On the first day of the big TED conference, Wadah Khanfar, the head of Al Jazeera, offered a supremely optimistic take on the revolutions transforming Tunisia, Egypt, Li

This week, some of the world’s greatest thinkers (and biggest spenders) are gathered in Palm Springs and Long Beach, California for TED’s annual conference. In case your invitation to TED2011 got lost in the mail along with ours, you can still keep up with the conference through TED’s homepage.

A quick fyi for TED heads in our audience: Right here, you can find an online spreadsheet that lists 875 TEDTalks, with handy links to each individual video. This evolving Google doc will give you access to more than 265 hours of “riveting talks by remarkable people.

If you’ve never seen Jake Shimabukuro handle the ukulele before, you’re in for a little treat. Known for his complex fingerwork, the ukulele virtuoso now tours with Jimmy Buffet and has recorded with Yo-Yo Ma.

You have heard the message before – the secrets to living an excellent life. But they bear repeating from time to time. And Neil Pasricha, editor of the 1000 Awesome Things blog, communicates it all in a rather touching and earnestly straightforward way. This talk comes from TEDxToronto, staged in September 2010….