Top five TED Talks – April 2020

There are perks of sitting at home all month, one being that I have scoured through more TED talks than I ever have before. It helps expand the vast repertoire of random facts that I have collected (and forgotten) over time. Here are a few talks that left a lasting impression and ones I would definitely recommend.

1. 2 questions to uncover your passion — and turn it into a career | Noeline Kirabo: It is never easy to ask difficult questions. It gets harder when you know that the question is important and the answer elusive. Yet when the two circles of what you do on a daily basis and what you are passionate about fail to intersect, it is time to think of change. In this talk, Noeline encourages you to sit awhile and ponder on two basic questions so that you never have to retire nor resign.
2. An ode to living on Earth | Oliver Jeffers: More like spoken poetry, this Friday morning watch suddenly notched up my appreciation levels. For the first time ever (no kidding), I noticed that there was a mango tree outside my window albeit slightly obscured by another giant tree. I spent a good while wondering why I had missed to notice it all this while especially with the many bunches of green mangoes hanging off the branches. It has been a week now and suddenly I notice more consequently maybe even living a little more. It is the little things. Thank you planet Earth.
3. The weird history of the “sex chromosomes” | Molly Webster: Wait what! So everything I was taught in school was incorrect even though we have known this for decades? There are talks that teach you something new, there are talks that remind you of things you already know and then there are talks that make you question what you were taught in school and believed true for all your life. Let’s just say that this covers all three aspects and will lead you to be a more enlightened human being. Watch it now!
4. What coronavirus means for the global economy | Ray Dalio: Most of TED’s hour-long talks around COVID have me reminiscing the shorter ones. Except this one. While Ray Dalio does not share extensive investing tips, he does make extremely valid points on how we as humans are terrible at predicting what is to come next and why all the AIs in the world did not predict the coronavirus. If you have time on your hands and are worried about the global economy, maybe give this one a listen. It does not disappoint.
5. What you need to know about stalkerware | Eva Galperin: I know identity thefts happen, people are stalked and accounts are hacked. Do I take all appropriate steps all the time? Do I even know just how secure my accounts are? I do not. Only because it takes time and effort, it is not easy nor user friendly. Accounts are first indexed to sell your data and then consider privacy. This talk was a nudge to rethink how I think about security. If you had time for just one of the five talks. Let it be this. Bad things always happen to someone else until it happens to you.

How was April for you? Do you have videos you’d recommend I watch? Let me know in the comments.