The Onion recently began parodying TED talks. This one is my favorite so far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ce

The Onion recently began parodying TED talks. This one is my favorite so far: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tom6_ceTu9s . The Onion parodies are definitely not entirely fair, but they do a good job of pointing out that a lot of TED talks are definitely more on the aspirational side of things. I've definitely seen a few TED talks where the speakers' abilities basically covered up the fact that they weren't actually saying anything. I was kind of heartened to see the onion parodies, because I had wondered if I was the only one whose bs detectors were going off. This isn't to say you should be dismissive of TED talks out of hand, or that they're all crap, or anything. I actually think that if they didn't let a few bs-ers in it would be a sign that they weren't taking enough risks. But it is important to keep in mind that some talks are little more than hand waving. And you definitely shouldn't automatically assume it's brilliant just because it has the TED brand behind it.