I was lucky to attend an excellent high school, but I still couldn’t wait to get to college. As good as my teachers were – and some of them were superb – I imagined that college professors floated on air. I pictured them gliding up to the lectern, adjusting their little round glasses, and then, without notes, casually, without any particular effort, starting to talk — and from the very first words, blowing my mind.

When I got to college, I found that professors were a lot like my high school teachers. Their knowledge was deeper; their command of the subject was firmer; and there was a higher level of engagement with the material — if not always with the students in the lecture hall. The first and last classes of a college course were often scintillating. The flabby middle parts…not so much.

I did have a few professors who somehow managed never to be boring. The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould, for instance, who made the stodgy world of paleontology vibrate with warlike passion. Or the philosopher Stanley Cavell, whose intricate readings of Emerson, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche were balanced by equally intricate readings of the Hollywood screwball comedies of Hawks, Cukor, and Capra.

Both of these professors were MacArthur fellows, winners of the so-called “genius grant.” I suppose you could just call them geniuses and be done with it, but what made them so riveting had less to do with off-the-charts I.Q. than with the startling freshness of their ideas.

It’s worth taking a moment, in this season of political tedium, to consider what a fresh idea really sounds like. Politicians love to pay lip service to the power of ideas, and to claim that their ideas are better than the ideas of the other guy, or other party.

But when was the last time you heard a politician say anything – anything – that filled you with wonder.

Not anger. Or grudging agreement. Or even a sense that “this guy really gets me!” But sheer amazement. The feeling that something you took for granted maybe isn’t that way, after all. The slight vertigo of a mind opening to new possibilities.

Maybe politics is the wrong place to look for wonder. Wonder is rare enough without subjecting it to the mill of popular opinion.

But if you happen to be suffering from a wonder deficit this season, I’d like to recommend a website: www.TED.com, where you’ll find over 1000 mini-lectures by some of the most interesting and innovative thinkers, doers, and artists on the planet.

No TED talk lasts more than 18 minutes. This may seem like a severe limitation, but the speakers always seem to rise to the challenge, and the brevity makes it possible to squeeze a TED talk – or even two – into a busy day.

What are you likely to learn about in a TED talk? The range is breathtaking, everything from what it feels like to be a human jet; to the ethics of bioengineering; to a guide for making educational toys for the world’s poor from everyday trash. You can hear about finding shipwrecks; cooking with liquid nitrogen; or designing a machine capable of assembling itself.

There are plenty of celebrity lecturers like Bill Gates, Roger Ebert, and General Stanley McChrystal, but the most interesting TED talks are by people you’ve never heard of, like Thomas Heatherwick, a British designer whose portfolio includes a drawbridge that opens by curling back on itself; a huge power station that looks like Space Mountain; and a “seed cathedral” that looks like…well, you’re just going to have to see it for yourself. It’s that strange and beautiful.

If you’re not crazy about watching videos on a computer and you happen to have Roku, the device that lets you stream Netflix to your television, you’re in luck. You can add TED as a channel and watch it on the big screen.

If you have no idea what the last paragraph means, you may be stuck watching TED talks on a computer.

Even so, you’ll instantly forgive the little window and the tinny speakers. These brief videos will remind you what fresh ideas — and idealism — look and sound like. They may even transport you back to a time when you couldn’t wait to have your mind blown.

Sort of like school, minus the boring parts.

 

 

 

 

 

This column was published in the Perry Co Times on 15 December 2011

For more information, please contact Mr. Olshan at writing@matthewolshan.com