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Nigel Bamber

Head of Structural Analysis, Caterham F1 Team

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Can you put together TED talks to make bigger stories?

Sebastian Wernicke has done a very funny TED talk, where he distills down the essence of 1000 TED talks to just 6 words. This got me thinking, were there any themes across the TED talks that were evidence of a bigger story.
I was very inspired by Jeremy Rifkins wonderful talk on the Empathic Civilisation, and wondered if there was any evidence across the rest of the talks that this sort of civilisation was possible in reality, or indeed, had started to grow already.
I've listed a few of the other talks that I found to show that this might be happening, but there's now about 1200 more talks to explore to see if they are a part of this big story. I'm going to need some help with this!
So, can you think of any other TEDs that add to the story of the growth of an empathic civilisation? Or perhaps you can find evidence in the talks that it can never happen?
Maybe you have spotted a different story that the TED talks are telling? Please let me know.

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    Fritzie Reisner 100+

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    May 21 2012: Along the top of the TED homepage, you might click on Themes. There you will find, for example, 8 talks under the theme Charter for Compassion and 66 under the theme Rise of Collaboration. If you explore those groupings, this might short-cut your work about the empathic civilzation.
    In reference to your question "have you spotted a different story," I think these themes, of which there are several dozen, are the easiest first place for you to look.
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      Nigel Bamber

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      May 22 2012: Hi Fritzie,

      I had seen the themes section and used it to do some initial narrowing down. The tags are useful too.

      I like the way you have combined two themes, Charter for Compassion and Rise of Collaboration, to tell the empathic civilisation story at a level above talks. It's similar to the increasing levels of filtering that Sebastian did in his talks. How many themes could be linked together to tell a story?

      I also enjoy the serendipity of just picking talks at random, and discovering that they add to the story. An example is the Moral Behaviour of Animals talk, which occurs in neither of these themes but adds something to them.

      Perhaps someone has found apparently unrelated talks which might make up part of the story?
      Or, has anybody got some ideas for new themes?

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