10 Inspiring Videos; Best and Brightest Brain Videos

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10 YouTube Videos That Will Change How You Think

by Elizabeth Harper on October 07, 2014
in Music & Video Services, Tips & How-Tos :: 3 comments

Updated with new picks 10/7/2014

While you may think of YouTube as a place to check out the latest in funny animal videos, there's a lot of content that caters to the brain rather than the funny bone.

We've found the best and brightest videos for you to enjoy when you need to stretch your mental muscles. These cover a variety of topics, but they're all guaranteed to make you look at the world around you at least a little bit differently.

Dan Gilbert: Why are we happy? Why aren’t we happy?

Scientist Dan Gilbert has made some surprising discoveries about happiness. For example, lottery winners and paraplegics both have about the same level of happiness one year after the event that changed their lives. How is that possible?

Gilbert explains how our long term happiness is not on based getting what we want, but how our brains react when we don’t get what we want. And he demonstrates this by way of Mick Jagger, Monet and amnesiacs. Confused? Watch this 22 minute video as he talks about exactly how this works based on his scientific studies into the matter.

Stephen Hawking: Questioning the universe

One of the most brilliant scientists of our time not only discusses how the universe began and the probability of alien contact, but how that information determines how we should proceed in the future. Given mankind’s selfish and aggression expansion, Stephen Hawking makes a case for space exploration so that we can continue to thrive on other habitable worlds.

Elizabeth Gilbert: Your elusive creative genius

If you are pursuing creative endeavors, either professionally or personally, this talk by the author of the best seller of Eat, Pray, Love is for you. She questions the assumption we all have that creativity and suffering go hand-in-hand and challenges creative people to look at their work and their life’s passion to create in a different, more positive light.

Colin Stokes: The hidden meanings in kids' movies

Father of two, Colin Stokes, wonders aloud, "Why is there so much Force in the movies we have for our kids and so little Yellow Brick Road?" By that he means, films aimed at boys tend to teach them that violence is the answer and a woman is their prize (i.e. Star Wars.) And films aimed at girls tend to teach them to work together and make allies to overcome problems (i.e. The Wizard of Oz.)

The question he has is, why aren’t there films focused on gaining allies and solving things diplomatically aimed at boys? Why aren't there more films that teach young men not to objectify women and treat them as the reward they are entitled to? Most importantly, Colin talks about what we as parents can do about it.

Amy Webb: How I hacked online dating

Is there an algorithm for love? Statician Amy Webb analyzed not only what she wanted out of a potential husband, but also what men she liked were looking for. Using this process, she altered her online dating profile and it caught the eye of the man she would end up marrying.

This is not just a story on how to find the ideal mate, but how to approach any passion in your life in a way that gets you what you want in a smart way designed for success.

Randy Pausch: The Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Though the "Last Lecture" series at Carnegie Mellon University is themed around what the professors' last lectures would be, for Randy Pausch, who had recently been diagnosed with terminal cancer, this would literally be his last lecture. But don't think this video is a downer because Pausch is dying: he's in good humor and you're guaranteed to crack a smile while watching his inspirational talk about how to live life to its fullest.

Told through Pausch's reminiscing, his lecture focuses on achieving one's childhood dreams and, even better, how to help others achieve their dreams. At over an hour in length, it's well worth your time.

Steve Jobs: Stanford Commencement Address

Several years before his death, the Apple CEO gave the Commencement Address to the graduates at Stanford University. In it, he talks about his own life: he dropped out of college after six months, unable to see the value in whiling away all of his parents' savings. He didn't know how at the time, but he hoped it would all work out — and, if you know anything about the story of his life, it did.

His message of believing in yourself and following your own path is full of humor and insight. It isn't to be missed and only clocks in at a little more than 15 minutes.

Susan Cain: The power of introverts

We live in a world that doesn't always cater to the needs of introverts—a personality type that accounts for a third to a half of all people and tends to prefer quiet over loud, isolation over socialization. Cain, an introvert and the author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts, offers a thought-provoking argument that suggest introverts have as much to offer the world as their extroverted brethren.

One of the more popular TEDTalks, The Power of Introverts runs just under 20 minutes and may make you see a new side to yourself or those around you.

Eli Pariser: Beware online "filter bubbles"

Don't know what a filter bubble is? It's a phenomenon unique to the Internet-era in which our interests and preferences tailor the kinds of content we see on search engines and social channels. And while it can be helpful in directing us to the information most relevant to us, Eli Pariser explains that it can also prevent us from seeing opposing viewpoints in this 9-minute TEDTalk.

Sheryl Sandberg: Why we have too few women leaders

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is well-known as a business leader who's been outspoken on the subject of women in the workplace. So it's no surprise that when she spoke at a TED Conference she gave a 15-minute passionate argument for why we need more women leaders in the world. She also focuses on the messages we send women about working and the messages we send our daughters as well.

Elizabeth Gilbert "The Signature of All Things" ("Eat, Pray, Love")

Philadelphia Inquirer, Friday, September 27, 2013, Home & Design section, Page D1:




Earthy pleasures in Gilbert's new novel


Elizabeth Gilbert's new book, "The Signature of All Things," is her first novel in 13 years. It's due out Tuesday. (DAVID SWANSON / Staff Photographer)
 GALLERY: Earthy pleasures in Gilbert's new novel



VIRGINIA A. SMITH, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
POSTED: Friday, September 27, 2013, 2:02 AM


The Woodlands, the once-grand 18th-century estate on the west bank of the Schuylkill, is one of Philadelphia's lesser-known historic spots.

Yet, novelist Elizabeth Gilbert found her way to 40th Street and Woodland Avenue and chose the run-down mansion, carriage house, and stables, and the surrounding Victorian-era cemetery, as the setting for her new book, The Signature of All Things.

"It was so obvious as soon as we drove up. That's it! Everything about the Woodlands was right," says Gilbert, forever to be remembered for what she calls "the freakishly successful" Eat, Pray, Love. Her 2006 memoir has sold more than 10 million copies worldwide and was made into a 2010 movie starring Julia Roberts.

Gilbert's latest work, due out Tuesday from Viking, is her first novel in 13 years. Be forewarned: Signature is no Eat, Pray, Love, which was well-padded with humor, wish-fulfillment, and garlicky bucatini all'amatriciana. But, Gilbert says, "I think readers will recognize my themes: travel, exploration, curiosity, mysticism, adventure, and what is a woman's life."


Signature is a deeply researched, historical tale that unfolds from 1760 to 1880 - "the most fascinating moment in botanical history," she calls it - in Philadelphia, the nation's horticultural hot spot, and points beyond, including Amsterdam, Hawaii, Peru, London, and Tahiti.

Equally vast is the emotional landscape of the fictional Whittakers, a collection of memorable, if not especially likable, characters who live at White Acre (a play on the family name). The Woodlands, where a restoration plan is in the works, snagged the role over Bartram's Garden, which Gilbert found too Quakerly and modest, and Lemon Hill mansion, which "didn't feel right."

In real life, the Federal-style Woodlands, built in 1788, was the country home of William Hamilton, a gentleman intensely interested in architecture, landscape design, and botany. He traded seeds with Thomas Jefferson, another talented plantsman, and William Bartram, son of John, the noted Philadelphia botanist.

Presiding over the fictional White Acre, Philadelphia's grandest estate, is patriarch Henry Whittaker, a crude, self-made adventurer whose world revolves around botanical exploration and the accumulation of money, by whatever means. Daughter Alma, Gilbert's protagonist, lives a rarefied and repressed existence until age 50, when her narrative spikes in surprising directions.

More than 6 feet tall and solidly built, Alma is described as "a big homely pine cone." She's a botanist with a moss obsession, able to hold her own in esoteric debate with the scholars and adventurers - men, all - who flock to the Whittaker dinner table.

But Alma is lonely, aching with lust, and the solitary manner in which she alleviates this predicament is among the more arresting features of Gilbert's book. Relief comes in a tiny, dark room off the Whittaker library called "the binding room," where Alma ostensibly retreats to care for the family's fragile book collection.

Gilbert, 44, modeled this hideaway after a closet on the Woodlands' first floor. And she wanted Alma, she says, to be "very carnal, because women's desire has just not been written about from that time.

"You know they had that desire . . . . It's not like we just invented it in the 20th century."

Alma's dowdiness also serves as counterpoint to modern heroines, often portrayed as "dangerously gorgeous with flashing eyes, heaving bosoms, and auburn hair," Gilbert says. "All sorts of women feel desire, even homely women who don't incite desire in others."

Signature is quite a page-turner, in other words, with lots of pages to turn (499).

Gilbert drew inspiration from a 1784 illustrated edition of Captain James Cook's voyages, Cook's Journeys, which belonged to her great-grandfather, a Philadelphia lawyer. (Henry Whittaker joins Cook on a botanical expedition to Tahiti and Hawaii.)

Gilbert, who grew up on a Christmas tree farm in northwest Connecticut, tapped another strand of DNA for her novel - from her mother, a master gardener who grew all the family's vegetables.

"When I grew up, I ran away from the soil as fast as I could, moved to New York, Philadelphia, traveled the world," Gilbert recalls. "But once I moved to Frenchtown [N.J.], all I wanted to do was garden."

Gilbert lived for a time in West Philadelphia and upper Roxborough and still has family in the area. In 2009, she settled in Frenchtown, a picturesque borough on the Delaware River, with husband Jose Nunes, known to readers of Eat, Pray, Love as Filipe.

At her new home, Gilbert planted vegetables, like her mother, but soon abandoned that for a sprawling flower garden and native plant meadow, which she calls "my bird and butterfly disco."

The gardens "never fail to delight me," she says. They also fueled the botanical fascination that led to Signature.

Another writerly influence was Gilbert's desire to avoid "the standard two endings that every novel about women in history has had, until very recently."

She describes them this way: "You either got the happy ending, meaning you had a good marriage to landed gentry and you settled down in the fine estate and had a bunch of children - or you had the unhappy ending. You made a sensual error and you're ruined, bankrupt, impoverished, or killed by yourself or somebody else.

"There aren't just two possible endings. Most of us survive all kinds of mistakes and can look back and say, 'That was a really interesting life.' "

Gilbert is eager to help raise money for the Woodlands, which recently got a $300,000 grant from the William Penn Foundation to devise a master plan for restoration. An author event of some kind - tea and a tour of Woodlands-inspired scenes from the book, perhaps - is planned for the spring.

The tour could include the infamous first-floor "binding room," the housekeeper's bedroom (underground passageway), Alma's studio (stable), and the grounds, where Alma collected her moss specimens.

Already, a few first-time visitors have discovered the Woodlands, having heard of its influence on Gilbert.

"We really hope to use the book to help elevate the Woodlands' profile," says executive director Jessica Baumert.

Meanwhile, Gilbert contemplates her next move: "a very naughty novel."



'SIGNATURE' EVENT

Elizabeth Gilbert

will speak at the Free Library of Philadelphia, 1901 Vine St., on

Oct. 3 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $15.

Gilbert will autograph copies

of her new book,

The Signature

of All Things.

For information,

go to freelibrary.org/calendar or call 215-567-4341.

vsmith@phillynews.com.


215-854-5720


Virginia A. Smith
Inquirer Staff Writer
Articles | Email

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