When I was in Aspen in June for the Fortune Brainstorm Conference I heard quite a few people talking about TED. I wasn't quite sure who or what TED was, so I asked one of the attendees. I found out that TED was an annual conference in Monterrey, CA held in March that brings together about 1,000 of the world's top leaders to talk about the pressing issues of the day.

Today, I ran into a blog post about TED Talks, a new series of videos that were just launched on the TED website. On this site they have videos of speakers from past TED Conferences. The below videos are especially noteworthy:

1. Peter Gabiel, founder of Witness
2. Bono, talking about the economic incentive to lift Africa out of poverty
3. Jacqueline Novogratz, the founder of the Acumen Fund
4. Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point and Blink
5. Stephen Levitt, author of Freaknomics
6. Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia
7. Larry Brilliant, Exec. Director of the Google Foundation
8. Al Gore, talking about Climate Change
9. Tony Robbins, motivational speaker
10. Iqbal Quadir, founder of GrameenPhone