Quantum Physics Made Relatively Easy:
In 1999, legendary theoretical physicist Hans Bethe delivered three lectures on quantum theory to his neighbors at the Kendal of Ithaca retirement community (near Cornell University). Given by Professor Bethe at age 93, the lectures are presented here as QuickTime videos synchronized with slides of his talking points and archival material.
Freeman Dyson called Bethe the “supreme problem solver of the 20th century.” Coming from Dyson, that’s praise indeed.
American Rhetoric is a “speech bank” holding over 5,000 full text, audio and video on some of the most famous speeches, lectures, debates and interviews of all time. Recently they released a list of the top 100 speeches in American 20th century politics (complete with transcript and audio).
If that got you inspired, these 22 personal development videos are a great compliment.
A couple of speeches currently getting rave reviews:
Stanford always seem to nail that commencement speech.
via Ramit’s del.icio.us links and 37signals’ Signal vs. Noise
If you haven’t yet discovered, the 2008 Reith Lectures are currently under way over at BBC Radio 4. This year they are being held by Jonathan Spence - a specialist in Chinese history - and the first two lectures have been on the topics of Confucius and UK-China relations.
I absolutely, positively, know I’ve written about this and I would bet my life savings that I posted it, but alas I cannot find it anywhere.
Every-so-slightly delayed (months later!), here’s what happened when Randall Munroe (of xkcd fame) was invited to Google - he also gave an Authors@Google talk.
More Googleplex videos here, including the excellent Tech Talks that I can’t get enough of.