IDEA SELLER

Chris Anderson Is Perennially in Search of Innovative Ways to Inspire Mankind Through the Ted Platform.

- Ajita Shashidhar

If you ask TED curator Chris Anderson about his favourite TED talk, he instantly says that some of his favourite talks are yet to come into the public domain. Anderson is referring to the Hindi version of TED Talks, scheduled to be aired on Star Plus later this month. It is the first time TED Talks will be in a language other than English. And Anderson is excited. He has been personally involved in not just the selection of speakers, but also in speaker rehearsals to ensure that they present the most transformational ideas. “There are some amazing talks coming up,” he says.

Those who might have imagined that the brain behind the popular TED Talks show would be, like most media personalities, flamboyant, and overtly outspoken, are seriously mistaken. The 60-year-old TED curator, once a journalist, comes across as a shy person. Most of us watch a TED talk not just for inspirational ideas but also to lift our spirits on days when everything has gone wrong. Anderson is, in many ways, TED personified. His first advice to anyone who is new to TED is to type ‘happiness’ and start watching what comes by. “The talks that have changed me most are about happiness,” he says.

His favourite advice on happiness is what was offered by American philosopher Dan Dennett, who, in a TED talk, said that the secret to happiness is finding something bigger than you are. Anderson claims he is working for that. As you engage in a conversation with him, he comes across as a warm and charming person whose single-minded goal is to bring about change in the world and inspire people to live life differently through TED.

This trait of giving back to society, in his case, through public speaking, is something he has inherited from his doctor parents, who spent a large part of their lives in India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, doing eye surgeries free of cost.