The School of Life: Nigella Lawson on Food and Philosophy

Nigella Lawson talks with Alain de Botton about the deeper meaning of food.

Kermit The Frog's TED Talk on Creativity

Kermit the Frog is an entertainment icon known worldwide for his appearances on The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, as well as a number of feature films. He attributes much of his success to his thirty-five year partnership with Mississippi native and entertainment visionary, Jim Henson. Kermit has received many honors and accolades for his work, including multiple Academy Award nominations, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and a commemorative stamp from the U.S. Postal Service.

The Most Intimate Relationship in Your Life: Your Smartphone

Tom Chatfield for 99u:

Above all, it seems to me, we face two entwined questions every time we reach towards a screen. What does the computer want us to do—and what do we ourselves want? If we’re not careful, we will only ever answer the first. Ours is a world in which we are nudged, cajoled, bribed, and enticed ceaselessly; in which we are locked in an embrace with tirelessly fascinating tools. More than ever, we must be prepared to admit how messily personal this relationship is; how toxic habit and excessive ease can be; and that, as in all relationships, the easiest and the best option are rarely the same thing.

As the Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman once put it, “when faced with a difficult question, we often answer an easier one instead, usually without noticing the substitution.” If we’re not careful, our days will become a sequence of answers to questions that aren’t worth asking: what do you like, dislike, think in 140 characters; how can a friend most efficiently be acknowledged or dismissed; what distraction might help you forget the life you forgot to lead?

The Science Of Why You Should Spend Your Money On Experiences, Not Things

"You don't have infinite money. Spend it on stuff that research says makes you happy." Fast Company takes a look at research on happiness:

There's a very logical assumption that most people make when spending their money: that because a physical object will last longer, it will make us happier for a longer time than a one-off experience like a concert or vacation. According to recent research, it turns out that assumption is completely wrong.

"One of the enemies of happiness is adaptation," says Dr. Thomas Gilovich, a psychology professor at Cornell University who has been studying the question of money and happiness for over two decades. "We buy things to make us happy, and we succeed. But only for a while. New things are exciting to us at first, but then we adapt to them."

So rather than buying the latest iPhone or a new BMW, Gilovich suggests you'll get more happiness spending money on experiences like going to art exhibits, doing outdoor activities, learning a new skill, or traveling.

On Stress and Inner Voices

The School of Life on Work: 

Where do inner voices come from? An inner voice always used to be an outer voice. We’ve absorbed the tone of a harassed or angry parent; the menacing threats of an elder sibling keen to put us down; the words of a schoolyard bully or a teacher who seemed impossible to please. We internalised the unhelpful voices because at certain key moments in the past they sounded compelling. The authority figures repeated their messages over and over until they got lodged in our own way of thinking.

To change our inner voices we need to encounter equally convincing and confident, but also helpful and constructive varieties of voices over long periods. We need to hear them often enough and around tricky enough issues that they come to feel normal and natural responses – so that, eventually, they come to feel like things we are saying to ourselves; they become our own thoughts.