When I lived in London I used to attend lectures and talks at least once a week (often at the Royal Institution, a wonderful place).

They were one of the mainstays of my intellectual life, and I used to leave many of them babbling with excitement (the adult equivalent of kids doing chops and kicks as they leave Kung-fu movies).

Here in Belgrade there are still many talks and lectures that one can attend, but unsurprisingly, it cannot match London.

Luckily there are several superb sites at which you can see (or sometimes just hear) recorded lectures and talks that are guaranteed to stimulate you intellectually.

Here is a list of my 10 favourite sites and resources:

1. TED.com - The runaway best video lecture series. Superfood for the mind. I have seen some literaly stunning presentations on this website. Brilliant men and women are given 20 minutes to make their main points. Do yourself a favour and go and check it out.
2. Pop!Tech – Is a “one-of-a-kind conference, a community of remarkable people, and an ongoing conversation about science, technology and the future of ideas”.
3. Edge.org – Undoubtedly one of the most concentrated sites of brilliance and inspiration on the planet.
4. What Is Enlightenment Unbound – “WIE Unbound delivers fresh weekly audios, videos, and downloadable MP3s featuring the leading-edge visionaries, mystics,scientists, philosophers, and activists found in the pages of What Is Enlightenment? magazine.”
5. @Google Talks (YouTube Channel) – Authors, scientists, politicians and other luminaries talking to staff at Google.
6. UChannel (University Channel) – A collection of public affairs lectures, panels and events from academic institutions all over the world for you to view, listen to, stream or download.
7. World Lecture Hall – World Lecture Hall, your entry point to free online course materials from around the world.

8. WGBH Forum Network -  an audio and video streaming Website dedicated to curating and serving live and on-demand lectures given by some of the world’s foremost scholars, authors, artists, scientists, policy makers and community leaders.
9. MIT OpenCourseWare – It was MIT that kicked off the whole lectures-made-public phenomenon when it made its learning materials available online.
10. Zencast.org – OK, this may look like religious proselyting, but Zencast has beautiful lectures on the theme of Buddhism and mindfulness from the likes of Alan Watts, Gil Fronsdal, Thich Nhat Hanh and Eckhart Tolle.

Here are some other sites I am not so familiar with:

• Smart People on Cool Topics Series:  SciTalks (Science), Busitalks (Business), HumTalks (Humanities)
• VideoLectures.net – Aims to provide free and open access of a high quality video lectures presented by distinguished scholars and scientists at the most important and prominent events like conferences, summer schools, workshops and science promotional events from many fields of Science.
• Freevideolectures.com – Bringing free education to everyone
• Top 10 Universities With Free Courses Online
  
• Big Think – Brand new and interesting

Other resources

For a list of my current favourite Podcasts, Streams, Radio Stations and Audio Blogs , see this post.

Photo: A Yankee in Belgrade. Click image for original site and large version.

Pat from “A Yankee in Belgrade” posted this picture of a poster in Jagodina (a municipality south of Belgrade) advertising an offer form the local government saying that if you’re single and live in Jagodina and you get married by the end of 2008, you’ll be offered a job, 200 euros for your first child and up to 200 euros monthly for every fourth child until he/she is 18.

Dmitry Orlov, is of “Reinventing Collapse“, a book about what America can learn from the collapse of the Soviet Union, and currently an in demands expert on how to prepare for the situation the world is facing thanks to the Global recession.

He has a new presentation online via Google Docs called “The Five Stages of Collapse“. He lists the stages as:

Stage 1: Financial Collapse – Faith in “business as usual” is lost. The future can no longer be assumed to resemble the past. Risk can no longer be assessed and financial assets to be guaranteed. Financial institutions become insolvent. Savings are wiped out, and access to capital is lost.

Stage 2: Commercial Collapse – Faith that “the market shall provide” is lost. Commodities are hoarded. Import and retail chains break down. Widespread shortages of survival necessities become the norm.

Stage 3: Political Collapse – Faith that “your government will take care of you” is lost. Government interventions fail to make a difference. Political establishment loses legitimacy and relevance.

Stage 4: Social Collapse – Faith that “your people will take care of you” is lost. Local social institutions, be they charities or other groups that rush in to fill the power vacuum, run out of resources or fail through internal conflict.

Stage 5: Cultural Collapse – Faith in the goodness of humanity is lost. People lose their capacity for “kindness, generosity, consideration, affection, honesty, hospitality, compassion, charity”.

It is a very interesting presentation and I strongly recommend that readers take the time to view it.

Those of you who lived through the chaos of Russia or Serbia in the 90′s will recognise their countries then, except this time there is no relief from or escape to, The West.

Dmitry is blogging at Club Orlov.

Via Jelena on Flickr