This was shared with my by a friend of mine on Facebook who knew I was on the search for inspirational TED Talks. Logan LaPlante is 13-years old and considers himself a bit of a hacker, but not how you would typically think of a hacker.

Read the complete article.

While I was out on my run today – I’m training for a full marathon after all – I had a thought that there must be at least one or two videos on running available on TED. Sure enough, the first one I came across talks about being born to run. Christopher then goes on to talk about a number of different aspects and cultures and the fact that running used to be related with freedom. Personally, I still relate to it as being freeing. What do you think?

Best quote I: “My only friends are my legs.”

Oh sleep. Something that I love to get, but rarely ever feel like I get enough. In fact I tend to go heavily in to sleep debt, then try and make it up in a few sessions…it just doesn’t seem to happen properly. In fact watching Russell Foster chat about sleep is making me reconsider a few things in the world of sleep.

Five hours or less sleep each night generates a 50% chance of being obese, or at the least, overweight. It increases stress and of course negatively impacts memory. All things that I can see directly impacting me.

In the last 60 years we’ve lost 1.5 hours of sleep (on average). So how many hours of sleep do you get each night?

I initially had no clue who Paul Kemp-Robertson was, but his presentation came up when I searched for wordpress, something near and dear to me. He goes on to talk about loyalty and how it in itself is truly its own micro-currency. In any given day 30% of all transactions at Starbucks are completed using their StarPoints – their loyalty program. Amazon has recently launched Amazon Coins, just one other example of a micro-currency.

Loyalty as a currency is definitely something to consider when you think about marketing. Who are you loyal too?

There’s no doubt you’ve probably heard of Tim Ferriss. If not, he’s the author of The Four-Hour Workweek, a great book that has inspired and changed many lives. It’s definitely had an impact on my thought process. It was great to hear him speak about his fears and how he approaches them differently. More specifically, how he feels that anyone is capable of doing anything!

Now here’s a TED talk that was just recently added to the video collection. Apollo Robbins is hailed as the greatest pickpocket in the world. I’ve always had a fascination with misdirection and what some people call magic. This session was truly amazing. You need to watch it all the way to the end for the strangest twist you didn’t likely see coming.

The really cool part about it being on video is you can rewind and replay the parts you completely missed and possibly learn a bit. But I love his overall question, if you could control someones attention, what would you do with it? Let me know in the comments.

At first I wasn’t sure about watching this one, but a friend of mine recommended it on Facebook and I’m so glad that I had a watch and listen to Caroline Casey. It’s surprising how many different jobs she had and proof that what you believe, can take you very far. Take the 15-minutes to watch and be happy that you can.

It’s no secret how much I admire Sir Richard Branson for his drive in entrepreneurship, innovation and humanitarian efforts. In fact, it’s because of him in part that I started Expert Empire. It only seemed logical to me to have a watch of his TED interview where he simply recaps a lot about his life, however there are lots of little lessons to be learned.

I heard about this TED episode while working on some content for the Conscious Creation Telesummit and decided it was a great one to watch today. It’s an interesting thought from a trained medical professional that the medicine that’s keeping us alive, could also in fact be killing us.