Over on the HHS! blog last week, we got to brag about Spring 2005 Hot Shot Rachel Sussman's TED talk on her ambitious project The Oldest Living Things In the World. Watching Sussman eloquently present her research, findings and artwork, we were struck by the (re-)realization of how our own creativity, wonder, and aesthetic sensibilities can be piqued and informed by the TED talks, an amazing (and free!) resource.

If you're anything like me, your RSS feed reader haunts you with unread posts. Ditto on the Instapaper app, your subscription podcast lists, your 43 things, and countless other higher-self, time-saving developments that sometimes serve to create more anxiety in what else I didn't get to that week than alleviate it. So I'm going to make things simple for you. Bookmark this, read it now, send it to yourself in an email, whatever will make you eventually sit down with this post with your headphones on (or what-you-will), and listen to these modern day sages hold court. Trust me, it's worth your while. I give you, dear reader, a totally subjective but art-ified Top Ten TED list:

Maira Kalman: The Illustrated Woman
It's no secret that many of us at JBP HQ have a love for the stream-of-conscious metaphor-making art that Kalman is famous for. In this talk centered on the theme of "simplicity," she begins with the seemingly simple statement that, "I'm trying to figure out two very simple things: How to live and how to die. Period. That's all I'm trying to do, all day long."

Olafur Eliasson: Playing With Space and Light
This master of spatial experience gives a lecture that at moments seems like continental philosophy, at others like you've wandered into an ethics course. The ethics of the art-maker. An excerpt:

How do we configure the relationship between our body and space? How do we reconfigure it? How do we know when being in a space makes a difference? It's about Why? rather than How? The "why" means really: What consequences does it have when I take a step? Does it matter? Does it matter if I am in the world or not? Does it matter whether the actions that I take filter into a sense of responsibility? Is art about that? I would say yes.

Elizabeth Gilbert: On Genius

Unless you've recently woken up from a decade-long sleep, you've probably heard of, and have an opinion on, the work and quick rise to fame of author Elizabeth Gilbert. Whatever your opinion on her best-selling memoir is, this talk is not about that (not really), and is a wonderful meditation on what it is to quell the creative demons both within and without in the ongoing battle of trying to maintain a creative life. Her historical semantic lessons on the meaning of the word are worth the price of admission alone.

Stefan Sagmeister: The Power of Time Off
What's so revolutionary about this talk is that it is a call to a reordering of our values, where we actually act to value our time at least as much as our money. He asks that we wonder aloud (and perhaps act upon) the questions: Is what we are doing with the majority of our time a job, a career or a calling? And does one manage to get from one to the other, if one so desires? This is a great discussion on what it takes to self-regenerate. (Ignore the comments that descend into a discussion of class warfare at the end of this talk.)

Dan Barber: A Surprising Foie Gras Parable
This is my very favorite TED talk. In the spirit of the talk above, it's about how to re-order one's thinking and by doing so, re-order one's value set and personal vision in a way that rings considered and true. Someone send this talk to me on Facebook right after I spent my honeymoon in Montreal consuming vast quantities of foie gras. I didn't click on this link for a month because I thought it was going to be a tsk-tsk lecture on the horrible realities of foie gras production. I was very very wrong and this talk is transcendentally good. And very funny. Don't make the same mistake I did!

Full disclosure time: Because, like you, I am a busy bee, I have not had time to actually listen to all the TED talks on my short-lsit. But I've bookmarked them! And I plan to come back to them! Because there are something on the order of over 500 of these incredible little gems of wisdom provoking things in me that need to be provoked. So I've resolved to "make" myself listen to them so I can make room for more. My Ted To-Do list of my remaining five are after the jump. I'd love to read your favorites and suggestions in the comments, if you're a devoted TEDster or one, like me, who does what she can.

Vik Muniz: Making Art With Wire and Sugar

Edward Burtinsky: Manufactured Landscapes

Raghava KK: Five lives of an artist

Rob Forbes: On Ways of Seeing

Taryn Simon: Photographing Secret Sites