Speaker Profile – ‘Belle de Jour’ – Dr Brooke Magnanti
August 15, 2014 Blog Comments Off
“After leaving university, I applied for a number of jobs that I never got and watched my savings steadily dwindle. So when a friend gave me the phone number of a madam, I decided to become a call girl.” – extract from ‘The Intimate Adventures of a London Call Girl’
Belle de Jour, the infamous call girl working in London revealed her identity in 2009 as Dr Brooke Magnanti, a respected scientist, working in the fields of developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology.
In 2003, Brooke was an American student in London, working on the finishing touches to her doctoral thesis. With London rent to pay, she was limited in the number of hours she could work on her overseas student visa, so when a friend gave her the number of a Madam, Brooke became ‘Belle’ – a £300 an hour call girl. Read More »
Feeling Snow-den by Surveillance State Secrets
August 12, 2014 Blog Comments Off
Humans have always been interested in the lives of others, whether peeking over the fence to see what the Jones’ are up to, listening in on a conversation you’re perhaps not supposed to be listening to, or reading something that wasn’t meant for your eyes. Depending on the situation, you can pass it off as innocent; it’s not like you’re delving deep into the details of this person’s life.
However, just like a lot of things with humanity, this subject also comes with a darker side, something that’s been long intertwined with history and something that does take the ‘innocent’ snooping of our peers into a different realm – surveillance. Read More »
Tchaikovsky and Human Rights
November 7, 2013 Blog Leave a comment
Equal rights is a tough and long fought over issue in many countries, however, none of them are as public at the moment than the problems facing Russia’s LGBT community at the hands of the Russian government. Although many countries like the UK, France, Canada and the US push forward in LGBT rights all the time, many others are disgustingly backwards in their treatment of the gay and transgender community. The widespread bigotry and narrow-mindedness shown by the Russian government in their increasingly abhorrent laws and restrictions are unfortunately still present in many countries, some places still holding the death penalty for anyone found to be LGBT.
Speaker Announcement: John Robb
October 28, 2013 Blog Leave a comment
I spent the years after abandoning my childhood dream in favour of experimenting. I told myself that I abandoned it because I lost my mentor. The truth is I abandoned it because I realized that I didn’t have passion. A small, but steadily increasing number of people in the world are lucky enough to be able to do what they love for a living, or at least leverage that experience and passion in order to support themselves in a position that allows them to use that knowledge to their advantage. John Robb is one of them. Read More »
Silence Is Golden
October 27, 2013 Blog Leave a comment
When I first heard about a man who’d travelled the world for 17 years, in silence and mostly on foot, I wondered what it would be like to just be silent for a single day. So I earnestly vowed to be silent and pay attention on my walk to work, down a lovely cycle path through the woods. I fell over at the first hurdle, when a work colleague said hello as soon as I walked in the building. To not respond would’ve been rude, so my day of silence lasted from waking up till I arrived at work, an unimpressive two hours. John Francis (nicknamed the planetwalker) fared much better.
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Out of Reach: Space for a Secret Speaker
October 20, 2013 Blog Leave a comment
If you look hard enough, we tell our children, you can see a man’s face peering at you from the surface of the Moon. It’s a place where the temperature can range from extremes of 123 to -153 degrees Celsius. Yet a face of craters, slightly lopsided and uncanny, makes a lump of rock so inhospitably alien become something familiar, even human. Read More »
Performer Announcement – Hetain Patel
October 18, 2013 Blog Leave a comment
“It is Patel’s skilled precision in realising an almost seamless harmony of his culturally and historically divergent source material that gives his installations a distinctive resonance.”
- Robert Clark, The Guardian
We are very excited to welcome visual artist Hetain Patel to TEDxSalford as a performer this year, so expect the unexpected as Patel brings us his fascinating and vibrant work to our stage in November. Read More »
Speaker Announcement – David Erasmus
October 8, 2013 Blog Leave a comment
David Erasmus is a serial entrepreneur who is passionate about creating a better global future. He is the founder and CEO of Givey – a revolutionary donation platform that allows Gift Aided micro-donations through Twitter, SMS and other social applications to over 6,000 charities. This encourages people to support charities they care about ‘on the go’ with instant low friction donations while connecting with like-mined supporters. Read More »
Speaker Announcement – Joanne Harris
October 3, 2013 Blog Leave a comment
Joanne Harris, MBE, has written 17 books and counting – the most well-known of which being Chocolat, which was nominated for the prestigious Whitbread award. A year later it was made into a film of the same name, starring Dame Judi Dench, Juliette Binoche and Johnny Depp, and was equally well received; the proof in the pudding (pun intended) being its nominations for 5 Oscars, a Bafta, an Emmy and a Grammy. Read More »
Speaker Announcement – The Scary Guy
September 19, 2013 Blog Leave a comment
The Scary Guy. He’s been called many names, by many people – although you might wonder why the list includes those such as ‘Agent For Change,’ ‘Urban Dalai Lama,’ ‘Warrior For Peace’ and ‘The Mind-Waker.’
In the last decade on the road, The Scary Guy has worked with schools, police forces, the military, and a host of communities and corporate organizations. Through his live performances and across his active online networks, he’s reportedly helped over 10 million people around the world ‘achieve personal peace and triumph in their lifetime.’ Read More »