I realize that as the author of a listicle titled "10 TED Talks They Should Have Censored," I may not be in the best position to tackle this subject, but it seems like the snark and mockery aimed at the annual TED talks -- currently being held in Long Beach and Palm Beach California, and their TEDx offshoots around the world, has reached a fever pitch, and there's something of a pro-TED backlash brewing. 

Slate's Matthew Yglesias and Grist's David Roberts took to Twitter yesterday to express bafflement at all the TED-hate out there, and Roberts offered a pretty cogent defense of the TED phenomenon.

Alternative to casual internet user picking up idea from TED talk is *not* casual internet user being fully educated on a topic.

Like, if Average Joe wasn't burdened with that glib, simplified TED talk, he'd probably go read the original literature, right? 

This got me thinking about why it is that TED irritates so many people. The world "elitist" gets thrown around a lot to describe Chris Anderson's institution, which charges $6,000 for membership. But that's a hard label to pin on them given that they put all their talks online for free.

Some are also put off by the gee-whiz Silicon Valley buzzword culture surrounding TED. Take, for example, the names of of this year's sessions, which include "progress enigma," "beautiful imperfection," and "disrupt!" But let's be honest, anyone who's attended an academic or media conference has seen equally vague but more boring versions of these. Best not even to discuss the World Economic Forum, whose theme was "Dynamic Resilience" this year.

Some charge that TED has devolved into a glorified self-help seminar, a kind of Tony Robbins for geeks. (Sometimes featuring the actual Tony Robbins.) Yes, there's a certain amount of this, but you're just as likely to hear prominent scholars like Saskia Sassen, Jared Diamond, or Peter Singer sharing their latest work.

The biggest charge critics level at TED is that it glorifies "ideas" for their own sake, and rewards snappy presentation over rigorous thought or intellectual debate. 

The New Statesman's Martin Robbins writes:

The genius of TED is that it takes capable-but-ordinary speakers, doing old talks they’ve performed many times elsewhere, and dresses them up in a production that makes you feel like you’re watching Kennedy announce the race to the moon.

Evgeny Morozov, who, by the way, once gave a really good TED talk, takes it further:

Today TED is an insatiable kingpin of international meme laundering—a place where ideas, regardless of their quality, go to seek celebrity, to live in the form of videos, tweets, and now e-books. In the world of TED—or, to use their argot, in the TED “ecosystem”—books become talks, talks become memes, memes become projects, projects become talks, talks become books—and so it goes ad infinitum in the sizzling Stakhanovite cycle of memetics, until any shade of depth or nuance disappears into the virtual void.

Nathan Heller took a similarly skeptical tone in his New Yorker dispatch from TED last year, noting that "More than half of Long Beach talks end in standing ovations."

It's certainly fair to say that not every idea presented at TED is "worth spreading," but quite a few are. I could just as easily put together a list of the "10 dumbest magazine articles" of last year -- hell, of last week -- but I wouldn't condemn the entire form. 

Ultimately, I suspect it's the style more than the content that annoys critics -- and often annoys me. There's a certain dorm-room "is the blue I see the same as the blue you see?" vibe to many TED talks that can be very grating. (The Onion Talks web series parodies this brilliantly with videos like "What is the biggest rock?" and "A future where all robots have penises.")

But again, the magazine comparison is useful. I wouldn't avoid reading an interesting-looking article in Vanity Fair because I'm not really interested in the Kennedy family, Marilyn Monroe, or Hamptons garden parties. Similarly, you don't really have to buy the TED ethos to be grateful for the fact that a slew of fascinating talks are available for free at the click of a mouse.

Over the past few days, we've been sharing interviews with the authors nominated for this year's Lionel Gelber Prize. A literary award for the year's best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs.

The award is sponsored by the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto in cooperation with Foreign Policy. The interviews are conducted by Rob Steiner, former Wall Street Journal correspondent and director of fellowships in international journalism at the Munk School.  

Next up is Thomson Reuters Digital Editor Chrystia Freeland. Here's the jury's citation for Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else:

"In Plutocrats, Chrystia Freeland describes the evolution of a new global elite of unprecedented economic, social and political power. This mobile, denaturalized community affects the lives of billions as its wealth and values distance it from even the wealthiest of societies.  Freeland explores consequent issues of equity and accountability with fluency and intimacy, capturing the human dimension of a powerful and disturbing phenomenon."

You can listen to the interview here.

Last week, the Iranian government organized a conference on "Hollywoodism" in Tehran, at which an international group of activists, religious figures, filmmakers, and politicians discussed the ideology of Hollywood films. In particular, many of the participants argued that films like Argo promote an anti-Iranian, anti-Islamic agenda.

One of the more suprising participants in the event was Mike Gravel, the former two-term Alaska senator, best known for reading the Pentagon Papers into the public record, who ran in the Democratic and Libertarian presidential primaries in 2008. During the campaign, Gravel attracted attention for his anti-establishment views as well as his unconventional advertising. Since leaving electoral politics, he has spoken in support of WikiLeaks and called for a new investigation of the 9/11 attacks.

According to the New York Times, Gravel argued at the conference that it was  "'fundamental' to discuss the American movie industry’s ways of portraying Iran in order to prevent 'an insane war.'"

I spoke with the 83-year-old Gravel Thursday on the phone from his home in California about his impressions from the trip.

Foreign Policy: So who invited you, how did this come about?

Mike Gravel: I've been angling to go to Tehran for some time. I'd been there 40 years ago when I was in the Senate, for a few days, and so I was hoping I'd get a speaking gig where they could pay my way. I can't afford myself to take these kind of trips if they're not funded. So what happened, unbeknownst to me, this was the third Hollywoodism conference.

A fellow by the name of Kevin Barrett [the former University of Wisconsin professor and 9/11 truth activist] who I know, I had spoken on his television show, or radio show, frequently. He suggested to them that they invite me and it took off from there. I've been interviewed on average about once a week on PressTV and so my views are very well known over there and obviously quite safe for an invitation because I wasn't going to rock any boat.

FP: So as I understood it, many people at the conference were arguing that Hollywood movies like Argo are motivated by some kind of pro-Israel, anti-Iranian agenda. What did you think about that?

MG: There was various elements of extremes. I am very much a movie buff, and there's good stuff that comes out of Hollywood and there's bad stuff that comes out of Hollywood. You can take your pick. They take a different viewpoint. [The Iranians] operate from a religious viewpoint and they feel that some of the extremes of Hollywood has deteriorated human culture worldwide and so that's what they're trying to have this conference. They want to try and see if they can't develop an alternative to Hollywoodism and I don't think they can, I think that they will have an influence in their area of movies. Part of the deal was they gave us two, or I'd say 20, maybe more, movies to watch that were part of the conference so I'll be doing that for part of the time here to try to get a feel for how realistic they are.

FP: What were your general impressions of Iran?

MG: I can't tell you how warm the people were. How giving, considerate. And, the thing that was very surprising to me. If you follow American media, you think they're on the ropes. I gotta tell you, there's no question the sanctions are a discomfiture, but in the long run it is the best thing that's ever happened to Iran. It's made them totally independent, and forcing them to internalize their economic activity, to build machines. We rode for about 10 miles right through the heart of Iran where they're building an elevated highway. Boy, I'll tell you, that was an impressive work area. So the city is just like a normal thriving city. It has prosperity. You could tell by the traffic jams. The architecture's extremely attractive and imposing, and so what's happened to the country is it's being forced into independence. But that's exactly what a developing country does. You force domestic wares to be produced and then you turn around and you can export your product very competitively because your money is depressed, and so that's what's going on in Iran. And I don't think the United States has any inkling that what it's doing is counterproductive to arriving at a solution in that part of the world.

FP: Do you think war between the U.S. and Iran is inevitable?

MG: First off, I think it'll happen by accident. I equate what's going on today as to what was going on in February and March of 1914. Everybody's psyched up to the hilt, armed to the hilt. All you need is an accident, all you need is an accident to just blow the whole thing wide open. And that's my fear. When you see a poll, and the polls I've seen vary, but from 40 to 55 percent of the Americans would tolerate an invasion of Iran. Now, I don't think that toleration would last beyond 30 days, but when you see a situation like that and politicians read the tea leaves, they think they can do what they want in this regard.

Let me back up. The sanctions are illegal. There's nothing that I see that Iran ahs done that warrants the sanctions against them. If you want to sanction somebody, do it to Saudi Arabia who has funded the madrasas with Wahhabism, hatred of the gentiles. That's not the approach of the Shia. The Shia is the more benign wing of the Islamic world, and the Ayatollah Khamenei, the imam, is the, literally the pope of all the Shiitex in the world.

FP: The Obama administration publicly says it's trying to avoid war. Do you believe that?

MG: No, I think there's a great insincerity on part of the Obama administration unfortunately. Probably the best approach to this, the Imam has stated very clearly they are not going to pursue the acquisition of the bomb because the Koran dictates that they cannot do that. Now at face value, when you recognize that this is the spiritual leader of the country and the spiritual leader of the world of Shiites and he's making a statement that the Koran does not tolerate an atomic bomb. Now, if you took that at face value, then a lot of things become a little ridiculous, like when the President says ‘well we've got a red line here you can't cross.' They're not going to cross it, they've already said this repeatedly. And there's no intelligence estimates that indicate they're pursuing a bomb. None at all.

Of course, there's a lot of conflict with the IAEA and I don't know if you remember the memo, from the um, Amamo, the Japanese guy, the head of other IAEA to the ambassador in Austria, telling the ambassador that, oh, he's very grateful for the United States in getting the job and that he guarantees that American interests will be protected. Now, I don't particularly view that as an independent kind of a situation, not even fair, but by the same token, Iran has not violated anything of the IAEA. It has had investigators all over the place, and they're going to continue to do that.

FP: So who else did you have a chance to meet with? Did you talk to any officials?

MG: Oh yes, some, but I didn't' recognize who they were. I didn't meet Ahmadinejad. They were trying to put something together, and it sort of fell through. Obviously I didn't meet the Imam. But met other officials who were party to the conference because the whole conference is funded by the government, and so they were at various levels, cultural levels, and maybe not so cultural were monitoring the conference and I was interviewed extensively by the various networks. And I gave the same opinions that I have right now giving to you.

FP: Were you able to talk to any opponents of the regime?

MG: Nope. I know Trita Parsi here in the States but no, I didn't get any feel for any opposition. You know, we were staying at the hotel and then we would just go out to forays. My wife was with me and so she likes to see things. I would just rest in the hotel. You know, I'm 83 at this point, I don't need a whole lot of gallivanting around.

But, we were talking about meeting people from about 35 people from all over the world, motion picture people, writers, activists, and some were off the charts.

FP: What do you mean "off the charts"?

MG: Oh, their attitude toward Zionism. But that wasn't so much. They don't talk about the Jewish lobby, they talk about the Zionist lobby, in their terminology, which is interesting. I doubt there's any change that they'll be able to bring forth. But what they will bring forth is an independent, powerful nation able to defend itself, and will certainly be a leader of the non-aligned, and that's not always in the United States' best interests. And I resent a lot of our imperial attitude that we have to, we're the self-appointed policemen of the world. We police when it's our interests and if not, we don't police very well.

FP: Did it seem like the officials you met with were open to opposing views? Were they tolerant of dissent?

MG: Oh yeah. Yeah. They're very open. Because they know, from their public pinion, that they're operating in the blind. And, oh, there's one other thing I came away with that fascinates me. I, the last 25 or 30 years, I've focused my attention on structure of government, you know, how human beings in society attempt to govern themselves. I look for models. Like Switzerland for direct democracy. They have an interesting model. They have married a theocracy and a political system, and it appears to work. Now, all I can say is that's nothing to cause fear. What we should do is encourage models like this to see how they operate and see what contributions they can make to human governments.

FP: So you think we can learn from the Iranian political model?

MG: Oh yes I think we can. Not so much for ourselves. We say we've got separation of church and state. Well I've gotta tell you Joshua, when you pay your taxes, you are supporting all the churches in the United States. That's the nature of the beast. Since Islam is such a devotional kind of religion -- I mean I was in a couple of meetings where I had to sit there and meditate while they were praying -- this has something to tell us. They have a successful country, and make no mistake about it, they are a very successful country and are suffering as a result of our injustice.

Over the past few days, we've been sharing interviews with the authors nominated for this year's Lionel Gelber Prize. A literary award for the year's best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs.

The award is sponsored by the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto in cooperation with Foreign Policy. The interviews are conducted by Rob Steiner, former Wall Street Journal correspondent and director of fellowships in international journalism at the Munk School.  

Next up is Yale political scientist Paul Bracken. Here's the jury's citation for The Second Nuclear Age:

The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger and the New Power Politics by Paul Bracken urges an end to complacency about nuclear strategy post-Cold War. With deep personal experience in the field, Bracken examines regional nuclear theatres that barely existed under the 20th Century's duopoly, and makes the case for new paradigms of conflict management in a far more volatile nuclear game.  This is a cautionary treatise of profound potential significance in a newly multilateral world." 

You can listen to the interview here.

Adel Noori, one of the Uighurs released from Guantanamo Bay to the island of Palau in 2009, who was reported missing last week, has actually relocated to Turkey, say U.S. officials. McClatchy reports:

But U.S. officials had known since late last year that Noori had grown impatient with U.S. efforts to find him and his Turkish wife a permanent home and the couple had managed to relocate to her homeland.

"He's not missing; he's definitely not disappeared," said one of two U.S. government officials who discussed the episode on condition of anonymity because only the State Department was authorized to answer questions on the matter.

Noori's relocation is particularly impressive given that he is technically stateless and has no travel documents. 

The $600,000 the Obama administration agreed to pay the Palauan government in 2009 to take care of the men has long run out and the country's new government says it will step up it's efforts to relocate them -- though some of the men has reportedly married and begun raising families since arriving on the Pacific island. Noori had been working as a security guard at the Palau Community College.

The State Department shuttered the office that had been working on relocating Gitmo detainees in January.

Iranian mobile operator Rightel is providing the country's mobile users with their first 3G Internet services, but the company's video-calling feature has drawn the ire of the country's clerical establishment. 

Al-Monitor reports:

Four grand ayatollahs — Nasser Makarem-Shirazi, Hossein Nouri Hamedani , Jafar Sohbhani and Seyyed Sajjad Alavi Gorgani — have issued fatwas banning Rightel.

"The decadence and corruption associated with [Rightel’s] use outweighs its benefits,” decreed Grand Ayatollah Makarem-Shirazi. “It will cause new deviances in our society, which is unfortunately already plagued with deviances.” Ayatollah Alavi Gorghani said that the video-call service would “jeopardize the public chastity” and “inflicts numerous damages” on Iran’s religion and political system.

An anti-Rightel website called "Rightel mirage" has been set up by Iran’s hard-liners. “Providing everyone with opium and then advising them to use it wisely,” reads an op-ed on the site, cautioning against the risks video calls pose to family life.

Some activists also suspect the attack on Rightel may be part of a move to limit communications during this summer's presidential election.

When French Industrial Renewal Minister Arnaud Montebourg wrote to Maurice Taylor, asking him to invest in a failing Goodyear tire plant in Northern France, the Titan Tire CEO could have just said, "no." But that's not really his style:

"I have visited that factory a couple of times. The French workforce gets paid high wages but only works three hours," Taylor said in the letter, dated February 8 and obtained by French business daily Les Echos.

"They get one hour for breaks and lunch, talk for three and work for three. I told this to the French union workers to their faces. They told me that's the French way!"[...]

"Titan is going to buy a Chinese tyre company or an Indian one, pay less than one euro per hour wage and ship all the tyres France needs. You can keep the so-called workers."

Taylor followed up in an interview with the AFP:

"I just came back from Australia and I met there young Frenchmen and women and young Spanish men and women who have moved there because they can get jobs down there and they're excited to build something," he said.

"That's why in France pretty soon everybody will be sitting down in cafes sipping a glass of wine but they won't be making any money."

After it was obtained by the media, the letter provoked outrage in France and Montenbourg responded with an angry letter promising to "inspect your tyre imports with a redoubled zeal."

Obviously Taylor, a one-time longshot candidate for the GOP nomination for president and author of Kill All the Lawyers and Other Ways to Fix the Government,  was being hyperbolic. But is there any truth to the critique? 

Kind of. French workers work the fourth fewest hours per year in the OECD, according to the organization's statistics. Only the Norwegians, Germans and Dutch work less. On the other hand, if working long hours was all it took to drive the economy, Greece -- and no. 4 in the OECD -- would be an industrial dynamo.

On the OECD's labor productivity rankings, France comes in a respectable 7th after Norway, Luxembourg, Ireland, the U.S., Netherlands, and Belgium. So it seems they are getting something done in between those bottles of bourdeaux. Australia comes in 13th.  

Over the past few days, we've been sharing interviews with the authors nominated for this year's Lionel Gelber Prize. A literary award for the year's best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs.

The award is sponsored by the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto in cooperation with Foreign Policy. The interviews are conducted by Rob Steiner, former Wall Street Journal correspondent and director of fellowships in international journalism at the Munk School.  

Yesterday, the prize board announced the five books that had been selected for the prize shortlist. They are: 

• Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum (Washington, DC and Poland), published by Signal Editions  
• The Second Nuclear Age: Strategy, Danger, and the New Power Politics by Paul Bracken (Connecticut), published by Times Books  
• Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super-Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland (New York, New York), published by Doubleday Canada and The Penguin Press
• Ghosts of Empire: Britain's Legacies in the Modern World by Kwasi Kwarteng (London, England), published by Public Affairs
• From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asiaby Pankaj Mishra (London, England), published by Doubleday Canada and Farrar, Straus & Giroux

Next up on our list of interviews is journalist Anne Applebaum. Here's the jury citation for Iron Curtain:

"In Iron Curtain, Anne Applebaum captures the demeaning claustrophobia of Soviet-dominated regimes in Central Europe after 1945. With devastating precision, Applebaum documents the subordination of every autonomous social force in these countries by a paranoid and greedy power. Rarely has the fragility of liberalism been more deftly portrayed."

Listen to the interview here.