In praise of slowness

Journalist Carl Honore believes the Western world's emphasis on speed erodes health, productivity and quality of life. But there's a backlash brewing, as everyday people start putting the brakes on their all-too-modern lives.

Watch his TED talk here about the topic. Remember that you can activate the English subtitles if you want to do so.

One in eight million

One in eight million is a feature of The New York Times where we can learn about the lives of ordinary New Yorkers through a series of videos.

All the videos are unscripted and are intended for general viewing, so we might find the accent of some of the people here a bit hard to understand.

Do not be put off by this. Try and get a general understanding of the topic they are talking about and, more importantly, lose your fears to deal with native speakers of English face to face.

The art of choosing

Sheena Iyengar studies how we make choices -and how we feel about the choices we make. On this TED talk she touches on both trivial choices (Coke v. Pepsi) and profound ones, and shares her groundbreaking research that has uncovered some surprising attitudes about our decisions.