Today TED announced the 50 millionth view of a TED talk, marking its success since it first launched online two years ago in June of 2006.  TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design—and it features talks by various speakers from Bill Clinton to Bono. However, the most viewed talks are actually given by persons previously unknown. They are ideas “flying on [their] own merit[s]”, says the executive producer of TED media according to TEDBlog. Almost half of TED’s audience comes from outside the U.S., establishing TEDTalks as a global presence. TED Curator Chris Anderson says,

“TED’s mission is to spread ideas, and we’re now doing that on a scale that was unimaginable two years ago. It’s clear there’s an appetite out there for big ideas and meaningful stories.”

Check out the Top 10 TEDTalks of all time; you’ll be surprised by the speakers and their subjects, with number one titled, “My stroke of insight,” by neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor. And while you’re at it, check out Richard Baraniuk’s “Goodbye, textbooks; hello, open-source learning,” a talk by the founder of Connexions, a leading educational platform in the OER movement.

All TED talks are licensed under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND.