Bono, Richard Dawkins and Al Gore Speaking at TED

Every year, a thou­sand “thought-lead­ers, movers and shak­ers” get togeth­er at a four-day con­fer­ence

called TED (which is short for Tech­nol­o­gy, Enter­tain­ment and Design). In past years, the list of speak­ers has ranged from Sergey Brin and Lar­ry Page to Bill Gates, to Her­bie Han­cock and Peter Gabriel, to Frank Gehry and Bil­ly Gra­ham. This year Bill Clin­ton, Paul Simon, and Lar­ry Lessig are set to speak. It almost goes with­out say­ing that not just any­one can attend such an event. You’ll need an invi­ta­tion for starters, plus $4400 to cov­er admis­sion fees. If you can look past the coun­try club­bish­ness of the event, then you may find it worth spend­ing time with the audio (iTunes — Feed) and video (iTunes — Feed) pod­casts of talks from recent con­fer­ences. Some “vod­casts” you’ll want to check out include: Bono, Peter Gabriel, Richard Dawkins, Mal­colm Glad­well, and Al Gore. (We’re not sure what to say about Tony Rob­bins.)