Ian Bremmer

The best TED Talks that I have watched are talks that have interested me in a topic that before watching that talk, I had very little exposure to and then made me proactively

go and engage with that kind of content when I saw it before and I would flip through it.

Because when you just see a reasonable article on something, but you haven't seen the best person in the field opine on it in a sharp way for 12 minutes, you don't know that you're really interested.

And Ted is like the sudden ta-da, you should really care about this topic.

You don't care about all of them.

They don't all resonate with you.

But of those that land, you're more likely to start digesting that news and that content better than you otherwise would have.

What an incredible service.

I think it's a great thing.

Well, I work for the U.S.

government all the time in the sense that I'm not charging them for my analysis and I'm giving them advice.

And sometimes they're listening and sometimes they're not.

But I certainly feel like a part of my existence as an analyst is to try to help government leaders that at the end of the day, I want to do better.

And that means most government leaders, even governments that I don't really agree with, I'd much rather that they would be ultimately successful.

um then fail i mean would i do that for with an incredibly repressive government um that's you know sort of not probably not but for for most generally i would say sure and and opposition too um but i don't think that i mean when i was a kid um

I was in second grade and Mrs. Kritikos was asking the class, they were telling us about what it was like to be the president and the importance of the job and the decisions you had to make.

And I was thinking about it and she was asked the class, okay, everyone that would like to be president when they grow up, raise your hand.

And so I raised my hand and I'm thinking about how cool it would be and all this stuff.

And she calls on me

And I remember this and there's not much I remember from being in second grade.