I never expected a talk by a philosopher to be the most memorable TED x CERN talk for me. But John Searle made it so

TEDxCERN was a lot of fun. The speakers were amazing, covering cosmology, cancer cures, underwater earthquakes, gender politics, ignoble bras, the Higgs boson (of course) and more. I recommend a trawl through them all here. You may even spot me waving my arms in the air along with the choirs of College International Ferney-Voltaire and International School Geneva, and will.i.am on skype if you so wish. Hiranya Peiris from UCL kicked the whole thing off with a great talk about Planck data and cosmology. The four TED Ed animations are also well worth a watch.

But to my amazement, the one talk which I remember most, a couple of weeks later, was by a philosopher. I am pretty skeptical about philosophers on the whole, but then I think John Searle might be too. He makes a bold claim for the science of consciousness

You care about science, philosophy, music, art, whatever. It's no good if you're a zombie, or in a coma. Consciousness is number one.

and he delivers, with a brilliant talk, with so many quotable bits that I give up. Just watch it.

And the rest. But not all at once, or your brain may explode.