[acidbaseextract]

Nima Arkani-Hamed is an amazing speaker, and if you're interested in modern physics I highly recommend watching his talks. A great place to start is his 5 part Messenger lecture series. It starts with the discovery of quantum mechanics, and the last 3 talks all cover different frontiers of fundamental physics today.

http://www.cornell.edu/video/playlist/nima-arkani-hamed-on-f...

Introduction ends and Nima starts about 4 minutes into the first lecture. :)

[arcticfox]

I second this recommendation. "Particle Fever" piqued my curiosity, but watching this series blew my mind. As a non-religious person, the content of the series is about as close as to religion as I will ever find. And as a sports fan, I now have the same anticipation waiting for LHC findings that I do for big games.

Arkani-Hamed has a knack for making things understandable without "pop-sciencing" them, a flair for the dramatic to make them exciting, and a serious background to validate his understanding.

I'm sure he's not for everyone (I'm guessing that physicists that already know the subjects may find him annoying) but for me, the guy is amazing.

[nikofeyn]

i actually find him unlistenable. he says "uh" every two words and has a very choppy way of speaking. he caries a certain amount of arrogance in his speaking as well. it is authorative but too much so.

[noobermin]

I won't comment on the arrogance, but trust me, many scientists have verbal tics or habits that are distracting, including me. We aren't the best at public speaking, we are the best at science.

EDIT: wrote "visual" when I meant "verbal"

[nikofeyn]

well i was mainly commenting on the comment that he's an "amazing speaker". that has a pretty strong connotation. haha.

[maroonblazer]

I take it you're a physicist ;-)

[nikofeyn]

mathematician moonlighting as a software engineer. ;)