Bill Nye the Science Guy (watch his TED-Ed lesson) will be joining the cast of “Dancing with the Stars.” New York Magazine says of Nye’s inclusion in the lineup — alongside Snooki, Valerie Harper and Jack Osbourne — that he is “the big get.” How long do we think it will be before he and his partner dance to “She Blinded Me With Science?”

The Guardian has picked the “20 online talks that could change your life.” Spoiler alert: more than half of their picks are TED Talks.

Isaac Mizrahi (watch his talk, and check out his playlist of TED favorites) has relinquished control of his fashion company, leaving him be free to do a cabaret act, cook, paint, and more, as sources tell The New York Times.

Legendary writer Margaret Atwood has imagined a post-apocalyptic future that sounds like, and references, George Monbiot’s book Feral. (Read about Monbiot’s talk at TEDGlobal 2013.)

PostSecret, the website where people anonymously post the things they would never tell their closest friends (watch Frank Warren’s talk about it), has run into some controversy. As reported by Vice, it appears that someone may have posted a murder confession on the site.

Janet Echelman (watch her talk) is a guest DJ on KCRW, Southern California’s NPR station, and has picked five songs from five key moments in her life.

This article on expectations in music from Australia’s The Age references Bobby McFerrin’s TED Talk (watch it here).

In OMNI Reboot, George Lazenby muses on sight and stories — drawing from Pawan Sinha’s work on restoring sight in blind children (watch his TED Talk), and sharing a mind-blowing, 325-year-old thought experiment. He asks: How much of what we see is informed by the stories we hear?

In the incredible video above, National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins (watch his talk) sings the “Sequester Blues.” He not only plays guitar, but has written lyrics about the woes of the US government cutting budgets for medical research.

Oliver Sacks (watch his TED Talk) is coming to a small screen near you. Deadline reports that NBC is developing a TV drama called Sparks, based on the fascinating case studies of the neurological anthropologist.

The Node has rounded up its favorite biology-related TED Talks.

In this Al Jazeera report, Hans Rosling (watch any of his 9 talks) breaks down what mothers need across the world and across income gaps to have safe births. Start listening at 1:05.

GPS spoofer Todd Humphreys (watch his talk) is at it again! The MIT Technology Review reports that he and his students just knocked a multi-million-dollar yacht off course.

Jeff Smith (watch his TED Talk) discusses the experience of being well-off, white and in prison with Piper Kerman of Orange is the New Black fame. One great moment from this MSNBC segment: “What do you want to tell people who are living in the America where they don’t think the criminal justice system has anything to do with them?” the interviewer asks. Smith replies, “The people who are locked up really aren’t that different from you and I. We probably had a lot more privileges than a lot of them growing up — maybe an intact family, the opportunity for a great education, or financial security, but at the end of the day, they miss their kids just like we do, they miss their girlfriend or their wife or their mom or their friends just like we do, and they want a chance at a better life when they get out.”

The online magazine Bookslut asked poet Stephen Burt (read about his TEDGlobal 2013 talk) to list some of the delightful things he’s recently consumed. On his list: “TED Talks by Bernie Krause (watch it), Gavin Pretor-Pinney (watch it) and Alexa Meade.” (We’ll bring you Burt’s talk later this fall.) And dive into another great long interview with Burt, quite different, from the Huffington Post.

Tim Brown’s TED Talk (watch it here) was referenced in the Forbes.com essay, “It’s time to bring design thinking down from on high.”

At TED2012, Sherry Turkle gave a talk on how our devices and online lives are making us more connected, and at the same time more alone. Below, her ideas as animated by Shimi Cohen as a project for a course at Shenkar College of Engineering and Design in Tel Aviv.

Here are some highlights of the back-and-forth:

Vanessa Borg : “Changes in digital technology has not only helped us but it has hindered us at the same time. Whereas up to until a couple of years ago you could enjoy a dinner with a person knowing that you have their complete attention, nowadays you know that as soon as their bag/ pocket/ jacket starts to vibrate they have a need to check what has happened. Ultimately I believe that what we are trying to achieve is social acceptance from our own social circle. Nowadays this acceptance is measured either by how many people like your status or by how many people share your image.”

Sherry Turkle: Dear Vanessa . . . I think you point to a really important point! The metric of who one is cannot be measured by how many Facebook friends who have or how many people like your status or follow you on Twitter. Yet now we have these metrics and they can be oppressive. This is such an important point!”

Clayton Papillon:  Sherry, this conversation has answered a few questions I had after I watched your talk. However, you mentioned in your talk to take more time for yourself and have more face-to-face conversations/interactions. For the most part technology has allowed us to take more time for ourselves because you can respond to a question/text/email instantly. If we were to always engage face-to-face (like we used too) we would lose a lot of valuble time to complete other tasks and have more face-to-face conversations with those we adore. Also, your talk seemed to pin technology and communication in a negative light while ignoring the brilliance of it. As we have realized in the last few years more people in this world actually have a voice now because of the way technology allows us to communicate. Information through social media has the power to change the world. Through this realization I find that sometimes I have more in common with a person in South America then I do with my own neighbour, among other things.  Historically speaking, communication has limited the way civilizations interact, do business, and develop. Not to mention it has only served those who can communicate or are listened too. We are now living in a world interconnected by social media and although there might be small negative impacts, it surely brings a large positive light to our global civilization.Thank you for your conversation! :) ”

Sherry Turkle: Clayton, I think you misunderstand me. I am very positive. But I think when we ignore what hasn’t gone right, we do so at our peril. That is my position. So, I honor what has gone brilliantly! But some things are not going so well. And I don’t want us to lose sight of them. I don’t want it to be an either/or thing.”

Samuel Cook : ” I also find that while digital communication helps us hide from the audible and physical side of the conversation, it reveals a different kind of confrontation. When people can see your words they can judge spelling and ability to express yourself legibly. This has a few impacts. I tend to judge people’s intelligence on how well they can spell now, and while it might be inspiring to converse with somebody who can speak with beautiful flow, that doesn’t always convert in text. It also has brought to the surface a huge problem with spelling that may not have been addressed on such a large scale in the past, but unfortunately when weaknesses are unearthed they are often justified and glamorized to hide them in plain sight. We are allowing these problems to grow on a large scale in the upcoming generation.”

Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Just a moment ago Sherry Turkle‘s daughter texted her: “Mom, you will rock.” Turkle loved it, she says. “Getting that text was like getting a hug.” Turkle, who has written extensively on the nature of human relations on the internet, who evangelized the internet, who loves receiving that text, is here to tell us that there may be a problem.

In 1996 she gave her first TEDTalk, “Celebrating our life on the internet.” She was excited, as a psychologist, to take what people were learning in the virtual world and apply it to the physical world. It made the cover of WIRED.

Her new book, Alone Together, will not make the cover of WIRED, she is pretty sure. She is still excited about technology, but is deeply worried that we are letting it “take us places we don’t want to go.” She’s interviewed hundreds of people about their online habits, and she’s come to this conclusion: “The little devices in our pockets are so psychologically powerful that they don’t even change what we do, they change who we are.” Things we do with them were odd, but now seem familiar. We text in board meetings, classrooms and even funerals.

People talk to her about “the important new skill of making eye contact while you’re texting… It’s hard but it can be done.”

Why does this matter? It matters to her because she thinks we’re setting ourselves up for trouble. Constant digital interaction impedes our capacity for self-reflection. “People want to be with each other, but also elsewhere. People want to control exactly the amount of attention they give others, not too much, not too little.” She calls it the Goldilocks effect. But the distances that feel right for some people in some situations, say a boardroom, can be totally wrong in others, such as raising a child.

A teenager says to her, “Someday, someday, but certainly not now, I’d like to learn how to have a conversation.” There is a feeling that conversations are difficult because we don’t have the ability to edit as we talk, and so can’t present the exact face that we’d like to. “Human relationships are rich, and they’re messy and they’re demanding. And we clean them up with technology. We sacrifice conversation for mere connection.”

Stephen Colbert once asked her, “Don’t all those little tweets and texts, all these little sips of information, add up to one big gulp of real conversation?” Her answer is no. All of these little bits work very well for many things, but they don’t work for the real task of learning deeply about each other. Even more, “We use conversations with each other to learn how to have conversation with ourselves.”

Turkle finds that people wish for an advanced version of Siri that will be a friend who will listen when others won’t. The feeling that no one is listening makes us want to spend time with our technology, Facebook pages, robots and others. “Have we so lost confidence that we will be there for each other?” She did research in a nursing home, where she saw a woman who had just lost a child, interacting with an “empathetic” robot seal that seemed to respond to her. The staff was amazed. But Turkle called it “one of the most wrenching, complicated moments in her 15 years of work.”

We’re designing tech that will give us the illusion of friendship without the demands of companionship. They offer us three fantasies:

1) We’ll have attention everywhere.

2) We’ll always be heard.

3) We’ll never have to be alone.

This relationship, this constant connection, “Is changing how people think of themselves, it’s shaping a new way of being … I share, therefore I am.” Turkle believes we need to cultivate a capacity for solitude. “If we’re not able to be alone, we’re going to be more lonely. If we don’t teach our children to be alone, they’re going to be more lonely.”

At TED1996 she said: “Those who make the most of their lives on the screen come to it in a spirit of self-reflection.” She believes the same is true now, and that now is the time to talk about technology. We are still very much the early days of designing technology. There’s time to reconsider how we build and use our digital tools, “to build a more self-aware relationship with them, and with ourselves.”

She has suggestions for how to make room for solitude.

1) Teach it as a value for your children

2) Make spaces, such as the kitchen, to be alone.

3) Listen to each other, including to the boring bits. “When we stumble or hesitate or lose our words, we reveal ourselves to each other.”

She is optimistic that we can do this, but we need to recognize complication, and that we are vulnerable to the allure of false promises of simplicity. “Let’s talk about how we can use digital technology to make this life the life we can love.”

The jury in the room, and the audience, overwhelmingly agree that she is “Not guilty of worrying about the wrong thing.”