Chrystia Freeland, who spoke on the rise of the plutocracy at TEDGlobal 2013, is running for political office. Photo: James Duncan Davidson

Chrystia Freeland, TEDGlobal 2013 speaker and the author of the book Plutocrats (read more about her talk), has announced her plan to run for political office in Toronto. She tells the Globe and Mail, “In my writing, my reporting and my thinking, I have come to feel that there is a really great challenge that the world and Canada faces, which is figuring out how to make the 21st century work for the middle class. I want to try to be a part of a team that does something about that.”

Brené Brown (watch her TEDx talk) was profiled in The Guardian this week, and shares the moment — while interviewing middle schoolers — that showed her she needed to press forward with her research.

Simon Sinek (watch his talk) talks to Inc. about the topic he’s investigating right now: how leaders control the “circle of safety.” In other words, if you lead a group, how safe do the people in your group feel? As he says: “When we feel safe, remarkable things start to happen.”

Here, 5 TED Talks that every healthcare professional must watch, as selected by MedCity News.

The North Pole Environmental Observatory released a timelapse last week of the now-annual lake located near the North Pole. This arctic lake, photographed by the NPEO at about 85º North latitude, is caused by ice melting as global temperatures rise. In light of this newest development, watch this TED Playlist of 8 talks on the topic, and check out Lewis Pugh’s talk about swimming the North Pole.

Upworthy has highlighted a recent video from TED2013 speaker Amanda Palmer (watch her talk), which she calls an open letter to the Daily Mail. Annoyed by the newspaper running a photo of a wardrobe malfunction during her performance at Glastonbury, Palmer wrote this NSFW song about the paper. We repeat: this video is NSFW.

TED Fellow Usman Riaz’s latest short film is called Ruckus — and while it’s named for a song on his album Circus in the Sky, it is much more than a music video. Here, he chats with the TED Fellows Blog about it.

Chaz Ebert, widow of beloved film critic Roger Ebert (watch his TED Talk), has launched a new group Twitter feed for movie reviews and blog posts: @EbertVoices

In the August issue of Esquire, the cover story on actor Matt Damon shares a winding TED story. It begins with Damon watching a TED Talk — from speaker Gordon Brown, the former British prime minister (watch this talk) — alongside Paul Farmer, the activist physician who Damon greatly admires. (Read Farmer’s essay on the TED Blog.) The story goes on … and somehow concludes with Damon watching a talk from Michael Sandel (watch it here).