A great night out that feeds the appetite for new thinking

She says the BBC felt that such talks, bringing new ideas from across the spectrum 
of technology, business, psychology, the arts and beyond to an audience hungry for information, were “too intellectual” for them.

The talks in question involved a charismatic expert speaking directly to the crowd with no clever camera work and usually no props. So Cohen went back to the drawing board and instead put the 18-minute TED talks online, envisaging that they would attract a small audience of geeky types.

What happened next was a complete revelation.

Since making the TED talks available, for free, in just a few years they’ve had 500 million views and proven, as Cohen says, that “ engaging, smart, free video content can go viral.”

The success is also proof of a worldwide thirst for knowledge that goes beyond exclusive clubs of ‘intellectuals’.

The same desire for information and understanding of the world, where we come from, where 
we’re going and thinking that shapes the future, is part of the increase in infotainment on television. But as well as staying in to watch camera-friendly boffins like Professor Brian 
Cox expounding on the mysteries of physics, it is crossing into the territory of a good night out with friends.

Salon has been called 
‘London’s most talked-about night out’, and it travelled 
north for the first time last year, bringing with each event a stimulating night out that mixed ideas in art, science and psychology. The four sessions held at the Harrogate International Festivals sold out astonishingly quickly.

Designed to appeal to a wide-ranging audience, unified by curiosity and a desire to improve their life, each Salon North session consists of three half-hour sessions, with a speaker from each of the three areas, punctuated by breaks to drink, mingle and discuss the ideas.

In the first of two Salon North sessions at this year’s Festivals, Professor Tim Spector, an epidemiological geneticist at University College London, who is also the author of Identically Different – Why you CAN Change Your Genes, will explain how, if you practise anything for six hours a day and master it, it will change both your brain and your genetic makeup.

Prof Spector’s ‘turn’ is programmed alongside those of broadcaster, journalist and comedian Natalie Haynes, a classics graduate who will introduce the audience to her ancient guide to modern life, using the work of ancient sages had to say on change on a global and personal level.

Also delivering a high-octane half-hour will be Stevyn Colgan, 
a world expert on lateral 
thinking and how to connect 
your thinking.

Prof Spector says he prefers a Salon-type audience to those he speaks to in university circles. “The questions are usually 
much more interesting, for a start,” he says.

“A bunch of scientists will pick away at certain details, whereas a general audience is more capable of seeing the bigger picture and how the work we do might affect them.”

His talk includes revolutionary biological ideas on how genes have been proven not to be 
fixed entities, but more like plastic, able to change shape and evolve by consistent changes in behaviour.

Deciding to eat more healthily and take up exercise can, over time, make permanent changes to our genes as well as to anatomy and general health.

“The changes will be passed on, albeit in diluted form,” says the professor. “There’s a generally positive and very powerful message from this: that you are not stuck with how you are born.

“We can no longer say, fatalistically, that we have no control because of genes.”

Salon North organiser Helen Bagnall, says: “We wanted to create something that’s not just another night in the pub, talking about the same old things, but something more enriching. At the same time experts want a wider audience, and the events really work.”

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Salon North is part of the 
2013 Harrogate International Festivals. The event will be at The Club, 36, Victoria Avenue, Harrogate, on Wednesday, May 15. There will be a further Salon with different speakers on Wendesday, June 19. Box office 01423 562303 www.harrogateinternationalfestivals.com/salon-north