TEDx brings Soapy Beasts to the Summer Rescue

Here's hoping Team USA is as hot as team TEDxCharleston has been lately. Curator Edith Howle got word this week that yet another of the 2014 TEDxCharleston talks has been selected as an Editor's Pick on the national TEDxTalks channel, thanks to the sudsy wisdom and humor of Derreck Kayonga's presentation at April's TEDxCharleston event. Two weeks before, Vince Musi's Dr. Doolittle-inspired talk, featuring Musi's endearing, evocative and just plain awesome animal photos (shot for National Geographic), brought TEDxCharleston to the national spotlight, chimps-and-all.

If you're looking for an uplifting, engaging, inspiring, clean alternative to the YouTube or CandyCrush junk your kids are gorging on during their iPad summer, Kayongo's and Musi's TEDx talks are your ticket. Actually, any of the  2014 TEDxCharleston talks are a worthwhile way to spend a little summer screen time.

Kayonga's suave looks and Ugandan accent are reason enough to tune in, but his story of growing up in a happy family with fond memories of making soap as a young boy with his father in East Africa, then living through the squalor and horror of the Idi Amin regime when Kayongo's family and fellow citizens had nothing, much less soap, only to come to the US and discover, after an "ah ha" moment in a hotel shower, that 2.6 million bars of hotel soap are thrown out every day, is pure brilliance. An uplifting example of how a simple observation, that soap need not go to waste, is now helping improve public health in developing countries around the world, where 2 million kids a day die needlessly from diseases that could be avoided by simply washing their hands with soap.

Or if the beastly heat has you (and/or your kids) leaning toward more animalistic tendencies, spend a few moments being totally charmed by the expressive images that Sullivan's Island resident and National Geographic photographer Vincent Musi captures of our non-humanoid brethren.

If by chance Team USA loses this afternoon, Musi's muses will put a smile back on even the most rabid soccer fan's face.

I mean, really:

(lead image via TEDxCharleston)