most psychologists would be thrilled to pack a lecture hall with a couple hundred people who want to hear about their latest research. But to Barry Schwartz, PhD, that would be small potatoes. To date, more than 2.3 million people have watched him give an 18-minute presentation on the paradox of choice. That's because Schwartz, a psychology professor at Swarthmore College, stars in one of the 20 most popular talks on TED, the nonprofit organization that puts on high wattage conferences devoted to"ideas worth spreading," then shares those conference talks on its website(www.ted.com/ talks). Schwartz's talk is on the counterintuitive idea that the abundance of choice in our modern world can leave us feeling paralyzed rather than happy with our decisions. TED began with a meeting in Northern California in 1984 organized by Saul Wurman, the architect and designer who coined the phrase"information architecture. That first meeting focused on the three topics that still make up the conference's acronym: technology, entertainment and design. It featured an early look at the Sony Compact Disc and a demonstration of 3-D graphics from Lucasfilm, according to T s website. It took six years for Wurman to put on another conference, but after that it became an annual event.