In a talk he gave at the TED conference in 2006, Dr. Dean Ornish, who first became well known for talking up the benefits of diet and exercise in fighting heart disease, told a story about a year he spent studying under a well-known swami.

FORBES: Promoting Wellness vs. Illness: It's All About We vs. I

Other conference goers, many of whom are Gadgetoff regulars, also shone: including Amazon's Jeff Bezos, TED conference founder Richard Saul Wurman, computer engineer Danny Hillis, polymathic inventor Dean Kamen, sly literary agent John Brockman and Creative Good's Mark Hurst.

FORBES: Radical Ideas