A Tony Award winner, theater producer David Binder is interested in taking performances off the stage.

Bhakti Sharma is a record-breaking Indian open water swimmer.

The Sleepy Man Banjo Boys is made up of 11-year-old banjo sensation Jonny Mizzone and his brothers Robbie, 14, on fiddle, and Tommy, 15, on guitar.

Tim Ferriss is an early-stage tech investor, best-selling author and podcaster.

To showcase vital new art from African nations and the diaspora, Touria El Glaoui founded the powerhouse 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair.

TED Fellow Su Kahumbu is working to improve farmer livelihoods and contribute to nutritional security and environmental sustainability.

A powerhouse of scientific leadership in Africa, Christian Happi sequences and studies the genomes of infectious diseases like Ebola, HIV and coronavirus.

Writer, comedian and advocate Stella Young was the editor of Ramp Up, an online space for news, discussion and opinion about disability in Australia.

Long revered in the UK for her wit and candor, Sandi Toksvig is now lending her familiar voice to a greater cause -- equality for women.

Daniel H. Pink is the author of several provocative, bestselling books about business, work, creativity and behavior.

Psychologist Angela Duckworth studies the traits that allow us to stick to our goals — and she chose four great talks that explore other facets of how human beings behave.

Eric Haseltine applies discoveries about the brain to innovation and forecasting game-changing advances in science and technology.

Clay Shirky argues that the history of the modern world could be rendered as the history of ways of arguing, where changes in media change what sort of arguments are possible -- with deep social and political implications.

Rosamund Adoo-Kissi-Debrah is a BreatheLife Champion and founder of the Ella Roberta Family Foundation.

As Dave Eggers says, "The best TED Talks make sense of complicated ideas and trends, and have an elegant simplicity to them. It’s plenty of time to get across a clear and bold idea.” Below, his notes on 4 great talks.

Britt Wray's work is about life and what we make of it: past, present and future.

Naomi McDougall Jones is a vocal advocate and activist for bringing gender parity to film, both on and off screen.

Design veteran Kevin Bethune argues that designers' talents are often undervalued in business. He says that all designers have four key superpowers: x-ray vision, shapeshifting, extrasensory perception (ESP) and the ability to make others superhuman. Sound unbelievable? Watch and learn what can happen when designers are given space in the workpl...

Eduardo Paes is the mayor of Rio de Janeiro, a sprawling, complicated, beautiful city of 6.5 million. He shares four big ideas about leading Rio -- and all cities -- into the future, including bold (and do-able) infrastructure upgrades and how to make a city "smarter."

Emotional abuse can be incredibly damaging, increasing a person's chances of developing depression and anxiety. But these behaviors can be subtle and difficult to spot, both from within and outside a relationship. It also often makes people doubt their perceptions of their own mistreatment. How can we recognize these patterns in real life? Viann...

Jane Fonda has had four extraordinary careers (so far): Oscar-winning actor, author, fitness guru and impassioned activist.

At age 12, Freeman Hrabowski marched with Martin Luther King. Now he's president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), where he works to create an environment that helps under-represented students -- specifically African-American, Latino and low-income learners -- get degrees in math and science. He shares the four pillars of U...

With the invention of the atomic bomb, humanity gained the power to destroy itself for the first time in our history. Since then, our risk of either extinction or the collapse of civilization has steadily increased. Just how likely are we to destroy ourselves? And what poses the greatest threat to our survival? Dig into four existential threats ...

Regret is one of our most powerful emotions -- and also one of the most misunderstood. Over the past two years, author Daniel H. Pink has collected a trove of more than 16,000 regrets from people in 105 countries in an effort to better understand this mysterious emotion. He shares the key patterns that emerged (it all boils down to the same four...

In this hilarious, whirlwind tour of the last four billion years of evolution, paleontologist and TED Fellow Lauren Sallan introduces us to some of the wildly diverse animals that roamed the prehistoric planet (from sharks with wings to galloping crocodiles and long-necked rhinos) and shows why paleontology is about way more than dinosaurs.

With many women of color considering exiting the workforce due to unfair conditions, it's time to reshape systems in order to put an end to this massive loss of talent. Exposing the harmful repercussions of racist, toxic organizational cultures, soul coach Rha Goddess and corporate inclusion visionary Deepa Purushothaman share four pathways to r...

In the face of artificial intelligence and machine learning, we need a new radical humanism, says Tim Leberecht. For the self-described "business romantic," this means designing organizations and workplaces that celebrate authenticity instead of efficiency and questions instead of answers. Leberecht proposes four (admittedly subjective) principl...

As usual, the TED community has lots of news to share this week. Below, some highlights. An underwater museum. Off the south coast of Lanzarote, 12 to 14 meters beneath the sea, lies artist Jason DeCaires Taylor’s latest museum, Museo Atlántico, which opened on January 10. Three years in the making, the installation is not only an artisti...

By Kylie Dunn What do you get when you cross a 39-year-old perfectionist with 54 TED Talks and far more honesty than any person probably needs to experience? You get my Year of TED. I’ve been inspired by TED Talks for years, and felt the urge to do something noteworthy and challenging to ring in my fortieth year on the planet. Inspira...

It’s a challenge for anyone with a cause: How do you frame the issue so that people feel excited to get involved? For some causes, the answer is asking people to dump a bucket of ice on their head. For others, making that personal connection is even more tricky.  This is exactly how a small group of attendees felt when they were posed with...