When Salman Khan shared his vision for “a free world-class education for anyone anywhere” at TED2011, he turned the education world on its head. As he introduced Khan Academy -- a virtual classroom that uses video lessons to create an individualized, self-paced learning experience -- his alternative model fueled the nascent dialogue about online...

Rick Ledgett is the deputy director of the National Security Agency. He's here to give a response to Edward Snowden's onstage/virtual appearance at TED earlier in the week. (See the talk, Here's how we take back the Internet.) On Tuesday, the former NSA sysadmin made the case for open government and private lives, arguing that "we don't have...

Psychologist Paul Bloom studies the nature of pleasure. In this conversation with Ben Lillie, he discusses how knowing the history of an object can profoundly affect our enjoyment of it. Why is the origin of things so deeply important to us? We have a biological adaptation called "essentialism," which is a particularly clever and important a...

Psychologist Paul Bloom, author of How Pleasure Works, studies the nature of pleasure. At TED Global he gave a witty and riveting talk on how knowing the history of an object (or a relationship with a person) can profoundly affect our enjoyment of it or them. After the conference, TED's Ben Lillie caught up with him to talk about why that is...

Need a dose of literary oomph and inspiration? Here's a selection of uplifting reads -- all suggested by TED speakers -- for your end-of-year break. When you get snowed -- or rained -- in Take This Stallion by Anaïs Duplan An hour with this book will change even the pitch of your internal thoughts, as poet Duplan reshapes it with her vivid a...

Social psychologist Thomas Curran explores how the pressure to be perfect -- in our social media feeds, in school, at work -- is driving a rise in mental illness, especially among young people. Learn more about the causes of this phenomenon and how we can create a culture that celebrates the joys of imperfection.

After a surprise appearance by Edward Snowden at TED2014, Chris Anderson said: "If the NSA wants to respond, please do." And yes, they did. Appearing by video, NSA deputy director Richard Ledgett answers Anderson's questions about the balance between security and protecting privacy.

Meet Sharon Terry, a former college chaplain and stay-at-home mom who took the medical research world by storm when her two young children were diagnosed with a rare disease known as pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE). In this knockout talk, Terry explains how she and her husband became citizen scientists, working midnight shifts at the lab to find ...

Steven Pinker's book The Blank Slate argues that all humans are born with some innate traits. Here, Pinker talks about his thesis, and why some people found it incredibly upsetting.