Mary Louise "Meryl" Streep (born June 22, 1949) is an American actress who has worked in theatre, television and film.

She is widely regarded as one of the most talented and respected actresses of the modern era. Her mastey of accents (see video clip below) is, in my opinion, unmatched by any actor, female or male. She is simply gorgeous in every sense.

At TEDxDubai, longtime English teacher Patricia Ryan asks a provocative question:

Is the world's focus on English preventing the spread of great ideas in other languages? (For instance: what if Einstein had to pass the TOEFL?)

It's a passionate defense of translating and sharing ideas.

Patricia Ryan has spent the past three-plus decades teaching English in Arabic countries -- where she has seen vast cultural (and linguistic) change.

UK-born language teacher Patricia Ryan has spent most of the past 40 years teaching English in the countries of the Arabian Gulf.

It's been said that when an elder dies, it's as if a library is burned. Anthropologist Elizabeth Lindsey, a National Geographic Fellow, collects the deep cultural knowledge passed down as stories and lore.

Elizabeth Lindsey is a fellow of the National Geographic Society. Her mission: to keep ancestral voices alive by recording indigenous wisdom and traditions.

Elizabeth Kapu'uwailani Lindsey wants the world to remember the people who came before us.

The actor-turned-anthropologist has made it her mission to find, preserve and share the knowledge and traditions of indigenous populations before they disappear.

She’s working with Google to create a geospatial Map of the Human Story, using the indigenous science of wayfinding to chart tales at risk of being lost.

At TEDxRainier, Patricia Kuhl shares astonishing findings about how babies learn one language over another -- by listening to the humans around them and "taking statistics" on the sounds they need to know.

Clever lab experiments (and brain scans) show how 6-month-old babies use sophisticated reasoning to understand their world.

Patricia Kuhl studies how we learn language as babies, looking at the ways our brains form around language acquisition.

Patricia Kuhl is co-director of the Institute for Brain and Learning Sciences at the University of Washington.

She's internationally recognized for her research on early language and brain development, and studies that show how young children learn.

Is the beloved paper dictionary doomed to extinction? In this infectiously exuberant talk, leading lexicographer Erin McKean looks at the many ways today's print dictionary is poised for transformation.

Much to Erin McKean's delight, her job as editor in chief of the Oxford American Dictionary involves living in a constant state of research.