Sylvia Earle has been called “Her Deepness” by the New Yorker and the New York Times, “Living Legend” by the Library of Congress, and “Hero for the Planet” by Time.

She is an oceanographer, explorer, author, and lecturer with a deep commitment to research through personal exploration.

There's something new and very cool at TED 2014 (in addition to the multitude of other new and cool things TED always comes up with!).

This year, a select group of previous speakers are back in "All Star" sessions to update the TED community. (TEDStars?)

One third of the speakers on the TED 2014 main stage will be women. An additional 16 will participate in the "All Star" sessions, which again represents about one third of the sessions' speakers.

I believe stages everywhere (including those at TED and TEDx conferences) should reflect the ratio of women to men in the world's population (i.e. about 50:50).

Jacqueline Novogratz founded and leads Acumen, a non-profit organisation that takes a businesslike approach to improving the lives of the poor.

In her book, The Blue Sweater, she tells stories from the new philanthropy, which emphasizes sustainable bottom-up solutions over traditional top-down aid.

As a grad student, Cynthia Breazeal wondered why we were using robots on Mars, but not in our living rooms.

The key, she realized: training robots to interact with people. Now she dreams up and builds robots that teach, learn -- and play.