Susan notes: Thanks to TED for making TED Talks downloadable and embeddable, and for providing the biographical information that goes along with them.

Legendary ocean researcher Sylvia Earle shares astonishing images of the ocean -- and shocking stats about its rapid decline -- as she makes her TED Prize wish: that we will join her in protecting the vital blue heart of the planet.

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

Susan notes: Thanks to TED for making TED Talks downloadable and embeddable, and for providing the biographical information that goes along with them.

Writer and actor Anna Deavere Smith gives life to author Studs Terkel, convict Paulette Jenkins, a Korean shopkeeper and a bull rider, excerpts from her solo show "On the Road: A Search for American Character."

Hailed by Newsweek as "the most exciting individual in American theater," Anna Deavere Smith uses solo performance as a public medium to explore issues of race, identity and community in America. Her grandfather once told her, "Say a word often enough, and it becomes you."

Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice -- and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.

Inspired by Nigerian history and tragedies all but forgotten by recent generations of westerners, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novels and stories are jewels in the crown of diasporan literature.

Susan notes: Thanks to TED for making TED Talks downloadable and embeddable, and for providing the biographical information that goes along with them.

This 2004 TED Talk could equally be called "Eve Ensler's Journey To Help Stop Violence Against Women And Girls." Playwright and actress Ensler, who was abused as a child, is a master storyteller with a passion for changing the plight of violated women around the world. Her talk is at once tragic, funny and touching.

Eve Ensler, creator of "The Vagina Monologues," shares how a discussion about menopause with her friends led to talking about all sorts of sexual acts onstage, waging a global campaign to end violence toward women and finding her own happiness.

Inspired by a few intimate conversations with friends about -- gasp! -- their vaginas, Eve Ensler created the Obie Award-winning solo piece Vagina Monologues, in which she recounts tender, funny, gripping and horrifying stories women have told her about their bodies, their sexual experiences, and yes, that (until then at least), secret place the lies between women's thighs.

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.