The connection between two individuals is a powerful agent for social change. This idea animates the work of Jessica Jackley, who co-founded KIVA, the world's most successful microlending site. On stage, Jackley delivers an upbeat and enduring message: you can synthesize your disparate skills, as she did, to create a meaningful...

Sir Salman Rushdie is one of the most celebrated authors of our time—of any time. A brilliant provocateur, he's penned a handful of classic novels, influenced a generation of writers, and received a Queen's Knighthood for "services to literature." He stands as both a pop culture icon and one of the most thought-provoking...

Sal Khan is the founder of the Khan Academy, a nonprofit with the mission of providing free, high-quality education to "anyone, anywhere" in the world. A former hedge fund analyst with degrees from MIT and Harvard, Khan is also the author of The One World School House, which explores the potential impact of the...

Emily Bazelon is the author of Sticks and Stones, a major new contribution to the national conversation on bullying. Clear-eyed and accessible, Stones was hailed in the New York Times as an "authoritative and important book [that] should not only be read by educators and parents alike, but should...

Paul Tough challenges our culture’s belief that intelligence, endlessly measured by test scores, is the sole indicator of value in our education system. It’s not. In How Children Succeed, he ushers in a tidal change in thinking and argues that non-cognitive skills—or, character—are better...

In his #1 bestseller, Salt Sugar Fat, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Michael Moss traces the rise of the trillion dollar processed food industry and its link to the obesity epidemic. In powerful keynotes, he shows us how corporations knowingly use salt, sugar, and fat—and the latest in food science—to...

Named one of the most influential people in the world in TIME Magazine's TIME 100, Patti Smith is a poet, singer, songwriter, photographer and fine artist. A seminal American artist, Smith has produced a body of work whose influence branches out through generations, across disciplines, and around the ...

In the age of Big Data, Christian Rudder stands out. Rudder is in personal possession of one of the richest data sets in the world, accumulated from the dating site he co-founded, OkCupid. He's spent the last three years adding to his collection, mining and analyzing the core datasets of our time: Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook,...

Ta-Nehisi Coates is one of the most original and perceptive voices in black America—and one of our best young writers, period. With rich emotional depth and a sonar sense of how pop culture, politics, and history shape discussions of race, Coates is “the young James Joyce of the hip hop generation” (Walter...