TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading."

TED was founded in 1984 as a one-off event and the conference was held annually from 1990 in Monterey, California. TED's early emphasis was largely technology and design, consistent with a Silicon Valley center of gravity. The events are now held in Long Beach and Palm Springs in the U.S. and in Europe and Asia, offering live streaming of the talks. They address an increasingly wide range of topics within the research and practice of science and culture. The speakers are given a maximum of 18 minutes to present their ideas in the most innovative and engaging ways they can. Past presenters include Bill Clinton, Jane Goodall, Malcolm Gladwell, Al Gore, Gordon Brown, Richard Dawkins, Bill Gates, educator Salman Khan, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and many Nobel Prize winners. TED's current curator is the British former computer journalist and magazine publisher Chris Anderson.

Professor Daniel J. Levitin, Ph.D. (born December 27, 1957, San Francisco) is a prominent American cognitive psychologist, neuroscientist, and writer. He is currently James McGill Professor of psychology and behavioral neuroscience at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada with additional appointments in music theory, computer science, and education. He is Director of the Laboratory for Music Perception, Cognition and Expertise. He is also an accomplished record producer and musician.

He has published scientific articles on absolute pitch, music cognition and neuroscience and is more widely known as the author of two best-selling books, This Is Your Brain On Music: The Science of a Human Obsession, (Dutton/Penguin, 2006; Atlantic [UK] 2007) and The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature (Dutton/Penguin U.S. and Viking/Penguin Canada, 2008). Prior to his academic career, he worked as a producer and sound designer on albums by Blue Öyster Cult, Chris Isaak, as a consultant to Steely Dan, Stevie Wonder and Michael Brook; and as a recording engineer for Santana and The Grateful Dead. Records and CDs to which he has contributed have sold in excess of 30 million copies. From September, 2006 to April 2007 he served as a weekly commentator on the CBC Radio One show Freestyle, and he has appeared frequently on NPR.

Monica Samille Lewinsky (born July 23, 1973) is an American woman with whom United States President Bill Clinton admitted to having had an "improper relationship" while she worked at the White House in 1995 and 1996. The affair and its repercussions (which included Clinton's impeachment) became known as the Lewinsky scandal.

Monica Samille Lewinsky was born in San Francisco, California, and grew up in an affluent family in Southern California in the Westside Brentwood area of Los Angeles and in Beverly Hills. Her father is Bernard Lewinsky, an oncologist, who is the son of German Jews who escaped Nazi Germany and emigrated to El Salvador and later the United States. Her mother, born Marcia Kaye Vilensky, the daughter of a Lithuanian Jewish father and a Russian-Romanian Jewish mother; is an author who uses the name Marcia Lewis. Monica's parents' acrimonious separation and divorce during 1987 and 1988 had a significant effect on her. (Her father later married his wife, Barbara; her mother later married R. Peter Straus, a media executive.)