What was your favorite toy when you were a kid? Your answer might reveal more about you than you expect, says toy historian Chris Byrne. From Matchbox cars and Barbie to Rubik’s Cube and Squishmallows, he explores how playthings reflect cultural values and influence who you become as an adult.

Step inside artist David Szauder’s mind, where strange, extravagantly dressed characters live in an ever-changing opera. In this visually stunning talk, he presents a digitally rewired world — part AI-generated dreamscape, part inner theater — and probes the line between artist and algorithm. (Recorded at TEDNext 2025 on November 9, 2025)

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Malala Yousafzai has spent her life advocating for girls’ education — surviving an assassination attempt at 15, meeting with world leaders and then watching hard-won progress collapse when Afghanistan fell to the Taliban in 2021. That moment of despair forced her to completely rethink what it means to create change, and what she discovered replaced her shattered optimism with something more powerful and more honest. Hear how to keep fighting for the future you want, even when hope feels lost.