Anna Deavere Smith, Lynn Nottage & More Join TED TALKS LIVE Lineup at Town Hall

TED, the nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, and PBS have announced additional participants for the first ever TED TALKS LIVE, a six-night speaker event featuring TED Talks, short films and performances at The Town Hall (123 West 43rd Street) in New York's famed Theater District.

Participants joining the previously announced line-up include: Jeremy Bailenson, Sangeeta Bhatia, Christianne Boudreau, Daniella Carter, Rajiv Chandrasekaran, Thomas Dolby, Danielle Feinberg, Zaria Forman, Graham 2 Dance Company, Jim Green, Paula Hammond, Eric Haseltine, Yusef Komunyakaa, Nadia Lopez, Sean McComb, Meshell Ndegeocello, Samantha Nutt, Arati Prabhakar, Jamila Raqib, Anna Deavere Smith, Tierney Thys and Martha Wainwright.

Each program will also screen two short films, featuring work by award-winning filmmakers Geeta Gandbhir, Perri Peltz, Greg Whiteley, Heather Courtney, Anayansi Prado, Jon Halperin, Mark Mannucci, Michèle Stephenson, Joe Brewster, David Alvarado, Jason Sussberg, Tony Gerber, Lynn Nottage, Denise Zmeckol, Max Solomon, and Ric Burns.

TED TALKS LIVE offers an unprecedented opportunity to view a TED event for FREE to students, educators and veterans who apply for passes online. More than 1,800 tickets have been distributed to students and educators and are SOLD OUT, due to popular demand from applicants; FREE tickets are still available for veterans. Tickets for the general public are $100 with 50% off for active military to the War & Peace programs.

TED TALKS LIVE is a co-production with PBS and the Independent Television Service (ITVS), and is funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)'s Diversity and Innovation Fund.

Featuring three programs over six nights, November 1 - 6 at 7:30pm, TED TALKS LIVE is hosted by best-selling author, comedian and activist Baratunde Thurston. Speakers will share ideas in quick, powerful talks-18 minutes or less, TED's signature format.

TED TALKS LIVE: The Education Revolution (November 1 & 2)

• Daniella Carter, founder of Gender Global
• Harlem Samba, Brazilian percussion ensemble
• Sam Kass, former White House chef, NBC senior food analyst & MIT Media Lab Fellow
• Sal Khan, educator & social entrepreneur
• Nadia Lopez, principal of Mott Hall Bridges Academy
• Julie Lythcott-Haims, academic & best-selling author of How to Raise an Adult
• Andrew Mangino, CEO & co-founder of The Future Project
• Sean McComb, 2014 National Teacher of the Year
• Meshell Ndegeocello, Grammy Award nominated singer-songwriter, rapper, bassist & vocalist
• Sara Ramirez, Tony Award-winning singer, songwriter & actress
• Victor Rios, sociology professor & author of Punished: Policing the Lives of Black & Latino Boys
• Dena Simmons, educator at The Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence
• Anna Deveare Smith, MacArthur Fellowship recipient, Pulitzer Prize finalist & theater artist

Featuring short films by:

• Heather Courtney, Anayansi Prado, Greg Whiteley

TED TALKS LIVE: War & Peace (November 3 & 4)

• Christianne Boudreau, mother of ISIS recruit & the late Damian Clairmont
• Rajiv Chandrasekaran, journalist & bestselling author
• Adam Driver, Marine Corps veteran & Emmy-nominated actor
• Hector Garcia, clinical psychologist, expert on PTSD & author of Alpha God
• Graham 2, Martha Graham School's pre-professional dance company
• Sebastian Junger, journalist, best-selling author & Oscar nominee for Restrepo
• Yusef Komunyakaa, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet
• Samantha Nutt, bestselling author, humanitarian & founder of War Child USA and Canada
• Jamila Raqib, peacemaker & executive director of The Albert Einstein Institution
• Simon Sinek, ethnographer & leadership expert
• Rufus Wainwright, Grammy Award nominated singer-songwriter & composer
• Martha Wainwright, folk-rock singer-songwriter

Featuring short films by:

• Joe Brewster, Geeta Gandbhir, Tony Gerber, Jon Halperin, Mark Mannucci, Lynn Nottage, Perri Peltz, Michèle Stephenson

TED TALKS LIVE: Science & Wonder (November 5 & 6)

• Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab
• Sangeeta Bhatia, biological engineer & professor at MIT
• Paul Cantelon, film composer & musician
• Thomas Dolby, musician
• Juan Enriquez, leading authority on genomic code & author of Evolving Ourselves
• Danielle Feinberg, director of photography at Pixar Animation Studios
• Zaria Forman, visual artist
• Jim Green, planetary science division director for NASA
• Paula Hammond, head of the department of chemical engineering at MIT
• Eric Haseltine, technologist
• Angela McLusky, Grammy Award nominated singer-songwriter
• Latif Nasser, reporter & research director for Radiolab
• Arati Prabhakar, engineer & head of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)
• John "Scrapper" Sneider, jazz trumpet player & composer
• Tierney Thys, Marine Biologist & Science Educator

Featuring short films by:

• David Alvarado, Ric Burns, Max Solomon, Jason Sussberg, Denise Zmeckol

Each of the TED TALKS LIVE programs will be filmed and broadcast as three one-hour specials to premiere on PBS in spring 2016.

EVENT & TICKET INFORMATION:

TED TALKS LIVE is November 1 - 6, 2015 at 7:30pm at The Town Hall (123 West 43rd Street). Tickets are $100 and are available online at ticketmaster.com, and in person at The Town Hall Box office (123 West 43rd Street). For War & Peace, veterans can apply online for FREE tickets. Active military service members can purchase tickets at for 50% off using the code MILITARY at ticketmaster.com and in person at The Town Hall Box Office.

Photo by Walter McBride