Alan Alda has issued this year’s challenge to the world’s top scientists: What is sound? In an action-packed hour of interactive demonstrations, Alan and a team of communication experts invite the audience to explore what we hear, how we hear, and what that means for different species.

Using ultrasounds, inspecting tentacles, and making protective vests for penguins is all in a day’s work for aquatic biologist Pamela Schaller Hughes. Learn how she designs aquarium exhibits for endangered …

In his research, U.K. Astronomer Royal Martin Rees has tackled topics as varied as the Big Bang, quasars, and more far-out ideas like the search for dark matter and the …

Award-winning writers take the stage to share their quirky, engrossing, and sometimes shocking insights about human anatomy and social psychology. Mary Roach, widely regarded as one of the country’s greatest …

Einstein’s “spooky action” describes quantum particles entangled across space, but can such spookiness entangle particles across time? A conversation spanning the origins of quantum mechanics through its leading-edge implications for …

Humans work together on enormous scales to build complex tools as large as cities and create social networks that span the globe. What is the key to our success? This …