David Lavin, president of The Lavin Agency speakers bureau, has a lot of experience working with TED speakers—especially since he’s been one himself! As he tells negotiation and communication speaker Misha Glouberman in this exclusive discussion, the secret behind the success of TED is the people they put on stage. TED doesn’t pick  average, run-of-the-mill speakers to lead their lectures. Rather, they choose people who are “genuinely, passionately, engaged in doing something that’s incredible,” Lavin says. “People are hungry for content,” he continues. TED provides their attendees with an assortment of speakers who deliver quality content that inspires their audiences. We here at Lavin agree, and we represent an assortment of TED speakers sure to deliver rousing speeches no matter what the subject matter.

“I think there’s a sense that many of us have that the great age of exploration on Earth is over,” says virus hunter Nathan Wolfe. That sense, as he explains in this keynote, is mistaken—there still might be entire forms of microscopic life that have not yet been found.

Neil Pasricha can add another “awesome” thing to his Book of Awesome: having his TEDx talk ranked among the top 20 most popular of all time. His feel-good talk, called The Three A’s of Awesome, comes in at number 11 on the list with a whopping 1,455,980 views. Pasricha is in good company, with the likes Jane Fonda and popular human interactions specialist Brené Brown rounding out the list.

Using his trademark compilations of everyday things that bring extraordinary joy (like hitting a string of green lights in a row or having a blanket thrown on you before you fall asleep), Pasricha speaks to the importance of small pleasures in our often overwhelming world. We can use these happy, little events to live our lives to the fullest, says Pasricha—but only if we stop to savour them. Drawing from his massively popular blog, 1000 Awesome Things (which has been featured in media outlets such as CNN and The New Yorker) andhis international bestselling book, The Book of Awesome, he delivers heartwarming keynotes on how to change your perspective on life. Further, he helps people in all industries and walks of life bring awesome principles to their day-to-day life, helping audiences embrace the awesome both at work and at home.

In this candid interview, David Lavin, President and CEO of The Lavin Agency, talks about the impact that TED Fellows have on our world.

TED Fellow Hakeem Oluseyi has dedicated his life to teaching science to those in underserved communities and developing countries. From his formative years in some of the poorest ghettos in the American south, to his current position as a member of a Nobel Prize-winning team of scientists at Stanford, Oluseyi is a testament to the transformative power of knowledge, and a master at turning complex ideas into simple explanations. In this video, he likens the evidence that supports the Big Bang to the stretching of a rubber band.

“Why [aren’t] we asking students to do more than learn about the problem? They need to be part of designing the solutions,” says TED Fellow Juliette LaMontagne in her TEDx talk. With her interdisciplinary education program Project Breaker, LaMontagne is redefining education, creating entrepreneurs, and designing change.

“When people say, ‘I don’t get art. I don’t get it all,’ that means art is working,” says John Maeda, design speaker and President of the Rhode Island School of Design in his latest TED Talk. “Art is supposed to be enigmatic…art is about asking questions — questions that might not be answerable.”

TED Fellow and Astrophysicist Lucianne Walkowicz studies the faces of stars to learn the inner workings of their hearts. In this fascinating TED talk, she shares some of the astounding findings of NASA’s Kepler mission, which searches for new planetary systems in far-off space. “In just over two years of operations, we’ve found over 1,200 potential new planetary systems around other stars,” she says. “To give you some perspective, in the previous two decades of searching, we had only known about 400, prior to Kepler.”

Susan Cain’s TED Talk has now reached an amazing 3 million views. If you haven’t seen the Quiet author’s talk yet, do yourself a favor and take the 20 minutes.

As the election race heats up, it’s important to step away from the toxic rhetoric and take a sober, objective look at what really makes politics tick. Jonathan Haidt, moral psychologist and one of Lavin’s best political speakers, takes a fascinating and fresh look at how morality drives politics.