Those who believe that the Swiss only produce Swiss army knives, clocks and chocolate are mistaken. They also produced the jewel that is the biologist and adventurer Colomban de Vargas, who, at 40, started traveling through the oceans of the world in a sailboat on the TARA OCEANS expedition, studying protists. Don't know what they are? Relax, almost no one does. Protists are a fifth category of life after viruses, bacteria, animals and plants. Single-celled minuscule organisms, beautiful when seen, that have been on the earth for more than a billion years, helping, for example, plankton produce 50% of the carbon and oxygen that we breath. "We returned with a giant data bank, with 40 thousand plankton samples and in the next 30 years we are going to have a model of the Earth as a system, a cell, that we can live in symbiosis with." Amen.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)