Many people come to TED seeking something out of the ordinary. A chance to mentally recharge. A chance to step back and consider the really big stuff that's happening. A chance to understand life in a richer way.

Next year will be our most ambitious attempt yet to deliver on that agenda. We're building our program around the biggest questions there are. And because it's TED, we'll be seeking answers not just from the sources you might expect, but by bringing together multiple voices from very different disciplines. The "Aha" moments often come from the most unexpected connections. What you see below is not the final program. Just our current working structure. But it will give you a flavor of the incredibly rich vein of possibility in this approach. Plenty of Profundity and Challenge, for sure ... but also plenty of room for Cool, Exciting and Whimsical. We think you will like it very much.

• Who are We? (the extraordinary tale of homo sapiens ... Answers provided by a paleontologist, a historian, an evolutionary psychologist and a story-teller)
• What is our place in the Universe? (answers from a theoretical physicist, an astronomer searching for extra-terrestrial life, a religious mystic and a humorist)
• What is Art? -- is beauty just a human invention? (an anthropologist, a painter, a sculptor, and a museum curator)
• What is Love -- and why are we so bad at it? (a neurologist, a musician, a novelist, and a sex therapist)
• What is Evil? -- and how do we fight it? (a moral philosopher, a war-correspondent, a terrorism expert, and a human rights campaigner)
• What are the most Gorgeous New Things being created in our world? (an architect, a boat builder, a windmill designer, a photographer, and a marine biologist)
• Are we inadvertently creating New Forms of Life? (an AI researcher, a Web 2.0 pundit, a biochemist, a meme-theorist, a nano-technologist, and a transhumanist)
• What are today's most significant Cultural Trends? (a fashion designer, a technology writer, a foreign correspondent, a video-game creator and an epidemiologist)
• What will the Future be like? (a scenario planner, an inventor, an economist, and a science fiction author)
• What are the Problems I should be most worried about? (an asteroid hunter, a climatologist, a psychiatrist, and a statistician).
• Who will be the next President? (Yes, it's 2008. We'll invite the leading candidates)
• What will be my Legacy? (a global business leader, an environmental designer, a billionaire philanthropist, a social entrepreneur and a mother)