A letter — be it handwritten or typed — feels like an unpremeditated revelation, a glimpse into the writer’s subconscious. Letters are, also, often rooted to the place where they were written: a cozy armchair, a backyard hammock, the corner desk of a classroom, a train. It’s this physical and temporal presence that enables a special kind of opening-up, even when the recipient is a stranger.

Hannah Brencher knows the letter’s power. Her organization, The World Needs More Love Letters, facilitates letter-writing between strangers. In today’s heartfelt talk, given during the New York leg of the TED Talent Search, Brencher explains how she found this unique calling. Because her family has always communicated by letter, when she found herself depressed after college, she did the only thing she could think of — she penned pages and left them in libraries and cafes where strangers could chance upon them. The idea snowballed into a global exchange.

“Most of these letters have been written by people who have never known themselves loved on a piece of paper,” says Brencher in her talk. “They’re the ones from my generation. We have grown up in a world that is paperless, and where some of our best conversations have happened upon a screen. We have learned to diary our pain onto Facebook and we speak swiftly in 140 characters or less. But what if it’s not about efficiency?”

Brencher’s talk deeply resonated when we posted it on the TED Talent Search website. One commenter declared, “Hannah is an anachronism, a much-needed reminder of our need to slow down and pay attention. Outstanding! I wonder if she needs a Nana…”

Before Twitter, before Facebook, before Gmail and AIM, there were ink and paper. There were people who dedicated time to writing correspondences, and then waited for a reply. After the jump, excerpts from five of the most delightful, beautiful or simply intimate letters we’ve come across.

1. William James, a psychologist and philosopher (and brother to the writer Henry James), penned a letter to his wife, Alice James, from Vienna on September 24, 1882:

Dear, perhaps the deepest impression I’ve got since I’ve been in Germany is that made on me by the indefatigable beavers of old wrinkled peasant women, striding like men through the streets, dragging their carts or lugging their baskets, minding their business, seeming to notice nothing, in the stream of luxury and vice, but belonging far away, to something better and purer. Their poor, old, ravaged and stiffened faces, their poor old bodies dried up with ceaseless toil, their patient souls make me weep.[…]All the mystery of womanhood seems incarnated in their ugly being—the Mothers! the Mothers! Ye are all one! Yes, Alice dear, what I love in you is only what these blessed old creatures have.

2. In 2009, after Barack Obama was elected for the first time, Bill Adler published a book of kids’ letters to their president. So much of the writing in this book is moving (or hilarious); one example comes from Kiana, a 12-year-old from Anderson, South Carolina.

As a Black female, I’m going to try to be the first woman president, and the first Black woman president at that—that is, if no one beats me to it.

3. In an 1897 editorial in New York’s Sun, journalist Francis Pharcellus Church (anonymously) replied to a concerned eight-year-old, who had written to ask whether Santa Claus exists. This letter has rightly become famous—and inescapable during the holidays, when it’s printed and posted every year.

Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. […]The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. […]Only faith, fancy, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.

4. In 1882, several years before they married, the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud wrote to his fiancée, Martha Bernays, from Vienna:

If only I knew what you are doing now. Standing in the garden and gazing out into the deserted street? Ah, I am no longer passing by to press your hand, the magic carpet that carried me to you is town, the winged horses which gracious fairies used to send, even the fairies themselves, no longer arrive, magic hoods are no longer obtainable, the whole world is so prosaic, all it asks is: “What is it you want, my child? You shall have it in time.” “Patience” is its only magic word. And in saying so forgets how things get lost when we cannot have them then and there, when we have to pay for them with our own youth.

5. On a book tour in 1942, the writer Vladimir Nabokov wrote letters to his wife, Vera Nabokov. In November, on a stop in St. Paul, Minnesota, he wrote:

Yesterday after the trip into the country I went, having got awfully bored, to the cinema and came back on foot—I walked for more than an hour and went to bed around eight. On the way a lightning bolt of undefined inspiration ran right through me—a passionate desire to write, and to write in Russian. And yet I can’t. I don’t think anyone who hasn’t experienced this feeling can really understand its torment, its tragedy. English in this sense is an illusion and an ersatz. In my usual condition, i.e. busy with butterflies, translations, or academic writing, I myself don’t fully register the whole grief and bitterness of my situation.

I am healthy, eating plenty, taking my vitamins, and read the newspapers more than usual now that the news is getting rosier. St. Paul is a stupefyingly boring city, only owls at the hotel, a bar girl who looks like Dasha; but my apartment is charming.

Arunachalam Muruganantham may not seem like the most obvious person to have started a revolution in sanitary napkins — after all, he is male. But in this funny and uplifting talk, given at the TED Talent Search in Bangalore, Muruganantham describes how he is enabling women in India to make their own pads — all as a gift for his wife, Shanti.

“What you did in your early marriage days — you tried to impress your wife. I did the same,” says Muruganantham in this talk, describing how he one day noticed his wife carrying something behind her back. “It was a nasty rag cloth — I don’t even use that cloth to clean my two-wheeler.”

It was a moment when Muruganantham realized that his wife had to choose between buying feminine hygiene products and buying milk. And it launched a powerful idea — that making pads would be far more cost-effective then buying them. The problem: when his wife and sisters refused to test his creations, he had to devise a system to try them out for himself.

“That [experience] made me bow down to any woman in front of me and give full respect,” says Muruganantham. “Those five days, I will never forget — lousy days.”

To find out how Muruganantham created a machine that lets anyone make their own high-quality cotton pads — and why he decided to open source the blueprints — watch his talk. It’s a good reminder that innovation doesn’t just flow from developed nations to developing ones, but that amazing ideas can travel in both directions. After the jump, watch several more talks about innovation in India and how new solutions can be created if the resources of the community are taken into account.

Vinay Venkatraman: “Technology crafts” for the digitally underserved
Vinay Venkatraman is not your traditional designer. He has created a digital projector for a school out of a mobile phone, a lunchbox and a flashlight, as well as medical triage monitor from an alarm clock and computer mouse. In this talk from TEDxSummit, Venkatraman explains his idea of “technology crafts,” which use widely available parts to approximate technologies not affordable in rural India.

Anil Gupta: India’s hidden hotbeds of invention
“People may be economically poor, but they are not poor in the mind,” says Anil Gupta of the population in India. “The minds on the margin are not marginal minds.” In this talk from TEDIndia 2009, Gupta shares his work supporting entrepreneurs with brilliant ideas that are unable to flourish because of poverty. Gupta’s Honey Bee Network helps unsung inventors build the connections they need to market their products — from a coffee machine made out of a pressure cooker to a non-stick hot plate crafted from clay.

Jane Chen: A warm embrace that saves lives
Premature babies are unable to stay warm. While these babies are kept in incubators in Western hospitals, far too many babies in rural and poor areas die without a chance. On a trip to India, TED Fellow Jane Chen found herself deeply upset by this phenomenon — and determined to create a solution. In this talk from TEDIndia 2009, Chen shares Embrace, a low-cost portable incubator that looks like a tiny sleeping bag … and that could save a million lives.

Bunker Roy: Learning from a barefoot movement
Bunker Roy has founded a very unusual college Rajasthan, India: Barefoot College, a university for the poor. Roy’s school takes rural men and women — many of them illiterate — and teaches them to become solar engineers, artisans, dentists and doctors. From there, they bring their knowledge back to their villages.

Nirmalya Kumar: India’s invisible innovation
India has become a hub for software development — and yet this innovation is rendered invisible because so many believe that innovation doesn’t happen in the country. At TEDxLondonBusinessSchool, Nirmalya Kumar seeks to peel back these erroneous beliefs and show what is happening underneath.

Marc Koska: 1.3m reasons to re-invent the syringe
In underfunded clinics in India — as well as in other parts of the world — syringes are routinely reused. This practice kills 1.3 million people each year. In this talk from TEDGlobal 2009, Marc Koska introduces a promising solution: low-cost syringes that can only be used once.

Nandan Nilekani’s ideas for India’s future
Infosys co-founder Nandan Nilekani is often credited with making India a leader in IT services. In this talk from TED2009, he outlines what has helped India develop quickly in recent years — for example, a willingness to see people as a resource rather than a burden — and what needs to happen for economic growth to continue.

Anupam Mishra: The ancient ingenuity of water harvesting
The Golden Desert receives the least rainfall in all of India and, yet, centuries ago the local people devised an ingenious solution for harvesting water. In this talk from TED2009, Anupam shares how these feats of engineering are still used today — and may even be superior to our modern methods.

Earlier this year, TED headed on the road to 14 cities around the globe, on a hunt for untapped speakers for TED2013: “The Young. The Wise. The Undiscovered.” Holding one-night salons in cities ranging from São Paulo to New York to Nairobi to Shanghai, TED invited a slew of speakers to give the talk of their lives in just 3 to 6 minutes. In the end, almost 300 speakers presented at these far-flung events, and their talks were posted at TalentSearch.TED.com. TED fans were invited to watch and rate the talks through the month of August, and leave comments letting us know which talks they found the most fascinating, the most moving and the most insightful.

We were blown away by the ideas and presentations given during the Talent Search. 33 speakers from these events will appear on the TED2013 stage. In the spirit of surprises, you’ll have to wait to find out who. But because we want you to experience these incredible Talent Search talks, starting today, we’ll be posting several great talks from the collection on TED.com.

Curious to explore more of our Talent Search talks? Here, some playlists:

• Playlist: Stories of survival from the TED2013 Talent Search
• Playlist: Thoughts on energy efficiency from the TED2013 Talent Search
• Playlist: Bathroom talks from the TED2013 Talent Search
• Playlist: Unusual materials described during the TED2013 Talent Search
• Playlist: Tales of cultural heritage shared at the TED2013 Talent Search

And here, highlights reels of the events:

1. From Arab sci-fi to war zone survival tips: Highlights from TED@Doha
2. TED Talent Search: Report from TED@London
3. From silent conductors to manta rays: Highlights from TED@Johannesburg
4. TED Talent Search: Report from TED@Nairobi
5. From homeschooling to ancient architecture: Highlights from TED@Tunis
6. From hand puppetry to teaching boxes: Highlights from TED@Shanghai
7. TED Talent Search: Report from TED@Bangalore 
8. From finger painting to intercontinental missiles: Highlights from TED@Tokyo
9. TED Talent Search: Report From TED@Seoul
10. From the plastic bag dilemma to water ballet: Highlights from TED@Sydney
11. From wooden skyscrapers to spoken word: Highlights from TED@Vancouver
12. TED Talent Search: Report from TED@NewYork
13. From counterfactual reasoning to iPhone art: Highlights from TED@SãoPaulo
14. TED Talent Search: Report from TED@Amsterdam

Faith Jegede would prefer that you not call her normal.

In today’s powerful talk, given at the TED Talent Search London stop, Faith Jegede introduces you to her two brothers — Remy, 22, and Samuel, 16 — who are both autistic and extraordinary.

“Remy’s speechless but he communicates joy in a way that some of the best orators cannot … When he sings songs from our childhood, attempting words that not even I can remember, he reminds me of one thing — how little we know about the mind and how wonderful the unknown must be,” says Jegede. “Samuel has the most impeccable memory — though it is a selective one. He can’t remember if he stole my chocolate bar, but he remembers the year of release for every song on my iPod, conversations we had when he was four and Lady Gaga’s birthday.”

Yes, Jegede says that growing up with her brothers was full of challenges. But in the end she concludes, “When I cast my mind to the things they’ve taught me about individuality and communication and love, I realize these are not things I would want to change with normality.”

It’s a value TED holds dear – that even minds traditionally deemed disordered are full of beauty. For more speakers who express this idea, check out this 2011 playlist, featuring talks ranging from “Temple Grandin: The world needs all kinds of minds” to “Joshua Walters: On being just crazy enough.”  Or watch the wonderful talks from the TEDGlobal 2012 session “Misbehaving Beautifully,” all about the amazing things that can happen as a result of misbehaving neurons.