Agnes Binagwaho: A Doctor with Sassitude
"Years before she became the health minister of Rwanda, Agnes Binagwaho tried to lock a fellow pediatrician in a hospital room. She saw a doctor in an examining room with a mother who held her sick daughter in her arms. And he was asleep. Binagwaho was appalled. She examined the girl herself in a separate room and then asked a nurse to shut the door on the doctor, who wouldn't be able to get out w... posted on Nov 09 2019, 2,275 reads

What Would Nelson Mandela Do?
"As one of the worlds most famous moral leaders, Nelson Mandelas larger-than-life struggle against apartheid inspired many of us, but it was something he said inside a Johannesburg office in 2005 that has always stayed with me.
At the time, the organization that I had co-founded, Keystone Accountability, was less than two years old. The Nelson Mandela Foundation was a founding partner, and ... posted on Nov 08 2019, 4,571 reads

Bending the Arc: A Friendship that Changed the World
A fledgling group of unstoppable health advocates took on a seemingly impossible mission: global health equity. Harvard medical student Paul Farmer, idealistic physician Jim Yong Kim, and activist Ophelia Dahl successfully raised funding and opened a clinic in 1980s Haiti. Through cultural sensitivity, listening skills, local partnerships, and home visits, the revolutionary Partners In Health was ... posted on Nov 07 2019, 1,859 reads

The Mindfulness Skill That is Crucial for Stress
Mindfulness is known to have many advantages, including reducing stress, increasing awareness, improving physical health, and more. However, when it comes to lowering stress levels, without also practicing acceptance, we might not see the results we hope for. "Mindfulness practices that specifically emphasize acceptance teach us a nonjudgmental attitude toward our experiences -- meaning, learning ... posted on Nov 06 2019, 8,015 reads

What Focusing on the Breath Does to Your Brain
What if you could regulate your stress levels by controlling your breath? A new study from the Feinstein Institute for Medical Research suggests that while fast breathing rates may promote feelings like anxiety, stress, and fear, slowing down our breath may reduce these very same emotions. This article from Greater Good Magazine examines how breathing impacts various regions of the brain responsib... posted on Nov 05 2019, 26,773 reads

What Are the Best Ways to Prevent Bullying in School?
Did you know that all 50 U.S. states require schools to have a policy against bullying? Despite this preventive measure, there has been a slight uptick in bullying over the past 3 years. "Bullying occurs everywhere, even in the highest-performing schools, and it is hurtful to everyone involved, from the targets of bullying to the witnesses--and even to bullies themselves." In this Greater Good art... posted on Nov 04 2019, 6,496 reads

How Oral Surgery Taught Me a Lesson in Wholeness
Andy Smallman created an "Anonymous Kindness" class some years back, suggesting each participant offer an anonymous kindness act toward someone each week. Recently he met with an anonymous act of kindness toward him: an organ donor's bone to fill a hole in his mouth after oral surgery. Whose bone was it? he asked himself, and came up with a new answer "ours."... posted on Nov 03 2019, 4,971 reads

The Underland is a Deeply Human Realm
Robert Macfarlane writes vividly about outdoor spaces, borders, and the way in which one type of territory transforms subtly into another. His new book, Underland, descends into a quite literally overlooked landscape: the one beneath our feet. He wrestles with grand questions about humanity and its effects on the natural world even as he chronicles journeys to isolated caves, the man-made caverns ... posted on Nov 02 2019, 2,825 reads

Visible Work, Invisible Women
"'Visible Work, Invisible Women', is a fully curated, online still-photo exhibition. This video tour takes viewers around the entire physical exhibition, with original photographs and texts reproduced below as an article. All the photographs were shot by P. Sainath across ten Indian states between 1993 and 2002. These roughly span the first decade of the economic reform and end two years before th... posted on Nov 01 2019, 2,456 reads

13 Life Lessons From 13 Years of Brain Pickings
"On October 23, 2006,Brain Pickings was born as a plain-text email to seven friends. It was then, and continues to be, a labor of love and ledger of curiosity, although the mind and heart from which it sprang have changed --have grown, I hope -- tremendously. At the end of the first decade, I told its improbable origin storyand drew from its evolution the ten most important things this all-consumi... posted on Oct 31 2019, 17,215 reads