A Cab Ride I'll Never Forget
"Twenty years ago, I drove a cab for a living. One night I took a fare at 2:30 AM, when I arrived to collect, the building was dark except for a single light in a ground floor window. Under these circumstances, many drivers would just honk once. But I had seen too many impoverished people who depended on taxis as their only means of transportation. Unless a situation smelled of danger, I always w... posted on May 17 2012, 12,648 reads

Small-town Doctor, Big-time Hero
Rushville, Illinois is a small town where sunflowers wave in the wind. One of its claims to fame is Dr. Russell Dohner. A man who has been looking after his neighbors for 55 years, charging them about what we pay for a fancy cup of coffee: five bucks a visit. "In a mercenary world," a waiting patient told me, "this place is an oasis." Dohner will go anywhere, at any time, to help those in need, of... posted on May 11 2012, 27,899 reads

Finding Nimo: A Rap Star's Journey With 16 Slum Kids
At the pinnacle of a dizzying career, Indo-American rapper Nimo was haunted by an unshakeable sense of emptiness. In his mid-twenties, he abandoned the limelight and found himself meditating in the foothills of the Himalayas. There an inner voice nudged him to radically simplify his life and find his purpose in service of others. He moved to the Gandhi Ashram in India and dedicated himself to the ... posted on May 04 2012, 61,556 reads

Love and Play: a Conversation w/ Chaz
"When he speaks, you can sense a depth of earnest care in his voice. When you hear his stories, you know you're in the presence of a sacred soul. And it sort of sneaks up on you that he's served in hospices and with the homeless, that he spends his days mentoring college students as UPenn's University Chaplain. From gentle stories about his daughters to lessons from his "knucklehead punk" youth da... posted on Apr 29 2012, 5,096 reads

Boss Lady's Kindness Escapades
"The owner began mumbling in Korean under her breath. I couldn't get her to look up to me, so I asked the woman at my feet what was going on. She took an extra beat, maybe deciding whether she was going to really tell me, or not. And she said to me, 'That's Boss Lady, and it's Christmas Eve, and everyone going home early until you come in - Manicure Pedicure 45 minutes - so now everyone has to wai... posted on Apr 20 2012, 6,108 reads

Caine's Cardboard Arcade
Caine Monroy spent his summer vacation building an elaborate cardboard arcade in his dad's used auto parts store. The adorable 9-year old worked for months to perfect the game designs, making displays for the prizes, and creating elaborate security systems. Unfortunately, his dad's store is in an industrial part of East L.A. that gets almost no foot traffic. So Caine had exactly zero customers ..... posted on Apr 13 2012, 5,172 reads

Wisdom From Alice, Age 108
At age 108, Holocaust survivor Alice Herz Sommer still practices piano for 3 hours every day. At age 104, she had a book written about her life: "A Garden Of Eden In Hell." At age 83, she had cancer. Alice survived the concentration camps through her music, her optimism and her gratitude for the small things that came her way - a smile, a kind word, the sun. When asked about the secret of her long... posted on Apr 06 2012, 15,264 reads

13-Year Old Gymnast: Fearless ...& Legally Blind
Most athletes have the benefit of seeing what's ahead of them -- an opponent, the bars, a vault. But for 13-year-old Lola Walters, she usually has no idea what's coming until she's literally five feet away from it. Walters, a Washington resident, is legally blind, and suffers from a disease called nystagmus which causes her eyes to shift constantly, leaving her with double vision and no depth perc... posted on Mar 30 2012, 19,950 reads

An Indomitable Healing Spirit
For the past two years, James O'Dea has synthesized his remarkable life experience into what he calls "social healing". A former Director of Amnesty International's Washington, DC office and President of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, O'Dea's journey has taken him through both the depths of human suffering -- and it's transcendence. Along the way he has been wrestling with profound questions: W... posted on Mar 27 2012, 24,649 reads

An Ordinary Magical Life
"I met Shelagh Gordon at her funeral. My sharpest impression of her that day, as mourners in black pressed around me, was of her breathtaking kindness. Shelagh was freshly-in-love thoughtful. If she noticed your boots had holes, she'd press her new ones into your arms. When you casually admired her coffeemaker, you'd wake up to one of your own. A bag of chocolates hanging from your doorknob would ... posted on Mar 22 2012, 0 reads