Why Rivers Should Have The Same Rights as Us
Who is water? This question presents a fundamental change in thinking by giving legal personhood to water and will transform our approach to water as a culture. In this TED talk, Kelsey Leonard argues that water needs legal rights just as people do. Leonard is a legal scholar and scientist in the the Shinnecock Nation--an indigenous tribe of people in the state of California, USA. Her tribe believ... posted on Jun 10 2022, 1,206 reads

Spoken Without Words: ASL Poetry Slam
"It's spoken word without spoken words. ASL SLAM is an open space for poets to perform their work in American Sign Language (ASL). As ASL SLAM's executive director Douglas Ridloff explains, ASL poetry doesn't rely on rhyming patterns or meter within auditory or written wordplay; rather, the art is "more about the movement, a visual rhyme versus an audio rhyme." Its performance is a stunning and em... posted on Jun 09 2022, 2,741 reads

Black Joy in Pursuit of Racial Justice
"I've been longing to talk about all the ways in which these last couple of years have been so much of a gift for me. And yet I struggle with holding that fact in the same space with all the ways these last couple of years have challenged the very core of who I am as a human being and the way I navigate this world as a Black woman. And yet, in writing my book Black Joy: Stories of Resistance, Resi... posted on Jun 08 2022, 2,752 reads

Sami Awad: A Holy Land for All
When Sami Awad was 16, his uncle was permanently exiled for leading Palestinian nonviolent resistance during the first Intifada. That is how dangerous non-violence is, says Sami. His parents were refugees, displaced by the conflict, and Sami watched his own father abused by Israeli authorities. Yet his mother emphasized the Christian teachings of loving your enemies and forgiveness, while his uncl... posted on Jun 07 2022, 2,199 reads

Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild
When Kathy Fish was asked, in 2017, to contribute to the online journal, Jellyfish Review, she had a piece all cued up-- but then something happened in Las Vegas, that shook the nation, and Fish found herself writing a different piece for the platform instead. It went viral. It was titled, "Collective Nouns for Humans in the Wild." In Fish's words, "It weighs in at under 150 words and I've seen pe... posted on Jun 06 2022, 3,907 reads

The Age of the Possible
"...the octopus

with her body-shaped mind
and her eight-arm embrace
of alien realities,
with her colorblind vision
sightful of polarized light
and her perpetually awestruck
lidless eye

can see


shades of blue we cannot conceive."...

In this hypnotic poem Maria Popova views the age of the A... posted on Jun 05 2022, 1,454 reads

The Moth: All These Wonders
"The Moth was founded in 1997 by the writer George Dawes Green -- its name comes from his memories of growing up in St. Simons Island, Ga., where neighbors would gather late at night on a friend's porch to tell stories and drink bourbon as moths flew in through the broken screens and circled the porch light. It has since grown into what its artistic director, Catherine Burns, calls "a modern story... posted on Jun 04 2022, 4,312 reads

Let the Sun Rise
We all have days when things don't go as smoothly as we'd hoped and we have to make peace with things as they are. Fortunately the sun rises again each morning for all of us and we get another chance to see what the day will bring, to try again and to meet each moment with hope and to practice the art of living. Rejection, fears, doubts and failure are simply part of the human condition. Acknowled... posted on Jun 03 2022, 2,246 reads

Grace Before Dinner
"As a cook, I am beside myself when I encounter even ten varieties of tomatoes at a farmers market. But to see such diversity among people was deeply moving; people from everywhere with great rough hands and fine, weathered faces. Five thousand farmers from 130 countries were gathering for the first time in history, creating an event called Terra Madre." From Orion magazine's archives comes this i... posted on Jun 02 2022, 1,940 reads

Suzanne Simard: Forests are Wired for Wisdom
"Suzanne Simard is the forest ecologist who has proven, beyond doubt, that trees communicate with each other that a forest is a single organism wired for wisdom and care. Simard found that the processes that make for a high-functioning forest mirror the maps of the human brain that were also just now drawing. All of this turns out to be catching up with intelligence long held in aboriginal scienc... posted on Jun 01 2022, 4,015 reads