Wendell Berry: To Save the Future, Live in the Present
"If we take no thought for the morrow, how will we be prepared for the morrow? A steady stream of poisons is flowing from our croplands into the air and water. The land itself continues to flow or blow away, and in some places erosion is getting worse, and “no-till” technology does not prevent erosion on continuously cropped grainfields." Learn more about how poet and naturalist Wendel... posted on May 5, 11042 reads

Is Your Web Browser a Credit Card for Your Time?
Studies have shown that credit cards and other forms of non-tangible currency make it easier for people to spend more than they otherwise might (and in many ways, this is precisely what they are designed to do). The internet has developed a similar model, pushing us to spend more time than we have on advertisements and other distractions. In a day and age when time is more precious than ever, how ... posted on May 16, 4587 reads

Teach Aids: Breaking Taboos for the World for Free
Piya Sorcar is ​the founder and CEO of TeachAIDS, a social venture spun out of Stanford University that has been recognized as an innovation that could “change the world” by MIT Technology Review. At TeachAIDS, Piya leads a team of world experts in medicine, public health, and education to develop interactive software for HIV/AIDS prevention around the world. All of the material... posted on Jun 15, 8311 reads

How Our Bodies React To Seeing Goodness
"Researchers have a name for that high we get from witnessing human goodness: "moral elevation." And it has been shown to have many positive benefits. Past studies have found that moral elevation inspires optimism, and makes one want to be a better person and to act altruistically toward others." In this article, Jill Suttie,summarizes a new study which sheds some light on what happens in the bod... posted on Jun 11, 15682 reads

The Power of Landspeak
Under pressure, Oxford University Press revealed a list of the entries it no longer felt relevant to a modern-day childhood, including acorn, bluebell, buttercup, dandelion, ivy, lark, and mistletoe. The outdoor and the natural are displaced by the indoor and the virtual -- a small but significant symptom of the simulated life we increasingly live. And what is lost is the power that certain terms ... posted on Jul 2, 7887 reads

The Top 10 Happiest Countries
"Everyone wants to be happy, and increasingly, countries around the world are looking at happiness as an indicator of national well-being and considering happiness in policy making. As this year's World Happiness Report states, "Happiness is increasingly considered a proper measure of social progress and a goal of public policy." But what makes people happy, and which countries have the highest le... posted on Jul 8, 71333 reads

Saying Farewell To A Family Pet
There are many in life who walk beside us. Be they human or animal, we are touched by those beings who accompany us through the unfolding mystery of space and time. And even knowing that the spiral of life moves ever onward, from birth to death and round again, how, when the time comes, do we say goodbye to those we love? Shannon Hayes shares the story of Spriggan, and of holding sadness, joy, and... posted on Jul 23, 20745 reads

Can People Change?
"One day, after a talk I had given on altruism, a person in the audience got up and said in an irritated tone: "What are you hoping for by encouraging us to cultivate altruism? Look at the history of humanity! It's always the same thing! An uninterrupted succession of wars and suffering. That's human nature, you can't change anything about that!" But is this truly the case?...Can the individual ch... posted on Sep 9, 15961 reads

Sixth Graders on Mindfulness
"It really calms me down 'cause I get really stressed about homework a lot and when I breathe and just take a moment it really helps me focus more and I can get a lot more done" says one student. "If you get angry, you can just breathe in and out a couple of times..." says another. Listen to the children of Meena Srinivasan's 6th grade class at Park Day School in Oakland, California, talk about w... posted on Sep 2, 4659 reads

The Science of Stress
Maria Popova explores her own experience of stress and PTSD, pointing out that long before scientists began shedding light on how our minds and bodies actually affect one another, an intuitive understanding of this dialogue between the body and the emotions, or feelings permeated our very language. Ancient Greek, Roman, and Indian Ayurvedic physicians all enlisted the theory of the four humors -- ... posted on Sep 28, 17740 reads

Leisure: The Basis of Culture
"Today, in our culture of productivity-fetishism, we have succumbed to the tyrannical notion of 'work/life balance' and have come to see the very notion of 'leisure' not as essential to the human spirit but as self-indulgent luxury reserved for the privileged or deplorable idleness reserved for the lazy." Maria Popova draws from the wisdom of classic and contemporary philosophers, scientists, and ... posted on Oct 15, 11255 reads

How I Survived the Loss of My Hands and Feet
Meet Corinne Hutton. Two years ago, she lost her hands and feet after catching a virus that turned her limbs septic. She knew she had a choice then and chose to live with zest and passion. Today, she is a busy mom who has climbed mountains, flown planes, started a charity, and enjoys getting dolled up for nights out with her friends. Read on to learn more about this woman who transforms adversity ... posted on Oct 13, 6698 reads

Stretching Identity: A Conversation with Gabriel Meyer
"The first time I met a Palestinian Sufi Sheikh, I went to his house. The person who introduced me, my friend, he said, Listen, this is the third Israeli he meets, so be careful. You know, go slowly. So I sat; we were all very formal, Salaam. We sat down, it was very serious, and all of a sudden, I just took out my drum and starting singing, Allahu, Allahu, Allahu. His son came out from the kitche... posted on Sep 25, 3532 reads

Vegetable Seller to Reputed Oncologist
Dr. Vijayalakshmi Deshmane is one of India's most reputed oncologists who dedicates her life to service through medicine. But, when she was just a child, born into a "backward caste" and a socio-economically disadvantaged family living in the slums of India, with little access to food and basic amenities, leave alone educational opportunities, it was not obvious she would have such an illustrious... posted on Oct 3, 6358 reads

How Science Helps Us Find the Good
Since the beginning of time, the battle between good and evil has always been at the forefront of human existence. But only until recently has science started to help better understand the complexities of it all. And just as good and bad are linked, science also reveals how our inner world and the external one are tied together. The overall takeaway? If you want to find and foster the good in soci... posted on Oct 24, 15273 reads

Six Pillars of the Wholehearted Life
In what has been named as one of the best commencement speeches of all time, Parker Palmer, author, educator, and founder of the Center for Courage and Renewal, shares six pillars of a wholehearted life. The first, be reckless in matters of the heart: "Fall madly in love with life. Be passionate about some part of the natural and/or human worlds and take risks on its behalf, no matter how vulnerab... posted on Nov 3, 60453 reads

American Bear: An Adventure in the Kindness of Strangers
"American Bear" captures the adventures of Sarah Sellman and Greg Grano, who embark on a 60 day, 30 state trip around the United States, critically examining American culture, compassion and fear, by relying on the kindness of strangers for a bed in a different town each night. This 10 minute excerpt follows three days of the journey in South Dakota and Montana, featuring two of their hosts: a cha... posted on Nov 12, 3052 reads

Choosing Suffering Over Safety
"Can you walk, sweetheart?" I say these words to our dog Stella who is dying. Its time for breakfast and if she walks from our bed to the kitchen, maybe that will be a sign. Maybe she will be alright. So I ask her again, Can you walk? As I ask, I remember eleven years of sleeping twisted like a pretzel so the dog could get a good nights sleep. I remember mornings, how she rose at dawn and stomped ... posted on Nov 23, 15613 reads

Gratitude: Good for the Soul -- and Heart
As we launch into Thanksgiving week, consider this: Research shows that feeling grateful doesn't just make you feel good. It also helps -- literally helps -- the heart. A positive mental attitude is good for your heart. It fends off depression, stress and anxiety, which can increase the risk of heart disease, says Paul Mills, a professor of family medicine and public health at the University of Ca... posted on Nov 24, 11422 reads

A Yuletide Gift of Kindness
"The year was 1933 and Christmas was just a week away. Deep in the trough of the Great Depression, the people of Canton, Ohio, were down on their luck and hungry. Nearly half the town was out of work. Along the railroad tracks, children in patched coats scavenged for coal spilled from passing trains. The prison and orphanage swelled with the casualties of hard times. It was then that a mysterious ... posted on Dec 22, 15577 reads

The Art of Sho: A Calligraphers's Pilgrimage
Filmmaker Jerry Hsu spent four months observing Dr. Ronald Nakasone practicing the art of calligraphy, and witnessed how this art requires contemplation, perseverance and single-minded concentration. The art of "sho" or "writing", can be properly called abstract art. It is nonfigurative, nonobjective, and nonrepresentational. The process of the work is one of experimentation and distillation. All ... posted on Mar 3, 3903 reads

Waging Life in a War Zone
"From the stones of the destruction we will build plant basins to grow flowers." It started with one man's efforts to beautify his home with paint and flowers, but the initiative spread as neighbors came forward to spread the beauty. Using salvaged and recycled material, with some funding from a local and U.S. nonprofit, the densely populated neighborhood of al-Zaitoun in Gaza City, Palestine, is ... posted on Feb 7, 2762 reads

Indiana Jones Meets Florence Nightingale
"One night I was driving home from a sales conference and I went blind -- I later learned it was stress blindness. I managed to pull over to the hard shoulder of the motorway. All the while I was thinking, 'My life is over; I will never see my kids again'. I promised myself then that if my sight came back, I would find my purpose. I was very lucky, and my sight did return...And then I started to w... posted on Feb 11, 12749 reads

Rising Women Rising World
"It is an unusual occurrence when the roll call of achievements of just three women includes several nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize; training roles for UN Development Programmes, and advice-giving to NATO military officers and government officials. That the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and the Clintons, to name just a few, have sought them out for their input makes the individuals of this tri... posted on Mar 8, 15715 reads

Why Silence Is Good for Your Brain
"As our internal and external environments become louder and louder, more people are beginning to seek out silence, whether through a practice of sitting quietly for 10 minutes every morning or heading off to a 10-day silent retreat. Inspired to go find some peace and quiet? Here are four science-backed ways that silence is good for your brain -- and how making time for it can make you feel less s... posted on Mar 14, 81048 reads

Path to Freedom: A Former Prison Monk's Amazing Work
Redemption and transformation can occur in even the harshest of surroundings. During his 14-year incarceration Fleet Maull found meditation. With meditation he found a freedom that transcended prison walls. After his release he returns to prison to teach meditation, healthy survival skills and share his story of meaningful change. 1 out of every 100 Americans is currently behind bars. And 700,000 ... posted on Mar 30, 3721 reads

The Intelligence in All Kinds of Life
"Why is the world so beautiful?" This is a question Robin Wall Kimmerer pursues as a botanist and also as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She writes, "Science polishes the gift of seeing, indigenous traditions work with gifts of listening and language." An expert in moss - a bryologist - she describes mosses as the 'coral reefs of the forest.' She opens a sense of wonder and humility fo... posted on Apr 22, 14964 reads

We Are All Criminals
Emily Baxter is a public defender, turned policy maker, turned storyteller with an unusual cause. As founder of the nonprofit, "We Are All Criminals" she invites everyday people to anonymously share stories of crimes and misdemeanors that they were never caught or charged for. Through sharing personal experiences, her work seeks to inspire empathy and ignite social change. The project is gaining ... posted on May 11, 13372 reads

How to Cultivate Global Compassion
Paul Ekman, legendary psychologist and Professor Emeritus at UCSF, is an expert on emotion recognition and his work has been instrumental in helping us understand the universality of emotion and its place in our social lives. More recently, inspired by his exchanges with the Dalai Lama, Ekman's work has focused on applying his knowledge of emotion and compassion toward bettering human social inter... posted on Apr 24, 11695 reads

Slow Down to Get Ahead
Chronic rushing through a never ending to-do list feeds anxiety and heightens stress levels. Due to the epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, released in the brain during stressful periods, our brains get hooked on the stimulation of activity. Our bodies become addicted to rushing and our minds switch into autopilot with everything of high importance and needing to get accomplished quickly. We st... posted on May 1, 9767 reads

The Strange Beautiful Side of Death
"Its no surprise to anyone who knows my family well (or perhaps anyone who has a teenage daughter themselves) that growing up, my mom and I had a strained relationship.Simply put, she insisted that I sit at the table for dinner, go to bed at nine, periodically clean my room and go to church. She ran the whole house, had a full time job, and was frequently stressed. My dad, on the other hand, seeme... posted on May 5, 24560 reads

Forward the Smile
Angelo Pangalos' project has a simple purpose - to encourage and inspire people to share a smile with a stranger. Pangalos has been in and out of hospitals since the age of five. Faced with one health crisis after another, and unable to work, Pangalos decided to give the one thing he didn't have - a smile. For the last several years, Pangalos has used his passion for magic and music to entertain s... posted on May 15, 4017 reads

How to Avoid Abusing Power
"When we receive power, it feels like a vital force. It surges through the body, propelling the individual forward in pursuit of goals. When an individual feels powerful, he or she experiences higher levels of excitement, inspiration, joy, and euphoria, all of which enable purposeful, goal-directed action. Feeling powerful, the individual becomes sharply attuned to rewards in the environment and q... posted on May 17, 15174 reads

The Lullaby Project: Homeless Mothers Make Music
Since 2011, the Lullaby Project, a Carnegie Hall program (part of its larger Musical Connections initiative) that takes music's transformative power outside gilded concert halls and into neglected communities throughout New York City and across the nation, has paired more than 300 homeless or incarcerated mothers with professional musicians to create a musical experience for their child. Over thre... posted on May 29, 16587 reads

They & The Emotional Weight of Words
"Language is the space in which we carve a place for ourselves, where we demand to be seen. A reflection point for culture, community, and family to acknowledge our existence on our terms." For many, the pronouns 'he' and 'she' are limiting and do not adequately express their identity. "The entire lexicon for how we understand gender is shifting. For many of us, it can be a weighty, disorienting e... posted on Aug 28, 6056 reads

Our Relationship With Media & Attention
Mary Rothschild studies the effects of media on young children. She tells this story, "Each child was happily kneading their dough, these two, two-and-a-half to five-year-old children, and making a bread animal or something. I thought, "Wow. It's been like four minutes and they're all quiet!"Then this little girl next to me looked up and said, "Mary, the Lion King video is too loud." So I thought ... posted on Jul 11, 21377 reads

'Tashi & The Monk' Wins an Emmy!
Lobsang Phuntsok is a former Tibetan monk who trained with the Dalai Lama and spent years teaching Buddhism in the West. In 2006, he moved back to establish a community in the Himalayan foothills for orphans and impoverished children. Phuntsok remembers, "My birth wasn't something to celebrate. I brought a lot of pain and embarrassment to my family. That's why when I was younger I was always call... posted on Sep 20, 0 reads

Street Books: Library on Wheels For People Outside
Recognizing that "those living outside or in temporary shelters are usually barred from borrowing books from regular libraries because they lack the required documentation," Professor Laura Moulton began lending books to people living on the fringes of society in Portland, Oregon. In 2011, Moulton founded a bike-powered mobile library, Street Books, to make sure those in isolated communities have ... posted on Aug 10, 11798 reads

We Save What We Love: Gordon Hempton
Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton is in love with nature's music -- sounds and silences he says that have either changed or vanished in the three decades he has been recording them. Bird songs, dolphin clicks, and insect chirps are all sounds of communication. If those sounds are drowned out by noise pollution, creatures can't hear each other. The results can be devastating. If danger warnings, ma... posted on Aug 12, 18024 reads

Color Your World With Kindness
Delight in this gorgeous animation designed for children and adults alike by 'A Better World'. The film portrays how small acts of kindness can positively change the feelings and attitudes of others and how naturally this will spread, grow and flourish within our communities and beyond. The Better Worldian's strategy is to plant flowers instead of pulling weeds, cultivating the goodness in everybo... posted on Aug 13, 4881 reads

The Effortless Effort of Creativity
"Every good poem begins in language awake to its own connections -- language that hears itself and what is around it, sees itself and what is around it, looks back at those who look into its gaze and knows more perhaps even than we do about who are, what we are. It begins, that is, in the mind and body of concentration." Poet Jane Hirshfield shares more on creativity, concentration, the pleasures ... posted on Sep 6, 11180 reads

'Love Rounds' at Loma Linda
"Love Rounds" are done at the Loma Linda hospital once a week. "This unique idea was started by Dr. Wil Alexander, PhD, who is currently 94 years old and still teaching and lecturing within the family medicine department. He is not a physician -- he is a minister and professor of religion at Loma Linda University, and brings an important non-medical perspective to the way we learned to look at pat... posted on Oct 7, 7198 reads

A Fun Way to Stop Buying Things You Don't Need
"A few years ago, illustrator and editorial cartoonist Sarah Lazarovic felt like she was buying too much junk. So she stopped shopping for a year, then documented her withdrawals and, eventually, all the lessons and tips and tricks she learned about not buying things. Instead of buying the items she coveted, she made paintings of them.During that time, instead of buying the items she coveted, she ... posted on Sep 9, 18788 reads

Shoulders
In his moving creation, Kindred's Artist-in-Residence, Daniel Sperry gives voice and music to Naomi Shihab Nye's poem, "Shoulders", a poem that speaks "directly to the connection between what we do as parents and the prospect of living in a world where we take care of each other in that same careful, and tender way." Sperry's transcendent work connects with and inspires those "on the quest ...to... posted on Dec 15, 10063 reads

Gifts for Gifted Children
"What gifts can we offer gifted children? How can we who are their guardians do justice by them? The first gift is not to praise them for their talents alone. Just as a beautiful child is often praised only for their beauty, and grows simultaneously vain and insecure, an intelligent child can easily learn that their mind is what makes them lovable...Instead, give these children the gift of praise ... posted on Sep 28, 34210 reads

The Running Program That's Pulled 1,300 People Out of Homelessne
At 5:45 a.m., on a Friday morning, a group of about 20 homeless guys warmed up in a parking lot in East Harlem. In a circle, they did jumping jacks, twisted their torsos and touched their toes, and then huddled up, they chanted the Serenity Prayer ("God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...") and took off running. They ran with Back On My Feet, a program started by social en... posted on Nov 30, 17060 reads

A Lesson in Letting Go From My Mother
This delicious essay is a paean to a mother who nourishes and nurtures, is selfless, gracious, and wise. . . even when a domestic ritual changed forever. The source of many happy memories for the writer as a teen was watching her mother make fresh roti (Indian bread). There was a process she followed -- one that was methodical, careful, and slow, that included plenty of leisurely talk while calmly... posted on Nov 19, 16499 reads

Whistling in the Wind: Preserving a Language Without Words
The last speakers of a language without words reside on La Gomera, one of the smallest islands in Spains Canary Islands. "El Silbo," a whistled communication used in rural and isolated areas, is dying out as islanders embrace digital communication and move to cities and the mainland. Even so, El Silbo has a firm place in the island's culture. Some of La Gomera's schools are teaching the language a... posted on Oct 14, 3116 reads

Cafe Momentum: Serving Second Chances
At a Texas restaurant staffed by ex-offenders, young men ditch criminal backgrounds to roast, toast and saute high-end cuisine. That restaurant was created by Chef Chad Houser who realized that the inmates who he was teaching cooking were more than his pre-conceived stereotypes and deserved a second chance: "When he arrived in the kitchen, none of the eight boys were the tattooed toughs he'd expec... posted on Nov 2, 12813 reads

Community, Conflict and Ways of Knowing
"I argue that the relation established between the knower and the known, between the student and the subject, tends to become the relation of the living person to world itself." In this beautifully articulated piece Parker Palmer reflects on how we should be thinking about the nature of community in modern higher education, what role conflict plays in community, and the two types of love that are ... posted on Nov 13, 13272 reads