A Lift That Gave Me Joy
Last fall, before Thanksgiving, I was making my way in my car out of the shopping center parking lot. I was all alone in the car. I noticed a woman laden with bags and her two boys, one carrying a pumpkin and the other another bag. On a random impulse, I rolled down my window and asked "Would you like a ride?" "Oh yes!" was their excited reaction. This was special for me because, as a handicappe... posted on Apr 2, 2848 reads

Fairness: An Evolutionary Advantage?
The best place to see the Golden Rule in action is... at the grocery store? That's what science columnist John Tierney says. In a recent study, WalMart shoppers of Hamilton, Missouri scored higher in a test of fairness toward strangers than clan-based communities around the world. Researchers explain that developing "market norms" promotes general levels of "trust, fairness and cooperation" with s... posted on Apr 8, 2613 reads

Meet The Boss
Lily Kanter makes money so she can give it away. And she's good at it. After retiring as a multimillionaire at age 35, she and her husband started a family foundation to support amazing causes and social entrepreneurs. Yet when asked to pinpoint her proudest accomplishment, Kanter admits it's a work in progress: "Figuring out how to do the dance of running a successful company, but also running a ... posted on Apr 14, 3911 reads

Food for Thought... in a Jar?
When I worked in a busy office, most of my co-workers kept jars of candy on their desks to enjoy and share with others. Constantly battling the "bulge," I hated these temptations, but nevertheless often gave in to them. Finally, I decided to put out a jar of my own "feel good" stuff, with no calories. I bought a beautiful jar and spent one whole weekend at home cutting up colorful strips of paper ... posted on May 3, 3942 reads

An Artist's Life
"I walked into this little painting gallery and nobody was there, just a room full of paintings- not paintings that I found very interesting, but I was killing time." So begins an unlikely adventure in which Richard Whittaker learns about a 97-year-old painter still at work and giving watercolor workshops even though he was blind. Literally a few hours after setting foot in Claremont Fine Arts, W... posted on May 11, 3272 reads

The I of Marriage
We all know there's no "I" in team. But a new study suggests that having too much "I" in marriage might be a problem as well. In a study that examined over 150 middle-aged and older married couples as they discussed a recent conflict, UC Berkeley researchers found that couples who used words like "we," "our," and "us" displayed high levels of positive emotional behavior and low levels of physiolo... posted on May 19, 4291 reads

Pay What You Want
Dawn Frierdich stood at the counter. Surrounded by the rich aroma of freshly baked breads, pastries, and cookies, she finally settled on three loaves of bread and an iced tea. But when it came time to pay, her cashier, Mike Miller, redirected her to the donation jar on the counter. This week, Panera Bread Company, a national bakery and restaurant chain, launched its new nonprofit store in Clayton,... posted on May 21, 4216 reads

What Adults Can Learn from Kids
"I loved to write from the age of four, and when I was six my mom bought me my own laptop...I wrote over 300 short stories on that little laptop, and I wanted to get published. Instead of just scoffing at this heresy that a kid wanted to get published, or saying 'wait until you're older,' my parents were really supportive." Since publishing her first book at the age of 7, Adora Svitak, now 12, has... posted on May 24, 3989 reads

The Kindness Habit
"Last winter I was going through a rough patch in my life. I had a bunch of terrible things going on around me. I felt very distant and became quite selfish. I hated the way I was feeling and one day I woke up and told myself, 'You are above this, stop feeling sorry for yourself.' Then I tried out an experiment, and it has definitely changed me for the better. Every day, I would do at least one ac... posted on May 30, 2766 reads

Kindness Goes Around, and Comes Around
It is so often true that "what goes around, comes around," and that life lessons often walk in through the most unexpected doors. On one hot summer day, a single mother and her son find themselves on a broken down bus. When their fellow elderly passengers grow unbearable hot and uncomfortable, the mother-son duo hand out all their food without a second thought, even though they have no money to sp... posted on Jul 10, 8685 reads

Sixth-Grade Philanthropists
On a bike trip across Europe and Asia, Mike Church came across Ujjwall Bhat, a Nepali man whose dream was to start a school in his rural village. Inspired by his vision, Church returned to his hometown in Maryland and contacted friends and local charities to help fund Bhat's dream. Three years later, the Mikey Medium English School opened its doors in Bauniyan, Kailali Nepal. Though located in rur... posted on Jun 13, 1532 reads

Anything is Possible
Jessica Herrera's parents lost their jobs at the beginning of her senior year in high school. Evicted from the homes they rented, the family split up: her father left town to look for work, her mother and sister moved in with relatives, and Jessica took refuge in a homeless shelter. But that didn't stop the 18-year-old from graduating high school. "There were times I came home and there was no foo... posted on Jun 21, 4623 reads

The Art of the Mind
"After about an hour I got to a ridge top that I'd never been on before. It was hot. I headed down the ridge, looking for a shady spot to eat my sandwich. I saw a large tree, standing alone, about one hundred yards off the edge of the trail. It had a great view: a vast swath of the East Bay stretching away to San Francisco with the Golden Gate in the distance. Not a bad place to be homeless, I tho... posted on Jun 28, 5065 reads

The Health Benefits of Generosity
Ever notice a feeling of warm satisfaction from giving someone a gift? Or a sense of joy from treating someone else to a meal? This link between good vibes and good deeds may be more than coincidence, say researchers at the University of British Columbia and Harvard Business School. In a recent study, participants were given $10 and asked to decide how much of it to share with someone else. Those ... posted on Jul 7, 3706 reads

A Small Act
Chris Mburu feels fortunate to have received an education at all. Growing up in a mud house in Kenya, it seemed unlikely that he or his neighbors would escape a cycle of poverty. Today, Mburu is a Harvard Law School graduate and works as a human rights advocate for the United Nations. How did this happen? A small and consistent act of hope from a teacher in Sweden. Years ago, Hilda Back decided to... posted on Jul 9, 3437 reads

Remembering Peace Pilgrim
From 1953 to 1981, a silver-haired woman walked over 25,000 miles on a personal pilgrimage for peace. Crossing the United States seven times with nothing more than a toothbrush, some pamphlets, and a navy sweatshirt, she vowed to "remain a wanderer until mankind has learned the way of peace, walking until given shelter and fasting until given food." Leading a fairly ordinary life up through young ... posted on Jul 16, 3539 reads

10 Pieces of Wisdom for Painters
Artist Leigh Hyams of San Miguel Allende, Mexico writes, "I found this script today in a forgotton portfolio. It was dictated to me by my four-year-old granddaughter Annalena, who could not write then, but she knew how to advise people to paint and draw. I like her advice enormously, not to mention her attitude..." Here's just one example of Annalena's painting wisdom: "When I don't have anything ... posted on Jul 23, 4405 reads

Thinking Outside the Human Mind
Dr. Temple Grandin is one of the most fascinating and respected figures in the world today. As a child whose parents almost sent her to a mental institution, Grandin became the first autistic individual to publish an autobiography. She has utterly transformed how we view people with autism and how we treat animals, specifically in the cattle industry. She explains to us what it is like for her to ... posted on Jul 28, 6391 reads

Food: The Solution for Conflict?
Tucked away in a humble corner of Pittsburgh, Penn., rests a colorful take-out stand that is connecting people from around the world through food and art. The idea is simple: start a restaurant that serves food from countries that the US is in conflict with. Run by three artists, Conflict Kitchen has become an incubator of cross-cultural conversation. One guest notes, "Food is a pathway to positiv... posted on Jul 31, 2487 reads

How to Live and Die
Death is rarely spoken about in our homes. "I wonder why," remarks Khushwant Singh. At 95, Singh thinks of death very often. But he does not lose sleep over it. A self-described agnostic, Singh states that ultimately, he does "not know what happens to us after we die but one should help a person go in peace--at peace with himself and with the world." From his 95 years of experience, Singh offers e... posted on Aug 15, 5431 reads

In Pursuit of Silence
When all is silent, what do you hear? The first widely observed national moment of silence occurred in Britain in 1919. For two minutes, switchboard operators declined to connect telephone calls, subway cars and factory wheels ground to a halt, and ordinary citizens held their tongues. Within 10 years, the somber annual tradition had grown so popular that the BBC began to air the sound of the sile... posted on Aug 21, 2999 reads

Faith, the Two-Legged Dog
There are some things you have to see to believe, and Faith is one of those. She's a labrador-chow mix born without one front leg and another that was severely deformed and then removed. What's truly amazing about Faith is that, despite having only her two hind legs, she can still walk! In fact, she's lived almost her entire life on those two legs. Something of a celebrity, Faith appeared on Oprah... posted on Sep 6, 7566 reads

Why Money Is Like Beer
When he was 21, heir to the Baskin-Robbins throne John Robbins left the ice cream company and his fathers money, determined to find happiness and fulfillment on his own. After becoming a successful author and establishing an independent fortune, he lost everything in the Bernie Madoff scandal. Through tumultuous relationships with money, Robbins discovered that: "Money, it seems, is a little like... posted on Nov 12, 8997 reads

The Miracle Birth
After giving birth to premature twins, Kate Ogg was informed that one of them didn't make it. Devastated, she held her limp 2-pound infant against her bare chest. For two hours, the mother and her husband said their goodbyes, cradling and hugging their son as if he were alive. Two hours later, the newborn began moving and gasping. Ogg instinctively fed her son a few drops of breast milk and soon ... posted on Aug 28, 14004 reads

Restorer of Slums
Santosh Thorat, a young father of five, was grateful to have picked up an extra day's work. That morning, he left his home, which he shared with 17 others in an East Mumbai slum, to help a bulldozing crew ward off protesters as they demolished a nearby slum. "That day when I went to work, I thought, 'I don't want to do this,'" Thorat recalls. Three days later, Thorat's bosses demolished his home. ... posted on Sep 4, 3400 reads

Three Sisters and a Miracle
You might've used Craigslist to sell that old bike, or to look for another job or housing opportunity. But how about using it to save your dad's life? That's just what three sisters from New York did. After Jennifer Flood's dad was diagnosed with kidney disease, she and her sisters posted an ad on Craigslist... for a living donor. One year, four months, and one hundred responses later, a woman fro... posted on Oct 12, 2503 reads

The Success of Failure
These days, it seems like new technologies are cropping up around every corner we turn. Hardly a month goes by without the announcement of some new and exciting media project or application. A new web tool or project may be exciting, but Christian Madera reminds us that for each new app or initiative that gets launched, there are probably dozens that failed, or never even fully began. And it is i... posted on Sep 10, 2578 reads

9/11 Day of Service
September 11 is a loaded day. It marks the ninth anniversary of the World Trade Center bombings in New York City, the 103rd birthday of Gandhi's concept of Satyagraha ("clinging to truth" in Sanskrit), as well as 117 years after Swami Vivekenanda's stunning speech on interfaith dialogue at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. This year, 9/11 also coincides with Eid al-Fitr, a Muslim holid... posted on Sep 11, 1790 reads

Trespassing Snowmen
There is an elderly man who lives up the street from us. He has no one to shovel his driveway. he is a bit of a miser so most people aren't so inclined to help. One day, I don't know who did it, but someone used the snow on his driveway to make a whole bunch of smiling and waving snowmen on his lawn. As my son and I were walking by, I could hear him grumbling. "What's the problem?" I asked. He com... posted on Sep 17, 4552 reads

Fueled by Landfills
In a dry, windy canyon not far from San Francisco, California one landfill is curbing greenhouse gases by transforming its waste into fuel. "We own this big pile of trash, and we need to look at it and think, 'what can we do to get something out of it?'" said Ken Lewis, Director of Altamont Landfill Operations. With special technology, natural gas produced by decaying organic waste gets captured a... posted on Sep 20, 1999 reads

Sharing Bikes Across Washington DC
These days, the city streets of Montreal, Paris, and Lyon are blooming with bicycles and bikers. Take one step out your door, and you'll spot a man in a suit riding with groceries from the corner market. German tourists yakking away while riding along the banks of the Rhone River. Students zipping by on their way to class, or to meet friends at a cafe. Cities in the U.S. are quickly following suit... posted on Sep 23, 2345 reads

A Farmer's Market... in the Hospital?
In health professions, the kitchen is as crucial as the clinic. At least according to Dr. Preston Maring, a gynecologist and obstetrician with three decades as a surgeon. Food is at the center of health and illness, he says, and so doctors must make all aspects of it, "growing, buying, cooking, eating," a mainstay of their medical educations, personal lives, as well as their practice. A man who wa... posted on Oct 3, 1781 reads

Live Boldly
It's easy to get discouraged. Taking the risk to manifest our ideas has always been just that: a risk. With so many daily challenges and voices of caution, the space between our ideas and their manifestation in the world can feel like an abyss. Yet, as Wendy Strgar notes, "Living with one foot out the door is the silent and common disease that infects us often without our knowing it." She suggests... posted on Sep 27, 5687 reads

Bill Clinton Starts a Vegan Revolution!
Joining the ranks of celebrities who are sort of vegan, Bill Clinton has announced that to lose a bunch of weight and get his ticker in better shape, he's adopted a plant-based diet. Now, instead of snack foods and burgers, he's a sort-of-pescetarian. Specifically, he's dairy and meat-free, "occasionally treating himself to a little fish. He eats lots of plants, drinks almond milk with protein pow... posted on Oct 16, 6486 reads

The Myth of Multi-Tasking
The rise of the social web has created a flood of information over the past few years. With this influx of life and data streams comes a desire to stay on top of it all. For many people, this means multi-tasking. While it's intuitive to think that handling so many tasks at once makes us more productive and efficient, multi-tasking actually does quite the opposite. According to Stanford Professor C... posted on Oct 5, 6470 reads

Student Changes Lives, One Hug at a Time
For two years, University of Miami student Kemy Joseph has been wearing signs around his neck with uplifting messages like "U R Awesome," and "Persevere." He recently celebrated his second anniversary of spreading goodwill by spending 15 hours on campus giving high-fives and hugs. His goal: to make 800 people feel a little bit better in one day. "I tell them they are not alone. We go through the s... posted on Oct 6, 3323 reads

Giving Slums a Human Face
It's not common for important philanthropic prizes to go to people whose work involves criminal trespass and who make statements like the following: "You never know who's part of the police and who's not." But the TED conference plans to give its annual $100,000 prize to the Parisian street artist known as J R, a shadowy figure who made a name for himself by plastering colossal photographs in down... posted on Oct 30, 3211 reads

Scientist Discover 200 New Species
For thousands of years, steep mountain ranges and dense forests have limited interaction between many of Papua New Guinea's indigenous groups, creating one of the most culturally and linguistically diverse countries in the world. Geographic barriers also have limited scientific exploration in the country, which is known to harbor many undiscovered species. Trekking by foot, canoe, and helicopter, ... posted on Nov 3, 2458 reads

School Volunteers Fill Void
Lehigh University grad Felicia Cooper has spent almost everyday for the past month in the library of Overbrook High School, devoting her working hours to helping students at risk. A West Philly native, serving these students is a homecoming of sorts. "I am from the School District of Philadelphia, so I know some of the challenges as a student that could be faced." It's volunteers like Cooper that ... posted on Oct 31, 936 reads

A Checking Account of Smiles
Jorge Munoz is a bus driver in New York City who started feeding the hungry in Queens five years ago, using food that would otherwise have been thrown away. Since then, he's been there, day-in and day-out, distributing 121,000 meals over the years. And that's how he discovered a secret- the power of sharing. "People are telling me, 'Jorge, you have no money, you do all this and get nothing back.' ... posted on Nov 26, 2455 reads

Job Perks of an Optimist
A new study by researchers at Yale and Duke Universities find that optimism pays off in job hunting and promotions. After studying the effect of an optimistic disposition on MBA students' job searches, the researchers found that optimists fared better than their less-optimistic peers. Optimistic grads found jobs more easily, with less-intensive job searches. Even better, two years after graduation... posted on Nov 24, 8726 reads

Why Social Value is Good for Business
In a recent interview, David Schmittlein, Dean of MIT Sloan School of Management, hones in on the importance for business to be able to state their social value. "The social contract that businesses, organizations in general, have with the world is changing, and unless organzations can demonstrate and explain the social purpose and the social value that they've fulfilled, they will fail. They will... posted on Nov 23, 3188 reads

Does Thinking Make it So?
In a world that prizes medical science and blames illness on factors such as genes, viruses, bacteria or poor diet, certain perplexing cases stand out. Consider Mr. Wright, a man whose tumors "melted like snowballs on a hot stove" when he was given an experimental drug that he believed would cure his cancer, but was later declared to be worthless by the American Medical Association. His case is ju... posted on Dec 23, 5436 reads

Restoring Paradise for Gentle Giants
When Iain Douglas-Hamilton left Tanzania, in East Africa, in 1970 to study at Oxford University in Britain, he left behind "an elephants' paradise". But when he returned in 1972, the country's national parks looked more like a war zone: ivory poaching had endangered these gentle giants. With elephants on the brink of extinction, the soft-spoken conservationist and author knew he had to act. In his... posted on Dec 16, 2289 reads

Four Ways to Respond in an Argument
From your nervous system's point of view, there are a number of ways to respond to an argument. You can find yourself in one of the knee-jerk reactions such as fight, flight, or freeze. You can roar and bite, escape and hide, or freeze like deer in headlights. Or, you can take a breath, and get your nervous system to smile. Neuropsychologist Marsha Lucas reminds us that taking a moment to catch ou... posted on Dec 13, 24580 reads

Matching Kids and Mentors
To the beat of Aretha Franklin, and with pizza-laden paper plates poised precariously on their laps, families sit in the crowd at the assembly hall of Horace Mann Middle School. They are waiting. They look slightly anxious. It's not graduation day- though it is something akin. The seventh and eighth graders here are at a pivotal time in their young lives, when school dropout problems can begin, ex... posted on Jan 3, 2262 reads

A Passion for Giving
'A Passion For Giving' is a stylish, powerful and beautifully shot film with great music and compelling interviews with fascinating people, some famous some not, who inspire the viewer to give and help other people, animals and the planet. It reinforces the notion that anyone has the capacity to give, not just those with disposable income. From a Tibetan monk to a New York City street artist, thi... posted on Dec 8, 3857 reads

Generous Vegetable Seller
After the morning hustle, a lone lamp shines on a vegetable stall. With head bowed, Chen Shu-Chu is the first to arrive in the market and the last to leave. She earns marginal profits. Yet, her frugality has allowed her to donate NT$10 million (about 350,000 US $) towards various charitable causes, including schools, orphanages and poor children. The generosity of a woman with such a humble income... posted on Feb 7, 2903 reads

Removing Stigma One Idli At A Time
A small idli shop in south Tamil Nadu, India, is the talk of the town. At daybreak, people crowd around to buy idlis and dosas from two women who are HIV positive. Despite the stigma of HIV/AIDS in their town, the customers are aware of their condition and continue to patronize their shop. With community support, Vijayarani and Sumathy have overcome the devastating news, "look as healthy as any... posted on Feb 8, 2396 reads

Importance of Kindgergarten
An experienced teacher and a small class in kindergarten can set a person up for life. At least according to a large-scale study by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The bureau study, conducted by a team of economists, draws on data from Project STAR, one of the most widely studied education experiments in the United States. The project spans 11,600 students and their teachers in kindergar... posted on Jan 5, 3805 reads