A Tax We Might All Benefit From
Dublin -- there is something missing from this otherwise typical bustling cityscape. There are taxis and buses. Every other person is talking into a cellphone. But there are no plastic shopping bags, the ubiquitous symbol of urban life. In 2002, Ireland passed a tax on plastic bags; customers who want them must now pay 33 cents per bag at the register. There was an advertising awareness campaign. ... posted on Feb 12, 3375 reads

12 Minute Cab Ride
""Penn Station," I told the cab driver. The young, heavy-set man peered at me through his sunglasses and motioned me to get in. "I've got to get to JFK airport by 2:30PM. You think I'll be able to get there by train or should I cab it all the way?"" With that harmless question begins a most unusual 12-minute cab-ride and a conversation that demonstrates how every chance encounter in this world h... posted on Feb 24, 5499 reads

An Unusual Punishment
What punishment should be imposed on a man who shot a police officer almost 40 years ago and fled to Canada, but went on to live an upstanding life as a husband and father who worked in a library? There was a rare answer here on Friday: Require him to give $250,000 to a foundation that helps the families of injured Chicago police officers. Joseph Pannell will serve just 30 days in jail and two yea... posted on Mar 5, 3460 reads

Donor Match Over Coffee
Annamarie Ausnes is known for holding up the line at her favorite coffee shop, carefully counting out her coins to pay for her "short drip, double-cupped" daily jolt. Over the years, Sandie Andersen, a friendly barista behind the counter, has taken these morning moments to make conversation, to make friends. And then there was the small talk that day last fall. "She reached over the counter and sa... posted on Mar 7, 2907 reads

A Stroke of Insight
Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: one morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. In her TED talk, Taylor shares a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the wor... posted on Mar 14, 5701 reads

A Small Dose of Hope 30 Years Ago
"When I was in my first year of college, I hit a stretch where every area of my life was a disaster, I felt hopeless and alone, and more depressed than I knew was possible.On one such day, I was walking from class across campus to catch my bus home, head down, fighting tears of total despair, when a guy came down the sidewalk toward me. I had never seen him before. Embarrassed at being seen in su... posted on Mar 19, 1705 reads

The Soccer Boy Effect
Brian Mullaney's epiphany occurred back in 1994 in Vietnam. He was traveling as a board member with Operation Smile, a charity that performed cleft-repair surgery on poor children around the world. In a small Vietnamese village near the Chinese border, there was one kid who played soccer every day with the volunteers; they took to calling him Soccer Boy. When the mission was over and Mullaney and ... posted on Mar 22, 3301 reads

A Small Dose of Hope 30 Years Ago
"When I was in my first year of college, I hit a stretch where every area of my life was a disaster, I felt hopeless and alone, and more depressed than I knew was possible.On one such day, I was walking from class across campus to catch my bus home, head down, fighting tears of total despair, when a guy came down the sidewalk toward me. I had never seen him before. Embarrassed at being seen in suc... posted on Mar 20, 5093 reads

Laser Monks
In 2002, Bernard McCoy founded an online ink and toner business that today has grown into a multi-million-dollar operation, but contrary to the way most businesses work, his own salary hasn't increased in proportion to the company's profits. "I'm probably the worst-paid CEO in the country," he says joyfully. His annual pay? Zero dollars -- the same as when he started the business. McCoy is a mo... posted on Mar 25, 3102 reads

The Runner's High
The runner’s high: every athlete has heard of it, most seem to believe in it and many say they have experienced it. But for years scientists have reserved judgment because no rigorous test confirmed its existence. But now, researchers in Germany, using advances in neuroscience, report that the folk belief is true: running does elicit a flood of endorphins in the brain. The endorphins are associa... posted on Mar 30, 2944 reads

A Victim Treats His Mugger Right
He was walking toward the stairs when a teenage boy approached and pulled out a knife. "He wants my money, so I just gave him my wallet and told him, 'Here you go,'" Julio Diaz says. As the teen began to walk away, Diaz told him, "Hey, wait a minute. You forgot something. If you're going to be robbing people for the rest of the night, you might as well take my coat to keep you warm." Rather stu... posted on Mar 29, 6506 reads

Strengthening our Willpower Muscle
It is true that research studies have shown that the brain's store of willpower is depleted when people control their thoughts, feelings or impulses, or when they modify their behavior in pursuit of goals. In fact, Psychologist Roy Baumeister and others have found that people who successfully accomplish one task requiring self-control are less persistent on a second, seemingly unrelated task. But ... posted on Apr 3, 4285 reads

Why Aren't We All Good Samaritans?
Daniel Goleman, psychologist and award-winning author of "Emotional Intelligence"(EI) and other books on EI, challenges traditional measures of intelligence as a predictor of life success. In this 20 minute TED Talk video, he asks why we aren't more compassionate more of the time. Sharing the results of psychological experiments, and using personal anecdotes, he explains how we are all born with t... posted on Apr 7, 4897 reads

The Boy Who Gave It All Away
Drew Friend's 5th birthday party had been in full swing for less than half an hour -- and toys, board games, clothes, and stuffed animals were stacked on the dining room table. The pile kept getting bigger as guests poured into his home with armfuls of birthday gifts. But Drew didn't pay much attention to the pile. And a few hours later, he gave all the presents away. He had made an unusual decisi... posted on Apr 15, 3850 reads

The Mowing Mailman
Iron banisters flank the front steps of Jack's little blue house. Two summers ago, they were covered with vines. To get the mail to the front door, mailman Eric Wills had to fight through a jungle. Wills didn't know much about Jack, except that he was old and seldom got out. For weeks, the mailman struggled through the thicket, frustrated with the man's unkempt grounds. One day, he heard a voice i... posted on Apr 17, 3124 reads

A Pianist Like No Other
"When I arrive at Derek Paravicini's home, he is giving a glittering rendition of Cole Porter's "It's De-Lovely" on his shiny, black piano. When I leave three hours later, he is being spoon-fed lunch from a plastic bowl. Derek is 27, blind, has severe learning difficulties, cannot dress or feed himself -- but play him a song once, and he will not only memorize it instantly, but be able to reproduc... posted on Apr 20, 2886 reads

Gift Economy Health Clinic
After 22 years in private practice, Dr. Lorna Stuart found herself frustrated with the number of insurance companies and the rules and restrictions that came with them. "The day-to-day time that I spent on paperwork was increasing, while my patients weren't getting the good care that I wanted to give them -- face-to-face time, one-on-one time," she recalls. "I vowed to do whatever little I could ... posted on Apr 25, 2520 reads

Being the Change & Singing It
In this lovely and listenable new music video by singer/songwriter Kat Edmonson, intentions are set forth one-by-one, hand-scrawled and held proudly aloft on makeshift cardboard banners. A short-order cook seeks to "include everyone." A young boy whose smile betrays a missing tooth says he'll "make friends with the world." A woman kneels in her garden with a sign saying she'll "support small farms... posted on May 5, 2855 reads

Tornado-Hit Town's Green Recovery
A year after it was practically wiped off the map by a tornado, Greensburg is rising again -- and going green, too, with solar panels, wind turbines, tinted windows, water-saving toilets and other energy-efficient technology. Environmentalists and civic leaders have seized on the disaster as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to re-engineer the town."I would never say the tornado happening was a goo... posted on May 8, 3363 reads

A Polio Survivor Serves the Dying
From the neck up, John Welton looks like Santa Claus before his beard turned white. From the chest down, he is atrophied. He walks with crutches, his right leg bearing the weight of his 130-pound body. Welton, 60, has survived polio. And yet, he serves dying patients at Montefiore Medical Center, working there as a Physician Assistant. He does not wear a long white coat because it might tangle his... posted on May 9, 2200 reads

Meditation Literally Saves a Life
It was a cool early spring day in the eastern coastal port of Ningbo. 52 year old, Wang Jianxin was on a construction site digging a 5-metre ditch. Without warning, a wall of the ditch collapsed, burying Mr. Wang under a huge pile of earth. "It was suddenly dark and I realised what had happened and found that there was a small air pocket in front of me," Mr. Wang said. That was when he turned to... posted on Jun 1, 7817 reads

A Turtle Who Taught Kindness
"Enlightenment and epiphanies can show up in some pretty strange ways. The Buddha found it under a Boddhi tree, Nelson Mandela in prison and Ram Dass through psychedelics. Little did I know, mine would arrive in the form of a hard-shelled reptile simply trying to cross the road -- a turtle. But this wasn’t just any turtle, this was the world’s most optimistic one. He was tenaciously determine... posted on Jun 2, 4227 reads

Israeli Takes Palestinian Citizenship
World reknowned Israeli pianist, Daniel Barenboim, recently became the first person known to hold both Palestinian and Israeli passports. "It is a great honor to be offered a passport," he said after a Beethoven piano recital in Ramallah, the West Bank city where he has been active for some years in promoting contact between young Arab and Israeli musicians. "I have also accepted it because I be... posted on Jun 8, 1878 reads

Virutally Waterless Washing Machine
British inventors have designed a washing machine that takes eco-friendliness to a new level: it uses just a single cup of water to wash a load of clothes. Instead of water, the Xeros machine uses special plastic chips in each wash, and when that single cup of water is heated, these chips absorb the dirt -- including tricky stuff like coffee and lipstick. Though it's still in prototyping, the inve... posted on Jun 17, 4089 reads

A Dad's Wisdom
"Come on," my dad would say, "let's do some gardening." It wasn't a question, but a demand -– and I wasn't exempt, no matter if I said, "Dad, I'm playing baseball." Or football, soccer, or going sailing. It was a chore. I resented it. My dad's garden was a kaleidoscope of color, including dozens of roses in a bed that needed constant attention. "Roses are the greediest flower of all," dad told m... posted on Jun 15, 4244 reads

Vision Without Eyes: Caroline Casey
She's legally blind and can't see beyond one meter. But Caroline Casey managed to achieve, at age 34, the three dreams she held as a teenager: to become an elephant handler, to work for herself, and to drive a race car at 185 km/h. As Caroline puts it, "You don't need eyes to have a vision!" She went on to start the Aisling Foundation, which looks deeply at disability, its attendant loneliness and... posted on Aug 21, 2405 reads

A Homeless Man's Gift
"On New Year's eve my husband and I stopped in San Francisco for dinner on our way back from a retreat. While eating we felt that we should do something different this year. I took a $20 bill and asked the restaurant owner to give me $5 bills." So begins this heart-warming real-life story of a couple who ventured out on the streets to give and in the process received. ... posted on Jun 25, 5410 reads

The Best Education Money Can't Buy
Berea College, founded 150 years ago to educate freed slaves and "poor white mountaineers," accepts only applicants from low-income families, and it charges no tuition. "You can literally come to Berea with nothing but what you can carry, and graduate debt free," said Joseph P. Bagnoli Jr., the associate provost for enrollment management. "We call it the best education money can't buy."... posted on Jul 25, 4023 reads

A World Without Waste
Kamikatsu may be a small backwater in the wooded hills and rice terraces of south-eastern Japan but it's become a world leader on waste policy. Kamikatsu residents have to compost all their food waste and sort other rubbish into 34 different categories. There are no waste collections from households at all, instead people take full responsibility for everything they throw away. This BBC story sha... posted on Jul 28, 2698 reads

Finding A Lost Sunset
"Around 5:30pm, I was on the bus one day and everybody on the bus was quiet. People had just gotten off from work, students had just finished their last class and everybody was a little tired from a long day. I was just looking outside of the window without any specific thought in my mind. It was the same view I have seen many times before, people hurrying home. In front of me, there was a guy si... posted on Jul 30, 5817 reads

Towards More Tolerance
Today's students are the most racially tolerant generation our nation has ever seen. According to recent studies, they are more likely to have friends, or to date, across racial and ethnic lines than the generations who came before them. On the whole, they believe racism is wrong. But we still have a long way to go. According to federal statistics, one in four students report being targets of raci... posted on Aug 11, 2138 reads

13 Best Energy Ideas
"Investments in energy projects will total $16 trillion in the next two decades. That investment -- along with spending for long-lived buildings, transportation, manufacturing, and public works -- could lock us into climate chaos. Or it could set us on the path toward a sustainable future. How can we make sure that this new infrastructure is climate friendly? For starters, it will have to be both ... posted on Aug 9, 2819 reads

Bank Employees Pay-it-Forward
You think everyone would have something they dislike about their job -- with the notable exception of the people at State Bank and Trust in Fargo, North Dakota. "What do you hate about this company?" Steve Hartman of CBS asked some workers. One said: "I haven't found anything yet." Another: "No, this is a good place to work." And it doesn't stop there. Last Christmas, the bank gave each of the 500... posted on Aug 6, 4794 reads

The Responsibility Project
It all began when the insurance company Liberty Mutual ran a TV commercial about people doing things for strangers. The response was truly overwhelming. Thousands of emails and letters from people all over the country thanking them. Which led the company to think, "If one TV spot can get people thinking and talking about responsibility, imagine what could happen if we went a step further?" So they... posted on Aug 23, 3535 reads

Tell Me Your Story
Dan Gottlieb, the celebrated family therapist and radio show host who has helped thousands of people in difficulty has definitely faced his own challenges. A near fatal accident 29 years ago left him paralyzed chest down -- but it didn't take away his profound connection to others. "It came to me in the middle of the night a couple of weeks ago, four words that could change the world: Tell me your... posted on Sep 10, 3368 reads

An Unexpected Thank You
"You probably don't remember me," she began, "but I have come back to file for Graduation with Distinction" And then she pulled out a piece of paper from her wallet and gave it to me to read. It was my handwriting, but I didn't remember writing it. As the Assistant Director of the Honors Programs at the university, one of my jobs was to review student transcripts to make sure they met requiremen... posted on Oct 6, 4861 reads

Alex's Lemonade Stand
In 2000, a 4 year old cancer patient named Alexandra "Alex" Scott announced a seemingly simple idea -- she was holding a lemonade stand to raise money to help "her doctors" find a cure for kids with cancer. The idea was put into action by Alex and her older brother, Patrick, on their front lawn in July of 2000. For the next four years, despite her deteriorating health, Alex held an annual lemonade... posted on Oct 10, 2564 reads

Choosing Life: The Story of Jim Maclaren
A 300-pound, 6-foot-5 All-American football player, Yale student and aspiring actor Jim MacLaren's life literally ended after he was hit by a 40,000-pound city bus in his early twenties. Pronounced dead at the accident scene, he awoke from a coma eight days later, his left leg missing below the knee. Fast-forward a few years. MacLaren, supported by a prosthetic leg, becomes the top amputee triathl... posted on Oct 20, 4477 reads

The Generosity Gene
The thought of not receiving presents on a birthday, bar or bat mitzvah, or any other gift-getting occasion is hard to accept for most children. So, where would such an idea come from? Teachers, older siblings and parents are the inspiration. Sometimes, it's just another compassionate stranger. For Gwenna Heidkamp, 11, who requested animal shelter supplies in lieu of presents for herself, it was h... posted on Nov 5, 5834 reads

A Table For Three
"My fiancee and I decided today was the day to finally treat ourselves to a nice dinner. It started off as 'our' day' but little did we know that it would turn into much more. I didn't want the whole day to be about yearning to leave the office for the upcoming dinner and I didn't want the dinner to be just another romantic night for two... So, I felt compelled to turn up the notch of giving that ... posted on Nov 7, 5882 reads

A Hospital With A Difference
Anne Lang, head of human resources at Winchester Hospital, pulls out a simple, black box and flips it open. Inside is a small but telling stack of reasons why this 229-bed community hospital is the state's top place to work. At Winchester, Lang and other managers keep index cards listing how employees prefer to be rewarded: in a meeting, in the hospital newsletter, personally, with chocolate or sp... posted on Nov 9, 3143 reads

A Dying Boy's Last Wish
Brenden was the kid who ran the fastest, climbed the highest and dreamed of becoming a marine photographer. Leukemia took away all those things, but not his wish to help others. "He's always thought about others. Never complained about having to go through this, ever," said his mother, Wendy Foster. When Brenden was first diagnosed with leukemia, he and his mom began a new tradition. Every night t... posted on Nov 11, 6779 reads

Finding A Lifeline & A Friend
In 2000, after 31 years of robust health, James Chippendale, a wealthy Dallas business executive who had traveled much of the world, was found to be suffering from a lethal form of leukemia. Mr. Chippendale's doctors told him that his only chance of survival was a bone marrow transplant, and that the likelihood of finding a matching donor seemed bleak. More than 5,000 miles and a world away, Klaus... posted on Nov 13, 4694 reads

Measuring Stick For Managers
In one of its biggest polls, Gallup asked more than one million employees from a broad range of industries a series of questions designed to uncover the answer to the question, "What do talented employees need from their workplace?" The answer -- that talented employees need great managers -- led to the second research effort, which attempted to determine how the best managers find, focus, and kee... posted on Nov 17, 8694 reads

Kids Embrace The Giving Spirit
The very rich and the very famous capture the headlines for their charitable giving. But another group of avid philanthropists is also leaving its mark. Young people from grade school on are engaged as never before in making a direct difference in the world. They are donating via the Internet to favorite projects overseas, creating their own nonprofits to pursue social causes, and becoming grantma... posted on Nov 25, 3723 reads

The Boy With An Incredible Brain
This is an in-depth look at the astonishing mental capabilities of Daniel Tammet, born in Britain, and from a young age able to do extraordinary calculations in his head. Skeptics have thrown a number of challenges at him, for instance testing his ability to recite to 22,500 decimal points the calculation of Pi, as well as learning a language in a week. Tammet, in his gentle unassuming way, has pa... posted on Nov 27, 4254 reads

National Day of Listening
One of the largest oral history projects of its kind, the non-profit, Story Corps, has over the years enabled tens of thousands of everyday people to record the life stories of family and friends, because they believe that everybody's story matters and every life counts. This year, the organization has declared November 28, 2008 the first annual National Day of Listening -- and everyone's invited ... posted on Nov 28, 2279 reads

Clean Energy for the Developing World
Across much of the developing world, the dinner hour comes with a billow of smoke. That's because many of the world's 2 billion people who live without electricity continue to cook with wood, dung, and charcoal. These solid fuels may seem cheap, but their hidden costs are quite high. Burning them sends carbon into the atmosphere, exacerbating global warming. And the indoor air pollution they cause... posted on Dec 12, 2570 reads

Differently Abled
Javed Abidi, affected at birth with a spinal malady and confined to the wheelchair by medical negligence, is working to provide political visibility and economic opportunities for disabled persons. He rejuvenated the Indian chapter of Disabled People's International, a worldwide organization of people with disabilities, and mobilized the emergence of several grassroots groups across the country. S... posted on Dec 14, 1888 reads

Growing Seeds In Silence
"This story I'm about to share with you has been growing in the heart of many people on Cape Ann, where I live. It is the story of Jude, a young deaf man with green thumbs and a big heart who recently opened a plant store in our community called The Silent Seed. I first heard about him from my friend Nana who had noticed the new store during one of her walks and was so inspired by the owner that s... posted on Dec 13, 3982 reads