Why We Feel Awe
"News stories and social media posts inundate us every day with tips for greater happiness, health, and general well-being. But who has time to fit them into our already packed schedules? Recently, though, my research has led me to believe that one simple prescription can have transformative effects: look for more daily experiences of awe. This doesn't require a trek to the mountains. What the sci... posted on Jun 2, 17211 reads

Whitefoot: Wendell Berry Tells the Story of a Mouse
"Her name was Peromyscus leucopus, but she did not know it. I think it had been a long time since the mice around Port William spoke English, let alone Latin. Her language was a dialect of Mouse, a tongue for which we humans have never developed a vocabulary or a grammar. Because I dont know her name in Mouse, I will call her Whitefoot. The name fits because her four small feet and all the undersi... posted on Jun 8, 7363 reads

Optimism in the Dark Night
"In the process of writing this song I was made to look deeply into the nature of optimism in the face of dire facts. Is optimism naiive, simplistic? Does it require living behind rose-colored glasses in denial of the truth? After all, how can any of us feel hopeful about our earth's ecosystem and how it is trending?" Singer and song-writer Gayan Macher offers up his new song, "Earth on Fire,... posted on Jun 12, 14528 reads

The DNA Journey
Travel search site Momondo conducted a DNA experiment with 67 people from around the world and asked: do you dare question who you really are? Participants were asked what they thought the test would uncover, and were also encouraged to share some of their views and prejudices about people from different parts of the world. Some weeks later they were invited back. Watch the surprising results.... posted on Jun 13, 6936 reads

Beyond the Known Territory
"When I was in my twenties, I would let myself go and when an image came up, I'd paint it. I'd have a piece of paper and ideas would come to me, and I'd try to depict them. Looking at these later, I'd see things revealed -- childhood memories or hidden things going on in my life -- these things would be there. But when I did the painting, I wouldn't see any of this." Rue Harrison talks about the m... posted on Jun 15, 7940 reads

Housecalls for the Homebound
When Dr. Samuel Lupin's critically-ill daughter passed away he was understandably devastated. Then he channeled his grief into serving other patients who, like his late daughter, were fragile and housebound. ""Because of her, I got involved in this," he says. "You sort of feel like, these are my patients, this is my extended family, and they need me much more than patients in an office." Little di... posted on Jun 18, 36206 reads

Navajo Justice: Life Comes From It
"The Navajo word for "law" is beehaz-aanii. It means something fundamental and absolute, something that has existed from the beginning of time...It's the source of a healthy, meaningful life. Navajos say that "life comes from beehaz-aanii," because it is the essence of life. Imagine a system of law that permits anyone to say anything they like during the course of a dispute, and no authority figur... posted on Jun 30, 22808 reads

What Science Taught Me About Gratitude, Compassion & Awe
Dacher Keltner, world renowned psychologist and researcher credited with expanding the field of science to include emotions, offers thought leadership that can shift our cultural narrative towards kindness and care. He shows us that the levels of the basic human nervous system include compassion (through experiments in which images of human suffering lit up the subjects' mammalian nervous system),... posted on Nov 4, 31446 reads

Wendell Berry: What Are People For?
In these poems Wendell Berry — poet, novelist and environmental activist — writes about what it means to be human, the human experience of solitude, of community, of love and work, of desire and despair.... posted on Jul 18, 34483 reads

What Role Were You Born to Play in Social Change?
Bill Moyer was "best known for identifying eight stages of successful social movements, which he named the Movement Action Plan, or MAP...he also invented a powerful tool that clarifies how we work for change on two levels: individually and organizationally.Four Roles of Social Activism" This article delves into the roles of advocate, helper, organizer, and rebel, and how we can embody them effect... posted on Jun 27, 16405 reads

Paying Attention, Discovering Joy
When asked whether the poems she wrote helped connect her to the joy they expressed, poet Barbara Crooker had this to say, "I write from personal experience. If you look at the facts of my life, you might not think that there would be much reason for rejoicing. My first child was stillborn and my first marriage fell apart partly because of this, my third daughter had a traumatic brain injury when ... posted on Jul 26, 11370 reads

Living Gandhi's Message In Inner City Oakland
Francisco ("Pancho") Ramos-Stierle's life changed abruptly when he learned that the university where he was pursuing his PhD was working with an outside laboratory to develop next generation nuclear weapons. At that time, he refocused his life on service and activism. He explains, "I began to evolve my definition of success. It wasn't just about me getting to do what I wanted to do; it was finding... posted on Aug 23, 17303 reads

How Anxiety Reduces Empathy
It turns out that anxiety can have a negative effect on not just ourselves, but our dealings with others. In a recent series of studies on how specific emotions influence perspective taking, participants experiencing emotions with uncertainty, like anxiety and surprise, displayed greater egocentrism than those feeling other emotions such as anger or disgust or even neutral feelings. When stressed ... posted on Jul 12, 22788 reads

Elie Wiesel's Nobel Acceptance Speech
Extraordinary Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Elie Wiesel passed away this weekend at 87. He inspired millions with his messages of peace, atonement and human dignity. Maria Popova of Brain Pickings invites us to "Remember this luminous human being with his timeless, increasingly timely Nobel speech on human rights and our shared responsibility in ending injustice."... posted on Jul 4, 21199 reads

Robin Wall Kimmerer: The Grammar of Animacy
"Puhpowee...translates as 'the force which causes mushrooms to push up from the earth overnight.' As a biologist, [Robin Kimmerer] was stunned that such a word existed. In all its technical vocabulary, Western science has no such term, no words to hold this mystery. You'd think that biologists, of all people, would have words for life. But in scientific language our terminology is used to define t... posted on Aug 17, 11224 reads

Bolivia's Law of Mother Earth
Imagine a lake having the same rights as a landowner. Or a condor with the same rights as a child. Under Bolivia's historic Law of Mother Earth, signed into law in 2010, all entities in nature have equal rights to humans. Based on Andean spiritual principles, the law was enacted in an effort to curb climate change and the exploitation of Bolivia's natural resources. It spells out seven specific ri... posted on Jul 15, 32199 reads

Leadership & Authentic Self Esteem
"There was a time when we believed self-esteem to be the royal road to flourishing...However, later studies showed that increases in self-esteem did little for our happiness or performance, but ample for our egos. Professor Roy Baumeister's work with self-esteem showed that we'd been raising a generation of narcissists who went on to wreck havoc in their lives and in their workplaces. It now appea... posted on Oct 18, 16830 reads

A Tale of Two Americas and the Mini-Mart Where They Collided
Ten days after 9/11, a shocking attack at a Texas mini-mart shattered the lives of two men: the victim and the attacker. In this stunning talk, Anand Giridharadas, author of "The True American," tells the story of what happened next. It's a parable about the two paths an American life can take, and a powerful call for reconciliation.... posted on Jul 30, 24918 reads

10 Tips for Effective Communication
In this article, Liz Kingsnorth explores the ways we can improve our relationships with others at home, at work and with friends, by improving the way we communicate. Kingsnorth offers ten tips to keep in mind to communicate non-violently when engaging with the world, which include simple actionable steps like listening more than speaking, to more complex ideas exploring empathy and non-verbal co... posted on Aug 20, 177868 reads

The Fine Art of Taking Time
"When I tell people I'm an artist they usually tell me they can't draw. I'm not sure when art became conflated with realistically representing things by making marks on surfaces, but I bet it was before cameras and copy machines. I carved this rickshaw for my friend to print onto fabric so she could have a rickshaw skirt. The lack of perfection is part of the art. However, transferring informatio... posted on Sep 8, 14354 reads

6 Ways More Nature in Our Lives Can Reduce Violence in Our World
In some settings the natural world has the power to heal human hearts and prevent violence. That statement isn't based on modern Romanticism, but on a growing body of mainly correlative scientific evidence, with a tight focus on the impact of nearby nature. Read on to discover six reasons why meaningful relationships with nature may -- in concert with other approaches -- bolster mental health and ... posted on Nov 14, 18917 reads

The First Allergy-Friendly Food Bank
For people with food allergies or Celiac disease, groceries can be extremely expensive. Those on very limited budgets can get caught in a gap in the social safety net because available food products may be unsafe. Facing just this problem when her daughter was diagnosed with food allergies, Emily Brown worked with fellow mom, Amy Goode, to launch the Food Equality Initiative, aimed at making food ... posted on Oct 9, 9226 reads

Mumbai's Signal Shala: A School in a Shipping Container
"Signal Shala" or Signal School is a school that operates out of a shipping container under a flyover in Mumbai, India, and facilitates education for children who otherwise beg or sell small items at traffic signals to earn a living for themselves and their families. 28-year old Aarti Parab is a teacher at Signal Shala. In this article she shares what inspires her to co-create an environment of l... posted on Dec 8, 10920 reads

On the Relationship Between Failure, Humility and Wisdom
"Failure is like the original sin in the biblical narrative," according to philosophy professor Costica Bradatan, who is writing a book to be called "In Praise of Failure." He says that "regardless of class, caste, race, or gender, we are all born to fail, we practice failure for as long as we live, and pass it on to others. Yet failure gives us the chance to look at everything -- at the world, at... posted on Sep 13, 9071 reads

Arlene Samen: A Global Healer for Women
Arlene Samen has been a Nurse Practitioner in Maternal Fetal Medicine for over 33 years. In 1997, Arlene met the Dalai Lama and showed him what Interplast could offer children of Tibet. He said to her, "You must go into Tibet and help rural people. When you are on the path of service, all doors will open to you." That meeting deeply impacted the trajectory of Arlene's life of service. In 2004, she... posted on Jul 11, 7767 reads

Fleet Maull: Waking Up in Prison
Fleet Maull founded Prison Dharma Network in 1989 while serving a 14.5 year mandatory-minimum sentence for drug smuggling at a maximum security federal prison medical facility. He led a twice weekly meditation group in the prison chapel for 14 years and also helped start the first inside prison hospice program and provided daily care to dying prisoners until his release. In 1991, he founded Nation... posted on Sep 24, 14766 reads

A Bible Belt Church's Response to a Mosque
Leaders of a growing Muslim community in Memphis, Tennessee, wanted to build an Islamic center where they could gather not just to worship, but to host weddings and other parties; gather on weekends and holidays; house a day care for children; and have activities for the elderly. When they finally succeeded in purchasing a plot of land opposite a church, Dr. Bashir Shala, head of the board of trus... posted on Sep 29, 6084 reads

The Gift of Danger: Lessons from Aikido
"As I began to practice aikido, there were indeed moments when my own energies blended with those of another person and I had a taste of what I had hoped to find. But often I reacted unthinkingly when someone grabbed at my arm or struck toward my head. Id try to muscle through or, just as tensely, hold back from moving. As I witnessed these automatic outbreaks of fear and hostility, I began to rec... posted on Oct 13, 10953 reads

How to Raise an Environmentalist
"From climate change to overfishing to deforestation, it seems that we are on the brink of a natural disaster on an epic scale. If we cannot do something to reverse these trends, we will surely make our planet uninhabitable." So, what could spur people, especially children, into action? "Research indicates that motivating people to care takes more than just reciting facts and making doomsday predi... posted on Nov 3, 12464 reads

How to Protect Against Nature-Deficit Disorder
With today's use of technology, it can be easy to forget to go outside, but studies show that making this a habit can be bad for your health, especially for kids. In this interview with Richard Louv, author of the book, "Vitamin N: 500 Ways to Enrich the Health & Happiness of You Family & Community," Louv talks about the upsides of getting outside. Spending time in nature can result in a host of b... posted on Nov 23, 16637 reads

How Poetry Captivates Us
Robert Hass is one of contemporary American poetry's most celebrated and widely-read voices. He served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 1995-1997 and has won both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. In the mid-1990s, Cofounder of the River of Words organization, which provides tools for teaching ecoliteracy to young students through multidisciplinary, interactive curricula, Hass is Distingui... posted on Nov 29, 10990 reads

The Power of Emotional Agility
Just like physical agility, emotional agility is important to overall health, well-being and successful relationships at work. Psychologist Susan David, a lecturer at Harvard Medical School and author of the book, Emotional Agility, offers insights about the "critical skill set" needed to achieve emotional balance. She notes, "emotions help us not only to communicate with other people but also to ... posted on Nov 17, 13985 reads

Staying Alive: Mary Oliver on How Books Saved Her Life
"Adults can change their circumstances; children cannot...Whatever can take a child beyond such circumstances, therefore, is an alleviation and a blessing." Mary Oliver shares how books provided salvation, a place into which she could disappear, and how her passion for language helped her conquer her pain and find power through her work.... posted on Dec 7, 15957 reads

Do You Like Me? Do I?
""While I was at Facebook, I came up with an idea to solve a problem. Here was the problem. Lets say, I posted this awesome photo. Five or ten people might comment, and I'd feel great...But I soon noticed that people who didn't have something new or clever to say, might not say anything at all. They'd come up to me in the hallway and tell me they liked something I'd shared. WAIT A MINUTE. How muc... posted on Nov 21, 35475 reads

Thanksgiving Spotlight on Gratitude
On October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln set aside the last Thursday of November as a day to give thanks, a new national holiday, Thanksgiving. He urged his fellow citizens then embroiled in civil war to not lose sight of the gifts surrounding them, among them "fruitful fields and healthy skies." Lincoln understood that, even in the worst of times, gratitude is essential. As we celebrate Than... posted on Nov 24, 15070 reads

Annie Dillard: On Seeing
"When I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I've never been seized by it since. For some reason I always "hid" the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of ... posted on Dec 1, 27256 reads

Annie Dillard: Living Like Weasels
Annie Dillard tells us we could learn from weasels "something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive...open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will...yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn't "attack" anything; a weasel lives as he's meant to, yielding at every m... posted on May 25, 37247 reads

Wisdom from the Women at Standing Rock
"For months, the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota has become ground for resistance against the construction of a crude-oil pipeline that desecrated sacred burial and prayer sites and threatens the water supply of the surrounding Native American community. The growing encampment of water protectors at Standing Rock has drawn supporters from across the United States amid escalating te... posted on Dec 5, 42050 reads

Moving the Giants: An Urgent Plan To Save The Planet
"Moving the Giants" tells the story of arborist David Milarch. In 1991, Milarch had a near death experience that inspired a radical restructuring of his life with a goal to harness the incredible life force of redwood trees to generate healing and change. His efforts among the redwoods serve two purposes: First, as the planet warms and conditions for these redwoods change in their southernmost ran... posted on Dec 12, 3279 reads

Digital Green: Helping Farmers Through Video
"Today what Rikin Gandhi and his 65-member team do at Digital Green, an independent, non-profit that he heads, is simple: train farmers to make and show short videos where they record their problems, share solutions and highlight success stories. They provide farmers with nifty $200 handheld, battery-operated, small, handheld pico projectors to show the videos to small groups of people in electric... posted on Dec 9, 4115 reads

Krista Tippett on Sounds True
In this interview with award-winning journalist and author Krista Tippet, she shares insights on journalism as a force for progress, beginning, first, with a good question and active listening: "Good listening starts even before words begin to be spoken, even before we speak the question. It starts with the invitation we create, the way we create the invitation, the space we create. If it's not tr... posted on Dec 31, 13548 reads

Maya Angelou: The Day I Learned the Value of a Smile
"My paternal grandmother who raised me had a remarkable influence on how I saw the world and how I reckoned my place in it. She was the picture of dignity. She spoke softly and walked slowly, with her hands behind her back, fingers laced together. I imitated her so successfully that neighbors called me her shadow. "Sister Henderson, I see you got your shadow with you again." Grandmother would look... posted on Dec 16, 24928 reads

Giving the Homeless a Hand Up with Technology
At HandUp.org, before you help someone in need, you can see their face, look into their eyes, see their children, their smile, read about their challenges, and even send them a message. In a meaningful way, HandUp.org connects donors with those in need. The brainchild of Rose Broome, HandUp.org fulfills a need she realized existed when saw a homeless woman sleeping on the street. Here she was in S... posted on Jan 2, 15291 reads

Kids in Hospital Receive Magical Christmas Surprise
This holiday season, kids in a hospital in Australia were able to see Santa and hang out in a winter wonderland without having to leave the building.In one day, photographer Karen Alsop took photos of 30 kids with Santa and a green screen at Monash Childrens Hospital in Melbourne, Australia. During their photo shoots, the patients expected a typical Santa photo. They had no idea Alsop had plans to... posted on Dec 25, 10564 reads

Barbara Crooker: Poetry as a Form of Love
"I believe the way we most fully integrate ourselves with the world, is through our senses. When I teach creative writing classes, I love it when I get a five-day class, so that each day I give them an exercise based on one of the senses. I think the electronic world makes us out of touch with our embodied selves. For me, nature is a huge source. I want to be outside. I want to turn to it. I want ... posted on Feb 3, 11898 reads

Welcome to Terra Sapiens
In this article, planetary astrobiogist David Grinspoon, senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute and adjunct professor of astrophysical and planetary science at University of Colorado, focuses on our growing knowledge of what we are doing to this world. He says “we have entered a new epoch of Earth history, one in which the net activity of humans has become an agent of global cha... posted on Jan 24, 5460 reads

Generation Waking Up
Kosmos: "You have been working with young people for a number of years now, Joshua. How is this generation different?" Josh Gorman: "There's a new generation of young people waking up and coming of age all across the planet, a generation rising between an old world dying and a new world being born. We are the make-it-or-break-it generation. The all-or-nothing generation." Gorman is the founder of ... posted on Jan 18, 12442 reads

How Behavioral Science Helps Tackle Big Issues
Over the past several decades, behavioral science researchers have uncovered a wealth of fascinating insights into the human mind. But much of this study has been confined to laboratories and academia. Alissa Fishbane is bucking that trend by applying the lessons from behavioral science to the social sector. As managing director of ideas24, her team advises governments and nonprofits about how to ... posted on Mar 15, 11928 reads

Say Your Truths & Seek Them In Others
In a lyrical, unexpectedly funny talk about heavy topics such as frayed relationships and the death of a loved one, Elizabeth Lesser describes the healing process of putting aside pride and defensiveness to make way for soul-baring and truth-telling. "You don't have to wait for a life-or-death situation to clean up the relationships that matter to you," she says. "Be like a new kind of first respo... posted on Feb 25, 24804 reads

This Woman's Novel Approach to Poverty Is A Game Changer
"Compass Working Capital's mission is to help struggling families build the savings and the skills they need to climb out of poverty. Compasss programs combine financial education and coaching, with incentives for saving. The asset-based approach works: 60 percent of families in the flagship program have increased their incomes by an average of $11,000 a year, and 81 percent have seen their saving... posted on Mar 2, 13208 reads