Quadruple Amputee Swims Across English Channel
Philippe Croizon lived a rather normal life with his family until a severe electric shock accident led to the amputation of all four of his limbs. Undeterred by his handicap, Philippe decided to swim the English Channel and eventually went on to become the first quadruple amputee to achieve the feat. Watch how Philippe prepared himself for this remarkable challenge!... posted on Feb 21, 3750 reads

Can Science Create Heroes?
Can modern science help us to create heroes? That's the lofty question behind the Heroic Imagination Project, a new nonprofit started by Phil Zimbardo, a psychologist at Stanford University. Heroism isn't supposed to be a teachable trait. We assume that people like Gandhi or Rosa Parks or the 9/11 hero Todd Beamer have some intangible quality that the rest of us lack. When we get scared and selfis... posted on Jan 7, 4602 reads

Homeless Man with 'Golden Voice'
Ted Williams was homeless, but with a golden voice. A chance YouTube video changed everything. Williams story became a viral sensation on January 4, with the original YouTube clip reaching more than four million views in 24 hours. He was found by a dispatch reporter on the side of the road, using his incredible voice to collect money on the street, holding a cardboard sign that asks motorists for ... posted on Jan 6, 8446 reads

An Academic Sparks Giving to Charity
Toby Orb is a researcher at Oxford University who lives off little more than 300 pounds a month. Yet he's inspiring a movement of charity-giving that's even more impressive than Zuckerberg, Gates, and Buffett. In the past year, Ord has given more than a third of his earnings to charities working in the poorest countries. Why? For Ord, the question is: why not? "If you only have a certain amount of... posted on Jan 25, 4127 reads

Children Show They Can Make a Difference
Parents want their kids and teens to care about others - whether at school, in their community, or in need a continent away. The good news is that children "are sort of hard-wired" to want to help others, says Michael Ungar, author of "The We Generation: Raising Socially Responsible Kids." "They want to take on responsibility." From a second grade environmentalist to a 21-year-old peacemaker, here... posted on Feb 5, 4810 reads

A Neighbor's Kind Act
They lived across the street from each other for years, but didn't know each other well. James Bronson was a fixture in Adams Morgan, a retired barber who'd been greeting passerby from his front stoop for more than 3 decades. John O'Leary was 25 years younger, a sound engineer who'd bought his six-bedroom townhouse just as the neighborhood was beginning to gentrify. Not the likeliest of roommates.... posted on Feb 17, 6106 reads

Over Ten Thousand People Attend His Funeral
Government officials shut down the streets. As everyone silently stood in line to pay the final respects, the magic of Ishwar-kaka was evident -- the richest men in the country stood next to human-waste scavengers next to powerful politicians next to reknowned Gandhians next to vegetable sellers next to his next-door neighbors next to kids who had merely read about him. A humble man who built ov... posted on Feb 15, 14635 reads

Mind vs. Machine
In the race to build computers that can think like humans, the proving ground is the Turing Test-an annual battle between the world's most advanced artificial-intelligence programs and ordinary people. The objective? To find out whether a computer can act "more human" than a person. In his own quest to beat the machines, the author discovers that the march of technology isn't just changing how we ... posted on Feb 14, 2961 reads

The 3 A's of Awesome
It's the little things in life. The waitress who notices your empty glass, and refills it without asking. Grabbing hold of a tissue, right before a sudden sneeze. The sound of snow falling. Freshly laundered clothes... An observer of life's smiling snapshots, Neil Pasricha reveals 3 secrets (all starting with A) to leading a life that's truly awesome.... posted on Feb 16, 23886 reads

Seaweeds May Be Earth's First Plants
A trove of seaweed-like fossils unearthed in southern China may be some of the oldest plants ever discovered. Until now the earliest definitive evidence of complex creatures resembling modern organisms was about 580 million years old. This new series of fossils predates those by anywhere from 20 million to 56 million years. "It's not the oldest multicellular life," remarks a co-author of the study... posted on Mar 13, 1534 reads

The Professional Development Ethic
"The notion that one can do anything is liberating. But life without constraints has also proved a recipe for endless searching, endless questioning of aspirations. It has made this generation obsessed with self-development and determined, for as long as possible, to minimise personal commitments in order to maximise the options open to them... At what point, though, does the experience-seeking en... posted on Feb 22, 5607 reads

Pizza Delivery Saves the Day
Every day for the past three years, 82-year-old Jean Wilson has ordered a large pepperoni pizza and two diet cokes from the local pizza shop. One day, she took a particularly hard fall in her house that left her unable to get up. After her regular order failed to surface for three days, delivery driver Susan Guy took it upon herself to check on her, an act that saved Wilson's life!... posted on Mar 2, 3733 reads

Like Water From a Hummingbird
On a trip to Japan, Wangari Maathai learned the story of the hummingbird in the forest fire. While other animals run in fear or hang their heads in despair, the hummingbird flies above the fire time and again, releasing a few drops of water from its tiny beak. "Why do you bother?" the animals shout. "I'm doing the best that I can," the hummingbird replies. For Maathai, the Nobel Peace Prize recipi... posted on Mar 5, 4271 reads

A Town Lines Up to Save An Unknown Man
Howard Snitzer clutched his chest and crumpled on a freezing sidewalk. He wasn't breathing. He had no pulse. If he didn't get help soon, he would die. For the next 96 minutes, more than two dozen local towns folks, first responders, took turns performing CPR on the fallen man. Their teamwork saved Snitzer's life, in what may be one of the longest, successful out-of-hospital resuscitations ever. Wh... posted on Mar 4, 3390 reads

A Couple's Weekly Gift
At the start of 2011, a couple resolved to pledge $52 to a different charity every week this year. Inspired by a website that challenges people to make public resolutions to do good, the anonymous duo made their first gift after receiving a fortuitous letter from a homeless shelter asking donors to consider providing 26 meals by giving $52.52. A teacher and a coach with three kids, the couple says... posted on Mar 27, 1824 reads

The Untapped Power of Smiling
We're born to do it. A smile is one of the most basic, biologically uniform expressions of all humans. Paul Ekman, the world's leading expert on facial expressions, discovered that smiles are cross-cultural and have the same meaning in different societies. 3-D ultrasound technology shows that developing babies appear to smile even in the womb. The mood-boosting power of a smile is unfathomable. St... posted on Mar 25, 19892 reads

The Chef's Way of Giving Back
When, Haley, who had struggled through poverty most of his life, finally started garnering success in his restaurant business, he realized that he still wasn't happy. So, while he was searching for something that would make his life more meaningful, that something found him instead: the children. At a charity event, Haley agreed to sponsor two orphaned girls. Back then, he had no clue that these g... posted on Apr 15, 3443 reads

75-Year-Old Retiree Brings Smiles to Street Corners
Hundreds of people sleep on San Diego's streets each night, on corners, beneath the interstate and across from the public library. They hang out in small groups or sit alone, watching the time pass. But when a wiry man with dark glasses approaches, everyone seems to perk up. The man is David Ross, better known as Waterman Dave. For years, he's handed out hundreds of bottles of water each day to th... posted on Apr 27, 4116 reads

The Mathematics of Being Nice
Cooperation is interesting because it essentially means that you help someone else, someone who is a potential competitor. You reduce your own success in order to increase the success of somebody else. Why should you do that? Why should natural selection favour such behavior? To answer these questions, Martin Nowak highlights 5 types of humans cooperation via evolutionary dynamics and experimental... posted on Apr 7, 12372 reads

82 Hour Hunger Fast
Anna Hazare, a 73-year-old Gandhian, sat fasting in the burning sun, and he promises to stay until death -- unless his Indian government agreed to consider a powerful law that could rid Indian politics of the scourge of corruption. A tall order. Yet, after single-handedly provoking a people's revolution that galavinized millions of his countrymen, the 72-year-old activist who launched what he cal... posted on Apr 9, 7548 reads

Today You, Tomorrow Me
A touching story of a random act of kindness: "During this past year I've had three instances of car trouble: a blowout on a freeway, a bunch of blown fuses and an out-of-gas situation. They all happened while I was driving other people's cars, which for some reason makes it worse on an emotional level. Each time, when these things happened, I was disgusted with the way people didn't bother to he... posted on Apr 11, 10508 reads

How the Ancient World Used Color
Were ancient Greece and Rome filled with dignified white marble statuary? Not a chance. Though we still think of them in terms of white marble sparkling under a hot Mediterranean sun, a new exhibition shows at least one Greco-Roman lady as they really were -- in technicolor. Under Stanford sophomore Ivy Nguyen's skillful watch in the Cantor Arts Center lab, long-dead colors on marble have indeed ... posted on Jun 6, 5610 reads

How We Can Change Our Minds
The study of neuroplasticity is changing the way scientists think about the mind/brain connection. How can we use scientific discoveries linking inner experience with brain function to effect constructive changes in everyday life? How does the brain change as we influence each other? How can we re-shape our brain to become more open and receptive to others? New evidence is showing that the mind c... posted on May 7, 21248 reads

Simple Philosophy of the World's Oldest Man
Walter Breuning had a deceptively simple philosophy that he lived by for 114 years. And it was these ideas for living that appeared to be his secret to a long life. "Every change is good." "The more you do for others, the better shape you're in." "We're going to die. Some people are scared of dying. Never be afraid to die. Because you're born to die." Learn more about the world's oldest man.... posted on May 4, 11477 reads

Harvesting Water, Out of Thin Air
The African Namib beetle has found a distinctive way of surviving. When the morning fog rolls, it collects water droplets on its bumpy back, then lets the moisture roll down into its mouth, allowing it to drink in an area devoid of flowing water. What nature has developed on it's own, Shreerang Chhatre, an MIT graduate student, wants to refine, and help the nearly 900 million people worldwide that... posted on May 6, 5584 reads

The Great Tree Survey
According to a 2010 United Nations report, the rate at which forests are destroyed-logged or cleared to make way for farms or mines-was nearly 20 percent lower from 2000 to 2010 than it had been in the previous decade. Huge tree-planting programs, especially in China, reduced the net loss of forest even further. But vast areas are still being slashed, mostly in the tropics, including each year a S... posted on May 30, 2959 reads

4 Reasons To Keep a Work Diary
What does Oprah have in common with General George S. Patton? Being an avid diarist. Recently, Oprah offered her readers glimpses into her diaries, along with encouragement to keep their own. Many well-known figures throughout history, from John Adams to Andy Warhol, have faithfully kept records of their daily lives. Aside from a place in history, are there any personal benefits of keeping a diary... posted on May 20, 10997 reads

The Most Vital Lessons for Starting Over
In his famous Lectures on Physics, Richard Feynman presented this interesting speculation: "If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?" Fascinated by Feynman's question, Seed magazine posed a similar one to a number of leading th... posted on Jun 5, 17260 reads

The Neuroscience of Improv
How does an act of imagination happen? How does the mind create on command? Recent experiments have attempted to figure out the mystery behind this kind of creativity, from John Coltrane letting loose on a saxophone to Jackson Pollock dripping paint on a canvas. These are works made entirely in the moment -- their beauty is spontaneous. Researchers have found that before a single note ... posted on Jun 15, 6237 reads

Why Invisible Gorillas Matter
Daniel Simons has become one of the most influential young cognitive scientists in the last decade, co-authoring smash-hit studies in two different fields. He's best-known for his "Gorillas in our Midst" study, co-authored with Christopher Chabris, where viewers are shown a 45-second video of six students tossing around basketballs. Viewers are instructed to carefully count only the passes between... posted on Jun 29, 4928 reads

Why Is Humility So Underrated?
Generally we don't equate genius with being humble. If anything, we expect the opposite, and are pleasantly surprised when we find a counterexample. But this presumption is actually relatively modern. Ancient Romans believed that a genius was actually an invisible, divine entity who would assist a person in a creative work. In effect, this view positions a person as an instrument of their work, a... posted on Jun 24, 4777 reads

The Artist Who Gives It All Away
One day, San Francisco artist Jane Baker realized something. Now she operates from a new place -- new, but also very old: "I don't know art history that well, but it is only in the last few hundred years that art has been a commodity. Before that, most artists were doing it out of their love for, frankly, for God or their church. Most of the art that's been made has not been made for money. So I'm... posted on Jun 30, 3009 reads

20 Untranslatable Words From 'Round The World
There are at least 250,000 words in the English language. But to think that English -- or any language -- could hold enough expression to convey the entirety of the human experience is naive. For example, 'Toska,' from Russian, which is a kind of dull ache of the soul. Or 'Mamihlapinatapei,' from Yagan, describing the wordless, yet meaningful look shared by two people who both desire to initiate s... posted on Jul 2, 26858 reads

Impossible: Breaking the Four-Minute Mile
In 1954, England's Roger Bannister ran the first sub-four-minute mile. Today, of course, the it is routine among the top runners, but until Sir Roger (knighted in 1975) accomplished it, it was considered beyond the realm of human possibility -- like climbing Mount Everest or walking on the moon. Bannister though, being a medical student at Oxford at the time, recognized it more of a global, psycho... posted on Jul 11, 3451 reads

Ways to Connect More Deeply
"Make Crows Feet. Use the Right Words. Perfect Your Handshake. Dress for a Tie. Get Close. Don't Impose Your Values. Accept Others. Pursue and Project Your Passions. Find Shared Passions. Default to Yes." In this compelling infographic, former chief evangelist of Apple, Guy Kawasaki, further details his advice for increasing likability. Or put another way, simply connecting more deeply.... posted on Aug 3, 0 reads

The 'Before I Die' Project
Artist Candy Chang had an idea to turn an abandoned property in New Orleans into a sort of collective performance art piece in which all are invited to participate, simply by declaring what is important to them. Participants are invited to complete the sentence "Before I die I want to ..." Chang has provided chalk, a large-scale blackboard, and the necessary permits. A thought-provoking piece of p... posted on Aug 6, 16083 reads

The Horse Whisperer
"Your horse is a mirror to your soul, and sometimes you may not like what you see," says Buck Brannaman, a cowboy who travels around the U.S. helping horses with "people problems." The documentary film, Buck, follows Brannaman from an abused childhood to an incredibly successful relationship with horses. In the film, the animal-human relationship becomes a metaphor for facing the daily challenges ... posted on Aug 15, 5874 reads

Homeless Kid Wows Korea
At three years old, he was handed off to an orphanage. At five years old, he was living on the streets. At twenty-two years old, he's persevered and pursued his love for the arts, amazing the world with his heartfelt performance on this video of Korea's Got Talent. Meet Choi Sung-Bong, a person who embodies the idea of never giving up. ... posted on Aug 21, 9676 reads

10 Strategies for Reducing Prejudice
UC Berkeley professor Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton provides research-based tips for overcoming prejudices based on differences. Here are his top ten strategies, summarized: Travel (somewhere that challenges your worldview); Take a course on prejudice; If you value egalitarianism, recognize that unconscious bias is no more "the real you" than your conscious values; Laugh a little -- smiles and happiness ... posted on Sep 10, 17627 reads

The Man Who Builds Bridges & Saves Lives
More than 13 years after his parents drowned in a flash flood, David Kakuko is at the Moruny River, building a bridge that might have prevented their deaths. The hanging footbridge will provide safe passage over the Moruny, a frequently flooded waterway in West Pokot, Kenya. "Before the bridge, there [were] so many people, so many who lost their lives," said Kakuko, 32. "I know, because I have no ... posted on Sep 16, 3164 reads

Remembering Steve Jobs' Insights
Steve Jobs, the iconic founder of Apple, died yesterday, and though the world will remember him for his legendary leadership, his creative genius, or his passion for design, he was also a man of inspiring insights. In this powerful 2005 commencement address at Stanford, Jobs shares three personal stories, urging his audience to always "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish." ... posted on Oct 6, 11978 reads

5 Ways of Spending Time -- toward Happiness
Our search to understand what makes us happy goes back centuries. As does our enduring belief that if we just do the right thing, happiness will follow. Researchers at Stanford and UPenn have recently shown how happiness is indeed a consequence of the choices people make. So what can people do to increase their happiness? Their answer is surprisingly simple: spend your time wisely. But some of the... posted on Oct 31, 37515 reads

Why Do A Billion Go Hungry?
In 1971, Frances Moore Lappe wrote a remarkable book that started a movement: "Diet for a Small Planet." Since then, people have been asking her, "Have things gotten better or worse?" She says, both. The number of hungry people has soared to nearly a billion, despite strong harvests; just four companies control three quarters of international grain trade; conditions for farmworkers remain so horr... posted on Nov 1, 12593 reads

Do Trees Talk to Each Other?
Don't trees only talk to each other in the movies? Professor Suzanne Simard of the University of British Columbia shares her latest research regarding forest ecosystems: amazingly, trees in a forest coexist in a synergistic web of interconnections, with the largest, oldest, "mother trees" serving as hubs. Because of the old trees linked into the network, the underground exchange of nutrients incre... posted on Dec 4, 9302 reads

The Library Rethought
Libraries have a special place in history as a hearth of culture that kindled the greatest feats of science and the grandest works of art. Yet today, they're in danger of being left precisely there -- in history. As our collective use of libraries dwindles in the digital age, five brave efforts are innovating the concept of "the library" in ways that make it as culturally relevant today as it ever... posted on Dec 11, 8736 reads

Language Is More Than Just Words
"We Still Live Here" is a fascinating documentary that tells a life affirming story of cultural revival. It follows the journey of social worker Jessie Little Doe Baird, a member of the Wampanoag tribe of Native Americans, who undertook an incredible quest to reclaim the language of her people. In 1993 Jessie began to hear the voices of her ancestors speaking in a language she didn't understand. A... posted on Jan 10, 10662 reads

Top 10 Kindness Stories of 2011
What we appreciate, appreciates. That's the way activist Lynne Twist explains a universal phenomenon: that the more we concentrate on something, the more we understand and learn, the more it expands our own boundaries. It also applies to the stories we surround ourselves with. In theory, stories of kindness are happening all the time, but the more we orient ourselves to them, the more we find all ... posted on Jan 1, 7066 reads

Three Parables to Regain Perspective
"If you are like me, sometimes I am so busy trying to catch up, stay even, or take the lead that I lose perspective. When things are going well, I am on top of the world. Yet then when bad luck hits or I see others achieving things I wish I could, I get down on myself. It's at times like these that I refer back to three parables from different cultures that have help me better keep my perspective.... posted on Jan 21, 26049 reads

Road Trip Nation
"I'd feel so much better about the world we live in if being 'passionate' or 'inspired' was a national standard instead of so much of the academic trivia that is mandated," a high school teacher wrote. Working with 11th graders in his capacity as college advisor, he was helping them explore how their own passions could lead to further study and possible career choices. In the process, he introduce... posted on Jan 27, 4634 reads

Lessons from a 7-yr-old's Heartwarming Letter
Sometimes the greatest lessons come unexpectedly, and from the smallest moments. 7-year-old Owen Shure's heart-warming letter to a football player is a perfect example. The Twittersphere buzzed with reactions to the San Francisco 49ers' Kyle Williams fumbling the ball in a tight moment in the playoffs. Some responses were downright vitriolic. But hopefully Kyle also saw this touching story from Be... posted on Jan 31, 22528 reads