suggests that our brains may be wired for altruism, but there’s a catch—well, five of them, actually. Humans can be remarkably generous. Americans gave a record $390 billion to charitable organizations in 2016 through a combination of individual giving and philanthropy from estates, corporations, and foundations. And people give in myriad other ways as well, from everyday acts of kindness toward loved ones to volunteering to large acts of altruism, like donating a kidney to a stranger. This isn’t surprising, given how wired we appear to be for giving. But there are limits to our generosity—and many people want to be more generous th... posted on Jan 18 2018 (11,248 reads)

is so easy to stir the stew, to add your own spice and heat to it until it boils over rendering anything inside charred and devoid of nutrition. How much more difficult it is to soothe an angry temper, to see from another's point of view, to broker peace. In this Daily Good Spotlight on Peacemakers, we take a look back at features on remarkable people who have brought peace to tense situations and made peace a priority both in their own lives and in the world about them. Children Children are our hope for the future and also surprisingly powerful present-day agents of change. With their fresh eyes, they see problems and can propose solutions where adults may have lost their ... posted on Oct 18 2017 (10,168 reads)

the past decade, I have had the chance to ask thousands of teenagers what they think about school. I’ve found that the vast majority of them generally feel one of two ways: disengaged or incredibly pressured. One thing nearly all teens agree on is that most of what high school teaches them is irrelevant to their lives outside of school or their future careers. One study found that the most common feelings among high school students are fatigue and boredom. Another study concluded that 65 percent of the jobs that today’s high school graduates will have in their lifetime do not even exist yet. But we are still teaching them in the same way that we t... posted on Dec 12 2017 (47,065 reads)

following is an edited transcript of Preeta Bansal's share at an Awakin Circle in Santa Clara in December 2017] Just today, on the way down here, I received news that an old family friend had passed yesterday. On the topic of Small Graces, I'm reminded of her life and her story, and how much it influenced my and my family's journey. My parents came to the U.S. from India in the 1960s, along with the first wave of immigrants from India. My father came to Kansas, which is where he was getting his Ph.D. Six months later, my mother came with the three of us kids -- my sister, my brother, and me. We were just two, four and five years old. It was the very first ... posted on Mar 24 2018 (16,160 reads)

the dawn of each new year, we vow to make changes, usually little things--lose a few pounds, eat better, exercise more, be more patient. Sometimes those changes stick; sometimes by February we are wondering where our resolutions have gone. But what of the big changes--atoning for a life of crime, or giving up destructive or selfish pursuits, for instance? Are those sorts of big changes possible? Do we have the potential to stop in our tracks, consider our lives, and turn another way if we find ourselves far down the wrong path?  In this Daily Good Spotlight on Redemption we look back through old columns to revisit stories of people who have reversed a destructive course in favor of... posted on Jan 3 2018 (7,325 reads)

Life is capable of creating patterns and structures and organization all the time, without conscious rational direction, planning, or control, all of the things that many of us have grown up loving. This realization is having a profound impact on our beliefs about the nature of process in interpersonal relations, in business organizations, as well as in nature itself. In this article, I will focus on some of the recent shifts in our understanding of the way things change. Three images have changed my life -- one, a picture of a chemical reaction, another, a termite tower in Australia, and a third, an aspen grove in my new home state of Utah. Each image in its own way represe... posted on Jun 15 2018 (9,434 reads)

human-assisted extinctions of other species. Sometime later, I received an email about a “Remembrance Day for Lost Species” from a decidedly different publication, the Dark Mountain blog. I am all for remembering lost ones, like vanished ancestors I never knew. But it is abstract, not embodied, remembering. It’s an idea of grief more than lived grief, the kind that wracks the body and leaves indelible scars. The pair of essays conjure up spectral images of creatures coming and going (mostly going), back and forth across Rumi’s “doorsill where the two worlds touch”—or moving in and out of what evolutionary cosmologist Br... posted on Mar 15 2018 (19,152 reads)

at all. I’m grateful for what science has been able to give us. But so far science is limited to what the five senses can prove, and there is so much more out there. If we didn’t have Geiger counters we would never know about radioactivity, for example. If we didn’t have a television, we’d never know there were television wavelengths passing through the room with us.  If we didn’t have X-rays, or ultrasound, we wouldn’t have access to all kinds of images that are invisible to the naked eye. We know there are sound waves we can’t hear, but dogs can. We know there are parts of the light spectrum we can’t see, but we’ve developed... posted on Mar 28 2018 (17,068 reads)

crime or harm disrupts the balance -- in a community, among people, and within a family. Trying, convicting, and incarcerating the wrongdoer separates them from society but may do little to reclaim that lost balance and less still to improve the underlying conditions that led to the harm. Restorative justice takes a broader view with efforts that may include facilitating reconciliation between the victim and wrongdoer as well as addressing the underlying causes of crime and distress, potentially improving the broken community.  Restorative justice can be transformational for all concerned. In this Spotlight on Restorative Justice, we look back at Daily Good features that advocate for ... posted on Apr 26 2018 (8,987 reads)

landscape, the journey from creation to home. JIM RUNS HIS HAND over a fish carved into a red sandstone wall that towers over the dusty, cracked ground dotted with cacti, yucca, and pine. Several hundred yards away, the land drops abruptly into an arroyo. For thousands of years, the A:shiwi etched animals, events, and stories into rock, painted rainfall and gardens onto pottery, and composed songs that told the way to springs and rivers. This, too, is mapping, says Jim. The names and images connected with places conveyed a symbiotic relationship between the people and the land. After their lands were colonized by the Spanish in the sixteenth century and later claimed by the Uni... posted on Jul 17 2018 (11,054 reads)

Worline is Executive Director of the CompassionLab at the University of Michigan, a research scientist at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University, and co-author of Awakening Compassion at Work, forthcoming in February 2017 from Berrett-Koehler. She sat down with author and entrepreneur Nir Eyal to discuss why empathetic teams make better business deals, how more caring leaders can help prevent corporate scandals, and the steps for cultivating compassion at work. This conversation originally appeared in Heleo: In-Depth Conversations with the World’s Leading Thinkers. Nir Eyal: What is the business case for c... posted on Sep 13 2018 (7,565 reads)

U.S. Vishal Rao, 40, developed a voice prosthesis for throat cancer patients that costs less than a dollar and is the cheapest in the market (Photos: By Special Arrangement) It is a traumatic experience for stage four throat cancer patients when the larynx or the voice box is removed and they lose their ability to speak. Till a few years ago, such patients used expensive imported voice prosthesis – costing between Rs 15,000 and Rs 35,000 - to be able to speak again. Those who could not afford the device remained voiceless for the rest of their lives. But not anymore, thanks to Dr. U.S. Vishal Rao, a Bengaluru based oncologist, who has developed an incredibly low-priced voi... posted on Jan 3 2019 (5,686 reads)

left to right, Cephus X (Uncle Bobby) Johnson, Stevante Clark, brother of Stephon Clark, 22, who was killed by Sacramento Police, and Beatrice X Johnson gather at the Families United 4 Justice event in Oakland, California. Photo by Nissa Tzun/Forced Trajectory Project. Oscar Grant III was an unarmed Black man killed by a police officer in Oakland, Calif., years before Black Lives Matter drew national attention to the growing number of unarmed Black men, women and children who die at the hands of law enforcement officers—what some scholars are calling an epidemic. Jan. 1 marked 10 years since the 22-year-old father was fatally shot by the Bay Area Regional Transit of... posted on Mar 16 2019 (3,504 reads)

NOVEMBER 2013  Oscar Schwartz on Maria Popova “Books are the original internet,” Maria Popova tells me with a grin. She is switched on, ballsy, irresistibly articulate, fully engaged. This is Maria’s gift. She talks about complex ideas in a way that transforms them into something I want to talk about with my friends. She makes big concepts relevant. “My bookshelves are completely full, and I’m still buying new ones compulsively,” she adds. “They’re piling up around me!” Undoubtedly, it is this gift that makes Maria’s blog, Brain Pickings, such a success. Her thirst for knowledge means that she looks pa... posted on Feb 17 2019 (8,843 reads)

mushrooms, fish, or clams, since for years she and her partner, the photographer Molly Malone Cook, were too poor to buy food. “I built myself a world out of words…” Nothing in Mary’s life was easy or light. She had a cruel childhood: an abusive father, a neglectful mother. Her response was to seek refuge in the woods of her native Ohio in the company of Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Emerson, and her alma mater Whitman — just her and the treetops, her and the images of the pages that spilled onto the earth. “I built myself a world out of words,” she said. At 17 she visited the home of the poet (also a Pulitzer winner) Edna St. Vincent M... posted on Mar 24 2019 (24,537 reads)

our computer screens for a time to return to the roots of being. Hiding under the covers, I tried talking, whispering, croaking, anything. Nothing came out, just a ghostly whoosh of air. Canceling was an option, but the event was new and it was doubtful that a replacement teacher could be found on such short notice. Standing up did not help. Neither did stretching or walking or smiling bravely in the bathroom mirror. I padded through a quiet house awash in golden summer light. Terrible images flashed before my eyes: faces looking up at me, uncomprehending, dismayed. People heading for the exits. Once the Buddha taught without speaking, holding up a single white flower. That wordl... posted on Aug 1 2019 (7,657 reads)

I  asked who knew what a wren was. Wren, that small brown bird, feathers small as splinters with a sharp song so loud that threads its way through hedges in parks and gardens. Not one. Not even the teacher. An absence of knowledge. So the book, of poems and paintings, went out into the world and into bookshops and libraries, into homes and schools. Teachers began to work with it and children wrote their own spell-poems using the book as a catalyst, learned the names, created beautiful images. Some children escaped, out from the classroom into playgrounds and beyond to search for The Lost Words. Outdoor classrooms sprung up, Lost Words gardens and trails. And such beautiful, rich wo... posted on Dec 12 2019 (6,833 reads)

a young man he trained for a decade in the classical dance form of bharatanatyam. As an adult he studied yoga, and ran a studio of his own. Until one day he decided to put aside every shred of training he had received and announced he was going to observe his students in silence, and see what arose …it was a radical decision, and for Gert van Leeuwen, it was a moment that changed everything. Gert van Leeuwen is the founder of Critical Alignment Yoga and Therapy, and the director of two Critical Alignment schools in Amsterdam and Russia. Over the last forty years his work has largely flown under the radar, drawing a small and dedicated following around the world. He has... posted on Feb 20 2020 (5,105 reads)

of people gathered on the Malieveld in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 2, 2020, in protest of violence against Black people in the U.S. Photo by Robin Utrech / SOPA Images / Light Rocket / Getty Images. In the past week, demonstrations have erupted in big and small cities across the United States and in countries around the world over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Amid the outpouring of outrage over Floyd’s death, the killing of Breonna Taylor by a police officer in Louisville, Kentucky, and of Ahmaud Arbery by vigilantes in Georgia, along with pent-up anger, exhaustion, and fear experienced by Black, Brown, and Indigenous ... posted on Jun 4 2020 (8,180 reads)

by Diane Barker The present pandemic, which in a few short months has wreaked havoc across our world, is most likely caused by an imbalance in the natural world, as loss of habitat and biodiversity is not only driving animals to extinction but directly causing animal viruses to spread to humans. In response our leaders are using the images of conflict: “We are at war with Covid 19,” we keep hearing; it is an “invisible enemy” we need to “vanquish.” But although this virus is disrupting our lives, causing sickness, death, and economic breakdown, it is itself a completely natural phenomenon, a living thing reproducing itself in the way nature in... posted on Aug 9 2020 (15,408 reads)