Inspiring the Future: Redraw the Balance
Twenty children between the ages of 5 and 7 in the U.K. were asked to draw a fighter pilot, surgeon and fire fighter. This video captures the reality of gender stereotyping among school children, and...
View ArticleLearning Generosity from a Homeless Child
On her annual trip home to visit her parents, author Homaira Kabir decided to invest some of her time and finances into a worthwhile cause. And despite finding many situations in which to share her...
View ArticleRising to the Occasion: Unleashing Our True Potential
"I remember a dream of long ago -- we all have this kind of dream, I think -- in which I came onto the stage to play a solo organ recital. The audience applauded and quieted down, I took my seat on the...
View ArticleNew Trail of Hope
"Walking into the park to get a better look, I was shocked to see how many pieces of art I saw. It was hard to believe. This was a city park, after all. Sure, one might see a piece of public art here...
View ArticleWhitefoot: 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...
View ArticleThe Science of the Story
Stories are told in the body. It doesn't seem that way. We tend to think of stories as emerging from consciousness -- from dreams or fantasies -- and traveling through words or images to other minds....
View ArticleOlympians Without Nations: Refugees Head to Summer Games
In August of 2015, Yusra Mardini and her sister, Sarah, fled Syria after their home was destroyed in the countrys civil war. The sisters traveled on land through Lebanon and Turkey, eventually boarding...
View ArticleThe Great Unknown Is Me, Myself
"Jacob Needleman's voice has been prominent in the conversation about man's inner possibilities for some forty years. Turning away from a career in medicine toward philosophy while at Harvard, he went...
View ArticleOptimism 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...
View ArticleThe 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...
View ArticleIndia's Youngest Single Parent to Adopt a Special Needs Child
On January 1, 2016, software engineer Aditya Tiwari made history by becoming the youngest single adoptive parent in India. He won a long struggle against the system to bring home Binny, a special needs...
View ArticleBeyond 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...
View ArticleThe Lady in Number Six
Alice Herz-Sommer was known for her grace and wisdom. The 109-year-old, [who passed away in 2014] was the oldest living pianist and Holocaust survivor, and undoubtedly one of the most inspirational...
View ArticleThe Hour of Land
Effigy Mounds National Monument is a quiet space of contemplation in the northeast corner of Iowa, containing 207 mounds, 56 of them effigies in the shape of animals. They are among the tens of...
View ArticleHousecalls 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...
View ArticleDoes Forgiveness Make Kids Happier?
Parents of young children may find themselves constantly trying to teach their kids to apologize for their mistakes. In the process a key area of development that tends to get overlooked is the art of...
View ArticleHow 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,...
View ArticleA Tribute to Mr. Happy Man
For over thirty years, Bermuda's Johnny Barnes stationed himself every morning for six hours at a busy traffic intersection. He made sure to tell all who passed by that he loved them. His delight and...
View ArticleOne Heart: A Mission To Save Lives in Childbirth
""When I came to Tibet I heard of so many tragic stories of women dying -- no access to care in remote areas, no history of trained birth attendants, and no knowledge about pregnancy and childbirth,"...
View ArticleBolivia'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...
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