Kitchen of Cheer
"Food is just a means of getting closer to people." Watching a child rummage in the garbage to drink melted ice from a discarded plastic sack spurred Mavis Ching to do something. Touch A Life prepares lunches for local kids and Saturday deliveries to their families in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Mother Teresa said: "The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved." Touch A Life a... posted on Oct 21 2013, 4,824 reads

Robert Hass On Rivers & Stories
In this essay, Pulitzer prize-winning poet Robert Hass brings our attention to the potential resilience of rivers as stories across cultures, places, and time, that most of the life on earth depends on fresh water, and that like stories they have a beginning, a middle, and an end. In between they flow, if we let them...... posted on Oct 20 2013, 21,777 reads

Darwin & The Survival of the Kindest
Dacher Keltner, director of the Berkeley Social Interaction Laboratory, investigates what it means to live a good and meaningful life from the fascinating perspectives of neurobiology, emotion science, and evolutionary science. Contrary to the idea that Darwin saw human beings as competitive and self-interested, Keltner argues that Darwin saw the human species as profoundly social and caring. He e... posted on Oct 19 2013, 26,884 reads

The Last Quiet Places
Gordon Hempton says that silence is an endangered species. He's an acoustic ecologist -- a collector of sound all over the world. He defines real quiet as presence -- not an absence of sound, but an absence of noise. The Earth as Gordon Hempton knows it is a "solar-powered jukebox." Quiet is a "think tank of the soul." In this interview we take in the world through his ears.... posted on Oct 18 2013, 38,922 reads

Love's Micro Moments of Connection
Is there any scientific basis for believing that love can stretch beyond the boundaries of our intimate relationships? What do the latest developments in human biology and psychology have to say? Barbara Fredrickson is better qualified than most other people to answer these questions. A professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a leading figure in the burgeoning "positive ps... posted on Oct 17 2013, 23,213 reads

10 Keys for Happier Living
We all want to be happy. And, happiness is the one thing we wish most for those we love. So, why is it so difficult? And, why aren't we working harder to make happiness our priority? "If you want to feel good, do good" -- this is just one of the many brilliant points carried forward by the Action for Happiness, a group of like-minded individuals from all walks of life who are intent on creating th... posted on Oct 16 2013, 121,735 reads

How to Design Neighborhoods for Happiness
Over the past 40 years we've seen a shrinking sense of community in America and this writer points at the design of our neighborhoods as a key factor in how to bring us back together. He writes about the New Urbanism, an "architectural movement to build new communities (and revitalize existing ones) by maximizing opportunities for social exchange: public plazas, front porches, corner stores, coffe... posted on Oct 15 2013, 74,214 reads

Turning the Tables on Success
"Two of the defining qualities of great leaders are the ability to make others better and the willingness to put the group's interests first. The employees with the greatest potential to excel and rise will be those whose success reverberates to benefit those around them." So, what does it take to be a great leader? In this piece, Wharton Business School professor Adam Grant describes givers, matc... posted on Oct 14 2013, 8,555 reads

5 Ways to Ease Envy
Ah, the green glow of envy that clings desperately to our heels, and manifests often in the most unexpected of ways. Envy knows no rest, as we find ourselves surrounded each day by those we feel to be better equipped, better looking...or just simply better! So, how do we find relief from its crushing grasp? Author Juliana Breines offers her approach to disarming the little green-eyed monster befor... posted on Oct 13 2013, 28,510 reads

The Overview Effect: Insights From Astronauts
Forty years ago, the astronauts of Apollo 8 orbited the moon for the first time and snapped the iconic "Blue Marble" photographs of the earth from space. It was not only an image of stunning beauty; it represented a powerful new perspective of earthly life and its place within the cosmos. It produced a radical shift in self-awareness. The earth has a unity and cohesion we understand intellectually... posted on Oct 12 2013, 6,988 reads