Snail Mail My Email
"Snail mail fascinates me," says Ivan Cash. "There's something warm and fuzzy about coming home and checking the mail and getting a letter from a friend. It's such an intimate for of communication, especially in today's world." But when he noticed his letter correspondence was dwindling as text and Facebook messages were growing, he decided something needed to change. The 25 year old, quit his ... posted on Apr 13 2013, 5,752 reads

The Most Beautiful Street in the World
"There are an estimated 11 million miles of paved road on Earth, forming a sprawling network which some might say represents humanity's conquest of the otherwise inaccessibly wild landscape. But, ironically it seems, the most beautiful streets in world just might be the ones that more closely resemble the untamed. With so many scenic streets in cities across the globe determining which of all is p... posted on Apr 12 2013, 17,898 reads

L'Equip Petit: The Little Team
"Zero. We always end at zero," muses Haritz, goalkeeper of the very special football team profiled in this delightful video."We haven't scored a goal yet, but we've almost scored them," reports Ruth with a wistful hopefulness. The other teams do substantially better. Always. But the lopsided scoreboard tallies have hardly dimmed their passion for the game. "We don't even care if we don't score bec... posted on Apr 11 2013, 3,321 reads

Finding Time: Slowness is an Act of Resistance
"The four horseman of my Apocalypse are called Efficiency, Convenience, Profitability, and Security, and in their names, crimes against poetry, pleasure, sociability, and the very largeness of the world are daily, hourly, constantly carried out. These marauding horsemen are deployed by technophiles, advertisers, and profiteers to assault the nameless pleasures and meanings that knit together our l... posted on Apr 10 2013, 9,512 reads

The Persuasive Power of Uncertainty
"When we started this research, we had the same hypothesis that a lot of people would have, that being more certain would be generally better when you're trying to persuade somebody or convince somebody to do something. And so, we were originally thinking expressing confidence or certainty might be a solution for people who lack credibility to gain influence. And so, we did some studies to look in... posted on Apr 09 2013, 6,847 reads

The Difference Between Listening & Hearing
"There is a difference, strong but not always noted, between listening and hearing. You hear the pneumatic drill, though you would rather not listen. You listen for your children's voices in the playground, but you can't always hear them. In urban environments, there's usually a surplus of sound -- so much, in fact, that it often becomes difficult to hear anything at all. But if we become too good... posted on Apr 08 2013, 26,837 reads

The Stubborn Gladness of Elizabeth Gilbert
The bestselling memoir "Eat, Pray, Love," about losing and finding herself, was the book that shot Elizabeth Gilbert to fame. It is now both a movie and travel tour. Yet there is much more to Gilbert than this runaway success. "Her collection of short stories, 'Pilgrims,' was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Award, and her debut novel, 'Stern Men,' was a New York Times Notable Book. Her 2009 TED T... posted on Apr 07 2013, 32,238 reads

Maya Angelou: Still I Rise
From the moment it was published in 1978, "Still I Rise" has been one of Maya Angelou's best-loved and most influential poems. It has inspired figures as diverse as Bill Clinton and Tupac Shakur and has become a staple in the canon of American poetry. Dr. Angelou's directness and candor affirms the power of individual strength over collective history, as well as to the power of individual lives to... posted on Apr 06 2013, 9,321 reads

Roger Ebert Goes Gently Into That Good Night
Celebrated film critic Roger Ebert passed away yesterday from cancer. In 2009, he'd shared a beautiful reflection on his own mortality, called 'Go Gently Into That Good Night:' "I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path. I was perfectly content before I was born... posted on Apr 05 2013, 40,236 reads

Why Mind-Wandering Robs You of Happiness
""The main thing is to get what little happiness there is out of life in this war-torn world," Clare Boothe Luce advised her young daughter, "because 'these are the good old days' now." And yet most of us are conditioned to escape into the past, into the future, into our to-do lists -- to wander off away from the present, even as we chronicle the moment in real-time on various lifestreaming platfo... posted on Apr 04 2013, 27,670 reads