9 year old Autistic Social Entrepreneur
Kent Melville's father was skeptical when his son first said that he wanted to use the profits from his successful summer lemonade stand to start his own soda company. Aaron Melville, who teaches business classes at a local college, did not believe his 9-year-old autistic son was ready to run his own business. He told Kent to wait until he was older. His son's response brought tears to his eyes a... posted on Mar 15 2012, 26,499 reads

Jeff Skoll on Story-telling & Social Change
One of Jeff Skoll's passions is storytelling. It stems from his youth, when he hoped to be a writer and inspire people to help solve the world's biggest problems. Skoll took a detour on that path when he met Pierre Omidyar and became eBay's first employee and president. Ultimately that detour enabled him to tackle his early passions on a scale that he could only have dreamed of before. He is famed... posted on Mar 14 2012, 7,141 reads

3 Little Monks and a Moment of Truth
"This is Ankur," our host Sachi had said, with the catching enthusiasm she's known and loved for, "He's an amazing photographer and has recently gone totally 'gift economy'." Meaning that he offers his photography unconditionally as a gift, inviting recipients to 'pay it forward.' I look over at the young man seated in front of me. An unguarded face lit now by a smile both shy and warm. "What's yo... posted on Mar 13 2012, 39,576 reads

Office Workers Raise 5 Day Old Kitten
"He was all soaking wet. The house had been power washed earlier but no one knew there was a baby kitty over in the bushes or that he had gotten wet. I cleaned him off with paper towels in case he had offensive tasting soap on him and put him back down and went back inside so the mama could get her baby. After much sitting there watching him cry, she walked away and didn't come back. I ran over... posted on Mar 12 2012, 19,386 reads

How Language Enabled Innovation and Evolution
"How did 'culture' develop, exactly? Language, says evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel, was instrumental in enabling social learning -- our ability to acquire evolutionarily beneficial new behaviors by watching and imitating others, which in turn accelerated our species on a trajectory of what anthropologists call 'cumulative cultural evolution,' a bustling of ideas successively building and improv... posted on Mar 11 2012, 34,049 reads

9 Essential Skills Kids Should Learn
"Unfortunately, I was educated in a school system that believed the world in which it existed would remain essentially the same, with minor changes in fashion. We had no idea what the world had in store for us. And here's the thing: we still don't. We never do. We have never been good at predicting the future, and so raising and educating our kids as if we have any idea what the future will hold i... posted on Mar 10 2012, 187,062 reads

The Suitcase That's Saving Lives
What if your carry-on suitcase could save a woman's life? In the fight against maternal mortality in the developing world, a rugged, portable "Solar Suitcase" is providing reliable electricity to clinics in 17 countries where healthcare workers previously struggled to provide emergency obstetric care by the light of candles, flashlights and mobile phones. The Solar Suitcase powers medical LED ligh... posted on Mar 09 2012, 5,399 reads

The Kindness Boomerang
What goes around comes around. This charming short film depicts the ripple-effect of kind acts -- the way in which receiving an unexpected moment of generosity from a stranger can cause us to become more aware of the needs of those around us and to take action to become a vector of goodness.... posted on Mar 08 2012, 6,379 reads

A Heart Touched By Music
"The way she was singing comforted me a bit. I stood there watching her play for about fifteen minutes, thinking that it must take courage to perform on your own in the middle of a crowded New York ferry terminal. So I stood there listening. She must have felt my presence because she would occasionally look in my direction. By now I was telling myself that if she could perform in front of hundreds... posted on Mar 07 2012, 5,707 reads

The Power of Introverts
"Do you enjoy having time to yourself, but always feel a little guilty about it? Then Susan Cain's "Quiet: The Power of Introverts" is for you. It's part book, part manifesto. We live in an era that values its extroverts -- the outgoing, the lovers of crowds -- but not the quiet types who change the world. In this engaging interview Cain discusses what it really means to be an introvert, the valu... posted on Mar 06 2012, 21,839 reads