Statistics about depression, mental health, and screen time cause concern for young people along with older people’s judgment that “today’s generation doesn’t read or doesn’t care.” Sean Murphy spent six months reading hundreds of poems submitted by young writers age 10 to 21 mostly from the US but...
Writer Mandy Len Catron finally finished a book proposal she began in 2019. A publisher liked it, but was hesitant to proceed because of similar books on the market. Then someone asked, “Do you think this book needs to exist?” She realized it was “started by a person I used to be” before the...
Clarence Chua shows up to a bee rescue with nothing but a bandana and bare hands -- no suit, no gloves, just attention and respect. In six years, this 42-year-old in Singapore has relocated roughly 6 million bees, one nest at a time, moving entire colonies -- queen, workers, larvae and all -- to...
Dr. Cynthia Li had done everything right. She spent a decade rebuilding her health from the inside out after conventional medicine found nothing wrong with her -- no diagnosis, no treatment, just labs that read normal while her body fell apart. She documented every step, wrote the book, and then...
Alyssa Curtis drives through a town in Michigan, US, with a trunk full of diapers and microwaveable mac-and-cheese cups. She restocks the 20 little pantries her nonprofit has quietly planted across the region. The Shame Free Collective is exactly what its name promises: no forms, no judgment, no...
When fire swept through the Santana Indigenous Territory in 2018, the men went for help and the women watched the land burn. From that helplessness, something unexpected grew: a volunteer fire brigade where 25 of 45 trained firefighters are women -- grandmothers, teenagers, educators -- defending...
Every year, for the last 34 years, a team of Japanese surgeons, dentists, and nurses has made the same journey: through Ho Chi Minh City's traffic, across the Mekong River, and into a rural hospital in Vinh Long province -- to offer free cleft-lip and cleft-palate surgeries to people who might...
After fifty years planting 25 million trees, Swami Prem Parivartan, known affectionately as "Peepal Baba," offers a counterintuitive insight: the most important trees are not the saplings we will plant in the future, but the elder trees that are already standing. His answer to whether he would save...
According to gifted storyteller Brian Conroy, “Before I ever told a story, I internalized the elements that made a good story” by absorbing vibrant family rhythms and cadences, the music, the laughter. Stories about his father brought him to life though he died when Brian was only four months old....
Amanda Coll and her seven year-old son with cerebral palsy were riding on a modified scooter when they hit a puddle and fell. Suddenly, she realized her son was unconscious. She had no phone on her, and the park was nearly empty. Desperate, she shouted for help. Five teenagers, sheltering under a...