September 5, 2025
Finding creative courage
“Whereas moral courage is the righting of wrongs, creative courage, in contrast, is the discovering of new forms, new symbols, new patterns on which a new society can be built.” ― Rollo May
Learning
"Courage is not the absence of despair; it is, rather, the capacity to move ahead in spite of despair."
When The Courage to Create appeared in 1975, humanistic psychology was reshaping the cultural conversation. Ideas of self-awareness, self-acceptance, and personal growth were moving from the margins into the mainstream.
BOOK: The Courage to Create
Learning
“People are incredibly generous, and creativity has no limits."
In 2012, Konstantinos Trichas had just moved from Athens to London and was eager to break into the city’s design scene. At the time, he was freelancing and commuting two and a half hours each way from East London.
ARTICLE: The Two Pages Sketchbooks Have Travelled The World, And Will Restore Your Faith In Creativity
Teaching
“We do school differently.”
Gever Tulley describes his parents as beatniks. Growing up in Mendocino, California, often below the poverty line, he and his brother were given a great deal of freedom and largely left to their own devices after school.
ARTICLE: No Teachers and No Curriculum: Is This the School of the Future?
One-liners
"We must all do our work.
Be accountable and go heal, simultaneously, continuously. It’s never too late. Each of us is precious. We, together, must break every cycle that makes us forget this."
— adrienne maree brown
AUGUST 29, 2025
A new world can arise.
"Out of this darkness a new world can arise, not to be constructed by our minds so much as to emerge from our dreams. Even though we cannot see clearly how it's going to turn out, we are still called to let the future into our imagination. We will never be able to build what we have not first cherished in our hearts." - Joanna Macy
Nature
"We are our world knowing itself. We can relinquish our separateness. We can come home again."
Joanna Macy often described today’s greed, violence, and ecological destruction as products of an “industrial-growth society” fueled by delusion, greed, and the illusion that we are separate from each other and the Earth.
BOOK: World as Lover, World as Self
Culture
A “99% perspective” on history suggests that societal collapse often meant liberation, adaptation, and resilience for the majority.
Here's a tough job. Luke Kemp researches the causes, dynamics, and consequences of societal collapse across history, along with today’s existential risks such as climate change and nuclear war.
ARTICLE: The Rewards of Ruin
Communication
Portraits of peace from around the world
Selman is a Brooklyn-based brand identity and design studio founded in 2013. Its founder, Johnny Selman, believes design carries ethical responsibility and can bring urgency, empathy, and clarity to pressing issues like injustice, climate change, and political divides.
WEBPAGE: Peace Post
Habitat
Why Paris is a friendlier place to shop and stroll
This spring, as U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy threatened to cancel congestion pricing in New York City, and to rip out urban bike lanes, Parisians voted to remove cars from 500 streets and restore 10 percent of the city’s parking spaces to public space.
ARTICLE: We’ll Never Have Paris … Unless We Start Rebuilding Our City Like The French Did
Communication
Better business through chemistry
On his website, Rob Schwartz says: “I help business people be more creative and help creative people succeed in business.” He lives up to that promise in his newsletter, Rob Schwartz Helps, where he generously shares his love for the creative business.
ARTICLE: Atomic Bonds: Why Great Work Requires A Little Chemistry
One-liners
ARTICLE: Appalachia’s ex-coalfields are being revived with native trees.
ARTICLE: Paper finds that when machines take over tasks people used to do, workers who can't switch to new tasks often see their pay stay the same or go down, especially those with less education, while people who can adapt or have higher degrees are more likely to see their pay go up.
ARTICLE: RISD is offering a new course on tattooing
"Self interest is of the past.
Common interest is for the future."
— David Attenborough
AUGUST 22, 2025
We could change the world tomorrow.
"We could change the world tomorrow if all the millions of people around the world acted the way they believe." - Jane Goodall
Civics
"We have huge power, we of the affluent societies, we who are causing the most environmental damage."
Jane Goodall warns that the greatest threat to our shared future is apathy. She is especially concerned about those with the means to act who instead choose inaction. While it’s easy to feel small as one person among billions, she insists that each of us can make a difference—by replacing apathy with hope and action.
ARTICLE: The Power of One
Learning
The Dali Lama on making a kinder world
In early 2020, the 14th Dalai Lama sat down in his own home for a filmed conversation. In this intimate setting, he shared personal reflections, life experiences, and teachings. These direct-to-camera talks became the seed for a cinematic portrait that blends his storytelling with archival footage, offering a window into both the man and his timeless wisdom.
TRAILER: Wisdom of Happiness - Official Trailer
Culture
“System Change, Not Climate Change!”
Gus Speth has been at the center of the environmental movement for decades. He co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), chaired the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality under President Carter, founded the World Resources Institute, and later served as Administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. He also spent ten years as dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.
ARTICLE: Towards a Climate-Capable Democracy
Nature
We need a new way of thinking to build resilient, sustainable communities in a rapidly changing world.
Chris Reed is an urban ecologist and designer. Nina-Marie Lister is a planner and ecologist. Together, they argue that ecological thinking not only can—but must—shape design practices for a sustainable future.
ARTICLE: Ecology and Design: Parallel Genealogies
Learning
Helping others has measurable and lasting cognitive benefits
Helping others feels good, and it's good for you. New research shows that regular acts of helping others, whether formal volunteering or informal neighborly aid, slow cognitive decline significantly in middle-aged and older adults.
ARTICLE: Helping Others Can Slow Cognitive Decline
Communication
Reporting hate is care in action.
While federal support for emergency services has been shrinking, Illinois is one of only three states with an agency focused on responding to hate incidents. To build public trust, Chicago designer Nick Adam and his firm Span teamed up with the University of Illinois Chicago’s Institute for Healthcare Delivery Design to create a new identity for the program, which helps people and communities affected by hate.
ARTICLE: Words Are Not Just Words
One-liners
"We must accept finite disappointment, but we must never lose infinite hope. Only in this way shall we live without the fatigue of bitterness and the drain of resentment. "
—Martin Luther King, Jr.
August 5, 2025
Articulate the world you want to live in.
"We often tell our students, 'The future’s in your hands'. But I think the future is actually in your mouth. You have to articulate the world you want to live in, first. We pride ourselves as a country that’s very technologically advanced. We have strong, good sciences, good schools; very advanced weaponry, for sure. But I think we’re still very primitive in the way we use language and speak, particularly in how we celebrate ourselves." - Ocean Vuong
Learning
Imagine and live into a story beyond crisis and collapse.
In her book When No Thing Works, Norma Kawelokū Wong draws on her experiences as a Zen master, Indigenous Hawaiian leader, community activist, and policymaker to explore how to live well and act wisely in an era of systemic collapse, collective acceleration, and profound uncertainty.
BOOK: When No Thing Works: A Zen and Indigenous Perspective on Resilience, Shared Purpose, and Leadership in the Timeplace of Collapse
Learning
"Let's tell the stories that allow us to fall in love with how that future could be."
Rob Hopkins is an impassioned and articulate advocate for the transformative power of collective imagination. At last year’s Boomtown Festival, he portrayed a “time traveler” from the year 2030, returning with optimistic reports and “evidence” of a transformed, sustainable, and joyful world.
VIDEO: Rob Hopkins speech Boomtown 2024 | Boomtown Goes Deeper
Civics
Creating stories about what might happen in order to shape and change the future, not simply to predict or adapt to it
I first met Adam Kahane in 2012, the same year he published his book Transformative Scenario Planning. Unlike traditional scenario planning, which focuses primarily on prediction and adaptation, Kahane’s approach uses the process not merely to understand the future but to actively shape it.
VIDEO: Transforming the Future with Adam Kahane
Teaching
"The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility."
Anke Schwittay's work bridges anthropology, global development, and design. She is developing what she calls critical-creative pedagogy—teaching methods that invite experimentation, imagination, and deep engagement with social challenges.
WEBSITE: Creative Universities
Learning
"The network endures because it does not live for itself."
In his 2023 book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin articulated his philosophy that creativity is a way of being—a lifelong practice of curiosity, openness, and engagement with the world. Writing in the the New York Times reviewer Tim Kreider described the book as “more Lao Tzu than self-help,” noting that it reads like contemporary Taoist wisdom for creative living.
WEBSITE: The Way of Code
Economics
How to assess the quality of clothing in an age of fast fashion and cost-cutting
Bernadette Banner cares about clothing. She is passionate about reconnecting with the intrinsic value that clothing once held—back when people owned only a few garments that lasted and were cared for lovingly. To her clothing historically had “an intrinsic value that we just don't have today,” and in her work she tries to rediscover that sense of worth.
VIDEO: How to Identify Quality in Clothing (A Rant)
Economics
Economics as if people mattered
From my seat at the table it appears that economics is the study of who thrives, who stagnates, who gets left out—and how we might actually fix it. It's for this reason that in a polarized world I find The Financial Times and The Economist to be trusted sources of news and analysis.
PODCAST: Technically Economics
One-liners
ARTICLE: Once a niche trend, green roofing is now a mainstream solution for improving urban biodiversity, managing rainwater, and reducing heat.
City of Chicago green roof. Image via Center for Neighborhood Technology
