december 5, 2025
Caring requires paying attention
“Caring requires paying attention, seeing, listening, responding with respect. Its logic is contextual, psychological. Care is a relational ethic, grounded in a premise of interdependence. But it is not selfless.” - Carol Gilligan
culture, connections
A “different voice” that speaks from a premise of connection and responsibility rather than separateness and hierarchy
When Carol Gilligan wrote In a Different Voice in 1982, most ideas about moral development were still based almost entirely on research with boys and men. Their way of reasoning was treated as the only “mature” way to judge right and wrong.
BOOK: In A Different Voice
culture, commons
Why “heterarchy” might be a better way to describe the shifting roles and relationships that actually hold communities and institutions together.
Carole Crumley is an American anthropologist and archaeologist known for founding the field of historical ecology and for introducing the idea of heterarchy to explain power and complexity in human societies.
ARTICLE: The Central Role of Collaboration and Trust in Human Societies
civics, collaboration
A general blueprint for how any cooperative human group can function well
Elinor Ostrom was an American political scientist and political economist best known for showing that communities can successfully manage shared resources without relying only on government or markets. Her work challenged the idea that commons inevitably collapse into a “tragedy of the commons.”
ARTICLE: Generalizing the Commons
learning, history
Design history as a “practice of freedom”
bell hooks saw education as a “practice of freedom," an opportunity to invite marginalized voices, encourage open dialogue, and challenge dominant narratives rather than reproduce them. Boston University professor Kristen Coogan applies this same lens to graphic design history.
INTERVIEW: The Daily Heller: The Growth of New Design History Ecosystems
communications, storytelling
Stories help people understand that the futures we picture together can become the futures we build.
Within reparations work, the term “hope gap” describes the disconnect between support and belief. Many people back an issue, yet far fewer think meaningful change can realistically happen in their lifetime, especially around Black reparations and Indigenous Land Back.
RESEARCH REPORT: Fabric of Repair
habitat, architecture
"The design of our schools is a choice. We can decide that our kids deserve beautiful, inspiring places to learn."
Ingrid Fetell Lee is a designer, researcher, and writer who studies how the built environment shapes joy, emotion, and well-being. In this article, she argues that most schools are unattractive not because beauty is costly, but because education systems prize efficiency, safety, and control over children’s emotional needs.
ARTICLE: How to Design a Better School Building
learning, Personal development
Don’t be afraid of the dark.
This is a dark and uncertain time. Joanna Macy reminds us that, like living cells in a larger body, it is natural to feel the world’s trauma. In a culture fixated on positivity and quick fixes, practicing radical acceptance—allowing things to be as they are, including painful emotions—can be a brave and transformative act rather than a passive one.
ARTICLE: In a culture obsessed with positive thinking, can letting go be a radical act?
ARTICLE: In New York City, congestion pricing leads to marked drop in pollution.
ARTICLE: Half of adults didn’t make a new friend last year.
ARTICLE: Among the many ethnic groups who fought in World War II to defend democracy from fascism, Indigenous Americans served at a higher percentage than any other ethnic group—more than a third of able-bodied Indigenous men between the ages of 18 and 50 joined the service.
ARTICLE: Half of adults didn’t make a new friend last year.
ARTICLE: Among the many ethnic groups who fought in World War II to defend democracy from fascism, Indigenous Americans served at a higher percentage than any other ethnic group—more than a third of able-bodied Indigenous men between the ages of 18 and 50 joined the service.
"Self interest is of the past.
Common interest is for the future."
— David Attenborough
december 5, 2025
Opportunities disguised as problems
“What we have before us are some breathtaking opportunities disguised as insoluble problems." - John W. Gardner
learning, creativity
"The society capable of continuous renewal not only is oriented toward the future but looks ahead with some confidence."
John W. Gardner was a major American public servant and civic reformer in the 20th century. A Republican serving in a Democratic administration, he was Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare under President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1965 to 1968.
BOOK: Self-Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society
culture, islands of sanity
“We cannot change the way the world is, but by opening to the world as it is we may discover that gentleness, decency, and bravery are available."
In this interview with Tami Simon of Sounds True, Margaret Wheatley speaks candidly about daily experiences of rage, grief, fear, and powerlessness. She fears that we’ve reached tipping points on major issues—climate, justice, democracy—where we no longer have the means or political will to create the large-scale change many activists once imagined.
INTERVIEW: Margaret Wheatley: Warriors For The Human Spirit
culture, place
Regenerating nature, communities, and local economies through systems change
If Matt Biggar had a magic wand, then corporate capitalist structures that drive extraction and disconnection would lose their grip, replaced by locally rooted economies that prioritize ecological limits, shared prosperity, and belonging. He doesn't, so he sketched a framework that shows people how to see, map, and change the systems in their own place so daily life becomes more connected, local, and regenerative.
BOOK EXCERPT: Putting Systems Change in Place
civics, socialism
"Socialism has been as impossible to separate from the narrative of the nation’s history as the capitalist economy itself."
Michael Kazin is an American historian of U.S. politics and social movements, known for his scholarly work on the American left, populism, and the Democratic Party. In this article he observes that socialism has been a steady and shaping force in U.S. political and cultural life, even though socialist parties have rarely held significant electoral power.
ESSAY: A Brief History of American Socialism
civics, libraries
Given libraries’ unique combination of broad accessibility, civic neutrality, and deep public trust, policymakers should embed them intentionally within health and social planning frameworks.
Our city, Greenfield, Massachusetts, is the proud owner of a brand-new library right in the center of town. Since opening in 2023, visits are up more than 200 percent. Program attendance, use of study and meeting rooms, and reference and notary support have all surged. Computer use is up more than 300 percent.
ARTICLE: How Public Libraries Help Build Healthy Communities
company, social purpose
A brand designed to disappear over time
Plasticity is a Japanese upcycling brand that turns discarded plastic umbrellas into bags and accessories, while openly aiming to eliminate the waste stream that makes its business possible—so the company can “disappear” within a decade.
ARTICLE: Plasticity: A Brand that Hopes to No Longer Exist in Ten Years
learning, Personal development
Equanimity is something you do, not something you have; it is a lived way of moving through the world.
Michael Uebel is a psychotherapist and writer whose work sits at the intersection of psychology, intellectual history, and contemplative practice. Frustrated by the way equanimity is usually described—as calm, stillness, or emotional dampening—he went looking for a more dynamic understanding, one he found echoed across Western and Eastern traditions.
ARTICLE: Equanimity is Not Stillness – It is a Mobility of the Mind
ARTICLE: B Corps in the UK are outperforming other similar businesses in turnover growth, growth funding and resilience.
ARTICLE: How one Seattle organization is turning food waste into plant food.
ARTICLE: New analysis shows that charred coffee grounds increase concrete's strength by 30% and shrink its carbon footprint by nearly as much.
ARTICLE: How one Seattle organization is turning food waste into plant food.
ARTICLE: New analysis shows that charred coffee grounds increase concrete's strength by 30% and shrink its carbon footprint by nearly as much.
ARTICLE: North Dakota is on track to be first in nation with 100% broadband internet access.
"Progress is people flourishing."
-Ted Gioia
NOVEMBER 28, 2025
Active hope as a guiding light
“I will not allow the light of my life to be determined by the darkness around me. ”— Sojourner Truth
TEACHING, ADVOCACY
"A remarkable story of self-possession under the most dehumanizing circumstances"
Before Susan B. Anthony, Rosa Parks, and Maggie Kuhn, there was Sojourner Truth. Today she’d be called a badass with brass balls. In her own time she was known as a “fiery abolitionist” and a “riveting preacher” with a straight-talking, unsentimental style.
ARTICLE: The Remarkable Untold Story of Sojourner Truth
teaching, schools
Free education classes that equip people with the tools to actively engage in movements for justice and peace
The Sojourner Truth School for Social Change Leadership is named after Sojourner Truth to honor her work as an activist for justice, freedom, and honesty.The school launched in Northampton, Mass. in 2017, sparked by the waves of grassroots activism that followed Donald Trump’s first election.
WEBSITE: The Sojourner Truth School For Social Change Leadership
learning, JOY
Joy is resistance
Ryan Urie asks how can we be joyful when our country is so divided, the planet is warming out of control, our democracy has been coopted by wealth, and wars are raging across the globe? Because, he says, times have been this bad before, and historically joy is what redeems life’s inevitable struggles.
ESSAY: Finding Joy in Dark Times
economics, gift economy
How can we learn from Indigenous wisdom and ecological systems to reimagine currencies of exchange?
This week my friend and colleague Beth Tener wondered aloud how a country as wealthy as ours can leave so many people without the stability and opportunity our prosperity should make possible. She pointed us to Robin Wall Kimmerer’s reimagining of how we exchange value.
ARTICLE: The Serviceberry. An Economy of Abundance
CULTURE, social intelligence
Libraries as commons-builders and cultural scaffolding
Libraries are among our most important builders of the commons—public spaces, shared knowledge, and collective imagination that belong to everyone. At a time when information is increasingly privatized, restricted, or distorted by ideological attacks, libraries stand as frontline defenders of public knowledge.
ARTICLE: Extralibrary Loan
company, hybrid working
The COVID pandemic provided evidence that remote and hybrid working practices could work for a wide variety of jobs.
Jane Parry is a UK-based sociologist whose applied research examines changing workplaces, workforce inequalities, and especially flexible, remote, and hybrid work.
ARTICLE: What Five Years Of Evidence On Hybrid Working Tells Us About The Future Of Employment
learning, Personal development
A simple way to improve at something is to imitate someone more skilled than you.
Cate Hall makes a simple observation: humans are mimicry machines. Babies learn this way, absorbing the sounds of native speakers long before they understand grammar, and mastering walking, facial expressions, and social cues through imitation.
ARTICLE: How to Be Instantly Better at Things
ARTICLE: What if AI were developed as a public utility rather than as a commercial service?
ARTICLE: Hackers are reviving early Nest thermostats abandoned by Google.
ARTICLE: Global demand for palm oil is growing 4% a year. Meeting future demand would require clearing rainforests 1.5 times the size of Ireland. A Dutch startup is converting food industry side streams into microbial oils that rival palm oil’s versatility while slashing its footprint.
ARTICLE: Hackers are reviving early Nest thermostats abandoned by Google.
ARTICLE: Global demand for palm oil is growing 4% a year. Meeting future demand would require clearing rainforests 1.5 times the size of Ireland. A Dutch startup is converting food industry side streams into microbial oils that rival palm oil’s versatility while slashing its footprint.
WEBSITE: Inventors say that a new film that can be made from food waste is as effective as conventional plastics at shielding food from moisture and oxygen.
"Progress is people flourishing."
-Ted Gioia
NOVEMBER 21, 2025
Going beyond what we think
"The essence of creativity is figuring out how to use what you already know in order to go beyond what you already think." - Jerome Bruner
TEACHING, CURRICULUM
“Learning how to learn is the ultimate skill.”
Jerome Bruner wrote this book in 1960, when teaching largely relied on rote memorization, rigid curricula, and the passive transfer of facts from teacher to student. He was among the first to suggest that education’s highest purpose is to cultivate the ability to actively construct knowledge, not simply store information.
BOOK: The Process of Education
learning, futures thinking
"Political violence behaves like other self-organizing natural phenomena—wildfires, earthquakes, or epidemics. "
Complexity science examines how the interacting parts of a system shape the whole in ways that can’t be understood by studying each component in isolation.
ARTICLE: History as Science: How Complexity Thinking Is Transforming Foresight
learning, IMPROV
Embracing vulnerability, making decisive choices, and active listening are learnable skills.
My mind opens a bit every time someone uses the phrase “yes/and” in conversation. The term comes from improv, where a performer accepts what another has introduced (“yes”) and then adds something new (“and”).
ARTICLE: Second City’s Side Hustle: Helping CEOs Improvise
culture, CRAFT
"Started with love...finished with care"
Friends Jennifer Simonic and Masey Kaplan are lifelong knitters. Jen jokes that she was “the weirdo knitting under the desk in 6th grade,” and Masey says knitting got her through the pandemic as she “stitched below the Zoom line, where no one could see.”
WEBSITE: Loose Ends
CULTURE, LIBRARIES
"As more libraries act as community centers for teens, they are meeting needs that schools, among other institutions, are unable to serve."
If you still think libraries are just quiet rooms full of books and shushing, it’s time to look again. Today they offer far more: technology access, museum and park passes, digital media, tools, and a wide range of community programs.
ARTICLE: Why Teens Love to Hang Out at the Library
NATURE, PUBLIC POLICY
Political divides are bridged by appreciation for nature.
As the federal government cuts back environmental protections, reduces climate monitoring, opens more public land to logging and mining, and weakens endangered species safeguards, a new 2025 report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) shows that 3 out of 4 people in the U.S. see nature as essential to their wellbeing.
ARTICLE: Divided Americans United in Cherishing Nature
learning, HOPE
"Hope is dedication to life."
Rev. Indira Grace Huerta writes that "the blatant racism, xenophobia, religious persecution, environmental assaults and political and governmental disregard for life—all life, including the accused, the poor, the marginalized, the elderly, as well as nature and our planet—have taken their toll on my heart and mind." She reports that this feeling of hopelessness became so palpable that she was almost paralyzed by it.
ESSAY: Hope is a Verb
ARTICLE:You can now borrow contemporary art at the Brooklyn Public Library—for free
ARTICLE: Elon Musk's projected earnings for 2025 will exceed the combined annual salaries of all U.S. elementary school teachers.
ARTICLE: A former high-ranking homeland security official in the first Trump administration has launched a new online platform to facilitate protests and other resistance efforts against President Trump and his policies.
ARTICLE: Elon Musk's projected earnings for 2025 will exceed the combined annual salaries of all U.S. elementary school teachers.
ARTICLE: A former high-ranking homeland security official in the first Trump administration has launched a new online platform to facilitate protests and other resistance efforts against President Trump and his policies.
WEBSITE: An organization dedicated to the collection, conservation, study and educational use of ephemera
"Progress is people flourishing."
-Ted Gioia
NOVEMBER 14, 2025
Reason to enjoy the future
“You can analyze the past, but you need to design the future. That is the difference between suffering the future and enjoying it." - Edward de Bono
learning, futures thinking
“If you do not design the future, someone or something else will design it for you.”
Here’s a delightfully radical perspective: we do not need to suffer the future. In fact, since the future exists only as a conceptual exercise in possibility, we have every reason to enjoy it.
BOOK: New Thinking for the New Millennium
learning, futures thinking
We don't spend much time imagining all the possibilities the future holds.
Bina Venkataraman says that humans have a superpower that we ignore. She is a science policy expert, journalist, and author working at the crossroads of social progress, environmental change, and science policy.
TED TALK: The power to think ahead in a reckless age | Bina Venkataraman
learning, futures thinking
"The only way to relegate yesterday’s news to the dustbin of history is to rebel today by re-imagining tomorrow."
I love Edward de Bono’s reminder that we can enjoy the future. Solarpunk is a transdisciplinary movement—spanning literature, art, and activism—that celebrates the radical hope required to make that possible.
ARTICLE: Solarpunk: Radical Hope
culture, art
“Art is the science of freedom.”
The quote in the headline is by Joseph Beuys (1921–1986), the German artist, teacher, and activist who expanded the definition of art by emphasizing the artist’s role in shaping political and cultural change.
ESSAY: The Creative Essence of Zohran Mamdani’s Ascent
teaching, joy
"Joy should be the ultimate goal of teaching and learning."
Gholdy Muhammad sees a pressing need for joy in school environments. She notes that teachers often tell her they feel overwhelmed and stressed, and the mental health of students is in serious decline.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Gholdy Muhammad Champions ‘Unearthing Joy’ in Her New Book
company, corporate responsibility
"We exist to save our home planet."
Sarah Weinman is an author, journalist, and crime fiction expert widely regarded as one of the leading voices in crime and mystery writing. On June 28, 2025, she delivered the keynote address at the American Library Association’s annual convention.
WEBPAGE: Work in Progress Report
learning, personal development
"My heart is at peace, peace generated from my faith in interbeing, in impermanence, and in continuation."
Mick McEvoy is the manager and head of the permaculture garden known as the Happy Farm, at Plum Village, the Buddhist monastery founded by Thich Nhat Hanh in France.
ESSAY: The Wisdom of Autumn: The Reality of Interbeing is Unsurpassed.
"I am always doing what I can't do yet
in order to learn how to do it."
- Vincent Van Gogh
NOVEMBER 7, 2025
The difficulty is not in the new ideas
"The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones." — John Maynard Keynes
CIVICS, DEMOCRACY
A powerful guide for defending freedom, pluralism, and rational problem-solving
Karl Popper (1902–1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher whose insights are especially relevant today. Having fled Austria in 1937 as the Nazis rose to power, he became a sharp critic of the philosophical roots of totalitarianism.
BOOK: The Open Society and Its Enemies
LEARNING, FLIP THE SCRIPT
How to escape from old ideas
Margaret J. Wheatley and Deborah Frieze's book Walk Out Walk On follows ordinary people from seven communities—in Mexico, Brazil, the United States (Ohio), South Africa, Zimbabwe, India, and Greece—who have “walked out” of broken systems and dependency on outside solutions and “walked on” to build resilient, creative, and self-sustaining communities.
WEBSITE: Walk Out Walk On
learning, systems thinking
How we can choose a better route into the future
In 2006 Thomas Homer-Dixon, a political scientist and complexity theorist, warned that converging energy, environmental, and political-economic stresses could cause a breakdown of national and global order.
BOOK: The Upside of Down, Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization
civics, social imagination
"Just keep moving forward, even if the steps are small.”
In 2007, the town of Greensburg, Kansas was nearly wiped off the map by a catastrophic EF-5 tornado. Ten people lost their lives, and the storm caused more than a quarter-billion dollars in damage.
VIDEO: Kansas town goes green while rebuilding after devastating tornado.
culture, performance
Using the CSA model for jazz performance
Farm shares allow consumers to support local farms by purchasing shares in the harvest. Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares lets music fans invest in local jazz by buying in to concerts before they are staged.
WEBSITE: Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares
culture, libraries
"A good fight begins with books. A good fight begins with all of you."
Sarah Weinman is an author, journalist, and crime fiction expert widely regarded as one of the leading voices in crime and mystery writing. On June 28, 2025, she delivered the keynote address at the American Library Association’s annual convention.
ARTICLE: In Praise of Librarians in Dangerous Times
"I am always doing what I can't do yet
in order to learn how to do it."
- Vincent Van Gogh
OCTOBER 31, 2025
Discovering new forms, new symbols and new patterns
"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
company, complexity
"What we face at the tail end of our industrial society is a design problem."
One of the reasons I feel hopeful about our collective future is that change itself changes. The mindset that got us here—linear, industrial, growth-at-all-costs thinking—no longer defines the path ahead.
ARTICLE: An Introduction to the Book No Straight Lines: Making Sense of our Non-linear World
CULTURE, creativity
Creativity as a defense against authoritarianism and cultural stagnation
Born in Italy, Silvano Arieti emigrated to the United States in 1939 to escape fascist persecution as a Jew. He became a professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College and served as chief of psychiatry at Metropolitan Hospital in New York.
BOOK: Creativity: The Magic Synthesis
communication, social messaging
An exhibition that celebrates the rebellious, democratic force of ink and paper
SHEPARD FAIREY: OUT of PRINT is an exhibition exploring the artist’s lifelong dialogue with printmaking. The 2008 Obama “Hope” poster made Fairey’s style famous, showing the power of shared art to move people and define a moment.
ARTICLE: Beyond The Streets Presents Shepard Fairey: Out Of Print
teaching, teal management
Reimagining school leadership as a collaborative structure that empowers individuals at every level of the system.
As a student of Teal Management principles popularized by Frederic Laloux in Reinventing Organizations, I was interested to read Dr. Lindsay Whorton’s ideas on rethinking leadership structures in schools.
BOOK: A New School Leadership Architecture: A Four-Level Framework for Reimagining Roles
company, systems thinking
Kalundborg, Denmark, has set the standard for how industries can collaborate to reduce waste, save resources, and cut costs.
Industrial circularity is a systems-based approach to production that eliminates waste by turning one company’s byproducts into another’s resources. The result is a closed-loop, regenerative network that benefits the environment, the economy, and the community.
ARTICLE: Case Study: Kalundborg Industrial Symbiosis
nature, public health
The Power of Trees for Public Health
The Green Heart Project in Louisville, Kentucky, is a pioneering study that links urban greening to human health. Launched in 2018, it’s a controlled, community-based trial in a racially diverse, working- to middle-class area of south Louisville with about 30,000 residents.
ARTICLE: The Green Heart Louisville Project
COMMUNICATION, SOCIAL MESSAGING
"If you give me a smart phone then I'll be able to ask everyone - everyone - whether or not I look pretty in this bathing suit."
The Phone-Free Schools Movement is a nonprofit organization advocating for bell-to-bell phone-free school environments, allowing students to focus, connect, and build relationships without the constant pull of social media.
VIDEO: If You Give Me A Smartphone—PSA
"I am always doing what I can't do yet
in order to learn how to do it."
- Vincent Van Gogh
OCTOBER 24, 2025
Joy is a fine act of insurrection.
“Joy doesn’t betray but sustains activism. And when you face a politics that aspires to make you fearful, alienated and isolated, joy is a fine initial act of insurrection.” - Rebecca Solnit
Civics
"This crisis is not about election cycles. It’s about historical tides."
The cover theme of The Atlantic’s November 2025 issue is “The Unfinished Revolution.” The editors mark the 250th anniversary of America’s founding and explore how the ideals, struggles, and unfinished business of the Revolution continue to shape the nation’s present and future.
ARTICLE: America Needs a Mass Movement Now
Civics
National ideals can still be organized and renewed, one neighborhood at a time.
On October 18, communities across the United States and beyond turned a day of protest into a vivid demonstration of grassroots coordination—proof that national ideals can still be organized and renewed, one neighborhood at a time.
ARTICLE: No Kings Protests (June 2025)
Civics
Nonviolent civil resistance is not just morally preferable—it is strategically superior for securing freedom and sustaining democracy.
Political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan have reshaped how we understand the power of ordinary people to create change and defend democracy.
BOOK: Why Civil Resistance Works. The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict
Habitat
The best measure of success in workplace design is how people feel at work.
In the 1990s, Veldhoen + Company, a workplace strategy and management consulting company based in the Netherlands, introduced Activity-Based Working (ABW), an approach to workplace design that aligned physical spaces (“bricks”), technology (“bytes”), and organizational culture (“behavior”) to support different types of work.
ARTICLE: Experience-Based Working: Putting People First is the Way Forward
Company
True leadership is the art of amplifying collective intelligence.
Jon Levy sees leadership as the art of amplifying group intelligence. He thoroughly busts the myth of the “heroic leader,” making a clear case that great leaders don’t succeed through charisma but by building cultures of strong collaboration.
BOOK: Team Intelligence. How Brilliant Leaders Unlock Collective Genius
Communication
"I guess what I'm trying to say is I want to exist in a world where I don't have to think about these things, ever again."
This ad works because it’s direct, honest, and plainspoken. It speaks to human needs and desires we all share.
VIDEO: End Violence Against Women Coalition: 20th Anniversary
Learning
Complaints are a really lousy way to express and idea.
Scott Berkun, an author and speaker on innovation, creativity, and design, thinks that complaining is a lousy way to initiate real change. Instead, he urges people to channel their frustrations into constructive action.
ARTICLE: Why You Should Stop Complaining
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
OCTOBER 17, 2025
Three things in human life are important.
"Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind." - Henry James
Teaching
“Learning how to learn is the ultimate skill.”
Jerome Bruner wrote this book in 1960, when teaching largely relied on rote memorization, rigid curricula, and the passive transfer of facts from teacher to student. He was among the first to suggest that education’s highest purpose is to cultivate the ability to actively construct knowledge, not simply store information.
BOOK: The Process of Education
Learning
"Political violence behaves like other self-organizing natural phenomena—wildfires, earthquakes, or epidemics. "
Complexity science examines how the interacting parts of a system shape the whole in ways that can’t be understood by studying each component in isolation. Since its emergence in the mid-twentieth century, it has been used to understand systems as different as economies, social networks, climate dynamics, supply chains, and public health.
ARTICLE: History as Science: How Complexity Thinking Is Transforming Foresight
Learning
Embracing vulnerability, making decisive choices, and active listening are learnable skills.
My mind opens a bit every time someone uses the phrase “yes/and” in conversation. The term comes from improv, where a performer accepts what another has introduced (“yes”) and then adds something new (“and”).
ARTICLE: Second City’s Side Hustle: Helping CEOs Improvise
Culture
"Started with love...finished with care"
Friends Jennifer Simonic and Masey Kaplan are lifelong knitters. Jen jokes that she was “the weirdo knitting under the desk in 6th grade,” and Masey says knitting got her through the pandemic as she “stitched below the Zoom line, where no one could see.”
WEBSITE: Loose Ends
Learning
"As more libraries act as community centers for teens, they are meeting needs that schools, among other institutions, are unable to serve."
If you still think libraries are just quiet rooms full of books and shushing, it’s time to look again. Today they offer far more: technology access, museum and park passes, digital media, tools, and a wide range of community programs.
ARTICLE: Why Teens Love to Hang Out at the Library
Nature
Political divides are bridged by appreciation for nature.
As the federal government cuts back environmental protections, reduces climate monitoring, opens more public land to logging and mining, and weakens endangered species safeguards, a new 2025 report from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) shows that 3 out of 4 people in the U.S. see nature as essential to their wellbeing.
ARTICLE: Divided Americans United in Cherishing Nature
Learning
"Hope is dedication to life."
Rev. Indira Grace Huerta writes that "the blatant racism, xenophobia, religious persecution, environmental assaults and political and governmental disregard for life—all life, including the accused, the poor, the marginalized, the elderly, as well as nature and our planet—have taken their toll on my heart and mind."
ESSAY: Hope is a Verb
One-liners
"Self interest is of the past.
Common interest is for the future."
— David Attenborough
October 10, 2025
The only question is how?
"It’s necessary to have a democracy. It’s not a question of whether we’re going to have a democracy. The only question is how?” - Danielle Allen
Learning
“If you do not design the future, someone or something else will design it for you.”
Here’s a delightfully radical perspective: we do not need to suffer the future. In fact, since the future exists only as a conceptual exercise in possibility, we have every reason to enjoy it.
BOOK: New Thinking for the New Millennium
Learning
We don't spend much time imagining all the possibilities the future holds.
She is a science policy expert, journalist, and author working at the crossroads of social progress, environmental change, and science policy. In her 2019 book The Optimist’s Telescope: Thinking Ahead in a Reckless Age, she explores how individuals and societies can overcome shortsightedness to confront long-term challenges like climate change and public health.
TED TALK: The power to think ahead in a reckless age | Bina Venkataraman
Learning
"The only way to relegate yesterday’s news to the dustbin of history is to rebel today by re-imagining tomorrow."
I love Edward de Bono’s reminder that we can enjoy the future. Solarpunk is a transdisciplinary movement—spanning literature, art, and activism—that celebrates the radical hope required to make that possible
ARTICLE: Solarpunk: Radical Hope
Culture
“Art is the science of freedom.”
The quote in the headline is by Joseph Beuys (1921–1986), the German artist, teacher, and activist who expanded the definition of art by emphasizing the artist’s role in shaping political and cultural change.
ESSAY: The Creative Essence of Zohran Mamdani’s Ascent
Teaching
"Joy should be the ultimate goal of teaching and learning."
Gholdy Muhammad sees a pressing need for joy in school environments. She notes that teachers often tell her they feel overwhelmed and stressed, and the mental health of students is in serious decline.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Gholdy Muhammad Champions ‘Unearthing Joy’ in Her New Book
Learning
"My heart is at peace, peace generated from my faith in interbeing, in impermanence, and in continuation."
Mick McEvoy is the manager and head of the permaculture garden known as the Happy Farm, at Plum Village, the Buddhist monastery founded by Thich Nhat Hanh in France.
ESSAY: The Wisdom of Autumn: The Reality of Interbeing is Unsurpassed.
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.
OCTOBER 3, 2025
How to affect the situation
"The way we live our daily lives is what most affects the situation of the world. If we can change our daily lives, then we can change our governments and can change the world. Our president and governments are us. They reflect our lifestyle and our way of thinking." - Thich Nhat Hanh
Civics
A powerful guide for defending freedom, pluralism, and rational problem-solving
Karl Popper (1902–1994) was an Austrian-British philosopher whose insights are especially relevant today. Having fled Austria in 1937 as the Nazis rose to power, he became a sharp critic of the philosophical roots of totalitarianism.
BOOK: The Open Society and Its Enemies
Learning
How to escape from old ideas
Margaret J. Wheatley and Deborah Frieze's book Walk Out Walk On follows ordinary people from seven communities—in Mexico, Brazil, the United States (Ohio), South Africa, Zimbabwe, India, and Greece—who have “walked out” of broken systems and dependency on outside solutions and “walked on” to build resilient, creative, and self-sustaining communities.
WEBSITE: Walk Out Walk On
Learning
How we can choose a better route into the future
In 2006 Thomas Homer-Dixon, a political scientist and complexity theorist, warned that converging energy, environmental, and political-economic stresses could cause a breakdown of national and global order.
BOOK: The Upside of Down, Catastrophe, Creativity and the Renewal of Civilization
Civics
"Just keep moving forward, even if the steps are small.”
In 2007, the town of Greensburg, Kansas was nearly wiped off the map by a catastrophic EF-5 tornado. Ten people lost their lives, and the storm caused more than a quarter-billion dollars in damage.
VIDEO: Kansas town goes green while rebuilding after devastating tornado.
Culture
"A good fight begins with books. A good fight begins with all of you."
Sarah Weinman is an author, journalist, and crime fiction expert widely regarded as one of the leading voices in crime and mystery writing. On June 28, 2025, she delivered the keynote address at the American Library Association’s annual convention.
ARTICLE: In Praise of Librarians in Dangerous Times
One-liners
ARTICLE: In 2020, Bordeaux, France's ninth biggest city, produced just three percent of its own energy. By the end of 2026, the proportion is set to reach 41 percent, largely thanks to solar and other renewables like wind and biomass.
Bordeaux’s submarine base is one of more than 300 buildings that the city is relying on to to produce significant amounts of solar energy. Credit: Bordeaux City Hall.
"People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them."
— Rilke
SEPTEMBER 26, 2025
One of the few things that keep mattering.
"Art is one of the few things that keeps mattering when everything else is uncertain." - Frank Ape
Company
"What we face at the tail end of our industrial society is a design problem."
One of the reasons I feel hopeful about our collective future is that change itself changes. The mindset that got us here—linear, industrial, growth-at-all-costs thinking—no longer defines the path ahead.
ARTICLE: An Introduction to the Book No Straight Lines: Making Sense of our Non-linear World
Culture
Creativity as a defense against authoritarianism and cultural stagnation
Born in Italy, Silvano Arieti emigrated to the United States in 1939 to escape fascist persecution as a Jew. He became a professor of psychiatry at New York Medical College and served as chief of psychiatry at Metropolitan Hospital in New York
BOOK: Creativity: The Magic Synthesis
Communication
An exhibition that celebrates the rebellious, democratic force of ink and paper
SHEPARD FAIREY: OUT of PRINT is an exhibition exploring the artist’s lifelong dialogue with printmaking. The 2008 Obama “Hope” poster made Fairey’s style famous, showing the power of shared art to move people and define a moment.
ARTICLE: Beyond The Streets Presents Shepard Fairey: Out Of Print
Teaching
Reimagining school leadership as a collaborative structure that empowers individuals at every level of the system.
As a student of Teal Management principles popularized by Frederic Laloux in Reinventing Organizations, I was interested to read Dr. Lindsay Whorton’s ideas on rethinking leadership structures in schools.
BOOK: A New School Leadership Architecture: A Four-Level Framework for Reimagining Roles
Company
Kalundborg, Denmark, has set the standard for how industries can collaborate to reduce waste, save resources, and cut costs.
Industrial circularity is a systems-based approach to production that eliminates waste by turning one company’s byproducts into another’s resources. The result is a closed-loop, regenerative network that benefits the environment, the economy, and the community.
ARTICLE: Case Study: Kalundborg Industrial Symbiosis
Nature
The Power of Trees for Public Health
The Green Heart Project in Louisville, Kentucky, is a pioneering study that links urban greening to human health. Launched in 2018, it’s a controlled, community-based trial in a racially diverse, working- to middle-class area of south Louisville with about 30,000 residents.
ARTICLE: The Green Heart Louisville Project
Communication
"If you give me a smart phone then I'll be able to ask everyone - everyone - whether or not I look pretty in this bathing suit."
The Phone-Free Schools Movement is a nonprofit organization advocating for bell-to-bell phone-free school environments, allowing students to focus, connect, and build relationships without the constant pull of social media.
VIDEO: If You Give Me A Smartphone—PSA
One-liners
“Make the drummer sound good.”
— Thelonious Monk
SEPTEMBER 19, 2025
Most people subscribe to an outdated worldview.
“As the twenty-first century unfolds, it is becoming more and more evident that the major problems of our time – energy, the environment, climate change, food security, financial security – cannot be understood in isolation. They are systemic problems, which means that they are all interconnected and interdependent. Ultimately, these problems must be seen as just different facets of one single crisis, which is largely a crisis of perception. It derives from the fact that most people in our modern society, and especially our large social institutions, subscribe to the concepts of an outdated worldview, a perception of reality inadequate for dealing with our overpopulated, globally interconnected world.” - Fritjof Capra
Civics
"This crisis is not about election cycles. It’s about historical tides."
The cover theme of The Atlantic’s November 2025 issue is “The Unfinished Revolution.” The editors mark the 250th anniversary of America’s founding and explore how the ideals, struggles, and unfinished business of the Revolution continue to shape the nation’s present and future.
ARTICLE: America Needs a Mass Movement Now
Civics
National ideals can still be organized and renewed, one neighborhood at a time.
On October 18, communities across the United States and beyond turned a day of protest into a vivid demonstration of grassroots coordination—proof that national ideals can still be organized and renewed, one neighborhood at a time.
ARTICLE: No Kings Protests (June 2025)
Civics
Nonviolent civil resistance is not just morally preferable—it is strategically superior for securing freedom and sustaining democracy.
Political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan have reshaped how we understand the power of ordinary people to create change and defend democracy.
BOOK: Why Civil Resistance Works. The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict
Habitat
The best measure of success in workplace design is how people feel at work.
In the 1990s, Veldhoen + Company, a workplace strategy and management consulting company based in the Netherlands, introduced Activity-Based Working (ABW), an approach to workplace design that aligned physical spaces (“bricks”), technology (“bytes”), and organizational culture (“behavior”) to support different types of work.
ARTICLE: Experience-Based Working: Putting People First is the Way Forward
Company
True leadership is the art of amplifying collective intelligence.
Jon Levy sees leadership as the art of amplifying group intelligence. He thoroughly busts the myth of the “heroic leader,” making a clear case that great leaders don’t succeed through charisma but by building cultures of strong collaboration.
BOOK: Team Intelligence. How Brilliant Leaders Unlock Collective Genius
Communication
"I guess what I'm trying to say is I want to exist in a world where I don't have to think about these things, ever again."
This ad works because it’s direct, honest, and plainspoken. It speaks to human needs and desires we all share.
VIDEO: End Violence Against Women Coalition: 20th Anniversary
Learning
Complaints are a really lousy way to express and idea.
Scott Berkun, an author and speaker on innovation, creativity, and design, thinks that complaining is a lousy way to initiate real change. Instead, he urges people to channel their frustrations into constructive action.
ARTICLE: Why You Should Stop Complaining
One-liners
SEPTEMBER 12, 2025
In rooting for democracy, choose hope.
“To be optimistic is to assume things will work out. To be hopeful is to realize things can work out if you work at them. Hope requires responsibility and agency; optimism relieves us of both. In rooting for democracy, choose hope.” - Eric Liu
CIVICS, CIVIC ENGAGEMENT
“When you are compassionate and generous, society can become compassionate and generous."
In January 2000, the White House asked Octavia Butler to write a memorandum to President Clinton outlining her vision of the future. She chose to focus on education.
ARTICLE: A Few Rules for Predicting the Future
CULTURE, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION
A “possibilist” believes that what we do matters, even when we cannot predict the results.
john a. powell spells his name in lowercase to reflect humility and interconnectedness. He is director of the Othering and Belonging Institute at the University of California Berkeley.
AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Can We Build a World Where We All Belong?
NATURE, SPIRITUALITY
"Reality is basically about change."
Mary Evelyn Tucker sees a clear path toward healing the planet, our relationship with nature, and with each other. She suggests that spiritual ecology—the field that explores how spirituality and the environment are interwoven—is the way finder.
ARTICLE: Why the World Needs Spiritual Ecology
