Unlocking our capacity to experiment with new patterns might be as simple as singing together.

One of the most self-defeating phrases we repeat is, “It’s always been this way. People don’t change.”In this short video, Bobby McFerrin shows just how wrong that assumption is. In 2009, at the World Science Festival, he appeared on a panel titled Notes & Neurons: In Search of the Common Chorus, which explored how music and the brain interact—and whether our responses to music are universal or culturally shaped.

How a strong, self‑transcending purpose can transform health, resilience, and ethical behavior

When Vic Strecher’s daughter was an infant, she was diagnosed with a fatal heart condition. Because she was otherwise healthy, her doctors recommended that she undergo what was then a relatively new and still largely untested infant heart transplant.

Transitions open us to new ways of seeing.

As one year turns into the next, Ann Tashi Slater sees our shared state of liminality as an opportunity to change our perspective. She describes this condition of being “in between” as a natural and fertile state, visible in moments like dawn before sunrise or a flower poised between bud and bloom.

"The essential art of civilization is maintenance.”

Stewart Brand’s been working on a new book, and it’s pushing at a quiet but radical idea: maybe civilization’s biggest problem isn’t a lack of innovation, or even the threat of collapse, but our failure to take care of what already exists. Instead of obsessing over the next new thing—or the end of everything—he argues we might do better by paying serious attention to the practices and institutions that keep systems working over the long haul.

It is better to think of purpose as something you form, rather than something you find.

Ross White is a clinical psychologist and author whose work focuses on psychological flexibility, wellbeing, and peak performance. He is the author of The Tree That Bends: How a Flexible Mind Can Help You Thrive and frames his practice around helping individuals and organizations function effectively under pressure.

"How much of the beauty of our own lives is about the beauty of being alive?”

Joseph Campbell was a twentieth-century scholar of comparative mythology and religion and among the first public intellectuals to bring myth beyond the classroom and scholarly circles. His formulation of the “monomyth,” or hero’s journey, influenced generations of artists and filmmakers, most notably George Lucas’s Star Wars, and helped popularize the idea that myths function as templates for psychological and spiritual development.

"The point is to live everything. Live the questions now."

Krista Tippett, host of the radio show and podcast On Being, laments how often we use words only to state opinions or win arguments. In this short clip, she reflects on the strength that comes from resisting the urge to rush toward clear answers, especially in a world facing vast, unresolved crises.

"With so much awful shit going on around us, how dare we deny the profound beauty of engaged experience when it is offered to us?"

Douglas Rushkoff’s work often critiques corporatism, financialization, and the “anti-human” logics of digital platforms, while calling for more cooperative, community-centered systems. He is acutely aware that millions of Americans face deepening poverty, that roughly 18 million households experience food insecurity, and that climate change, topsoil erosion, the displacement of Indigenous peoples, industrial encroachment on rainforests and wetlands, and the spread of microplastics and “forever chemicals” define our moment.

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.

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.

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.

There is a direct connection between individual growth and institutional adaptability.

What if we treated renewal as the central work of a free society? To nurture curious, courageous citizens who can reform rigid institutions, resist nostalgic backlash, and keep democracy from hardening into routines and decline?