The long game is not a strategy for winning; it is a way of belonging.

Social change unfolds over generations, not election cycles. Margaret Wheatley tells a story about colleagues who once met with the Dalai Lama while feeling deeply discouraged that their work for change seemed to have little impact. They asked whether their efforts would ever make a difference, given how dire things looked. With a smile, he replied: “Oh, don’t worry about that. Your work will bear influence in about 700 years.”

Our task is to participate wisely in a world where collapse and rebirth are unfolding at the same time.

None of us has to do everything, but each of us can do something. In Jewish teaching, Rabbi Tarfon says, “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it”—a line often associated with the work of repairing the world (tikkun olam). No one is asked to save everything; each of us is asked to take up our share of the work through whatever mix of creativity, care, and courage is available to us, right where we are.

Redesigning organizations and markets so they regenerate rather than extract

Alan Moore is very clear about one thing: we have reached the limits of the old industrial operating system, built on assumptions of predictability, hierarchy, and linear cause and effect. He describes a “trilemma” of social, organizational, and economic complexity that makes those assumptions untenable: the collision of rising social expectations and inequities, increasingly intricate and interdependent organizational systems, and an economic order built for linear growth and efficiency rather than resilience and shared flourishing.

America has never been as innocent as it imagines itself to be.

Reinhold Niebuhr was a perceptive critic of the American spirit, if not downright prophetic. The Irony of American History, which he wrote in 1952, was his attempt to make sense of the United States’ rise to global power in the early Cold War.

How to build inclusion and collaboration in your communities

Susie Wise teaches and coaches leaders in innovation, equity design, and inclusive storytelling at the Stanford d.school. She wrote this book to make what she sees as a simple, obvious case: belonging is a fundamental human need and a central goal of equity work. In this compact manual, small enough to serve as a field guide, she equips everyday leaders with practical design tools to build cultures of belonging in the communities that matter to them.

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.