Hollywood icon Cicely Tyson was like a Christmas tree, her manager said. The world could only see the ornaments. Before she died in January at the age of 96, Tyson wrote her autobiography to share more about her roots, including the parts of her life the public couldn’t see. One of the curious details she […]
MLK, in His Own Words
Martin Luther King, Jr. was a famous proponent of peaceful protest. What many people don’t realize is that the civil rights leader took a long time to come around to recognizing nonviolent resistance as a powerful tool for social change. As a college student, King was skeptical of the power of love to cure social ills. He […]
Everyone Deserves the Benefit of the Doubt
For centuries, humans have operated under the notion that we are inherently selfish, violent, and evil. What if this belief is a self-fulfilling prophecy? We need to put the “kind” back in humankind. Author Rutger Bregman says that humans are in fact kind by nature. We are hardwired to do good. One problem is that […]
Reframe Your Setbacks
The ancient Stoics knew that setbacks in life are inevitable. In fact, Stoics believed that setbacks were challenges from the gods to test their ability to deal with adversity. By viewing setbacks as tests of resilience and resourcefulness instead of sheer misfortune, Stoics stayed calm and happy in the face of adversity. Think of it this way: we can’t […]
Should We Legalize Heroin?
Should recreational drugs like heroin and cocaine be legalized? Dr. Carl L. Hart, a professor at Columbia University, makes a compelling case for decriminalization in Drug Use for Grown-Ups. The US government has been embroiled in the War on Drugs since the 1970s. But even with these expensive efforts, the number of Americans who use drugs has […]
How the Nazis Terrorized Britain
Winston Churchill had a lot on his plate. It was September 7, 1940, and Hitler’s armies had invaded much of Europe. The Nazis climbed to one of the highest points on the French coast, where they set up tables with food and champagne to watch the start of the Luftwaffe’s aerial attack on London. The […]
The Rise of Fox News
It’s strange to think that, a little more than 25 years ago, the Fox News Channel didn’t yet exist. The network would go on to change televised news. But in October 1996, the new network had just been launched by Ailes, who ran it from the shadows. He quickly built the network’s credibility by hiring top […]
Go Ahead, Blame Someone Else
What if your deepest fears, most destructive behaviors, and worst failures aren’t your fault? A new area of scientific research called epigenetics suggests that the traumas of our parents, grandparents, and earlier ancestors may manifest in our daily lives. Any repeating pattern of emotion, including depression and anxiety, may be a tendency you inherited from […]
Go Against the Grain
You don’t need a coach to eat right. Humans have known what to eat for most of human history. So why, all the sudden, do some people seem to need nutritionists and scientists to tell them what to do? The answer is: we don’t. For the most part, nutritionists profit from our confusion. And the […]
The Worst Pandemic in Modern History
Piles of bodies. Coffin shortages. Mass graves. The great influenza pandemic infected roughly one in three people—and killed tens of millions of victims around the world. The virus was, in many ways, something that nobody in the medical field had seen before. Victims experienced symptoms so suddenly, and so violently, that many could pinpoint the […]
