Singing bowls: Sounds that clean the soul
Sounds can heal the soul. That’s the principle of singing bowls—an ancient practice with origins in Tibet more than 2,000 years ago. Sound-healing is becoming increasingly popular in the West as the practice has been scientifically linked to reductions in stress and anxiety. Interesting fact: Read More...
If your carbon footprint makes you feel guilty, there’s an easy way out
“We think a lot about our carbon footprint,” says Deborah Markowitz. She diligently recycles, avoids eating meat most days, burns wood pellets for heat, and drives an electric car if public transport isn’t available. That’s all pretty standard fare for the environmentally conscious. But Read More...
Atlanta pledges 100 percent renewable power by 2035
Atlanta has arguably been the capital of the American South for decades, from its moniker as “The City Too Busy To Hate” during the civil rights era to its hosting of the Olympic Games a generation ago. Now, according to the Sierra Club, Atlanta is now the largest southern city to commit to a Read More...
7 companies steering the self-driving car craze
In 2009, the first photos started to trickle out of a Toyota Prius outfitted with a bizarre-looking metal contraption on the roof cruising the highways around Silicon Valley. The concept seemed far-fetched at the time, but Google’s early self-driving car went on to blaze a trail for the current Read More...
Inspiration: A year without processed food
From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2015 Megan Kimble, a journalist based in Tucson, Arizona, decided to spend one year eating only whole, unprocessed foods. Her book Unprocessed: My Busy, Broke City-Dwelling Year of Reclaiming Real Food tells about her journey. Why did you decide to stop eating Read More...
Ode to Guilin and Lijiang River National Park, Guangxi, China
Protecting China’s natural heritage From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2915 “The river winds like a green silk ribbon, while the hills are like jade hairpins.” So wrote the Chinese poet Han Yu (768–824), in praise of the area surrounding the Chinese city of Guilin, at the banks of the Read More...
Ode to Abeer Seikaly, Amman, Jordan
From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2015 A new kind of mobile home People move. It’s what they have always done and what they will keep doing. Architect, artist and cultural producer Abeer Seikaly, from Amman, Jordan, designed an elegant and practical home for people who are forced to move on to a Read More...
Possibility: Let nature run wild
From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2015 Commentary by Fred Pearce, a London-based environmental writer, is author of numerous books, most recently The New Wild: Why Invasive Species Will Be Nature’s Salvation, from which this is excerpted. Rogue rats, predatory jellyfish, suffocating Read More...
Possibility: One Last Thing: “We find the void in our minds”
From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2015 At sea, Henk de Velde has discovered something on his many solo voyages around the world: the void. Now the Dutch sea-farer tries to find it on the land as well. And he recommends everyone do the same. What do you mean by void? “Void is space. I Read More...
Possibility: How to become like Steve Jobs
From The Optimist Magazine Fall 2015 This article previously appeared in What Doctors Don’t Tell You Fruit may well have contributed to the mental sharpness and creativity of Steve Jobs, the late founder of Apple. And it’s not just Jobs who benefited: anyone who regularly eats fruits that are Read More...