Inspirational Media Articles

Excerpts of Key Inspirational Media Articles in Major Media

Below are highly engaging excerpts of key inspirational articles reported in the mainstream media. Links are provided to the original articles on their major media websites. If any link fails to function, read this webpage. These inspirational articles are listed by article date. You can also explore the articles listed by order of importance or by date posted. Enjoy the inspiring articles!

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The chapel of San Quentin prison was abuzz as more than 100 incarcerated men and their friends and families took their seats. A banner with large orange lettering hanging at the front read "Arms Down: Teaching there are options between the first and second amendment", and the mood was festive, with the men hugging their spouses, parents and siblings. Arms Down is a "mutual help group for firearm offenders", meant to help incarcerated people understand the reasons that they carried and used guns. Understanding will lead to healing, the program's creators hope, and insights the men gain in the program will travel beyond the prison's walls and help reduce violence in the free world. "This is an opportunity you have to give back to your community. We're the untapped resource," said Jemain Hunter, the program's founder. "People are scared because they don't understand what we're doing as gun offenders – as far as rehabilitation goes – to come out and not commit these sorts of crimes again." "I'm just trying to make sure people don't end up like me," he continued. The sessions, many of the participants said, allowed them to talk about the shame and regret they feel over their offenses, and connect the dots between the violence they witnessed in their youth and the harm they have caused others. Word about Arms Down has spread to other California prisons, which Hunter hopes can introduce other incarcerated people to a new way of thinking about their crimes.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on repairing criminal justice.

As I approach India's first Garbage Cafe on a cloudy and foggy winter day in early 2025, the smell of hot samosas immediately makes the place feel cosy. Inside, people are sitting on wooden benches holding steel plates filled with steaming meals, some chatting, others eating quietly. Every day, hungry people arrive at this cafe in Ambikapur, a city in the state of Chhattisgarh in central India, in the hope of getting a hot meal. But they don't pay for their food with money – instead, they hand over bundles of plastic such as old carrier bags, food wrappers and water bottles. People can trade a kilogram (2.2lb) of plastic waste for a full meal that includes rice, two vegetable curries, dal, roti, salad and pickles, says Vinod Kumar Patel, who runs the cafe on behalf of the Ambikapur Municipal Corporation (AMC), the public body which manages the city's infrastructure. Every morning, [Rashmi Mondal] sets out early on the streets of Ambikapur in a search for discarded plastic – anything from old food wrappers to plastic bottles. For her, collecting such detritus is a means of survival. "I've been doing this work for years," Mondal says, looking at the small pile of plastic she has gathered. Previously, Mondal used to sell the plastic she collected to local scrap dealers for just 10 Indian rupees (Ł0.09/$0.12) per kilogram – barely enough to survive on. "But now, I can get food for my family in exchange for the plastic I collect. It makes all the difference in our lives."

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Collaborating with robotics engineers and Italian 3D printer manufacturers, a Japanese company is building "homes of earth" made primarily from soil. Lib Work, Ltd. completed their first 3D-printed earth home in Yamaga, Kumamoto on July 22, calling their creative process "uncharted territory where tradition and convention offered no guide". With an eye toward recycling, sustainability, and reduced carbon emissions, Lib Work focused on combining 3D-printing with natural materials enhanced for strength, constructibility, and design quality. The walls of the completed Lib Earth House Model B use no cement (which produces industrial waste). Instead, they utilized only naturally derived materials with soil as the primary component to create sustainable earthen walls. Compared to the previous model (Model A) that used some cement, the building's strength has improved approximately fivefold while significantly reducing CO2 emissions from the manufacturing process itself. The walls contain cutting-edge sensors as part of a wall condensation monitoring system that monitors in real-time the temperature and humidity inside the walls. This system enables the house to manage its own condition by detecting condensation in advance to maintain a long-lasting, comfortable living environment. Additionally, the homes include remote operation of air conditioning, lighting, and bath controls via smartphone or dedicated monitor. It also features an off-grid energy system.

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Equipped with her own tailored bee suit and a hood to cover her floppy ears, Maple – a former police dog – has an important retirement task: helping save thousands of honeybee hives. The canine has spent the past five months sniffing Michigan bee colonies for American foulbrood, a highly contagious bacteria that's fatal to the insects. Maple, an English springer spaniel, uses her extraordinary sense of smell as a "high-speed screening tool" to prevent beekeepers from having to manually inspect every hive. American foulbrood only becomes detectable to humans by smell when it reaches severe infection, at which point the colony risks death, said Meghan Milbrath, a researcher and assistant professor of entomology at Michigan State University. The ultimate goal is for Maple's work to serve as a blueprint for teaching canines to detect honeybee diseases. It's part of a larger bee conservation effort in a record-breaking year for colony death in the United States ... primarily driven by pesticides, pathogens, poor nutrition and pests. Although Maple's new "target odor" is distinct from her previous job ... the fundamentals remain the same. Handlers expose the canines to a scent, offer a reward and teach the dog to conduct an action that means they've found the odor they're looking for. In Maple's case, she sits when she detects the smell. [Handler, Sue] Stejskal said she has to train Maple to be familiar and comfortable with the new environment so the pup can focus on the target odor.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth.

While trying to come up with a pesticide solution to kill off bollworms, Dr Robert Mensah had his eureka moment. It was the 90s, and in Australia bollworms were devastating cotton farms. He experimented and eventually came up with a simple food spray, "a mixture of food ingredients, yeast and sugar-based, diluted in water and applied to crops. It emits an odour which is picked up by beneficial predatory insects and attracts them to the fields where they kill pests." It was the beginning of an international grassroots campaign, in which Mensah has worked with various charities to teach people about this sustainable farming method. Ever since the dangerous side effects of pesticides became widely known, alternatives have been sought. This approach to farming, which reduces our reliance on pesticides, is called integrated pest management. In 2005, Mensah took food sprays to Benin, where the Pesticide Action Network (PAN UK) was helping farmers transition to organic farming. There, the misuse of chemical pesticides was seriously damaging people's health. The food sprays – cheap, safe and effective – caught on with farmers in Benin where thousands now use the technique. From there, Mensah took food sprays to southern Ethiopia, where they were also trialled successfully on vegetables ... and then to Vietnam where they were used successfully on maize. Another charity, Better Cotton, is now trialling food sprays in India ... where they've trained 214,000 farmers to use sprays.

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The idea that American health insurance companies are using AI to analyze and adjudicate claims for approval or denial sounds terrifying, but one North Carolinian is using AI to fight back. When Raleigh resident Neal Shah had a claim denied for his wife's chemotherapy drugs, he thought it was rare, that he was the only one, that it was just bad luck. Litigating his case on phone calls that lasted for hours changed the husband and father, and he set about creating a sophisticated app that uses artificial intelligence to compare claims denial forms against health insurance contracts, before automatically drafting an appeal letter. "For a doctor to write this, it's not rocket science, but it still takes hours," Shah told ABC News 11, adding that a well-written appeal letter, sent in immediately, can sometimes get denials reversed within days or weeks, but most people either don't know they can appeal, or don't know on what grounds they can appeal. In fact, according to Shah's research, 850 million claims denials occur every year, and less than 1% are ever appealed. That's where Counterforce Health comes in, a startup that's created a free-to-use app for claims denials. For Counterforce Health, Shah brought onboard Riyaa Jadhav, a Jill of all trades who has helped grow and expand the undertaking. Together, they've built Counterforce to the point where it boasts a 70% success rate in appealing claims.

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In 2021, Kristen Magnuson had to make a secret deal to continue a staple of her daily routine: swimming at her local outdoor pool. During the pandemic, the state of Washington required a vaccine passport to gain access to public spaces such as restaurants, movie theaters, and gyms. Ms. Magnuson chose not to get vaccinated. So the mother of two made a covert arrangement with gym staff. She could bypass the lobby by sneaking in through a back door. Ms. Magnuson was grateful, but she felt like a second-class citizen. Now she has a plea: Can we talk about what we went through? She isn't opposed to vaccines – her husband and children got them. She and others are asking: What would America do differently if the country could have a do-over, or faced a similar challenge in the future? Ms. Magnuson ... isn't ready to absolve top officials until they show "a recognition of harms." "I was surprised when some politicians and doctors said that those who remain unvaccinated should not be treated if they fall ill. People were not ‘bad' or ‘COVidiots' if they contracted COVID-19; they were human," [Dr. Monica] Gandhi wrote. "There is absolutely no place for stigma, judgment, and a shame-based approach in public health." The former NIH director [Dr. Francis Collins] proposed, instead, a reckoning modeled on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the aftermath of apartheid. "That means people coming forward and confessing what they did that was harmful in public and asking for forgiveness," said Dr. Collins, who was appointed by President Obama and served as a science adviser to Biden. "That's very different than just amnesty."

Note: Read NIH director Jay Bhattacharya's powerful call for forgiveness despite being cancelled for having dissenting views on COVID policies. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.

Thousands of infant sequoia and coastal redwood saplings, each the size of a thumb, sprout beneath grey foil and growing lamps in bus-size greenhouses. In the next room are their juvenile siblings, five to eight inches tall: sequoias, coastal redwoods, oaks and a hundred other tree species form the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive (AATA), a living library of the world's mightiest trees. These are not just any saplings – they all are descendants of so-called champion trees, specimens of exceptional size, age and resilience. At 75, David Milarch is trying to save the world's last old-growth forests from extinction – by using their DNA to help reverse climate change. The need, Milarch notes, is urgent: "Ninety-eight percent of the old-growth forest has been logged," he explains. "We have to save the remaining two percent." Unlike with other tree planting initiatives, Milarch puts plans in place to nurture the saplings for generations to come. To make this possible, he and Arboretum Detroit work with schools. "We empower the kids. We teach them, we give them the materials, and we check in on them," Milarch explains. "We're propagating the propagators. That's the paradigm shift." Each child gets to name a sapling, "because kids need to connect with nature," Milarch says. And later on, when the kids face hardship, Milarch points out, "they can always run to their tree and get some solace."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth.

On July 14, 48 students walked through the doors of the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine in Bentonville, Ark. to become its inaugural class. Named after its founder–the world's richest woman and an heir to the Walmart fortune–the school will train students over the next four years in a radically different way from the method most traditional medical schools use. And that's the point. Instead of drilling young physicians to chase symptom after symptom and perform test after test, Alice Walton wants her school's graduates to keep patients healthy by practicing something that most doctors today don't prioritize: preventive medicine and whole-health principles, which involve caring for (and not just treating) the entire person and all of the factors–from their mental health to their living conditions and lifestyle choices–that contribute to wellbeing. Visually, the school lives up to its acronym: AWSOM. The building, with soaring glass walls, is located on Walton family property and includes not just a wellness studio and gym, but a rooftop park, healing gardens where students can study, growing gardens for producing healthy foods, and a reflection pond. Walton is covering tuition for the first five graduating classes. They will get all the science and disease knowledge they need to manage the ‘sick-care' side of things," Walton says. But "I wanted to create a school that really gives doctors the ability to focus on how to keep their patients healthy."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing our bodies.

[The] universality of music, its ability to elicit the same emotions in diverse audiences, is exactly what inspires the work of Chicago-based nonprofit Crossing Borders Music. Composed of artists trained mainly in the Western classical tradition, the group compiles and performs music from Haitian, Palestinian, Rohingya, Native American and many other marginalized communities via free concerts held in libraries, cultural centers and university spaces. "Often, we find that in the West, refugees and immigrants are defined only by the conflict in their home countries," says Tom Clowes ... the founder of Crossing Borders. "But nobody wants to be defined by the worst things that have happened to them, especially when it's not even something that they've done, but something that's happened to them." The nonprofit's musical collaborations and concerts are a bid to not just showcase these diverse and complex musical traditions, but also to create empathy and understanding for immigrants and other communities who often get overlooked because of race, ethnicity, disability, gender, sexual orientation, identity or past trauma. Crossing Borders reaches over 10,000 people in person and online each year and organized 27 free concerts in 2024. "And when we hear audience members say our music defied their expectations or broadened their worldview, or that they felt their culture was affirmed and uplifted, we know we're fulfilling our mission," Clowes says.

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For more than 30 years, Frank Frost worked as a long-distance truck driver. He gained weight and was diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in his 50s. His doctors put him on insulin injections and told him to lose weight and move more. "When l, like most people, failed, they made me feel weak and worthless," says Frost. Then, Frost met a doctor with a completely different approach – one that changed his life. The doctor ... asked Frost about things he enjoyed doing as a kid and discovered he used to love riding a bike. He gave him a prescription for a 10-week cycling course called Pedal Ready for adults getting back into cycling. "I hadn't been on a bike for almost 50 years until I started cycling again," says Frost. What Frost's doctor had done was give him a social prescription, says journalist Julia Hotz. It's the idea of health professionals "literally prescribing you a community activity or resource the same way they'd prescribe you pills or therapies," she explains. The prescriptions include exercise, art, music, exposure to nature and volunteering, which are known to have enormous benefits to physical and mental health. And it all starts with "flipping the script from what's the matter with you to focusing on what matters to you," Hotz says. "What are your activities that you love? What gets you out of bed?" Frost's prescription helped him make friends after years in a solitary profession. And it helped him lose 100 pounds, get his diabetes under control and go off insulin.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive healing our bodies and healing social division.

Regenerative agriculture offers a way to move beyond what I call the ‘dead Earth assumption' – this mechanistic belief that the Earth is made up of lifeless raw materials meant for extraction. Because that's the foundation of industrial agriculture: all it cares about is how many tons of food it produces, with no regard for soil health, biodiversity or the wellbeing of farmers. Regenerative agriculture, on the other hand, shows us the opposite. It means collaborating with nature and recognizing that we are all living organisms on a living Earth. That is what farming should be about: regenerating the potential of the living soil, the living seeds, the living water, the living insects, and the entire web of life. By embracing this potential, we can also transform the way we relate to nature. Because regeneration writes its own poetry – it brings the Earth back to life again in our minds and, in doing so, our relationship with the Earth is being regenerated as well. Some people say: ‘You're naive, because companies will always win.' But I don't think that companies will win, and I will give you a reason why. The first corporation ever created was the East India Company in 1600, but after the revolt of the peasants in 1857, they shut down in 1858. So the first corporation that was created to rule the world, was shut down by peasants. In today's world, meaningful change can happen too, when we unite. It all comes down to nurturing the living soil and the living seed.

Note: The above was written by Vandana Shiva. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and healing the Earth.

Certain kinds of gut microbes absorb toxic Pfas "forever chemicals" and help expel them from the body via feces, new first-of-its-kind University of Cambridge research shows. The findings are welcome news as the only options that exist for reducing the level of dangerous Pfas compounds from the body are bloodletting and a cholesterol drug that induces unpleasant side effects. The microbes were found to remove up to 75% of some Pfas from the gut of mice. Several of the study's authors plan to develop probiotic dietary supplements that boost levels of helpful microbes in the human gut, which would likely reduce Pfas levels. "If this could be used in humans to create probiotics that can help remove Pfas from the body then this would be a nicer solution in that it wouldn't have so many side effects," said Anna Lindell, Cambridge doctoral student and a co-author of the study. Pfas are a class of about 15,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant. They have been linked to cancer, birth defects, decreased immunity, high cholesterol, kidney disease and a range of other serious health problems. They are dubbed "forever chemicals" because they do not naturally break down in the environment. The microbes [in the study] largely addressed "long-chain" Pfas, which are larger compounds and more dangerous than smaller "short chains" because they stay in the body longer.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive healing our bodies and technology for good.

A recent study published in Science offers strong new evidence that the human brain continues to generate neurons in the hippocampus, its key memory region, well into later stages of life. Conducted by researchers at Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, the study addresses a long-standing debate about how adaptable the adult brain really is. The hippocampus plays a critical role in memory, learning, and emotional regulation. In 2013, Jonas Frisén and his team at Karolinska Institutet made headlines when they demonstrated that new neurons could form in this region during adulthood. Despite this earlier discovery, questions remained. In particular, scientists lacked direct evidence that the cells responsible for generating new neurons, known as neural progenitor cells, are present and actively dividing in adult human brains. "We have now been able to identify these cells of origin, which confirms that there is an ongoing formation of neurons in the hippocampus of the adult brain," says Jonas Frisén ... who led the research. The newly formed cells were located in a specific area of the hippocampus. This area is important for memory formation, learning, and cognitive flexibility. "This gives us an important piece of the puzzle in understanding how the human brain works," explains Jonas Frisén. "Our research may also have implications for the development of regenerative treatments that stimulate neurogenesis in neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders."

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In Stockholm, Stina Larsson, 98, stood among fragrant lilacs, lilies and lavender, inspecting the garden that she has tended for more than 40 years. Ms. Larsson's garden, situated on a postage stamp of land beside the Karlbergs Canal, is one of more than 7,000 garden allotments, known as koloniträdgĂĄrdar, in Stockholm. The gardens, established as part of a social movement around the turn of the 20th century, offer city dwellers access to green space and a reprieve from crowded urban life. Though most are modest in size – Ms. Larsson's garden is about 970 square feet – koloniträdgĂĄrdar are prized for providing a rare kind of urban sanctuary, a corner of the city where residents can trade pavement for soil, and the buzz of traffic for birdsong. The garden programs were specifically designed to improve the mental and physical health of city dwellers. The idea was that a working-class family would be able to spend the summer there and work together but also have some leisure and fun. Cecilia Stenfors ... at Stockholm University, said her research shows that those who frequently visit green spaces, whether a forest or a koloniträdgĂĄrd, "have better health outcomes, in terms of fewer depressive symptoms, less anxiety, better sleep and fewer feelings of loneliness and social isolation." These positive effects can be particularly pronounced in older people and can help combat symptoms of age-related mental and physical decline.

Note: This article is also available here. Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and healing social division.

Most of the water on Earth is found in the oceans, but it's far too salty to drink. While desalination plants can remove salt and make seawater drinkable, they typically use a lot of energy. Now, researchers have developed a promising new material that could change that. Reporting in ACS Energy Letters, a team of scientists created a sponge-like structure filled with long, microscopic air channels that harness sunlight to turn saltwater into fresh, clean water. In an outdoor test, this simple system–just the sponge and a clear plastic cover–successfully produced drinkable water using only natural sunlight. It's a step toward making low-energy, sustainable desalination more accessible. In an outdoor test, the researchers placed the material in a cup containing seawater, and it was covered by a curved, transparent plastic cover. Sunlight heated the top of the spongy material, evaporating just the water, not the salt, into water vapor. The vapor collected on the plastic cover as liquid, moving the now clean water to the edges, where it dripped into a funnel and container below the cup. After 6 hours in natural sunlight, the system generated about 3 tablespoons of potable water. "Our aerogel allows full-capacity desalination at any size," [researcher Xi] Shen says, "which provides a simple, scalable solution for energy-free desalination to produce clean water."

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I moved to Fawkner, Melbourne with my partner and kids about five years ago, in search of affordable housing. The suburb was nice enough but I felt unmoored. Then I signed up to help with our school garden. On volunteer day, my partner pushed our kids to school in a wheelbarrow, and I was armed with a shovel and pitchfork. Around 50 people turned up to the school on a Sunday to help with the garden, and while the kids played, the adults chose jobs according to our levels of ability and enthusiasm. My partner opted to repair the garden beds and I went for the lower-stakes job of weeding. It was slow and careful work, pulling out dandelions and chickweed. Between gardening and tending to the kids, there were moments of socialising: a nod of thanks from a teacher, a chat with another parent about the out-of-control compost heap that lives behind the mud kitchen. These conversations were tentative, at least on my part; the pandemic and early motherhood had left me out of practice when it came to socialising. However, the school garden was the perfect place to learn how to be with other people again and I could see that I was surrounded by the sorts of people who I wanted to befriend. Working together in this way brings us close to what Aristotle called "the friendship of the good". This, according to Aristotle, is the best kind of friendship: it happens when you see the good in another person, and they in you. It is very different to what he calls a "utilitarian friendship", where we spend time with another person because of what they can do for us. A friendship of the good, conversely – like the school garden itself – is about creating something bigger than ourselves.

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Farmers Alberto GĂłmez, JosĂ© Castillo and Javier Castillo arrive with their selected seeds, stored in shigras – hand-woven shoulder bags – as has been done for generations. In San Lorenzo, they call themselves "seed guardians" for their role in protecting this living heritage and passing it down the generations. [They] are among the farmers supporting draft legislation, under review by the lower house of the Colombian parliament, that would ban genetically modified (GM) seeds, which they claim threaten their traditions, livelihoods and food sovereignty. The initiative has the backing of Indigenous, peasant and environmental organisations, but faces opposition from agribusiness and sectors that support GM. In San Lorenzo, the rejection of GM seeds evolved into organised political opposition after people detected the use of such seeds in nearby crops in 2012. They then feared that GM seeds might cross-pollinate with their native varieties, altering their traits and threatening their ability to preserve them. The alarm prompted them to act. They travelled from village to village, hosted workshops, collected 1,300 signatures and drafted a citizen-led proposal. The initiative was backed by the Seed Guardians of Life Network, a national platform comprising farming and environmental groups, as well as local collectives and the municipal government. It was formally submitted to the town council. In 2018, San Lorenzo declared itself a GMO-free territory.

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No toilets, expensive food of dubious quality, crowded housing. This was the reality for many in 1840s Britain. Something had to change. And the Rochdale Pioneers knew it. The group of 28 artisans and cotton weavers ... wanted to start a co-operative society in order to provide their community with affordable and unadulterated food. Their small grocery shop started by selling only flour, sugar, oatmeal and butter and opened just before Christmas 1844. Any profit was shared among member-owners. With this, the co-operative movement took root. Today, these businesses employ some 280 million people around the world – 10% of the employed population. Approximately 3m co-ops with an astonishing 1.2bn members, more than an eighth of the world's population, exist internationally. Shared Interest is a UK-based social lender that supports farmers and handcraft producers in 47 countries around the world. From sphagnum moss farmers in Peru to coffee farmers in Rwanda, the organisation provides finance for smallholder communities that collectively provide around a third of the world's food but are often stuck in cycles of poverty. Uganda-based coffee producer Bukonzo Organic Farmers Cooperative Union (BOCU), which Shared Interest has supported since 2014 ... negotiates prices, undertakes marketing and manages export on behalf of 13 smaller primary co-ops. Having this tiered system is crucial for small-scale farmers who don't speak English.

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They've been preparing every Tuesday for the past four months, learning to belt out favorites like "Singin' in the Rain" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Those attending their first Giving Voice concert may not know what to expect–it is a dementia-friendly choir, meaning many of the participants have some form of dementia and are joined onstage by caregivers and loved ones. Giving Voice, a nonprofit dedicated to helping people in all stages of memory loss, was founded in 2014 with an initial chorus of 35 members. There are now more than 70 "memory choirs" throughout the world that use Giving Voice's model as the foundation for their programs–and a slew of similar dementia-friendly choirs and bands, including Music Mends Minds, AlzheimHER's Chorus, and The Unforgettables Chorus. The premise of these memory choirs is simple but powerful: Making music is not just a feel-good community activity; it's also a powerful weapon to help preserve memories and enhance brain function. Over 55 million people worldwide are believed to be living with dementia. The success of memory choirs [raises] scientific questions about whether music therapy can rewire the brain in addition to improving mood and fostering community. Borna Bonakdarpour, a behavioral neurologist ... is on a quest to show that social singing can help address some of the underlying causes of the disease, such as decreased mental stimulation, isolation, and inactivity.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on the power of art.

Important Note: Explore our full index to key excerpts of revealing major media news articles on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.