Inspirational News Stories

Excerpts of Key Inspirational News Stories in Major Media

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

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Note: This comprehensive list of news stories is usually updated once a week. Explore our full index to revealing excerpts of key major media news stories on several dozen engaging topics. And don't miss amazing excerpts from 20 of the most revealing news articles ever published.

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Childhood Origins of Altered States in Adults

2026-02-19, Psychology Today

Posted: 2026-06-05 10:10:21

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/sense-of-time/202602/childhood-origin...

Research by Donna M. Thomas at the University of Lancashire ... found that children ages 4 to 5 often describe consciousness as something holistic and love-infused–a connective force linking them to family, nature, and even a purposeful universe. Notably, they do not equate consciousness with an individual "me." By ages 10 or 11, however, this shifts. Children begin to define consciousness as "I-ness"–an inner presence distinct from roles, relationships, or passing thoughts. In a recent preprint, Donna Thomas and I teamed up to explore the striking parallels between these early exceptional experiences and adults' pursuit of altered states of consciousness (ASCs). While children may slip naturally into states of self-transcendence or extrasensory sensitivity, adults often rely on "gateway tools" to revisit similar territory–meditation, prayer, breathwork, psychedelics, or other consciousness-altering practices. Using the eight core ASC dimensions identified by Larry Fort and colleagues (2025), we found compelling phenomenological overlaps. Children's reports of expanded awareness, boundary dissolution, and timelessness look surprisingly similar to adult descriptions of altered states. Whether we interpret these reports metaphorically or metaphysically, one thing is striking: The altered states many adults work hard to induce may share deep roots with the natural modes of awareness that characterize early childhood.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on the nature of reality.

It's hard to listen to accounts of people who've had [near-death] experiences and not be moved. Leanda Pringle from Connecticut had a NDE a little over 15 years ago, brought about by a double kidney infection. She experienced floating above her body and felt a sense of being everywhere and nowhere at the same time. "I've no idea how long I was floating in that abyss before I began to feel a presence," she recalls. "As it got closer I began to feel immense bliss. It was beyond anything I had ever felt before in my life. It's very hard to put that feeling into words. It was as if I was intertwined with it, but at the same time it felt as if it was hugging me." Tommy McDowell, a retired army veteran from Texas, spent seven days on a ventilator after suffering multiple organ failure induced by sepsis. During that time, he had a NDE that involved feeling a powerful sense of goodness. "It was a transformational presence of peace, comfort, serenity, love and home," he says. "I was no longer confused. I was no longer alone." He also saw a cloud of crystallised light that invited him towards it. As he entered, "I could feel embedded trauma, regret and loss washing away from my back and shoulders." Reflecting on what happened, Tommy says, "I experienced the presence of God. It was overwhelming and occurred in a way that I just don't have language to fully describe." By now, scientists have collected thousands of similar testimonies from people who have lived through a NDE.

Note: For more inspiring and credible material on this topic, read our Substack investigations: How Consciousness Research Can Help Heal a Divided World and Insights from Near-Death Experiences Remind Us of Who We Are and What Unites Us. Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences.

My life, at least at the beginning, followed a very traditional path. I believed science was moving us beyond religion and superstitions about life after death. But as my interest in the unexplainable grew, I started to see trends. Experts who weren't working together were finding the same results: that things science couldn't possibly explain like near-death experiences or psychic phenomena, were happening. I looked at documents from a CIA program where people were asked to send their thoughts – using just their minds – to others. The program concluded that there was a "statistically significant" success in doing this. I read multiple accounts of near-death experiences where a blind person was able to see, or a deaf person was able to hear. I reviewed stories of children who recalled past lives, and could even speak languages that they'd never been taught, at least in this lifetime. As I went to the primary sources and interviewed scientists, I felt like I had opened Pandora's box. I had always felt, and been taught, that science led us away from the paranormal. Now, that belief was turned on its head: I became convinced that science was showing us there is something bigger that can't be explained by our current scientific understanding of the universe. I've come to believe in non-local consciousness, or consciousness that originates outside our physical bodies and outside our brains. To me, this is the most scientifically sound explanation.

Note: For more inspiring and credible material on this topic, read our Substack investigations: How Consciousness Research Can Help Heal a Divided World and Insights from Near-Death Experiences Remind Us of Who We Are and What Unites Us.Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences.

A small Wisconsin city has just notched a big win in its fight against a proposed data center, thanks to grassroots community organizing and support from a growing statewide coalition. And to help guide other communities facing similar challenges, organizers in Menomonie have helped develop a toolkit for taking on hyperscale data centers. As of last October, there were about 3,000 new data centers being built or planned nationwide. Soon, a wave of data center projects was washing over Wisconsin towns. Data centers bring few permanent jobs and can drain municipal water resources, drive up electric bills, rob cities of tax revenues, and cause damaging noise, light and air pollution. Residents in Port Washington have complained about the disruption caused by around-the-clock construction at the new data center. Families near the construction in Beaver Dam have reported that their wells have run dry. Menomonie residents took to social media and the streets to raise the alarm about the data center proposal and organize community members. They met to share information, staged demonstrations and began attending city council meetings in growing numbers. By September 2025, there were over 10,000 Menomonie residents and allies in a Stop the Menomonie Data Center Facebook group – more than half the town's population. Pressure from local campaigners was so great that Mayor Randy Knaack announced at a September 22 city council meeting that he had notified Balloonist that the city would not be moving forward with a development agreement. More good news came in January when the Menomonie City Council voted unanimously to place additional regulations on data center projects. One of the statewide coalition's greatest achievements is the Big Tech Unchecked Toolkit. Published in December 2025 by Healthy Climate Wisconsin and other coalition partners, the toolkit includes information on what data centers are, their impacts on communities and success stories from struggles across Wisconsin, including Menomonie's.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division and reimagining the economy.

Trista Egli was standing in a greenhouse, tearing up strips of plantain and preparing to feed them to butterfly larvae. Egli is one of seven women incarcerated at the Mission Creek correctional facility, located a two-hour drive from Seattle, who are part of a year-long program that takes captured butterflies, harvests their eggs, and oversees the growth of the larvae before they are released into the wild where they will turn into adults. Last year, scientists working with the team released more than 10,000 larvae. Many of the women speak of their pride working on a project that feels like it is making a positive contribution to the world. Lynn Cheroff, 42, said she had been thrilled to talk about it with her two young children when they come to visit. Another woman, Jennifer Teitzel, appreciates the sense of order and discipline the program demands. Every detail about the eggs and larvae has to be collated and recorded. It is the women's responsibility, and nobody else's, seven days a week. The program run by Washington state department of corrections (DOC), is part of an effort to prepare the women for life once their sentences are over and to smooth the path to work or college. Kelli Bush, the co-director of Sustainability in Prisons Project, [says] the program also gives them confidence. "They reconnect with their own brilliance, they reconnect with their own intelligence," she says. "It's routine to hear people say ‘I didn't think I was smart and I'm realising I'm doing science'.

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

At a portable cabin in Porto, addicts queue up to use heroin and crack cocaine in safety, with medical staff on hand. The government-funded service ... provides them with clean needles, strips of aluminium foil, and other materials to facilitate their drug-taking and prevent infections. The overarching ethos of the centre revolves around harm prevention. The centre ... serves as a highly visible flagship of Portugal's long-standing policy of drug decriminalisation. Motivated by a widespread belief that the war on drugs was failing, the country's lawmakers agreed to decriminalise the acquisition, possession and private use of small amounts of drugs [in 1999]. Since its inauguration, Porto's centre has clocked up 63,000 visits from more than 2,000 drug users – the vast majority of whom use either crack cocaine or heroin. Only two overdoses have occurred, both of which were treated successfully on the spot. [Psychologist Diana] Castro also points to the 1,500 or so screenings undertaken, and the 89 individuals now receiving treatment for hepatitis C as a consequence. About 10 people have also entered detox programmes of their own volition. All those caught by the police with class A drugs are required to attend a government-run "integrated response" clinic, where their use levels are assessed and a treatment programme proposed. These clinics house psychotherapists, psychiatrists, social workers, pharmacologists and primary healthcare specialists.

Note: Read more about Portugal's innovative healthcare system that heavily emphasizes social prescribing to meet the deeper social, emotional, and community-rooted causes of addiction. Explore more positive stories on repairing criminal justice.

The single biggest predictor of how happy you are at any given moment isn't your income, your relationship status, your health, your career, or the city you live in. It's whether your mind is focused on what you're doing right now or wandering somewhere else. That's the whole finding. Present equals happy. Absent equals unhappy. Everything else is details. In 2010, Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert published a paper in the journal Science with a title that sounds like a Buddhist proverb: "A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind." They developed an iPhone app that pinged 2,250 people at random intervals throughout the day, asking three questions: What are you doing? What are you thinking about? How happy are you? People's minds wandered from what they were doing 46.9 percent of the time. And when their minds wandered, they were consistently less happy than when they were focused on whatever was in front of them. This held true regardless of the activity. What you're thinking about matters more than twice as much as what you're doing. You could have the perfect life – the career, the partner, the health, the house – and spend most of it mentally somewhere else, and the somewhere else would make you miserable. We don't struggle with presence during peak experiences. Nobody's mind wanders during their wedding or the birth of their child or the moment they land the job they wanted. Those moments are vivid enough to command attention. They handle presence for you. The problem is that peak experiences make up maybe two percent of your life. The other ninety-eight percent ... is ordinary, and your capacity to be present during ordinary moments determines the quality of your entire existence. That's where happiness actually lives. In the ninety-eight percent. In the ability to be present in an ordinary moment without wishing it were something else.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive inspiring news articles archive focused on solutions and bridging divides.

Many older adults also show significant improvements in their physical and cognitive health over time, according to a new study. The reason why seems to lie in how they think about aging. People who viewed getting older positively were more likely to show improvements in their cognitive skills and their walking speed. By contrast, folks in the study who held more negative ideas about aging tended to see a decline in these skills. That suggests people's beliefs can have a dramatic effect on their biology, the researchers say. "Our findings suggest there is often a reserve capacity for improvement in later life," said study co-author Becca Levy. "And because age beliefs are modifiable, this opens the door to interventions at both the individual and societal level." The new study included more than 11,000 adults aged 65 and up. 45 percent of the participants saw a positive development in either their scores on a cognitive test or their walking speed–a critical measure of fitness. Notably, when the researchers averaged the participants' scores, they saw an expected decline in ability as people aged. But on the individual level, that picture didn't hold up for everyone. "Many people equate aging with an inevitable and continuous loss of physical and cognitive abilities," Levy said. "What we found is that improvement in later life is not rare, it's common, and it should be included in our understanding of the aging process."

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on amazing seniors.

When Jamie Schuler teaches her Friday dance classes, some of her students stay seated. Most of the up to two dozen dancers have Parkinson's disease or other conditions that impact their mobility. A mashup of physical therapy and artistic expression developed by New York's Mark Morris Dance Group, Schuler's classes are designed to help participants manage aspects of their diseases, like coordination, balance and gait, while declaring dance an art form for everyone. Some of the dancers have even joined 3rd Law, the company that puts on the classes, in live, on-stage professional performances. Community-based workshops like this reflect a growing body of scholarship linking the arts to improved outcomes in physical and mental health. The research is fueling a push to make arts more accessible ... while hospitals, therapists and clinical researchers are increasingly bringing art and culture into environs for healing. Today, about half of U.S. hospitals have some kind of arts program. But UF Health has uniquely interwoven its arts program with its medical practice. Through the hospital's chart system, doctors and nurses make referrals to UF Health Shands Arts in Medicine, which includes a roster of in-house artists. In 2025, practitioners with the program had 13,000 arts engagements with the health system's patients, ranging from dance classes for expecting mothers in high-risk pregnancies, to painting or making mosaics with young patients.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on inspiring disabled persons and the power of art.

Children regularly survive near-death experiences, or NDEs, just like anyone else. But a new study published in the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice notes that very few researchers actually speak with this critical age group, despite the special insights it offers for experts exploring human consciousness. In their review, the authors noticed that children reported some similar "core features," including tunnels, bright lights, and out-of-body sensations. They interviewed seven children who survived cardiac arrest in a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) using arts- and play-based approaches, rather than the more direct questions used in most adult-based NDE interviews. Strikingly, however, the children's self-reported NDE experiences did not include every hallmark found in adult descriptions of NDEs. For example, there are no life reviews or messages from loved ones present in children's descriptions. Culture and religion also played little to no role in their responses, leading the authors to assert that a child's NDE may be more "raw" ... than adult NDEs, and should be considered extremely valuable data for future research. Unlocking the secrets of NDEs could help us understand consciousness, but scientists need more data. Thankfully, as resuscitation techniques become ever more advanced, it's likely that more and more people will experience these events instead of simply dying before they can share what happened to them.

Note: Our Substack investigation, How Consciousness Research Can Help Heal a Divided World, features fascinating examples and credible, scientific investigations into past-life memories in children. Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences.

The human brain remains deeply mysterious. Scientists have mapped its synapses and neurons in extraordinary detail, yet ... the felt experience of being you still defies efforts at a full explanation. However, researchers do have one fascinating window into that inner world: near-death experiences, or NDEs. As the name suggests, near-death experiences are altered states of consciousness reported by upwards of one-fifth of people who experience a life-threatening medical emergency. Some common traits of NDEs have emerged over nearly 50 years of research: intense emotions of peace and joy, out-of-body experiences (OBEs), encounters with dead relatives, altered perceptions of time, and elevated lucidity, among others. These accounts from people who've nearly died appear to contradict what scientists expect to occur in the brain as its regions begin to shut down one by one. In a new qualitative study published in the journal Psychology of Consciousness: Theory, Research, and Practice, [researcher Nicole] Lindsay and her colleagues reveal details of how individuals' dreams changed drastically following an NDE. A participant named Basil said he could confidently recall one dream every week or two, but after his near-death experience, that recall became a nightly occurrence. Others reported that dreams become intensely vivid after an NDE and that the separation between dreaming and waking was much more ambiguous than it was before.

Note: For more inspiring and credible material on this topic, read our Substack investigations: How Consciousness Research Can Help Heal a Divided World and Insights from Near-Death Experiences Remind Us of Who We Are and What Unites Us. Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences.

54-year-old fisherman [Ganeshbhai Devjibhai Varidum] was on a trawler off the coast of the western Indian state of Gujarat. They had mistakenly caught a whale shark, the largest fish in the world. Up to 40 feet in length ... the whale shark is as long as a city bus. Twenty-five years ago, the giant animal would have been killed. But Varidum did something extraordinary: He cut the net, which would have cost him upwards of $2,500, to free the shark. "Watching it go free gave me peace of mind." Found in tropical waters in the Indian, Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, whale sharks ... are known as the sea's gentle giants. Their interactions with humans are peaceful and curious, but they face a number of manmade threats. Until the late 1990s, the shores of Gujarat were ground zero for whale shark hunting. Their fins, oil and even meat were lucrative commodities. "400 to 500 of these gentle giants were being killed every year in India," [says Vivek Menon, co-founder of Wildlife Trust of India (WTI)]. In response, the Trust started a conservation program in 2002, and their first breakthrough came about ... thanks to [Hindu spiritual leader Morari Bapu]. When the WTI team told him about whale sharks there, he began urging his listeners to protect the fish in his sermons. The whale shark went from being nameless in the local language to becoming the "vhali," or beloved one. "Bapu made me realize that the whale shark is the largest fish in the sea but it never harms anyone," Ratilal Bamaniya, an elected leader of a fisher village on the Gujarat coast, says. "So why should we harm it? The whale shark is like my daughter. If she hurts, I hurt." In 2006, the forest department introduced a compensation scheme to pay fishers for net repairs after whale sharks have been released unharmed – a simple but vital recognition of the role fishing communities play in protecting whale sharks. To document these releases for compensation, WTI has distributed over 1,500 waterproof cameras to fishers, helping establish a shared data repository. More than compensation ... it seems fishers have come to be motivated by the respect and public attention that each rescue elicits.

Note: Don't miss the incredible pictures of whale sharks and their rescuers at the link above. Explore more positive stories like this on marine mammals.

In Kent, Ohio, older white women and immigrant families are forging unexpected connections through a time exchange network. Through time exchanges – sometimes called time banking – members earn time credits by helping others, then redeem them when they need assistance themselves. It's not barter, or charity; time banking emphasizes reciprocal exchange, recognizing that everyone has something to offer, and that we all need help sometimes. With over 530 active members and more than 101,000 hours exchanged over the past 15 years, Kent's time bank is one of the most vibrant in the world. Last year alone, members completed 3,900 exchanges through the original version of Time and Talents, a free platform. The ... interface is user-friendly. Users can track their time credit balance, and exchange private messages with each other about their needs and skills. Membership isn't limited to individuals – art galleries, businesses, and even governmental groups have requested volunteer labor in exchange for time credits. Rather than defaulting as a nonprofit with a formal board, groups might experiment with open organizing models where anyone can participate. Madison-based organizer Stephanie Rearick ... helped start a time bank in 2005, after she learned about it as one economic system of many in a book called The Future of Money. "I realized that time banking should address the things in our economy that most need to be addressed ... such as the degradation and devaluation of care and creativity, civic engagement and community work." Rearick sees common funds as one antidote to co-optation and collapse. Through them, neighbors pool money collectively to support shared projects and one another. After leaving the time exchange in 2017, she helped launch a common fund in 2022 as president of Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks (HUMANS), a global cooperative network focused on building a mutual aid economy. Time exchanges and common funds, she said, are just two tools of many that can be used for cultivating what she calls a neighborly economy.

Note: Learn more about the incredible world of time banking, where thousands of time banks have been established in over 37 countries. Explore more positive stories like this on tech for good and reimagining the economy.

When he walked out of prison after 28 years, the first thing Allen Burnett did was drive to the ocean. "I just stood there for a minute," he recalls. "I wanted to feel the air." Sentenced to life without the possibility of parole, he believed he would die behind bars. At California State Prison ... Burnett eventually earned a college degree with magna cum laude honors thanks to a pioneering in-prison education program through Cal State, and he found mentorship with other prisoners. Governor Gavin Newsom commuted his sentence. Today Burnett is the co-founder and executive director of Prism Way, a Los Angeles nonprofit that trains formerly incarcerated people to become peer support specialists. The work draws directly on the peer-counseling culture Burnett experienced during his own incarceration. The mission is clear: turn lived experience into healing. The California Model, inspired in part by Norway's prison system, emphasizes trauma-informed staffing, education and rehabilitation that mirrors life outside. Peer support is a key component. In 2022, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation began training incarcerated people to become peer support specialists. These mentors help fellow inmates cope with trauma and addiction, bridging gaps that formal treatment sometimes cannot. Early results of peer counseling have been promising. In the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in downtown Los Angeles, it coincided with a sharp drop in self-harm.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this in our comprehensive repairing criminal justice.

Known as the Night of Controversies, the Paris-based event featured about a dozen different sessions including debates ... as well as workshops on the art of the argument and non-violent communication. Run by the Institute of Desirable Futures, an organization working on corporate innovation and leadership, the project aims to "enrich us from our disagreements" and to "joyfully cast doubt on our certainties" in an era of growing polarization. The Night of Controversies was the institute's first all-out, multi-session event dedicated to disagreement, with more than 600 Parisians attending. The initiative is part of a wider movement that sees finding common ground and learning to "disagree well" as a potent remedy to many of today's societal and political woes. A study by researchers at the University of Cambridge in February 2026 found that divisions on social and political issues in the U.S. have increased by 64 percent since 1988, with most polarization after 2008. Julia Minson, a Harvard Kennedy School professor and behavioral scientist [said:] "When it comes to the U.S., people on the other side of the political spectrum are seen as unmoral, untrustworthy, not worthy of debate." The French institute has run "controversy" events for over a decade, predominantly as part of its work with small and large companies and even politicians. More than 2,000 people have participated in the institute's trainings on disagreement to date, spanning topics such as food production, climate change, AI, biomimetics and governance. The training might be intensively over a week or spread over several months of sessions. "I don't think we are fundamentally in disagreement," said one man. "Where we differ is our understanding of the political context." As a society, we have three choices when confronted with different opinions. First, we can withdraw from interaction and keep to our inner circle. Second, we can try to dominate and impose our beliefs on others. Or thirdly, we can learn to live and grow with them. "Listening to opposing opinions can enrich us," [Jean-Luc Verreaux, director-general of the institute] elaborates. "A diversity of perspectives can only improve how we build the world of tomorrow."

Note: Our Substack, The Social Media Platform Transforming Division Into Common Ground, spotlights a game-changing social platform that's using technology for good and bringing people together across differences. Explore more positive stories like this on healing social division.

A crisis is looming on European farms as the war on Iran threatens fertiliser supplies and sends fuel prices soaring. But some are more shielded than others. Regenerative farms are less reliant on imported synthetic fertilisers than their conventional counterparts while having very similar yields at much lower costs. They improve the soil's natural fertility with compost, animal manure, rotational grazing, and cover crops, which are planted in the off-season specifically to build healthy soil. They're less affected when global supply chains are disrupted. It also secures their future by reducing pollution, encouraging biodiversity and even improving public health. Overuse of synthetic nitrogen-based fertilisers is eroding the resilience of farms by polluting the water and air, degrading the soil, and posing risks to human health. On her farm in Greece, third-generation farmer Sheila Darmos generates nitrogen naturally through plants. "We integrate permaculture, syntropic agriculture, and agroforestry practices, and have been shredding tree prunings and leaving them on the soil for over 30 years, building rich fertile soil through decomposing organic matter," she explains. "We also grow nitrogen-fixing plants on the farm itself, so the system generates its own nitrogen without needing to import any synthetic fertiliser." Regenerative agriculture is not only about ecological regeneration and resilience: it also improves social and economic resilience to shocks and crises.

Note: Our latest Substack, "The Pesticide Crisis Reveals The Dark Side of Science. We Have The Solutions to Regenerate," uncovers the widespread conspiracy to poison our food, air, and along with the powerful remedies and solutions to this crisis. Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy and healing the Earth.

Heritage Growers, a native seed farm in Colusa founded by the nonprofit River Partners in 2021, is tackling one of the most fundamental – and least visible – environmental recovery challenges facing the American West: the shortage of locally adapted native seeds needed to restore damaged ecosystems at scale. With more than 200 acres in production, the farm grows what restoration scientists call "source-identified" seed – plant material whose genetic origin can be traced to the specific region where it will ultimately be replanted. That distinction is crucial. "It's not just any seed," says Heritage Growers' general manager Pat Reynolds, a restoration ecologist with more than 30 years of experience. "You want to take material that comes from a specific region, track and make sure those genetics are held forward, produce that seed and put it back into the region. That's a real important part of it. A poppy that's grown out in China and came from who knows what is not appropriate for habitat restoration." Some species require hand harvesting. Others, including some varieties of milkweed critical to pollinators like monarch butterflies, can cost more than $1,000 per pound to produce. "Milkweed actually is very expensive to amplify," Reynolds explains. "But we need it because if there is no milkweed, there are no monarch butterflies." Heritage Growers was created five years ago to address this systemic shortage.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on healing the Earth and technology for good.

Fredy Amador is intimately familiar with the financial struggles people face in the current economy. Northern Illinois' skyrocketing energy bills make the situation even tougher. Now, Amador has become an evangelist for something that can provide a modest measure of relief: A community solar project, built on a Superfund site too polluted for much else in the city of Waukegan where he lives, about 40 miles north of Chicago. Residents who subscribe to get energy from the solar farm are guaranteed to see savings on their energy bills, under a state program incentivizing solar in low-income areas. The 9.1-megawatt Yeoman Solar Project, which went online last month, can provide energy for about 1,000 households, as well as the Waukegan school district, which owns the land. Such brownfields are attractive locations for solar installations because of "existing electrical infrastructure, lower-cost land, and community acceptance," noted Paul Curran, CleanCapital's chief development officer. Incentives from the state initiative Illinois Solar for All helped make the project financially viable, even given extra costs incurred from building on a Superfund site. Solar is a good fit for sites that are too polluted for housing or other types of development. Under the terms of the Superfund remediation, residential use is prohibited at the Yeoman Creek site. The company has developed solar on brownfields and landfills in other states, including a new 822-kilowatt site in Maryland.

Note: Explore more positive stories like this on reimagining the economy and technology for good.

Kailash Satyarthi, the winner of a Nobel Peace Prize for his fight against child labor and exploitation, said his mission as a children's rights activist began when he himself was a child. On his first day of school, Satyarthi saw another kid about his age working as a shoeshine boy instead of attending class. It disturbed him. "I started looking at the world with different eyes, and I began questioning it because it wasn't right," [he said]. Satyarthi put his feelings into action. At just 11, he collected used books and created a book bank for poor children. The first rescue operation he undertook, with friends and colleagues, was to free a 14-year girl who had been abducted and was about to be sold to a brothel. As an adult he considered creating a charity or an orphanage, but instead founded an organization to defend children's rights, Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save Childhood Movement), which campaigns to end bonded labor, child labor, and human trafficking, and advocates for education for all children. An admirer of Mahatma Gandhi, Satyarthi gave up his career as an electrical engineer and his high-caste name, Sharma, in the 1980s, swapping it for Satyarthi, which means "seeker of truth." He also started working full time for his cause. Through his organization, Satyarthi has freed more than 80,000 children from forced labor in dangerous rescue operations. Two members of his group have been killed, one shot and the other beaten to death by criminal gangs. "My mission in life is that every child on the earth is free; free to walk to school, free to laugh, free to play. When every child is free to be a child, only then my dream will come true."

Note: Meet the beekeeper who left his job to create a network of rescuers that has freed hundreds of Kurdish Yazidi women sold into slavery by ISIS. In 19 countries, an international network of over 3,000 motorcyclists lives by a motto: No child deserves to live in fear. They call themselves Bikers Against Child Abuse (BACA). Their sacred mission is to empower and protect the many children who've endured child abuse–from being their 24/7 guardians to attending court hearings, serving as escorts, and working with law enforcement. Explore more positive stories like this on ending sex abuse and human trafficking.

Despair is nothing more than ... reducing the immense vista of reality to a particular interpretation of a particular moment. While orbiting a war-torn world aboard the International Space Station, astronaut Chris Hadfield took questions from earthlings in a Reddit AMA. Asked for his advice to anyone on the brink of giving up and his own approach to those moments of darkest despair, he offers: "I remind myself that each sunrise is a harbinger of another chance, and to take quiet, unrecognised pride in the accomplishments I get done each day. Each evening my intended list is unfinished, but I celebrate what I've done, and resolve to do better tomorrow. Also, nothing is ever as good or as bad as it first seems. Keep at it with optimism – it is your life to tinker with, learn from, live and love." This ongoingness of creation – the fact that this world is unfinished and our story unwritten – is nowhere more visible, life's ceaseless insistence on itself nowhere more palpable, than when seen on the scale of the entire planet. Hadfield captures this elemental calibration of perspective: "It's endlessly surprising how continually beautiful our changing, ancient, gorgeous Earth is. Every one of my 1,650 orbits, I saw something new. And I was up long enough to watch the seasons swap ends on the planet, like Mother Earth taking one breath out of 4.5 billion breaths." It is not unimportant that the word "holy" shares its Latin root with "whole" and has its Indo-European origins in the notion of the interleaving of all things.

Note: Former NASA astronaut Ron Garan watched Earth from space for 178 days and came to the realization that we humans are living a lie with our extractive economic systems and how we treat each other and the Earth. Explore more positive stories like this on the mysterious nature of reality.

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