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Nora Griefahn’s office showcases her work better than words: The interior walls at the C2C LAB on a busy street in Berlin, Germany, are alive with lush, air-purifying plants; lamp shades have been grown from mycelium; in the kitchen, visitors can choose between tea cultivated via regenerative agriculture and beer... Th
As Sunil Totti prepared for a job interview with an international tech firm recently, he was hit by a sudden anxiety: What if the electricity failed midway through? At home in Eastleigh, Nairobi, the power was notoriously unreliable. But that anxiety was quickly replaced by reassurance: “I know a place... The post Nair
Before Chris Downey lost his sight, he had a wind chime on his front porch. After he became blind, he realized that he could listen out for it to help him find his way home. But after a few years, his nextdoor neighbor added a wind chime to their porch.... The post How the Architecture of Sound Is Transforming Cities a
Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Tell us what you’ve been reading at info@reasonstobecheerful.world and we just might feature it here. Read receipts We hear it over and over: People aren’t reading anymore. Would more people be motivated to pick up a book... The po
Smoke hangs thick over southern Oklahoma’s Arbuckle Mountains as flames lick through prairie grass toward a stand of eastern red cedar trees. To many, the scene would look like a disaster in the making. But to father-son ranchers Chuck and Seth Coffey, the fire is a blessing — it’s the... The post Why Great Plains Ranc
This story was originally published by Civil Eats. The town of Skagway, in southeast Alaska, is home to approximately 1,000 year-round residents and hosts more than 1.3 million summer cruise ship passengers. Isolated in the winter, and reliant on a barge system to bring food up from the Lower 48... The post In Remote A
In Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, Ram Bibi, a 30-year-old mother now pregnant with her sixth child, counts herself as one of the lucky ones. She gets regular prenatal checkups at the Qari Safed family health house not far from her home. Here, midwife Marzia screens her for anemia, provides... The post How Af
Sunday Abiodun can often tell an animal is nearby before he sees it — from a broken twig or the way birds suddenly stop singing. For 15 years, he used those instincts to hunt wildlife to feed his family or to sell as bushmeat. Now he uses those same instincts... The post Former Poachers Are Protecting One of Nigeria’s
This story has been co-published by Reasons to be Cheerful and the Outrider Foundation. In Los Angeles, in Mumbai, in Kuala Lumpur and in several other cities around the planet, autonomous plastic-eating robots are taking over the waterways. They are, in one form or other, chomping up and extracting masses of the... Th
Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Tell us what you’ve been reading at info@reasonstobecheerful.world and we just might feature it here. Swimming upstream 20,000: That’s how many chinook salmon have migrated up the Klamath River, which flows through southern Oregon
César Maquieira has always loved the sea. Born and raised in the northwest of Spain, much of which is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, he would for years regularly go fishing and on boat trips, and he dabbled in scuba diving. There was something about the great expanse of azure... The post With Adapted Sailing, the Sea
On Doug Tallamy’s 10-acre property in rural Pennsylvania, the evidence arrives on wings. Wood thrushes now nest in shrubs that were once cut for hay. Luna moths — emerald-green giants that had become increasingly rare — have reached record numbers. Tallamy recounts enthusiastically that he has documented more than 1,38
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