With Earth Day in mind, I’m going to suggest you find the time to watch Bill Gates’ TED Talk about why he’s backing – and investing heavily in – a new kind of energy technology that has phenomenal potential to change, well, just about everything about the energy conversation. The challenges we face, as Gates describes, are monumental. But so also is the creativity and commitment of some of the folks leading the charge to find solutions to our problems. If you’ve seen Bill Gates give earlier presentations, it’s kind of neat to see his growth in terms of his confidence, his use of illustrations and data, and his ability to engage...

I wasn’t sure where to put Shane Koyczan’s TED Talk performance of his spoken-word poem “To This Day.” It’s about bullying, and the lasting impact that the harsh words children speak to each other can have. That’s something I experienced as a kid, both as a receiver and giver. And both – being called names and calling others name – shape some of the memories of my youth I would most like to forget. So perhaps, I thought, I should put it under “parenting,” inviting parents and all those who care for children to take these taunts and slanders more seriously so that we may children our to honor each other and to be resilient...

Lent is a time of self-denial, a chance to remember and identify with the sufferings of our Lord. It is also an opportunity to make do with less and in this way to identify also with all those who have so little, those with whom our Lord identified. That gets increasingly more difficult – and simultaneously more important – in a word that seems to grow more materialistic by the day. It is challenging to watch the ads of television and across the media and not succumb to believing that we just can’t get buy without that new ______________ (fill in the blank). In this light, Lent and its call to self-denial is a gift, an opportunity to...

One of the first questions I ask when I think about donating to a particular charity is what their overhead is – that is, how much money the spend on personnel and marketing and everything else it takes to administer their relief efforts. This kind of information is readily available and I use it to determine a sense of the charity’s efficiency – the lower the overhead, the more money goes directly to the recipients of the aid I and others give. Of course I assume the reverse is true as well: the higher the overhead the more wasteful the charity is and less deserving of my support. In this provocative TED Talk based on his book...

Kid President has taken the nation by storm. His “pep talk” has had more than 10 million views in the last month and many of his other videos – all designed, as he says, to make grown-ups less boring and the world a better place – have had a wide viewing. But who is Kid President? Turns out, it’s an eight year old boy by the name of Rob. Actually, he goes by Robbie (and not “the Robster,” as you’ll discover). (His last name has been withheld…by his mom.) The other guy behind Kid President is the videographer, producer, and friend, Brad. (I’m not sure who’s withholding Brad’s last name!) But it’s more...