In response to this coronavirus pandemic, we took the work we were already doing with some of our collaborators (Carol Mase and Tom Roy) and distilled it into the basics, which we are offering as a PDF.
Kelly McGonigal: How to make stress your friend (a TED Talk)
Ted talks – Kelly_McGonigal: How_to_make_stress_your_friend
Stress. It makes your heart pound, your breathing quicken and your forehead sweat. But while stress has been made into a public health enemy, new research suggests that stress may only be bad for you if you believe that to be the case. Psychologist Kelly McGonigal urges us to see stress as a positive, and introduces us to an unsung mechanism for stress reduction: reaching out to others.
Kelly McGonigal translates academic research into practical strategies for health, happiness and personal success
Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce (a TED Talk)
Malcolm Gladwell on spaghetti sauce – Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell gets inside the food industry’s pursuit of the perfect spaghetti sauce – and makes a larger argument about the nature of choice and happiness. Detective of fads and emerging subcultures, chronicler of jobs-you-never-knew-existed, Malcolm Gladwell’s work is toppling the popular understanding of bias, crime, food, marketing, race, consumers and intelligence.
Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story (a TED Talk)
Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story – Our lives, our cultures, are composed of many overlapping stories. Novelist Chimamanda Adichie tells the story of how she found her authentic cultural voice — and warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding.
Ken Robinson says Schools Kill Creativity (a TED Talk)
Ken Robinson says schools kill creativity – Sir Ken Robinson makes an entertaining and profoundly moving case for creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity. Creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson challenges the way we’re educating our children. He champions a radical rethink of our school systems, to cultivate creativity and acknowledge multiple types of intelligence.
Thinking in Systems: A Primer
Thinking in Systems: A Primer – by Donella H. Meadows
In the years following her role as the lead author of the international bestseller, Limits to Growth–the first book to show the consequences of unchecked growth on a finite planet– Donella Meadows remained a pioneer of environmental and social analysis until her untimely death in 2001.Meadows’ newly released manuscript, Thinking in Systems, is a concise and crucial book offering insight for problem solving on scales ranging from the personal to the global. Edited by the Sustainability Institute’s Diana Wright, this essential primer brings systems thinking out of the realm of computers and equations and into the tangible world, showing readers how to develop the systems-thinking skills that thought leaders across the globe consider critical for 21st-century life.Some of the biggest problems facing the world–war, hunger, poverty, and environmental degradation–are essentially system failures. They cannot be solved by fixing one piece in isolation from the others, because even seemingly minor details have enormous power to undermine the best efforts of too-narrow thinking.While readers will learn the conceptual tools and methods of systems thinking, the heart of the book is grander than methodology. Donella Meadows was known as much for nurturing positive outcomes as she was for delving into the science behind global dilemmas. She reminds readers to pay attention to what is important, not just what is quantifiable, to stay humble, and to stay a learner.In a world growing ever more complicated, crowded, and interdependent, Thinking in Systems helps readers avoid confusion and helplessness, the first step toward finding proactive and effective solutions.
