Reasons to be Cheerful
Reasons to Be Cheerful is an online magazine founded by musician and activist David Byrne. It shares inspiring, solutions-oriented stories highlighting positive developments and innovative approaches to global challenges. The platform covers a wide range of topics, including environmental sustainability, social justice, urban design, health, and culture, emphasizing practical, replicable solutions that are making a difference. Reasons to Be Cheerful aims to counterbalance the often negative news cycle by showcasing stories of progress, resilience, and creativity. The website encourages readers to engage with and support these initiatives, fostering a sense of hope and empowerment. It also offers a newsletter to deliver uplifting content directly to its audience.
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No Spare Parts: How Great Lakes Fisheries Are Creatively Minimizing Waste
A big lift of whitefish out of Lake Superior weighs about 2,000 pounds for Dennis VanLandschoot, the president of VanLandschoot & Sons Fish Market. But for the fifth-generation family business in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, only about half of that will generate any income. After removing the scales, the head, the...
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A Holistic Approach to Health Care Is Helping to Keep Rural North Carolinians Housed
This story was originally published by North Carolina Health News. In 2022, North Carolina launched an experimental initiative to address the nonmedical health needs of low-income residents by using Medicaid dollars. This first-in-the-nation effort, known as the Healthy Opportunities Pilot (HOP), has provided assistance to nearly 30,000 people across three...
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What We’re Reading: A Car-Free Neighborhood Finds Its Footing
Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Let us know what you think at info@reasonstobecheerful.world. Footloose and car-free Here at RTBC, we’ve reported several times over the years on the dream of the car-free city. In one neighborhood in Tempe, Arizona, that dream is...
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Bison Are Bringing Back Biodiversity to Britain
Just like clockwork, when feeding time arrives in the late morning at West Blean and Thornden Woods Nature Reserve, a group of trees begins to rustle in the distance. Shortly afterwards, the enormous head of a bison, covered in a moss of chocolate brown fur and two impressive curved horns,...
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How Street Art in Singapore Is Helping People With Dementia Get Around
A large mural of a teacup decorated with a green flower bursts off the white wall on the ground floor of a tall apartment building in the Kebun Baru area of Singapore. A bowl with a rooster adorns another building nearby. Up the street, another tower features a candy with...
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The Pioneering Paralegals Helping Women Take Back Their Land
When Bhanuben Bharatsingh’s husband died, his elder brother took control of the field she had tilled all her married life. This was the norm in Gujarat, the state in western India where she lived, but Bhanuben knew that her family’s well-being depended on what she did next. So she went...
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By Deconstructing Buildings With Care, Materials Get a Second Life
When Tsah Yahav and his team began to deconstruct a former military hospital on a three-hectare site near Grenoble, a city in the southeast of France, it was far from a classic image of demolition. They didn’t deploy bulldozers or excavators. There weren’t any wrecking balls or controlled explosions. Instead,...
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What We’re Reading: Near-Extinct Mussels Have Reappeared in Paris
Welcome back to our weekly behind-the-scenes glimpse at what’s getting our team talking. Let us know what you think at info@reasonstobecheerful.world. Mussel memory Earlier this month, we published a great story by Contributing Editor Peter Yeung about how fish are making a comeback in the once-nearly-dead Seine. Now, according to...
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The Revival of Germany’s Carbon-Sequestering Peatlands
This story was originally published by Yale Environment 360. Until recently, Henning Voigt’s 500-hectare farmland along the Peene River, near Germany’s northeastern Baltic Sea coast, was well-drained and used as a cattle pasture. Not anymore. Driven by the urgency of climate action, Voigt made a bold decision: to reverse the course of modern history. For...
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Ethiopia’s Utopian Experiment in Gender Equality
It doesn’t take long to observe that the community of Awra Amba is unlike any other place in Ethiopia — or even the rest of the world. Here in the breathtaking highlands of northern Ethiopia, not far from the fresh waters of Lake Tana, the largest in the east African...
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