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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What We’re Reading: ‘Tax Us More’ Say The Super-Rich
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. The price we pay “A handful of global oligarchs with extreme wealth have bought up our democracies; taken over our governments; gagged...
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The Nationwide Photo Project Preserving India’s Architecture
In the town of Jaisalmer in the western Indian state of Rajasthan, Patwon Ki Haveli shimmers in the haze of the Thar Desert, not far from its famed golden fort. With intricately carved balconies, courtyards where shadows dance as light filters through latticed windows, and rooms that echo with history,...
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How Community Solar Turned a Superfund Site into Savings in Illinois
This story was originally published by Canary Media, an independent, nonprofit newsroom covering the transition to clean energy and solutions to the climate crisis. As someone who spent several years as a workers’ rights organizer, Fredy Amador is intimately familiar with the financial struggles people face in the current economy....
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How Hamburg Combats Loneliness With ‘Culture Buddies’
What if a ticket to the opera could also be a prescription against loneliness? In Hamburg, the nonprofit KulturistenHochZwei — a play on the words culture (kultur) and tourists (touristen) — is turning concert and museum visits into powerful social medicine. Founded in 2015 by Christine Worch, a former marketing...
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What We’re Reading: A Wild Oyster Comeback
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. Burgeoning bivalves The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than almost any other ocean surface on the planet, which is bad news...
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Anyone in Paris Can Decide How the City Spends Its Money
Just off the bustling Rue Montorgueil, one of the most commercial streets in Paris, the Centre Cerise, or Cherry Sociocultural Center, is a haven of local community. At the cafe in the back, where the ceiling is covered in a sea of mirrors, a young barista whistles behind the counter...
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How a Tiny Australian Town Relocated 500,000 Flying Foxes
Surrounded by vast sugarcane farms, pristine rainforest, empty beaches and lush waterfalls, Cameron Bates’ new home of Ingham, a town in northern Australia, was a welcome breath of fresh air after the 16 years he’d spent living and working in Jakarta, Indonesia. In 2019, Bates moved into an apartment in...
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The School Where Students Pay With Plastic Bags
On a misty Thursday morning in the village of Pamohi in the northeast Indian state of Assam, children walk to school carrying two bags. One holds their books; the other contains 25 cleaned and sorted plastic bags and bottles. For these students, the latter is currency — their school, the...
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How the U.K. Helps College Students Get to Work
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education. MACCLESFIELD, England — Ishan Goshawk, an apprentice with global pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca, donned a lab coat and safety glasses, and entered a room filled with robots. His first stop was a machine programmed to...
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What We’re Reading: The L.A. Fires, One Year On
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. A second chance A year on from the devastating Los Angeles fires that burned for weeks and killed 31 people, the smell...
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