Inspirational News StoriesExcerpts of Key Inspirational News Stories in Major Media
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Iranian Samereh Alinejad wanted revenge after her teenage son was murdered in a street fight. But in a dramatic turn at the gallows, literally moments before the killer was to be executed, Alinejad made a last-minute decision to pardon the man. She explained later that her son had come to her in a dream and asked her not to take revenge. Domestic violence survivor Pascale Kavanagh said that she never thought she would reconnect with her mother–her abuser–during her adult life. However, in 2010, her mother suffered several strokes that left her unable to communicate or take care of herself. With no one else to help, Kavanagh began to sit by her mother's bedside and read to her. By caring for her mother day by day, Kavanagh said the hate she had for her mother dissipated into forgiveness and love. Mary Hedges was at a mall with her son when two boys pushed a cart over a railing onto her, causing severe brain injury ... and the amputation of her right foot. Even though she suffered a coma and spent weeks fighting for her life, Hedges was forgiving of her young attackers and launched a foundation called Sweet Returns to help mentor teens. Steven McDonald was a young police officer in 1986 when he was shot by a teenager in New York's Central Park, an incident that left him paralyzed. "I forgave [the shooter] because I believe the only thing worse than receiving a bullet in my spine would have been to nurture revenge in my heart," McDonald wrote.
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For seven years, I was a white nationalist skinhead and the front man of a neo-Nazi metal band based in Milwaukee. The life I led was toxic to myself and everyone around me. I was drawn in when I was 16. I was an angry, lonely kid, searching for something: identity, purpose, belonging. I found it, or thought I did, in a fantasy: the idea that I was part of a master race under siege. We justified brutal attacks – what we called "boot parties" – on people we saw as enemies: people of color, LGBTQ folks, Jews, punks, anyone who wasn't us. I'd hear a quiet voice inside asking, "What are you doing? This guy didn't do anything to you. You don't even know him," but I didn't have the courage to listen. In early 1994, the mother of my daughter and I broke up, and I found myself a single parent to our 18-month-old. Two months later, a second friend of mine was shot and killed. I'd lost count of how many friends had been incarcerated. It finally hit me that if I didn't leave, prison or death would take me from my daughter. That was the push I needed. I realized something profound: what I had been searching for all along – belonging, joy, connection – wasn't found in hate, it was in community. Today, I work with Parents for Peace, an organization that helps people caught in extremism find a healthier, more connected life. We support individuals on their journey – whether they're questioning, struggling, or still deeply entrenched – and we guide families trying to reach a loved one.
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Angela King was 19 and deeply entrenched in a white supremacist organization when Timothy McVeigh bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. The year was 1995, and King recalls watching the aftermath on TV. "That was the first time that I ever considered [that what I was doing wasn't] just a game," King says. "This was a whole other level of violence and destruction." King could see something of herself in McVeigh, and the reflection scared her. They shared the same ideology. The anger that drove McVeigh to blow up a building came from the same ideas that shaped her belief system. Untwining herself from that world would not be easy. Leaving behind the people she called her friends would prove challenging, but not as challenging as moving past the ideology that had become a part of who she was. It would take more than four years, a prison sentence, some unexpected kindness from a Jamaican inmate, and nearly two decades of sharing her story – with all its shame and violence – to replace hatred with forgiveness. Today, nearly 25 years after the Oklahoma City bombing, King is a co-founder of and programs director for Life After Hate, a nonprofit that helps people leave extremist groups. King shares her story not because it's easy. But she and other members of Life After Hate do it in the hope that others going through something similar will hear their stories, see someone they can reach out to for help, and envision a way ... forward.
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For 25 years, Jeff Schoep headed America's largest Neo-Nazi organisation, the National Socialist Movement. Now ... he says he is committed to helping deradicalise people who hold the extremist views he used to preach. "Hating people is exhausting. When you can't tolerate other people and other systems of belief ... there's something wrong with you and the way you're looking at things," Mr Schoep said. "Once you have the opportunity to see and understand somebody else's viewpoint, from their perspective of their story in life, that can be life-altering." Mr Schoep said his time at the helm of the National Socialist Movement was like being the leader of a cult. "I felt like I was going to save my race, and I was a patriot for my country ... that was what drove me," he said. A revelation for Mr Schoep occurred in 2016 when he agreed to an interview with Daryl Davis, a prolific African-American jazz musician who worked to deradicalise Neo-Nazi groups. Mr Davis spoke of the impact that racism had on his own life, which began when he was pelted with rocks as a child marching in a Boy Scout parade, asking Mr Schoep, "How could someone hate me when they don't even know me?" "I was told that racism was wrong in school, by my parents, my grandfather, everybody," Mr Schoep said. "But none of that resonated until I sat across from somebody that had experienced it firsthand and how it made them feel. "Daryl never told me how I was wrong; he showed me how I was wrong."
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The "Nairobi Birdman" is filling gaps in Kenyan bird conservation on the streets of the country's biggest city. Seen around town with an injured kite perched on his head, it's just one of dozens that Rodgers Oloo Magutha has nursed back to health. These have included pigeons, storks, owls, and other wild birds that fall a-fowl of Nairobi's powerlines, cars, windows, or other hazards that industrialized areas pose to winged wildlife. Magutha himself is not from Nairobi, but grew up in poverty next to Kenya's Lake Nakuru National Park. A haven for bird life, Magutha used to sneak into the park to watch birds, birthing a love of nature and wildlife in the young man that lasts to this day. These quiet moments were rare in his difficult, homeless existence. He grew up without a family home, but as often as it was possible, he'd take care of birds he found that were hurt, hungry, or diseased. Today, Magutha has reliable lodgings, and he's used them to house birds which have in turn made him a local social media figure. His Instagram account has a distinctly African flavor ... but he also drops educational bombs for young fans, such as how flamingos get their pink coloration. His dream is to eventually open a proper avian rescue center; one that's legal, safe, and equipped with the facilities needed to care for them. Until then, he carries on with the help of donations, feeding the birds he saves as much as he is able to, and releasing them when or if they're able to return to the wild.
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Jen Taylor-O'Connor grew up in what she calls a "garden variety Christian" home, though things changed when her family enrolled her in the Institute in Basic Life Principles, led by disgraced minister Bill Gothard, as a teen. And now, decades after breaking free from IBLP – which Taylor-O'Connor, 45, refers to as a "cult" – she's opening up about how her pet parrots helped her heal in the documentary Parrot Kindergarten. The film looks at Taylor-O'Connor's ongoing research on animal communication and the establishment of her Parrot Kindergarten program, which helps teach other bird parents what she's learned. She recalls first being drawn to birds as a way to help combat feelings of loneliness and navigate the trauma she'd experienced as a child. Though she'd had other birds before, when Taylor-O'Connor brought home her parrot Ellie, who is at the center of the documentary, she noticed that the bird was exhibiting anger and frustration. She found herself relating to Ellie and wondering how to help. "I didn't want her to experience what I had felt from my training center experiences, which is you just keep it all inside and then it bubbles out in harder ways. I wanted her to always have a voice," she says. "So, that's how it began to spur me into â€What does it look like for her to communicate? What does it look like for other animals to communicate?'" As a result, she started teaching Ellie tricks and saw her demeanor totally change as she developed a love of learning.
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The world began to spin. I collapsed ... and I watched, calmly, as paramedics rushed into the bathroom and worked over the body. I describe it as "the" body because I didn't recognize myself at first. It looked like a fake dead body. I watched as emergency services tried to resuscitate the man, but shortly after, they stopped and gave up. They zipped him up in a bright yellow body bag and carried him into the back of an ambulance. About 45 minutes into the journey to the hospital, a medic who was on his first week on the job decided to try to feel for a pulse one more time. After several minutes of checking, and re-checking, the medic later said he felt a faint pulse. I was in a coma for three days, officially declared brain dead by the doctors. They told my family that I had little chance of survival. But in those three days, I believe I traveled to "the other side." I was met with feelings of love and saw divine beauty. But I knew, deep down inside that it was not my time yet. So three days later, I opened my eyes in the hospital. Physically, I was completely fine. I was even described as a "miracle" by my neurologist. Although I was raised in a religious family, I was never a big believer. But I came back from my near-death experience with a deeper understanding of what our purpose is on earth. I try to live every day with a sense of gratitude and happiness. I know life is here to teach us many lessons. Also, I am no longer afraid of death.
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Thirty-seven years ago I was an oncologist resident, learning about how best to treat cancer using radiation. One day, I was flipping through a large volume of the Journal of the American Medical Association when I came across an article describing near-death experiences. It stopped me in my tracks. All my medical training told me you were either alive or dead. There was no in-between. But suddenly, I was reading from a cardiologist describing patients who had died and then came back to life, reporting very distinct, almost unbelievable experiences. When I finished my residency, I started the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation. I started collecting stories from people who had NDEs and evaluating them with the mind of a scientist and doctor. But in the face of overwhelming evidence, I've come to believe there's certainly an afterlife. No two NDEs are the same. But as I studied thousands of them, I saw a consistent pattern of events emerging in a predictable order. About 45% of people who have an NDE report an out-of-body experience. When this happens, their consciousness separates from their physical body, usually hovering above the body. I'm a medical doctor. I've read brain research and considered every possible explanation for NDEs. The bottom line is that none of them hold water. There isn't even a remotely plausible physical explanation for this phenomenon. And yet, my work with NDEs has made me a more compassionate and loving doctor.
Note: The above article was written by Jeffrey Long. Explore more positive stories like this on near-death experiences.
Physics students learn about the basic stuff of reality–space and time, energy and matter–and are told that all other scientific disciplines must reduce back down to the fundamental particles and laws that physics has generated. This philosophy, called "reductionism," worked pretty well from Newton's laws through much of the 20th century as physicists discovered electrons, quarks, the theory of relativity, and so on. But over the past few decades, progress in the most reductionist branches of physics has slowed. Physicists largely ignored living systems. But today, many of my colleagues ... have come to believe that a mystery is unfolding in every microbe, animal, and human–one that challenges basic assumptions physicists have held for centuries, and could answer essential questions about AI. It may even help redefine the field for the next generation. Beginning in the 1980s, physicists ... began developing new mathematical tools to study what's called "complexity"–systems in which the whole is far more than the sum of its parts. Throughout the current AI boom, researchers and philosophers have debated whether and when large language models might achieve general intelligence or even become conscious. As the 21st century continues to unfold, my fellow physicists will undoubtedly continue to advance the study of black holes, quantum mechanics, and other traditional domains. The study of life, however, will take us to places we've never imagined, opening a path for the future of our field that, for once, unfolds on a level playing field with biologists, ecologists, neuroscientists, and sociologists. At its best, the pursuit of fundamental answers about the nature of living things might lead physicists not only to new scientific marvels, but also to an entirely new way of doing science.
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A French ban on the production and sale of cosmetics and most clothing containing polluting and health-threatening "forever chemicals" goes into force on Thursday. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) are human-made chemicals used since the late 1940s to mass produce the non-stick, waterproof and stain-resistant treatments that coat everything from frying pans to umbrellas, carpets and dental floss. Because PFAS take an extremely long time to break down – earning them their "forever" nickname – they have seeped into the soil and groundwater, and from there into the food chain and drinking water. The French law, approved by lawmakers in February, bans the production, import or sale from January 2026 of any product for which an alternative to PFAS already exists. These include cosmetics and ski wax, as well as clothing containing the chemicals, except certain "essential" industrial textiles. It will also make French authorities regularly test drinking water for all kinds of PFAS. A handful of US states, including California, implemented a ban on the intentional use of PFAS in cosmetics beginning in 2025, and several other states are slated to follow in 2026. Denmark has banned the use of PFAS in food packaging since 2020. The European Union has been studying a possible ban on the use of PFAS in consumer products, but has not yet presented or implemented such a regulation.
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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 ... the initiative pairs teenagers with older adults to attend cultural events – everything from symphony performances to plays and art exhibitions. For the seniors, many of whom live on limited incomes and might otherwise stay home alone, these shared outings are a way back into public life. "With the young people, I feel young again," one 85-year-old from Bramfeld in the northeastern part of the city said after a concert at Hamburg's Elbphilharmonie. "They're so kind and respectful. Everyone talks badly about youth these days, but these students are wonderful. We even exchanged phone numbers. I hope we can go again soon." The idea is as elegant as it is effective. Seniors who fall below the income threshold – â‚Ź1,350 ($1,575) per month for individuals or â‚Ź1,750 ($2,040) for couples – receive free tickets to cultural events. But instead of attending alone, they're matched with a "culture buddy" aged 16 or older, recruited through partnerships with local schools. For the young volunteers, the outings are a crash course in empathy and human connection. The teenagers commit to at least three cultural outings per school year and receive a certificate for their volunteer service.
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At Boyle County High School, locally-raised beef marinated in cumin is heaped onto corn tortillas with queso, guacamole, sharp red tomatoes, and vibrant lettuce. It's just one of many meals the teens at Boyle get to enjoy, and a far cry from the days of fruit cups, pan pizza, and skim milk, days which everyone involved are happy to see gone. According to Lex 18 News, some 150 Kentucky farms sell their produce to around 90 state school districts thanks to a pandemic-era grant that supplied the state with $3.2 million for the purpose. It's clear from the attitude of Boyle County School District Food Service Director Cheyenne Barsotti that the move-to-local has affected far more than just the hungry teens' excitement for lunch hour: it's changed the whole way the school approaches food. Barsotti's cafeteria staff may just cook from scratch at times depending on what produce is available. The cooks feel safe trying out new recipes. Several students told the NBC-affiliate that the fajitas were a 9.5 out of 10. Under the new direction of American health policy, the USDA Dietary Guidelines have featured, for the first time in their history, a focus on protein over carbs–and real food, that is to say, food which spoils and doesn't come out of a box, over all others. Even though [the initial] grant money has been halted, the program has enlivened so many that school districts are trying to maintain the new direction, the new attitudes, and the new menus.
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For the past decade, every year, Parisians like [Anne-ValĂ©rie] Desprez have been able to see their proposals come to life on the streets of the French capital. Under the city's Participatory Budget, any resident above the age of seven, regardless of their nationality, can propose a project to be paid for by municipal funds. The model, increasingly popular across the globe, is helping authorities spend resources efficiently and boost democratic participation. In Paris, more than 21,000 ideas have been submitted by citizens since the scheme launched in 2014, resulting in 1,345 funded projects and an expenditure of â‚Ź768 million (almost $900 million), including â‚Ź263 million set aside for low-income districts. Each proposal must pass a feasibility study by city hall before being voted on by residents. "It is a very good device and it's important," says Yves Sintomer, a French researcher and co-author of the book Participatory Budgeting in Europe. It's led to the creation of rooftop farms, children's play areas, community art murals, shade structures and baggage storage for the homeless, as well as a number of projects at the [Cherry Sociocultural Center], which was founded in 1999. In 2017, following the center's first successful budget proposal, benches were installed in the street out front, providing a place for people to congregate for free. Further funding from the participatory budget enabled the center to buy a cargo bike – shared with other local businesses – for short-distance deliveries in 2019.
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"These plants are the winners, the ones that get to pass their genes on [to future generations]," says Lee DeHaan of the Land Institute, an agricultural non-profit based in Salina, Kansas. If DeHaan's breeding programme maintains its current progress, the descendant of these young perennial crop plants could one day usher in a wholesale revolution in agriculture. The plants are intermediate wheatgrass. Since 2010, DeHaan has been transforming this small-seeded, wild species into a high-yielding, domesticated grain crop called Kernza. He believes it will eventually be a viable – and far more sustainable – alternative to annual wheat, the world's most widely grown crop and the source of one in five of all calories consumed by humanity. Remarkably, DeHaan does not paint the current agricultural-industrial complex as the enemy. "Every disruptive technology is always opposed by those being disrupted," he says. "But if the companies [that make up] the current system can adjust to the disruption, they can play in that new world just the same." The Land Institute's strategy is redirection rather than replacement. "Our trajectory is to eventually get the resources that are currently dedicated to annual grain crops directed to developing varieties of perennials," says DeHaan. "That's our [route to] success." There are signs that this is already working, with the food firm General Mills now incorporating Kernza into its breakfast cereals.
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Wade Milyard heard the voice from "out of nowhere" and knew he needed to listen–he thought it was God, or some other higher power. The former canine officer for the Frederick Police Department in Maryland was responding to a domestic dispute at a homeless camp. Soon after he investigated the disturbance, the voice rang out. "Ask them about their laundry." Milyard heeded the voice, asked the question, and unknowingly set the course for a prayer-fulfilling future. The homeless couple he interviewed told him they typically washed their laundry in a nearby creek. The cop never forgot that response, nor his call to service. He pooled multiple donations with some of his own money and went to work creating a full service laundromat on wheels. Fresh Step Laundry was born–with a mission "to help restore dignity to the unhoused community by providing free, accessible, and hygienic laundry." Since retiring from the police force in January, the 45-year-old has been traveling around his Maryland city, which is near D.C., making a difference–one load of wash at a time. He's set a schedule so people can meet him to take advantage of his laundry service, and his email is at the bottom of the web page. In the last several weeks alone, Fresh Step has washed more than 2,000 pounds of laundry and his next goal is to add a second vehicle so he can double the number of people he can serve.
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It began in the small Catalan town of Taradell as a plan to provide local people with allotments where they could grow their own food. Four activists came together with the aim of promoting good environmental practices in local agriculture and business, as well as supplying renewable energy. The town has a strong tradition of community action, and as the initiative gathered momentum, the activists formed a cooperative, Taradell Sostenible, which now has 111 members and supplies power to more than 100 households. These include some of the area's most vulnerable citizens, says Eugeni Vila, the coop's president. "The question was how could people with few resources join the coop when membership costs â‚Ź100," says Vila. "We agreed that people designated as poor by the local authority could join for only â‚Ź25 and thus benefit from the cheap electricity we generate." The [Institute for the Diversification and Saving of Energy]'s policy aims to bring cheap electricity to households suffering from pobreza energĂ©tica (fuel poverty) who cannot afford the upfront cost of installing solar panels – typically â‚Ź5,000-6,000 for each household. "We've developed a formula to help people who are struggling to get by through incorporating them into a network that helps them to improve their situation," [Vila] says. "We've taken advantage of the EU Sun4All scheme to develop a system to assess who are the vulnerable families, and not just in terms of fuel poverty."
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Emily Kasriel, the author of "Deep Listening" (HarperCollins, 2025), believes that really listening to each other can help us repair the social fabric that has frayed. Kasriel emphasized that Deep Listening is not just about changing personal habits but also about confronting a broader societal turning point. She shared, "I believe we're at an inflection point where we must choose between further fragmentation or renewed connection. The practice of Deep Listening isn't just a nice communication skill – it's a necessary foundation for addressing complex challenges, in a business or society, from climate change to adapting to AI." Kasriel hopes that by creating a comprehensive guide "to equip readers with practical tools to bridge divides in their personal lives, professional settings, and communities," she will ultimately contribute to a less polarized, more connected world. Kasriel [said], "In my mediating, I witnessed how transformative it can be when people who see each other as enemies have the experience of being genuinely heard by the â€other side.' In these settings, I refined techniques for creating safety and holding space during difficult conversations-skills that directly informed several of the eight steps in my methodology." Given her extensive experience, Kasriel realized that listening is not a passive act but a deliberate practice. Through listening differently, you transform what your speaker shares or even thinks.
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In Montana, a focus on restorative justice is reducing juvenile recidivism through a nonprofit program that engages them, rather than punishes them. The nonprofit believes that it's actually far more challenging for juvenile offenders to look their victims in the eye and explain why they behaved antisocially than it is to simply serve a suspension from school, where they're distanced from friends and mentors, and often fall behind in their education. The Center for Restorative Youth Justice (CRYJ), is not a new organization, but their influence in Montana is growing. CRYJ receives referrals from Youth Court probation officers, school administrators, or school resource officers made on behalf of a juvenile offender who's broken the law. CRYJ then has a conference with the youth and their parent or guardian, and creates a tailormade program of restorative justice. This can involve peer group discussion, victim-offender meetings, and other situations where the youth is given the forum to reestablish a relationship with the community, rather than something like a school suspension. CRYJ believes that by limiting the overuse of exclusionary discipline and emphasizing a community-driven approach, it can help at-risk youth avoid falling behind in school. We spend a lot of time separating people after there's been harm, but often the deepest healing and learning and moving forward can happen ... when we can actually come together and talk about what happened and how to make things right.
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John Seigel-Boettner ... has been coordinating the local chapter of Cycling Without Age (CWA) since 2019. Effortlessly charming and still ferociously fit at 70-years-old, he gives rides at least twice a week. Though the people who ride upfront don't pedal, he doesn't call them "passengers" but "riding partners" to emphasize the program's spirit of companionship. "Cycling Without Age is about connection," Seigel-Boettner says. "It's about the conversations between pilot and partner, and the connection with everyone we meet along the way." While anybody can ride for free, CWA prioritizes riders with limited mobility. Seigel-Boettner's youngest rider was a five-year-old boy on a feeding tube who wanted to ride to school with his friends. "We provided that," he says, "and it made him very happy." Sometimes, his riders have lost their ability to speak at all. When Seigel-Boettner rides with someone experiencing memory loss, the words might fade away, but not the emotional resonance. The vibrations, the breeze, watching the passing world together become their shared language. "They see a flower, or the ocean, or a bird, and suddenly a memory surfaces," Seigel-Boettner says. CWA is much more than a lovely idea. A 2020 study found that participants experienced measurable improvements in mood and well-being after rides. The trishaw excursion is a chance to be seen again, not as a diagnosis but a person, not a burden but a being alive in the world.
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When marine geologist Mick O'Leary showed a group of Australian First Nations Elders a digital model of two ancient watering holes he had recently located–now under 14 meters of ocean–one man perked up, struggled to his feet and began speaking excitedly. Timmy Douglas, had recognized the watering holes as part of a songline he'd known all his life. Songlines involve using dramatic story songs that First Nations people began creating long before the written word as a mnemonic and spiritual system to navigate Australia's harsh terrain: they would do so by singing the songs as they walked across the land. These songs, which also define groups and laws and impart cultural values, have been passed down from one generation to the next over thousands of years. The connection of the songline to a recent and remarkable archeological find by O'Leary and his colleagues illustrates how First Nations groups and modern scientists are learning to work together–in this case to find evidence of the ancient humans who lived on land that is now underwater, what the Murujuga Elders call "Sea Country." Such evidence now includes stone tools that the scientists found last year on the ocean floor near the submerged watering holes. O'Leary says that although the research team did not physically follow the songline to make its discovery, he thinks that kind of collaboration might happen in the near future.
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