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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Lessons for a Warming World From Kashmir’s Cooling Caves
On a quiet June morning in Dudran, a remote village in the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir, the stillness is broken only by the rustle of the breeze, the gurgle of mountain streams, and the lively chirping of birds. Amid this calm, Mohammad Aamir walks steadily, balancing a deaag,...
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Can Citizen Scientists Avert Australia’s Biodiversity Crisis?
In 2023, a Queenslander noticed an interesting clam in the river waters of Ipswich, a town outside of Brisbane. She took a picture and uploaded it to the citizen scientist platform iNaturalist. The images were of freshwater gold clams, a highly invasive species that was, up to that point, found...
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What We’re Reading: What Americans Can Learn From German Prisons
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. Opening up This past spring, U.S. prison officials from several states spent a week touring four German prisons “where inmates wore street clothes, maintained their right to vote, cooked...
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Striding Into the Future on Solar Sidewalks
Kamloops, British Columbia, is a radiant place, receiving over 3,100 hours of sunshine a year. So it’s no wonder that in 2016, Thompson Rivers University (TRU) decided to harness all that luminescence and convert it to electricity. If the university’s solar array had been installed on a roof or mounted...
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Pink City Rickshaw Puts Women in the Driver’s Seat
Every morning, 33-year-old Poonam Devi sends her teenage daughters off to school in Jaipur, exchanges her sari for her uniform of salwar kameez, a more practical outfit consisting of a long shirt with baggy pants, and begins her day’s work in a bright pink electric auto rickshaw. Even today, people...
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What Happens When You Give Teens No-Strings Cash?
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news outlet focused on education. Kapri Clark used the $50 to help pay for her braces. Lyrik Grant saved half of it, and used the rest for dance classes. Kevin Jackson said he squandered the cash, on wings, ride shares for...
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A Breast Cancer App Is Saving Lives in Pakistan
In Pakistan, where breast cancer is the most common cancer among women and social stigma often delays diagnosis, a quiet revolution is underway. PinkDetect, a mobile app that combines tech and outreach, is helping women screen themselves privately and before it’s too late to get the necessary care. PinkDetect’s founder,...
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What We’re Reading: Homelessness in L.A. Is Finally Declining
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. Housing Angelenos Homelessness has been a major issue in Los Angeles since the 1980s, when housing development failed to keep pace with population growth. But according to a Bloomberg...
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A Sequoia Forest Grows in Detroit
Behind David Milarch’s desk in a large warehouse in rural Michigan grows the future of climate change solutions. Thousands of infant sequoia and coastal redwood saplings, each the size of a thumb, sprout beneath grey foil and growing lamps in bus-size greenhouses. In the next room are their juvenile siblings,...
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Building Empathy Through the Sounds of ‘a World in Motion’
In February 2025, in the shadow of the Israel-Hamas War with its rising death toll and humanitarian crisis, a small audience in a library in Chicago experienced the war’s heartbreak, one note at a time. A classical string quartet played Lao Rahal Soti (“If My Voice Departs”) with the lyrics:...
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