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We’re building a guide for everyday life, where experts will educate you about our world.
Author Spotlight
Anita Krajnc is executive director of the Animal Save Movement and global coordinator of the Plant Based Treaty initiative.
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Carrie P. Freeman, PhD, is a professor of communication at Georgia State University and is a co-founder of Animals and Media.
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Beatrix Homler is an animal and human rights activist.
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Emily Franko is the Local Peace Economy Coordinator at CODEPINK.
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Lorraine Chow is the stewardship and outreach coordinator at the Santa Fe Watershed Association.
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Anne Petermann is the executive director of Global Justice Ecology Project.
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Lauren Collee is a writer and researcher.
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Freddie Clayton is an investigative journalist with the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism, focusing on environmental themes, specifically water and sanitation issues worldwide.
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Michael Windsor is the senior director of corporate engagement at The Humane League.
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Doug Tallamy is the T. A. Baker Professor of Agriculture in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware and co-founder of Homegrown National Park.
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Guides
The guide will help readers understand the global plastic crisis from multiple angles, including the impact of plastic on human health, wildlife and the environment, the upstream forces in the lifecycle of plastics, the complex reality of recycling plastic, the unique threat posed by tiny plastic particles called nanoplastics, and how two similar cities have handled the plastic issue in different ways.
editorsourceareaThe New Grand Tour is a modern take on the "old" Grand Tour—a journey through the ancient landscapes of Rome and Greece, the kingdoms of Sumeria, and beyond—once reserved for only the privileged few. Today, the availability of data from the past six million years of human activity through archaeological collections and the accessibility of this data enable anyone to journey through the past.
Globally, our human stories have varied depending on factors such as terrain type, resource availability, and the ecoregion type at a given time and place. However, our collective story is written around the fact that environments shape human culture and, in turn, humans shape their environments.
editorsourceareaA true republican political system operates without a monarchy or concentrated political power in any office, branch, or individual. And a thriving republic observes the fundamental principles of equality, consensus, transparency, and reform (rather than institutional abandonment). If a republic strays from these values, political collapse can occur. This guide compares past republics, including the Roman and Venetian Republics, to republican states of today. By examining the successes and failures of early republics, we can gain a deeper understanding of the challenges in our current political environment.
editorsourceareaConscious consumption, or conscious consumerism, can be accomplished in a variety of ways, such as shopping for food products that avoid harm to nonhuman animals, using green cleaning products, drinking shade-grown, fair-trade coffee and organic wine free of harmful pesticides, driving small electric vehicles over instead of gas-guzzling SUVs, and boycotting fast-fashion brands and businesses that treat workers unfairly.
This guide will help you make buying decisions that are healthier for you, your family, nonhuman animals, and the planet.
editorsourceareaWith new anthropological, biological and scientific findings, we are increasingly able to trace the outlines and fill in the blanks of our human evolutionary story. This can help us better understand the social and cultural processes that produced the world we live in now. This guide to Human Bridges explores the work of experts from the fields of human biology, human origins, and anthropology who want to contribute their individual expertise to a wider accessible body of information, and enlist in the cause to make this material a staple of education at all stages of life.
editorsourceareaEnvironmental health is crucial for public well-being as it directly impacts human health. Pollution, climate change, and habitat destruction can lead to respiratory diseases, waterborne illnesses, and other health issues. Maintaining clean air, water, and land reduces the risk of disease transmission and promotes overall health. Additionally, preserving ecosystems supports biodiversity, which contributes to food security and medicine discovery. Sustainable practices safeguard public health for current and future generations, emphasizing the vital connection between environmental and public health.
editorsourceareaHuman ecology begins in the most intimate corners of our lives. Every breath we take, every meal shared, every relationship nurtured within a neighborhood depends on the health of the living environments around us. Human ecology helps us see how daily choices are woven into larger social and ecological systems—and how those systems, in turn, shape our bodies, minds, and spirits. It invites us to consider both our material needs—food, water, shelter—and our psychosocial needs—belonging, purpose, and agency—and to understand how inseparably they are linked.
editorsourceareaEach lens in this Guide encourages us to notice relationships: between people, communities, and the natural world. It examines how governance can support quality of life, how neighborhoods grow and adapt, and how cultures share resources and respond to change. The Guide offers practical ways to live more gently—and more courageously—with one another and with the planet, showing that the patterns we create carry consequences across places and generations.
At its core, human ecology is about caring for ourselves, the communities that shape us, and the ecosystems that sustain every moment of life. When society teaches that human well-being and environmental health are part of the same story, a new possibility emerges: that future generations may inherit not only knowledge, but wiser, more balanced ways of living on Earth.Why do some authors pretend to be someone they are not? Why do they claim experiences that they don’t have? What drives them to create texts and claim that they are ancient? By examining some examples of literary fraud from the modern era, we can gain insight not only into a fraudulent writer’s perspective, but also into readers’ expectations, publishing practices, and what kind of story a culture values.
editorsourceareaOur financial system originated in Mesopotamia, where it was designed to ensure economic stability for a community. Over time it has transformed into something much more predatory.
editorsourceareaIn a democratic society, the power to address the climate crisis lies with the people. And it begins at home, our backyards, our neighborhoods and local communities.
editorsourceareaWhen we think about effective climate action, there are many different factors and options to consider, from working within your local community to advance climate resiliency projects and urging the media to meet its climate commitments, to supporting the growth and popularity of climate fiction. Climate action can also be aided by reframing the climate crisis. Instead of seeing it only through a scientific lens but rather as a form of oppression by the wealthy elite or a matter of children’s rights, the climate crisis can be addressed on a systemic, sociopolitical level.
This guide explores various ways to approach climate action and activism, including concrete examples you can use in your own backyard and local community, plus success stories that can be emulated and reproduced wherever you are.New Additions
A growing public interest in animal rights and welfare is persuading cities to protect working horses from inhumane treatment.
By: Reynard Loki
Generative AI has transformed Silicon Valley’s playing field, favoring tech giants with vast data, compute power, and capital—while leaving traditional startups struggling to keep up.
By: Gary Rivlin
Research suggests that extremist violence stems not only from ideology but also from personal grievances, raising the question of whether teaching life and social skills in schools could help reduce the risks.
By: Sandra Ericson
Learning to spot the language of conspiracy theories is a key skill for navigating digital media.
By: Danica Tomber
From seasonal cycles and reincarnation to cosmic destruction and rebirth, ancient Greek and Roman philosophers developed competing theories of how time repeats—and what that repetition means for human life.
By: Claire Hall
From script to screen, advertising videos mix storytelling, data, and technology to grab your attention.
By: Gena Wolfrath
Ornamental gardens and Alpine-style cottages transformed the English countryside into miniature Swiss landscapes, blending Romantic ideals with playful kitsch.
By: Seán Williams
Communities can balance safety, cultural life, and ecological health by designing nighttime lighting that protects both people and the natural world.
By: Reynard Loki
The “polluter pays” principle transformed the energy industry half a century ago. Now, as industrial agriculture drives climate breakdown, deforestation, and water scarcity, experts say it’s time to apply the same rule to our food systems—and make corporations, not consumers, bear the cost of the damage.
By: Alex Crisp
An unprecedented avian flu outbreak in Argentine Patagonia devastated a stable elephant seal colony, highlighting the rising threat of infectious disease to wildlife in a warming world.
Classics
In this memoir, Frederick Douglass chronicles life as an enslaved boy in the American South, his eventual escape, and his new beginnings as a free man and abolitionist.
Note: This historical memoir may include outdated and offensive language.
“The Shame of the Cities is a book written by American author Lincoln Steffens. Published in 1904, it is a collection of articles which Steffens had written for McClure’s Magazine. It reports on the workings of corrupt political machines in several major cities in the United States, along with a few efforts to combat them. It is considered one of several early major pieces of muckraking journalism, but Steffens later claimed that the work made him ‘the first muckraker.’” (Source: Wikipedia)
By: Lincoln Steffens
A survivor’s perspective on what it was like to be on the Titanic as it sank, with detailed accountings of his and other passengers’ accounts.
This article on the German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte (associated with the movement of German idealism) appeared in the Philosophical Review, Volume 16, pp. 488-505, in 1907.
Ellen Bliss Talbot was a professor of philosophy at Mount Holyoke College from 1898 to 1932. From Wikisource:
“According to Dorothy Rogers and Therese B. Dykeman… ‘[Talbot] had a successful academic career, chairing Mount Holyoke’s philosophy department for thirty-two years and teaching part-time for several years after retirement. She published just three books, all on Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1898, 1899, 1906), in addition to her considerable number of articles in the Philosophical Review, Mind, and the American Journal of Psychology. Her commitment to women’s education at Mount Holyoke was unwavering, helping to ensure that the philosophy curriculum met the expectations of her fellow academicians as philosophy established itself as a profession.’ From ‘Introduction: Women in the American Philosophical Tradition 1800–1930,’ in Hypatia 19:2 (Spring 2004): viii-xxxiv.”
This two-volume book is an “exposé about the Standard Oil Company, run at the time by oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller, the richest figure in American history.” More from Wikipedia:
“Originally serialized in nineteen parts in McClure’s magazine, the book is a seminal example of muckraking, and inspired many other journalists to write about trusts, large businesses that (in the absence of strong antitrust laws in the 19th century) attempted to gain monopolies in various industries.”
“The History of the Standard Oil Company is credited with hastening the breakup of Standard Oil, which came about in 1911, when the Supreme Court of the United States found the company to be violating the Sherman Antitrust Act.”
“The original book was a two-volume hardcover set. An abridged paperback edition was released later.”
By: Ida M. Tarbell
This 1847 memoir was written by prominent activist and writer William Wells Brown to support the abolitionist movement. It chronicles Brown’s cruel treatment as an enslaved man, the horrors that he witnessed, and his multiple escape attempts for freedom.
Note: This book is part of a historical collection and may include offensive language.
This article on "the woman question" of the right for American women* to vote appeared in Popular Science Monthly, Volume 49, in June 1896. Two months later, Popular Science Monthly's editors attacked Tweedy's argument in an Editor's Table section titled "Women and Politics," reproduced below for historical context depicting the attitude of most men (and some women) of Tweedy's time:
- "The Monthly has lately given place to two articles on the subject of the demand which is now being made by some women on behalf of their sex to be allowed to participate in political life on a footing of perfect equality with men. One of our contributors [George F. Talbot, 'The Political Rights and Duties of Women'] has tried to show cause why the demand should not be granted, taking the ground that the change would be injurious to society as a whole and particularly injurious to the female sex. The other [Tweedy, below] treats the arguments of the first with scorn, and, if we are not mistaken, betrays not a little of that 'antagonism of the sexes' which nevertheless she declares to be 'unnatural and vicious.' The question is one which ought to be discussed with complete dispassionateness; and we think that on this score there was no fault to find with the earlier of the two contributions, that by Mr. George F. Talbot, in our May number."
The editors go on to dismiss Tweedy's argument because "As long as men alone do the voting, they are supposed to represent the non-voting sex. Every man has or has had a mother, most have one or more sisters, and a very large proportion have wives. Every man's vote, therefore, … ought to express his consciousness of and respect for the family tie." They continue, "What is mainly needed, in our opinion, is the deepening of the sense of trusteeship in men." Nevertheless, the "women agitators," described below by Tweedy, fought on until women won the right to vote with the 1920 passage of the 19th Amendment.
✲ It should be noted that the public debate at the time often considered the voting rights of only white women. While women gained the vote in 1920 with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, it was not until the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that the right to vote for Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color was guaranteed.By: Alice B. Tweedy
From Wikisource:
- “Ten Days in a Mad-House is a book written by newspaper reporter Nellie Bly and published by Norman Munro in New York City in 1887. The book comprised Blyʼs reportage for the New York World while on an undercover assignment in which she feigned insanity to investigate reports of brutality and neglect at the Womenʼs Lunatic Asylum on Blackwellʼs Island.”
By: Nellie Bly
This is a speech by Frederick Douglass given on Monday, July 5, 1852, in Rochester, New York. The oration was published as a pamphlet the same year. Annotations were provided by the Wikisource community.
The famous novel about government and business corruption in the early 20th century by muckraker author Upton Sinclair.
From Wikisource:
- “The Jungle is a 1906 novel written by author and socialist journalist Upton Sinclair. It was written about the corruption of the American meatpacking industry during the early 20th century. The novel depicts in harsh tones the poverty, absence of social programs, unpleasant living and working conditions, and hopelessness prevalent among the ‘have-nots,’ which is contrasted with the deeply rooted corruption on the part of the ‘haves.’”
By: Upton Sinclair
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