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We’re building a guide for everyday life, where experts will educate you about our world.
Author Spotlight
Marcelo Gleiser is a theoretical physicist. He is a professor of physics and astronomy at Dartmouth College, where he also serves as the Appleton Professor of Natural Philosophy and the director of the Institute for Cross-Disciplinary Engagement.
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Andrew Califf is an archaeologist and anthropologist with a special interest in environmental conservation and Indigenous rights.
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Yasmine Seale is a writer, poet, and literary translator specializing in Arabic literature, mythology, and cultural history.
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Caren Martineau is the founder and CEO of Bevival, a death literacy content platform and resource.
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Delcianna Winders is an associate professor of law and the director of the Animal Law and Policy Institute at Vermont Law and Graduate School.
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Michael S. Fenster is a cardiologist, chef, author, and professor of culinary medicine at the University of Montana.
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Jeff Feinman is a veterinarian and molecular biologist.
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Elizabeth Henderson is an organic farmer. She is the co-chair of the Interstate Council policy committee of the Northeast Organic Farming Association and represents the Interstate Council on the Board of the Agricultural Justice Project.
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Mark Moffett is a writing fellow for the Human Bridges project of the Independent Media Institute and research associate in the Department of Entomology at the National Museum of Natural History in the Smithsonian Institution.
April M. Short is a co-founder of the Observatory, where she is the Local Peace Economy editor. She is also a writing fellow at the Independent Media Institute.
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Guides
The Observatory’s Guide to Companion Animals and Human Responsibility explores the complex relationships between humans and the animals who live alongside us. It examines how pet ownership, breeding, and the global pet industry affect animal welfare, biodiversity, and ecosystem balance. From the ecological impact of free-roaming cats to ethical questions about domestication and dependency, the guide highlights both care and consequence. It also considers how human choices—from feeding practices to habitat encroachment—shape the lives of companion animals and wildlife alike. By bringing these perspectives together, the guide encourages more responsible, informed, and compassionate relationships with animals in human care.
editorsourcearea“It really is godlike,” says Geoffrey Hinton about artificial intelligence. He’s been called the “godfather of AI,” so he should know. “Magical intelligence in the sky” is how Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI, regards AI, while Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal and Palantir, warns that AI could bring about the appearance of the Antichrist. In contrast, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicts that AI will result in “the defeat of most diseases, the growth in biological and cognitive freedom, the lifting of billions of people out of poverty… a renaissance of liberal democracy and human rights.” Is AI really so transformative, or is it an evanescent trend whose importance has been overhyped?
This guide won’t give you the answers. It certainly won’t tell you whether AI is a harbinger of the Antichrist. What it can do, though, is explore AI’s unresolved issues, which will almost certainly be with us for years to come
editorsourceareaHumans have long used language, writing, and storytelling to make sense of the world—and to shape how it is understood. Writing takes many forms, extending from literature and journalism to scholarship, personal reflection, and everyday communication. Together, language and writing help develop our critical thinking, awareness, and curiosity.
The Observatory Guide to Language Arts and Writing explores how language and storytelling shape the human mind, foster empathy, and serve as tools for understanding ourselves, connecting with others, imagining new possibilities, solving problems, and questioning the status quo. Drawing on literature, history, psychology, neuroscience, and the social sciences, the guide highlights how writing and narrative shape not only expression, but perception, meaning, and action.
editorsourceareaThe United States is facing an unprecedented care crisis, with millions of Americans providing essential care to relatives and friends living with chronic conditions, disabilities, mental health challenges, or age-related needs. Despite serving as a lifeline for loved ones, informal caregivers often lack the public support they deserve. As a result, many experience significant emotional, physical, and financial strain. Finding convenient and flexible ways to practice self-care is therefore critical.
editorsourceareaWriting can be one powerful way for caregivers to do this. Through journaling, storytelling, and other forms of writing, caregivers can process difficult emotions, gain new perspectives on their experiences, and explore evolving aspects of their identities. Writing can also connect caregivers with others who share similar challenges.
Beyond personal healing, storytelling can help caregivers build community and advocate for stronger care policies. This guide explores several forms of writing and storytelling that can help caregivers reflect, cope, and heal—while also contributing to a more supportive care system for everyone.This guide examines the challenges facing vulnerable youth in America and the role communities, institutions, and public systems play in protecting—or failing—them. Drawing on research into child welfare, poverty, health, justice, and systemic inequities, the series explores how overlapping crises—from hidden abuse and neglect to the criminalization of childhood and the long-term effects of economic instability—shape young lives and limit opportunity.
editorsourceareaThe first article explores America’s hidden crisis in child welfare, revealing how children in foster care, detention, and institutional settings often experience neglect, exploitation, and harm. The second article examines how the justice system criminalizes rather than protects vulnerable youth through punitive detention, weakened labor protections, and systemic inequities that push children toward incarceration instead of opportunity. The third article focuses on the relationship between poverty and youth health, arguing that inadequate healthcare, pollution exposure, malnutrition, and environmental inequality undermine children’s ability to learn, grow, and participate fully in society.
The fourth article shifts from diagnosis to possibility, exploring how communities might coordinate education, healthcare, mentorship, enrichment, and meaningful work opportunities under a shared developmental framework. Drawing on existing civic-service and workforce-development models, it argues that resilience is not simply an individual trait, but the product of sustained social investment and consistent support.
The fifth article broadens the lens further, asking why societies so often normalize harm to children across war, poverty, environmental contamination, displacement, and public policy. Drawing on developmental science, civil rights history, and international child welfare, it argues that protecting children requires more than compassion or legal commitments. Instead, it calls for stronger accountability, sustained prevention, coordinated institutions, and renewed community responsibility at every level of society.
Future installments continue the series by turning from systems back to people, exploring the responsibilities of the adults who stand closest to children and the communities that support them. Taken together, the series asks readers to confront not only how children are harmed, but also what kinds of communities, institutions, and moral commitments are required to help them thrive. Readers are invited to reflect on a central question: Does your community care about children?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.
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.The Observatory’s Guide to Animals in Science and Research examines the role of nonhuman animals in scientific experimentation and biomedical development. It explores the ethical, regulatory, and scientific debates surrounding animal testing, including concerns about welfare, transparency, and the limits of animal models in predicting human outcomes. The guide highlights practices involving primates and laboratory animals, as well as growing calls for reform, improved oversight, and the development of alternative research methods. By connecting policy, science, and ethics, it offers a clearer understanding of how animals are used in research—and what a more humane and effective system might look like.
editorsourceareaThe Observatory’s Guide to Wildlife and Ecosystem Protection explores the interconnected challenges facing wild animals and the habitats they depend on. It examines how human activities—such as deforestation, industrial agriculture, wildlife trade, pollution, and climate change—are driving species decline and ecosystem instability. By highlighting the importance of biodiversity, including the role of apex predators, healthy forests, and intact habitats in maintaining ecological balance, the guide connects conservation science with real-world threats and solutions, offering a clear understanding of how protecting wildlife also safeguards human health, prevents future pandemics, and supports resilient ecosystems.
editorsourceareaAs people live longer and face increasingly complex end-of-life decisions, understanding death and dying has never been more important. This guide explores the emerging movement of death literacy, offering practical tools, knowledge, and community resources to help individuals navigate mortality with clarity and confidence. From fostering open conversations about death to exploring near-death experiences and preparing for end-of-life care, these articles provide insights into how we can approach death as a natural, supported, and meaningful part of life.
editorsourceareaNew Additions
As keyboards and touchscreens replace pens and pencils, the decline of handwriting raises questions about cognition, culture, and creativity.
By: Danica Tomber
Social hierarchies based on gender, race, appearance, and status are often learned rather than inevitable. Human ecology education offers one framework for helping people recognize these patterns and build more equitable relationships and communities.
By: Sandra Ericson
Principles from writing instruction, journalism, and professional editorial practice illuminate how revision clarifies ideas, strengthens critical thinking, improves communication, and transforms first drafts into stronger writing.
By: Ellen Feld and Reynard Loki
A 19th-century hyperpolyglot reported to have known up to 72 languages, the biography of Cardinal Giuseppe Mezzofanti explores the boundaries of how we characterize multilingualism.
By: Michael Erard
Before Freudian psychoanalysis became the dominant approach to psychotherapy, physician Morton Prince pioneered influential ideas about dissociation, hypnosis, habit formation, and talk therapy that helped shape the early development of American psychotherapy.
By: George Prochnik
Psychology and neuroscience help explain why stories shape how we think, feel, remember, and connect with others.
By: Katherine Dolan
Humanitarian organizations invest in education to promote safety, resilience, and social cohesion, but researchers continue to debate its long-term impact on conflict and human well-being.
By: Chloe Bruce
Buraq, the winged steed associated with the Prophet Muhammad’s Night Journey, evolved from a briefly described figure into a richly imagined symbol through Islamic literature, visual art, philosophy, and centuries of religious and cultural interpretation.
By: Yasmine Seale
Classics
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.
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.
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.
From Wikipedia:
- “A Voice from the South: By a Black Woman of the South is the first book by American author, educator, and activist Anna J. Cooper. First published in 1892, the book is widely viewed as one of the first articulations of Black feminism. The book is divided into two parts, ‘Soprano Obligato’ and ‘Tutti Ad Libitum.’ Each section contains four individual essays. This book led to the term ‘Cooperian’ being coined when speaking about Anna J. Cooper. It is considered one of the first, full-length Black feminist texts.”
- Overview
- “A Voice from the South compiles a series of essays that touched on a variety of topics, such as race and racism, gender, the socioeconomic realities of Black families, and the administration of the Episcopal Church.”
- “The book advanced a vision of self-determination through education and social uplift for African-American women. Its central thesis was that the educational, moral, and spiritual progress of Black women would improve the general standing of the entire African-American community. She says that the violent natures of men often run counter to the goals of higher education, so it is important to foster more female intellectuals because they will bring more elegance to education. She noted Black women whose accomplishments could rival those of men, including Phillis Wheatley, Sojourner Truth, Fanny Jackson Coppin, and Edmonia Lewis. Cooper advanced the view that it was the duty of educated and successful Black women to support their underprivileged peers in achieving their goals. Through this view Cooper’s style was deemed ‘Cooperian,’ as a direct comparison to other male canonical theorists. …”
- “A Voice from the South was published during a period that saw a burst of intellectual publications by Black women. Cooper’s book was published the same year as Lucy Delaney’s From the Darkness Cometh the Light; or, Struggles for Freedom, Ida B. Wells’s Southern Horrors: Lynch Law in All Its Phases, and Frances Ellen Watkins Harper’s Iola Leroy; or, Shadows Uplifted.”
By: Anna J. Cooper
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 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.”
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 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
From Wikipedia:
- “Woman in the Nineteenth Century is a book by American journalist, editor, and women’s rights advocate Margaret Fuller. Originally published in July 1843 in The Dial magazine as ‘The Great Lawsuit. Man versus Men. Woman versus Women,’ it was later expanded and republished in book form in 1845.”
- “The basis for Fuller’s essay is the idea that man will rightfully inherit the earth when he becomes an elevated being, understanding of divine love. There have been periods in time when the world was more awake to this love, but people are sleeping now; however, everyone has the power to become enlightened. Man cannot now find perfection because he is still burdened with selfish desires, but Fuller is optimistic and says that we are on the verge of a new awakening. She claims that in the past man, like Orpheus for Eurydice, has always called out for woman, but soon will come the time when women will call for men, when they will be equals and share divine love.”
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