“I am an usher because God has given me that talent, and he also has given me a blessing to be a blessing to others,” says Charles J. Brown. a senior usher at the Hemingway Memorial AME Church in District Heights, Maryland.

“We’re at a moment where we’ve adopted a new technology,” says MIT technology and society professor Sherry Turkle. “We’ve been vulnerable to its seduction, and we’re also ready to say this has led us not to a good place in terms of how it’s affected our relationships. It’s time for a change.”

A growing new spiritual practice combines the breathing techniques of yoga with laughter. Practitioners say it helps them achieve joy and spiritual well-being. At a laughter yoga session at Washington National Cathedral, we talk with instructor Diane Cohen, who says laughter yoga releases “that inner essence that we don’t always let out.”

"I am very, very spiritual but I am not religious. I believe in the existence of God, and before I start an operation I pray to God, and after the surgery I again pray to him for taking me through the operation."

“Stereotypes lose their power because they’re replaced by true, authentic relationships,” says Rev. Josh Graves, pastor of the Nashville megachurch Otter Creek Church of Christ, describing his project of engagement between Christians and Muslims. “It’s very hard for people to care about people they don’t know. That’s just true of humans wherever you are on planet earth.”

“In life there is so much temptation,” says boxing coach Mike Mosley. “There’s so much bad out there that it’s hard to know that you’re doing the right thing. I know 100 percent of the time when I’m in the gym is the right thing, and there’s a freedom in that.”

“If I can just be a small part of a revolution in business where it ceases to be just about making money but it’s about solving problems and service, that would be enough to keep myself going,” says Dan Price, CEO of Gravity Payments.

“It's just amazing to see how it doesn't matter what race you are, anything like that; it's just everybody has the same needs, so we all pitched in and just started helping out,” says Jared Stockstill, administrator at Bethany Church in Baton Rouge. “So I just feel like it's really gone a long ways toward bringing us together, the community back together, and everybody's pitching in and helping.”

"I’ll be praying for them, I’ll be chanting for them," says nine-year-old Jalue Dorje when asked what he will do for people as the reincarnation of a 16th-century lama.

"As a Shia, I see myself as a Muslim first. Yes, I am Shia, I’m very proud to be Shia, but when I consider myself and someone asks me what religion I am, I don’t say I’m Shia, I say I’m Muslim. And I think that’s how I identify, and I’ve always identified as that," says Nazeen Zaidi.