Stories of Impact

Stories of Impact brings back some of our favorite conversations this season. Today, we revisit an episode from last season, where we heard from Dr. Berry Billingsley, an education researcher in Swansea in the UK. Frustrated by the lack of questions in her science class, she began a quest to encourage students to think, about themselves, life, and the universe.

Read the transcript of this episode Catch the video edition of this episode here: Big Questions in Classrooms

Subscribe to Stories of Impact wherever you listen to podcasts Find us on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, and YouTube Share your comments, questions and suggestions at [email protected] Supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation

Stories of Impact brings back some of our favorite conversations this season. In our last episode, we visited Medellín, Colombia. Today, we travel to Rwanda, a country that was ravaged by the genocide against the Tutsis in 1990, for a story about how a path to forgiveness and piece is possible even after the worst of tragedies.

Today's episode offers a powerful example of courage, peace, and forgiveness. Our story looks back thirty years, to one of the most violent periods in modern history — the genocide against the Tutsi — and to the resilience and wisdom of the Rwandan spirit and heart.

On April 6, 1994, beautiful Rwanda, known as the Land of a Thousand Hills, became a hell on Earth. Between April and July 1994, hundreds of thousands of Rwandans were slaughtered in a horrifying frenzy of state-sponsored terror.

Freddy Mutanguha, an ethnic Tutsi, was just eighteen years old when the genocide began. Today, Freddy shares the story of his unimaginable losses, the miracle of his survival, and his life's work nurturing peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation in his country and across the world. A warning: this episode includes descriptions of murders – it's a difficult listen, but an important one.

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• Learn more about the Kigali Genocide Memorial and the Aegis Trust
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• • Supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation

Stories of Impact brings back some of our favorite conversations this season. Our expert today is not a researcher, but a former world-class dancer: Judith Jamison. Judith sadly passed away in 2024, but when we spoke with her in 2021, she shared the incredible story of revered Black dancer Alvin Ailey and what she's learned from a life spent in the arts.

Learn more:

• Judith Jamison
• Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
• Alvin Ailey
• Video: Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater performing Revelations

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Stories of Impact brings back some of our favorite conversations this season. This time, we travel to Medellín, Colombia, to meet Dr. Santiago Tobón. He has dedicated his life to understanding the structures and societal role of Medellín's criminal gangs, why teenagers want to join them, and how to help them see that a lawful life can be prosperous, too.

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• Supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation

Stories of Impact brings back some of our favorite conversations this season. Today we revisit an episode from our first season, aired during the Covid-19 pandemic. Dr. David Sloan Wilson is a biological sciences researcher at Binghamton University, and he explains what actually makes teamwork dream work, how cultures engender or discourage cooperation, and how to get people from different backgrounds to cooperate during times of crisis.

Learn more about David Sloan Wilson and the Evolution Institute.

Mentioned in this episode:

• Elinor Ostrom
• Michelle Gelfand's Tight and Loose Cultures
• Robert Putnuam's Bowling Alone
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• Keep up with the podcast series at storiesofimpact.org
• See the full Stories of Impact video series
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• Supported by the​ Templeton World Charity Foundation

Stories of Impact brings back some of our favorite conversations this season. In our last episode, we heard about the positive effects of coming together and sharing a meal. But for millions of Americans, that rarely happens. In fact, some 20 million people in the US today say they don't have any friends. So how do we solve this loneliness epidemic? Today, we revisit a conversation with Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas, who studies just that.

Dr. Emiliana Simon-Thomas is the Science Director at UC Berkeley's Greater Good Science Center, which tracks cutting edge research studies that focus on how important our relationships, our tendency towards generosity and cooperation, and our sense of mattering or contribution to our communities are to our health and wellbeing over the course of our lives. She wants to understand the science of loneliness.

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• Supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation

Today we're back in conversation with Dr. Adam Cohen, social psychologist and psychologist of religion at Arizona State University, who shares another research project that explores the way religious ritual connects participants more deeply not only with faith, but with community — this time, not through the practice of abstaining from food, but from breaking bread together.

Dr. Arielle Levites, Managing Director of the Collaborative for Applied Studies in Jewish Education and a Research Assistant Professor in the Graduate School of Education and Human Development at George Washington University had the same idea — that observing Shabbat wasn't just a nice idea, it was a practice with measurable impact.

So the team designed a study, enlisting the participation of Aliza Kline, founding President and then-CEO of OneTable, an organization designed to help young Jews develop independence and confidence in observing the ritual of Shabbat dinner in their homes. The question they wanted to answer? Does Shabbat dinner as a spiritual practice increase social connectedness?

Read the transcript of this episode Learn more about the research Subscribe to Stories of Impact wherever you listen to podcasts Find us on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube Share your comments, questions and suggestions at [email protected] Supported by Templeton World Charity Foundation

In today's episode we speak to Athena Aktipis, co-director of the Human Generosity Project, about the current results of her study of cooperation during the COVID-19 pandemic. Professor Aktipis discusses the insights both past and current research offer about the extent and the limits of human generosity during catastrophic events.

This is the third episode in a special, five-part Covid-19 conversation series.

Learn more about Athena Aktipis and The Human Generosity Project

Mentioned in this episode:

A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit

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• Supported by the​ Templeton World Charity Foundation

In today's episode, host Richard Sergay speaks with Erez Yoeli, director of the Applied Cooperation Team at MIT's Sloan School of Management, about how to motivate people to cooperate and behave altruistically during a pandemic. Dr. Yoeli discusses how we can harness the power of reputation to encourage prosocial behavior, and suggests ways to make the message of altruism appeal to everyone in a time when people are receiving conflicting messages about what is right.

This is the second episode in a special, five-part Covid-19 conversation series.

Learn more about Erez Yoeli

Mentioned in this episode:

• Matthew Rabin
• Robert Boyd
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• Supported by the​ Templeton World Charity Foundation

In this episode, we hear from Joseph Bulbulia, professor at the University of Auckland and the MacLaurin Goodfellow Chair in Theological and Religious Studies. Professor Bulbulia discusses how religious interaction, worship, and teaching come together in different ways to facilitate group cooperation, and what we can learn from that to support us during the pandemic.

Learn more about Joseph Bulbulia.

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• Comments, questions and suggestions [email protected]
• Supported by the​ Templeton World Charity Foundation