What readers actually clicked on this year
Greater Good Magazine's most-read pieces in 2025 tell you something: people are hungry for practical wisdom about the parts of life that matter. The top spot went to a film guide celebrating humanity's better moments. Right behind it: an article about what dying people wish they'd understood sooner. Then came pieces on managing emotions, fighting loneliness, and finding purpose.
The pattern repeats across the year's most popular twenty articles. Yes, there are guides to decluttering and conversation skills. But the throughline isn't about optimization—it's about connection. How to forgive yourself. What your brain does when you read poetry. Why some countries are happier than their GDP suggests. The research-backed answer to a question most people carry quietly: what actually makes a life feel full.
Beyond the numbers
Our editorial team also nominated ten pieces that didn't rack up the biggest view counts but landed hard with the people who found them. These tend toward the uncomfortable questions. What happens when you fall in love with an AI? Why research into happiness and meaning is being defunded. How moral injury—the damage we do to ourselves when forced to act against our values—quietly reshapes who we become.
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Start Your News DetoxThere's also a piece on alternative housing and community living, asking whether the nuclear family model has left us more isolated than we need to be. Another explores why good news about young people's mental health barely makes the headlines. And one examines the sunk cost fallacy—that gravitational pull that keeps us trapped in decisions long after they stop serving us.
What ties these together, whether popular or overlooked, is that they're all rooted in actual research. Greater Good doesn't traffic in self-help platitudes. Every article starts with a scientist's finding or a psychologist's framework, then asks: what does this mean for how you actually live.
The mix of what people read most and what our team championed suggests readers are looking for the same thing: permission to take their inner lives seriously, paired with evidence that doing so actually changes something. Not just feeling better in the moment, but building a life that holds up when you examine it closely.
