Every day, people protect what matters. These are their stories.
1607 stories
7th Graders' Harsh but True Gift Ideas for 30-Year-Olds As children, our Christmas wish lists are filled with fun, exciting gifts. But as we grow older, our desires often shift towards more practical, adult items. Seventh-grade teacher Mr. Frakes...
France's Largest Rewilding Project Takes Root in the Dauphiné Alps In the foothills of the western Alps in southeastern France, horned alpine ibex roam the limestone cliffs of a smaller mountain range known as the Dauphiné Alps. This region was o...
Are Organic Apples Better for the Soil? Study Challenges Assumptions An investigation into organic apple orchards in Australia has made a surprising discovery: their soils are remarkably similar to those of conventional orchards, where organic fa...
Artist Alona Rodeh's "Nightcaps" is a public art project featuring 15 sculptural additions placed directly on top of existing street lamps in Berlin's Brunnenviertel (Wedding) neighborhood. In the 1960s, when the neighborhood was rebuilt by the soci...
Met Repatriates 18th Century Painting Taken from Buddhist Temple After Korean War The Metropolitan Museum of Art has returned an 18th-century painting to a Korean temple that once housed a vast depiction of hell. The painting, titled "The Tenth K...
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Suckerfish—also known as remoras—are harmless, but the whales didn't seem to be fans of their hitchhiking :focal(1408x697:1409x698)/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/filer_public/87/f5/87f59fd0-9cf5-48dc-9ccd-786ef6066ae6/sc...
In Southern California, a mother-daughter design team is leading the way in transforming ordinary outdoor areas into extraordinary plant sanctuaries. Their backyard project exemplifies how, after a century of rampant urbanization, we're finally comin...
Newly Described 'Lucifer' Bee Found Visiting Critically Endangered Plant in Australia In 2019, researcher Kit Prendergast was surveying the insects visiting an incredibly rare plant in the Bremer Ranges of Western Australia when a bee grabbed her...
From rock music to rainforests: Akhyari Hananto's unlikely path to impact Before dawn breaks over Surabaya, Indonesia's "City of Heroes," Akhyari Hananto is already at work. After morning prayers, he opens Google Analytics to watch the night's re...
Move Over Bob: Changing the Trades so Women Don't Just Join the Workforce—They Lead It When co-founders Kate Glantz and Angie Cacace launched Move Over Bob, they weren't just starting a magazine. They were igniting a movement. "For too long, con...
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Woman Feeds Squirrel Daily, Then It Leaves a Surprise Treat Showing kindness doesn't cost a thing, but its impact is always worth its weight in gold. We typically experience kindness from other humans, but all living creatures are capable of maki...
Metallica Guitarist Sells Iconic Conan Painting for $10M Metallica's lead guitarist Kirk Hammett is auctioning off a prized painting of Conan the Barbarian that he purchased from legendary artist Frank Frazetta in 2009 for $1 million. The work, t...
Devil's Tower, also known as Matotipila or Bear's Lodge, was formed over 50 million years ago. Rising dramatically from the Wyoming Plains, this spellbinding monolith is a pillar of Lakota Sioux mythology and an enduring challenge to rock climbers wo...
'They're Playing Games': Illinois Lawmakers Press for Lead-Pipe Funding Lead pipes are a widespread problem across the United States, with no state having fully eliminated its toxic lead service lines that deliver drinking water to homes and busi...
Hawaii's Short-Finned Pilot Whales Eat Over 77,000 Squid a Year For Hawaii's short-finned pilot whales (Globicephala macrorhynchus), squid is the primary food source. These black marine mammals with bulbous heads feed primarily on cephalopods, ...
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Rare Parrots Return to Atlantic Forest Fragment Twenty brilliantly colored red-browed amazons took flight over a reserve holding one of the few remaining intact swaths of Atlantic Forest in Brazil. The green-and-red parrots had been missing from ...
New Uses for Everyday Spaces: South Korea Turns Parking Lots into Solar Power Hubs Parking lots might not seem like climate solutions, but South Korea is proving they can be. Starting this month, any parking lot in the country with more than 80 s...
'Incredibly serious and unbelievably funny' Philip Roth biographer, in Harvard talk, digs into novelist's contradictions, 'true loves,' and recurring themes from lust to Jewish life. Steven J. Zipperstein, the Daniel E. Koshland Professor in Jew...
Turning Fishing Waste into Biodegradable Plastic Jacqueline Prawira, an MIT senior in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE), has developed biodegradable, plastic-like materials from fish offal, as featured on the CBS show "Th...
This Newly Discovered 'Lucifer' Bee From Australia Was Named After Its Devil-Like Horns Researchers hope the discovery shines a light on bee conservation Down Under A few years ago, wild bee ecologist Kit Prendergast was searching for pollin...
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Ulrich Eichelmann has seen many rivers over his lifetime as the head of RiverWatch, an organization dedicated to protecting the world's waterways. He's spent time on the Tigris floating through Turkey and Iraq, on the Tagliamento in Italy, and travel...
Humans have poured more than 150 million metric tons of plastic garbage into the ocean since 1950. Plastic bits have turned up in even the most remote places, like the bottom of the Mariana Trench, where scientists recently found an intact plastic ba...
Iguanas on Mexico's Clarion Island Likely Native, Not Introduced by People: Study Researchers have long speculated that humans introduced spiny-tailed iguanas to Mexico's remote Clarion Island about 50 years ago. However, a recent study suggests ...
Around the world, new patents and inventions are emerging daily, but a select few regions are ahead of others. The 2025 Global Innovation Index (GII), released by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), ranks the top countries and metro ...
Transforming Homes with DIY Passion Our homes are our sanctuaries, the places where we spend much of our time and unwind from the outside world. It's only natural to want to love what we're surrounded by and create the kind of atmosphere that fee...
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Earth scientists have uncovered a slow and surprising process beneath our planet's surface that helps fuel volcanic activity in the oceans. Researchers from the University of Southampton found that fragments of continents are gradually stripped away ...
Some revolutions begin not with technology, but with a feeling. For Gregg Treinish, that feeling was guilt. He was spending years on long wilderness expeditions—crossing ranges, sleeping rough, watching the world's edges—and began to wonder what any ...
The name "Naruto" is now famous worldwide, forever associated with the popular manga/anime series of the same name. Those better versed in Japanese culture may also recognize the name as that of a delicious delicacy - narutomaki is a type of fish cak...
Man Builds Small Pond in Brazilian Forest, Attracting Incredible Wildlife Animals, much like people, need the basics of survival to thrive: food, water, shelter, and companionship. While we may not always consider the similar needs of wild creatu...
Why 'Mob Grazing' May Help Protect Drought-Hit Senegal's Vast Grasslands Ibrahima Ka, the village chief of Thignol, is spearheading the first pilot of "mob grazing" in Senegal. This approach involves tightly packing a herd of 350 zebu cows and 2,...
Brightcast is dedicated to restoring faith in humanity by highlighting the progress, solutions, and kindness that often go unnoticed. We believe in a balanced worldview.
Read our full mission →
Trash that would otherwise rot in landfills could be converted into 62.5 billion liters of jet fuel per year, with a carbon footprint 80-90% smaller than that of fossil-based aviation fuel, according to a new study (1). Aviation represents 2-3% of g...
Hundreds of communities in Sierra Leone's Bonthe district have signed a benefit-sharing carbon agreement with the Africa Conservation Initiative (ACI) to protect mangroves in the Sherbro River Estuary. The agreement is based on "carbon justice princi...
Government Sets Out Plan to Phase Out Animal Experiments The UK government has detailed its plans to fulfill its manifesto pledge to work towards phasing out animal testing. The new proposals include: Replacing Animal Testing by 2025 - By t...
Extinction Rates Are Slowing, and Conservation Efforts May Be Paying Off For years, headlines have warned that Earth is entering a sixth mass extinction. However, new research suggests this dire picture may be more nuanced and even somewhat hopef...
The Oldest Whales in the Ocean You're probably familiar with the literary classic Moby-Dick by the great Herman Melville. Published in 1851, the novel follows an enraged sea captain, Ahab, in his quest to hunt and kill a huge, ancient albino sp...
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African Artist Collective Calls on Museums to Rectify Their Debt to Plantation Workers In recent years, museums have expressed a desire to reckon with their pasts - returning looted objects, acknowledging indigenous land rights, and diversifying ...
The winners of the 2025 Epson International Pano Awards have been announced, showcasing photographs of our great, big, beautiful world in ultra-wide glory. Italy's Alex Wides (Alessandro Cantarelli) won the Open Photographer of the Year and the Natur...
Thousands of mollusks and worms have been discovered by a Chinese submersible in the Mariana Trench, almost six miles below sea level. The new study revealed it is the deepest colony of animals ever observed. "Hadal trenches, some of the Earth's lea...
Fiber optic cables crisscross the world's oceans, transmitting vast amounts of data as pulses of light. But what if these cables could also be used to listen in on life below the waves? An experiment launched in coastal waters on the northwestern ed...
A new roof paint could allow you to stay cool while providing water to drink. Australian researchers have developed a nanoengineered polymer coating that reduces surface temperature by up to 6°C even on hot days, and that harvests moisture from air. ...