Stories
Ten categories, one hundred and sixty-nine pieces. Pick one to match your mood, or browse slowly.
190 stories
Louis Braille: six dots that lit a path for children in the dark
Blinded at three, the French boy Louis Braille perfected the six-dot braille alphabet at fifteen, giving blind people everywhere the gifts of reading and music. He died poor and little known; more than a century later, his alphabet still lights the way for children in the dark.
Jonas Salk: a vaccine that could have been sold, given to the world
Jonas Salk developed the world's first successful polio vaccine, then refused to patent it, telling Edward R. Murrow: "There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?"
Tim Berners-Lee: when the web was born, he chose to give it away
In 1989 he wrote his hypertext proposal at CERN, and around Christmas 1990 he and Robert Cailliau connected the first web server to the first browser. When tolls and patents were suggested, he said: "It should be a square. Squares don't charge."
A pizzeria in Naples: by the oven fire, a seat kept for her
In an old pizzeria in Naples, Gennaro keeps baking 'one extra basil leaf' Margheritas for Maria, a widow who comes every Friday. She says: 'Every Friday, as evening falls, my feet walk themselves toward the lane — I think it's him leading me downstairs.'
The bento father of Tokyo: words he can't say, packed into a lunchbox
Single father Yoki Takahashi learns to cook from scratch, making a bento at five every morning and cutting unspoken love into nori characters; his daughter says "it's okay if the egg is burnt," and he keeps cutting for ten years.
A bicycle shop in Havana: he can't see the colors, but remembers every bike
In old Havana, Pedro repairs bikes by touch after losing his sight while Carlos reads the labels for him; the two have run their shop together for fifty years. A girl comes from America tracing her roots, pushing her late grandfather's old bicycle — and Pedro reads out its year, its dents, and the engraved initials of the man who once loved it.
A street piano in Berlin: a stranger plays the song of her youth
One autumn evening in Berlin, a young man named Lucas plays a waltz on a street piano and awakens Elsa, an old woman who has not touched a piano in years. "My fingers have forgotten long ago," she says — until a rainy night she finally sits down on the bench.
A cat canteen in Istanbul: gentleness raised by one street
Retired schoolteacher Fatma puts out water and food for stray cats in a lane of Istanbul's old town; what begins with one woman grows into the shopkeepers and children of the whole street. This lane, she says, hasn't been raising cats — it's been raising us.
Winter swimming in Helsinki: learning to begin again in the coldest water
Anne, trapped in long insomnia, is sent by her doctor to Helsinki's winter-swimming pier, where chipped ice, hot tea, and a towel passed through many hands teach her to breathe again. 'The coldest place,' she says, 'can also be the most honest place.'
The penguin keeper of New Zealand's coast: standing watch each night for little blue penguins
Margaret, a retired seafarer, keeps nightly watch over little blue penguins coming ashore at Crescent Bay; Liam, an exchange student who once thought she was blocking the penguins' way, grows into carrying the watch himself.
Every Sunday, Tram 28 Runs to Where Memory Still Lives
A retired Lisbon tram driver rides Tram 28 with his wife, who has Alzheimer's, every Sunday — the route where they first met. She has forgotten many things; he remembers every stop.
The Time Difference in a Bowl of Soup: Longing from Osaka to Toronto
An Osaka ramen-shop owner's daughter lives in Toronto; in their eight-minute Sunday calls he never says he misses her — he breaks the feeling into kombu, bonito and a handwritten recipe. Years later she opens a shop named Jet Lag.