Reasons to be Cheerful

This story originally appeared on The 19th and GBH News Rooted in Boston.

On a sunny morning in June, about two dozen people walk the land of Soul ...

“Agh, I am only getting consonants,” sighs Nicole Riberolles, the 104-year-old doyenne of Les Artistes nursing home in the Batignolles neighborhood of northwestern Paris.

There’s a Q, R, Y, W, N and an E lined up on her Scrabble letter holder. She sees nothing available, weaving her pearl necklace through her fingers in frustration.

But within a few turns...

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Sixty-eight quadrillion miles: That unfathomable number represents the estimated extent of the network of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi weav...

From the outside, Demain looks like any other bakery in Paris. The bright blue storefront, featuring huge glass vitrines, frames a bready feast for the eyes.

Behind it lie glorious piles of almond croissants, pistachio pastries, lemon meringue tarts, pecan-speckled brownies and such a great quantity of bread that the sight of it alone could probably induce gluten intol...

For several years, when Pierre-Yves Loaëc left his office in Nantes in the evenings, he passed a woman sleeping rough in the parking lot near Nobilito, the marketing agency he runs. The contrast nagged at him. Outside, she huddled near a parking garage vent for warmth during the winter. “My office had heat, a kitchen, sofas, a shower, toilets, but was sitting empty all night,...