I jumped for joy when my friend and serial entrepreneur Joe Huff and his co-founder Bridget Hilton told me about their latest project. LSTN headphones are ridiculously sexy, made of wood rather than plastic, which seems so obvious and intuitive for a music product. Plus for every pair...

Back when the Beatles traveled to Rishikesh, in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas, to study Transcendental Meditation (TM) with Maharishi-guru, most Americans thought of meditation as yet another new age, hippie pastime. But over the past few decades, scientific studies have revealed the significant benefits of meditation in terms...

Three years ago, I received a tragic phone call from a friend. Her sister, whom I'll call Mary -- a bright young woman who had struggled with bipolar disorder throughout her life -- had recently given birth to her second child. Mary had chosen to go off her psychiatric medications...

Do you love your Brita water filter? No?

I can't think of anyone who does.

That's what 30 year-old Mike Del Ponte figured out when he felt the urge to create his own start-up. Less than a year later, he had raised a stunning $150,000 on Kickstarter ($100K of...

Brandon Peele and his business partner Dane founded EVR1 a year ago with the intention of creating "gear and goods that are equal parts rugged utility and 20th century spiritual totem." Everything they make -- from pocketknives, key chains and iPhone cases, to watches and pendants -- is...

An unfamiliar companion has been hanging around me lately. His name is Death.

Within the last month, I have learned that our sweet old dog, Masala, is dying of liver cancer. I've made a new friend, Mitali, who, at age...

Projecting Change, which takes place each year in Vancouver, offers a new take on film festivals. Unlike Sundance, SXSW, and other well-known festivals where the objective is for filmmakers to find distributors for and generate buzz about their movies, the goal of Projecting Change is to provide a...

There's been a lot of talk in the past two years about things you don't learn in school. Billionaire entrepreneur-turned-venture capitalist Peter Thiel has gone so far as to offer kids a cool hundred grand to drop out of college and start a company instead. A video called...

Mark Twain Middle School's Seed to Plate Program in Venice, Los Angeles is a model for school nutrition programs in the L.A. Unified School District and across the nation. The garden serves as not only a source of healthy food for the students, but also as a classroom....

Joy Buolamwini exploded into my orbit like a solar flare: an exuberant, shining ball of positive energy and delight. When we met at Summit Series last winter, Joy was about to graduate from Georgia Tech with highest honors in computer science. Now, less than a year later, she...

Bend, Not Break: A Life in Two Worlds, the memoir I wrote with and about Geomagic CEO Ping Fu, hit bookstores and e-readers on December 31, 2012. The Western press had an overwhelmingly positive response to this remarkable tale of Ping's journey from China to America,...

Isn't it ironic that as we age, for many women, getting pregnant transforms from being our greatest fear into our most burning desire? Having a baby seems like the easiest thing in the world... Until you really, really want it and find that you can't.

Many of you have...

In this new year, why not resolve to find more joy in your everyday life? Joy is what makes life beautiful. It's what gets us through challenges and allows light in to illuminate the shadows. Joy heals our wounds, inspires us to greatness, and fills our souls with goodness.

Here...

Like everyone else in the nation and much of the rest of the world, I have spent the past few days grieving the tragedy of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. We have cried and we have prayed. We have screamed out at the universe, "Why kill 20 small children?...

Imagine being torn out of your loving mother's arms at age eight. Next thing you know, you're alone, crammed onto a train full of people headed for another city -- one you barely know. You think that at least your aunt and uncle, whom you've met a handful of times...

During the recent U.S. presidential campaign, I saw only one video with a positive bipartisan message. It was created by the online fundraising platform Sharemeister, who cleverly spliced together footage of both candidates praising our nation's veterans. Here, at last, was one subject Obama and Romney...

On a friend's recommendation, I took the novel The Seven Perfumes of Sacrifice by Amy Logan with me to Costa Rica this summer. Casual beach reading it was not. More like a gripping John Grisham murder mystery page-turner meets Sophie's World history lesson, all while delivering an Oprah-style...

Hurricane Sandy.

Many of us already have filed the disaster away in our dim, damp memory banks. Even for those of us who were caught in the storm, stranded for days without power and cell phone service, the event is securely locked in the past.

But...

My husband Kiran and I live in L.A., but we came out to New York last week for 10 days of work and fun. Kiran's parents and brother live in Long Island, where he grew up, so we set out to visit them for the weekend. We ended up staying...

When Elijah Woolery's father-in-law, Don, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, his family members felt a powerful desire to record as many of his memories as possible before his mind began to slip away.

Eli's sister-in-law, Kathy, was amazed by how, even when he struggled to remember what day it was...