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This year, 2,500 girls will be able to attend secondary school in Afghanistan. While this shouldn’t be a remarkable feat, it is: The Taliban government forbids girls from receiving an education beyond 6th grade. Ideas Beyond Borders, a nonprofit organization, is helping to support The Underground School Initiative that educates girls in 38 secret locations throughout Afghanistan. In an unexpected turn, this project will be partially funded by The Citizenry, a U.S.-based home goods brand, which raised money during its Black Friday sale last year to pay for teachers, educational supplies, and facilities for these students. [Photo: The Citizenry] Desperate for an Education In 2021, when the United States left Afghanistan and the Taliban took back power, one of the new government’s mandates was that girls would not receive more than a primary education. Schools shuttered overnight. This came as a rude shock to the 850,000 girls who were pulled out of school, when they had previously assumed that an education was a fundamental right. Teenagers were turned away from their old classrooms, some in tears. Faisal Saeed Al Mutar, who founded Ideas Beyond Borders eight years ago, had been paying close attention to this unfolding catastrophe. The goal of his organization is to create a free and prosperous Middle East by spreading knowledge and education. For instance, the organization has added upwards of 40,000 articles onto Wikipedia in local languages, including Arabic, Farsi, and Pashtun. [Photo: Ideas Beyond Borders] After the U.S. left Afghanistan, Al Mutar, who splits time between the U.S. and the UAE, began receiving messages from journalists in Afghanistan saying that there were families and teachers who wanted to defy the ban on education and start creating a network of underground schools. There are now many brave communities across the country that are putting thousands of girls through school. They were taking incredible risks, Al Mutar says. Parents were donating their houses so that girls could continue their education. Ideas Beyond Borders wanted to support this work, so it sent a team to vet these schools. It then served as a link between these schools and the outside world, helping to find individuals and companies who would be willing to fund these underground schools. [Photo: The Citizenry] There appears to be some disagreement among the Taliban’s leadership about whether girls should be allowed to go to school. There have been several points over the past four years when some leaders were open to reversing the decision. But a minority of senior hardliners are committed to this stance, and girls continue to be banned from school. While it is a risk for these girls to attend the underground school, communities have found ways to skirt the rules. Teachers describe their classrooms as madrasas, or Islamic religious schools. And according to CBS News, the Taliban’s involvement and regulation of these madrasas vary by location and local officials involved. In Taliban strongholds in the south and east of the country, authorities tend to enforce the ban, while in other areas, leaders are willing to turn a blind eye. Al Mutar isn’t particularly optimistic that things are going to get better in Afghanistan. He says that regime appears to be set on imposing more restrictions on women. The Taliban is making it harder to work, and there’s a new law that bans women from singing. It’s been more and more challenging, says Al Mutar. Freedoms are declining. [Photo: The Citizenry] Black Friday For Good Rachel Bentley and Carly Nance launched The Citizenry in 2014 as a brand that sold home decor ethically sourced from 4,000 artisans in 23 countries around the world. (Last year, it was acquired by Havenly, which owns mny home furnishing brands.) They partnered with Fair Trade to ensure that all workers were receiving a living wage. We learned that handmade doesn’t always mean fairly paid, Nance says. We want to invest in these communities for many reasons, including that it allows them to deliver the best craftsmanship. Nance says that over the course of working with skilled craftspeople from around the world, they found communities in Afghanistan than made traditional hand-knotted rugs. The company was keen to source rugs made by female artisans. But when the Taliban took over, women were no longer allowed to work outside the home. The Citizenry worked with local organizations committed to helping women continue to work safely, if they chose to do so. This meant rerouting rugs through neighboring countries before sending them to the U.S., rather than shipping them directly from Afghanistan, since this would make it less likely that local authorities would audit the rug-making facilities,” says Nance. “We’ve worked to build a supply chain and shipping rout where we can get the rugs in and out, while protecting the women who are working on them.” [Photo: Ideas Beyond Borders] When Nance discovered the network of underground schools, she was eager to support this work through The Citizenry. She believes giving girls an education is one step toward helping them work across many industries, ultimately creating more possibilities for their lives. She reached out to Ideas Beyond Borders to see how her team could help. The Citizenry turned its Black Friday Sale into an opportunity to raise funds for these schools by donating profits to Ideas Beyond Borders. It raised $30,000 that will fund the education of 2,500 girls in 38 secret locations across the country. Black Friday is our single-biggest day of sales in the year, and we thought it would be a beautiful kickoff to the holiday season, she says. Al Mutar hopes that the education the girls receive will allow them to find work in areas they are interested in. Some are eager to learn English and French so they can find work as translators. Others are eager to become graphic designers. A proportion of these girls are even able to go to university in women’s colleges in Bangladesh. They can then go through a more formal education system and find even more job opportunities, he says.
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As fires burned tens of thousands of acres across Los Angeles County, officials were warning residents that the air was a toxic soup of pollutionfueled by the fact that not only vegetation but cars, buildings, homes, and all the plastics and electronics inside them were going up in flames. But to some residents surprise, the Air Quality Index (AQI) on their phones didnt relay that same message. That’s because AQI doesnt capture the full scope of air pollutionwhich, during the fires, was made up of toxins including lead, chlorine, and bromine. To give residents a fuller picture of what exactly was in the air around L.A., scientists with an air monitoring project made their advanced air pollution measurements available to the public. Lead data, Los Angeles 1/1/2025-1/28/2025 [Screenshot: ASCENT Data] What doesnt AQI capture in air pollution? The Environmental Protection Agency developed the AQI to measure five major pollutants: ground-level ozone, particle pollution (also called fine particulate matter or PM2.5, meaning particles that are 2.5 microns or less in size), carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. PM2.5 and ozone tend to be the primary pollutants. The index gives all this air pollution a value based on the total mass concentration. That means the general AQI reading can lack specificity, says Roya Bahreini, a professor of atmospheric science at University of California Riverside and a co-principal investigator of the Atmospheric Science and Chemistry mEasurement NeTwork, or ASCENT project. Its also missing certain toxins that may be released during events like urban wildfires. Just looking at the value of PM2.5 cannot tell you how toxic the air is. The way many cities measure the aerosols in their air doesn’t show a full, real-time picture, she adds. While some may measure air pollutants continuously, they may only analyze the air filters every three or five days. Theyre also aggregating all that data into a 24-hour period. You dont get these very dynamic profiles, Bahreini says, We dont know if the high concentration that one filter sees is because of something that happened in the morning rush hour or the afternoon rush hour or at night. These gaps are what the ASCENT project, which was funded by the National Science Foundation in 2021, hopes to fill. We wanted to have a continuous look at the chemical composition of the PM2.5, and this fast, sort of state-of-the-art network has not existed in the U.S., Bahreini says. ASCENT set up its network at 12 sites across the country, including two locations in Los Angeles. With this network, we see continuously how dynamic the aerosol composition can be, and also how things change. Chlorine data, Los Angeles 1/1/2025-1/28/2025 [Screenshot: ASCENT Data] Lead and chlorine in L.A. wildfire air ASCENTs goal is to have all its measurements public by September 2025, but it rushed to make a website with its L.A. readings available during the fires as researchers realized the importance of what they were capturing. Early on, ASCENTs monitoring site in Pico Rivera, which is part of southeastern Los Angeles County, saw massive spikes in airborne leadjumping, at its worst, to 472 nanograms of lead per cubic meter of air. The EPAs safe levels for lead in the air is 150 nanograms per cubic meter averaged over three months. Before the fires began, L.A.s levels were less than 3 nanograms. Around the same time. ASCENTs tools also clocked spikes in chlorine to more than 13,000 nanograms per cubic meter of air, when the background level in the region is usually less than 50 nanograms. Bromine levels also saw significant spikes. Exposure to all of these can come with health impacts: Breathing in lead has been associated with brain and nervous system damage; chlorine can damage the respiratory tract and lungs, and bromine exposure can cause lung inflammation. (Though for the latter two, its difficult to know the risk given how they were distributed through the air during the fires.) Breathing in lots of particulate pollution in general can cause respiratory issues and even premature mortality. These three chemicals are very unique to something like an urban wildfire, Bahreini says. Lead could have gotten into the air from soil deposits that were burning, as well as lead pipes or paint from older homes. Chlorine is often added to plastics, including PVC piping, computer casings, or the insulation around wires. You can imagine how much of that got burned, Bahreini says. Bromine could be in all sorts of household materials, from mattresses to sofas to carpets, because its often used a component of flame retardants. Checking the air qualityand masking up The highest levels of those three toxins did decrease after the most active periods of the fires. Still, even once they decreased, their levels were still above normalpossibly because of wind, cleaning efforts, or other disturbances that can redistribute the particles in the air. ASCENT is planning to keep its publicly-available L.A.-area data online as long as there is interest, and fire risk, so residents can keep an eye on these pollutants with real-time data. (L.A. did rcently get some rain that eased the wildfires, though officials warned that fire conditions could still persist afterwards, especially if the Santa Ana winds return.) Bahreini encourages residents to wear a mask, like an N95 or Kn95, that protects against PM2.5.
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Donald Robertson is a cognitive-behavioral psychotherapist. He has been researching Stoicism for over twenty years and is one of the founding members of the nonprofit Modern Stoicism. He is also the founder and president of the Platos Academy Centre nonprofit in Greece. Whats the big idea? The philosophy and methods of Socrates can help bring calm and clarity to the distracted, nervous, and angry modern mind. His training techniques share remarkable overlaps with modern cognitive-behavioral therapy. Below, Donald shares five key insights from his new book, How to Think Like Socrates: Ancient Philosophy as a Way of Life in the Modern World. Listen to the audio versionread by Donald himselfin the Next Big Idea App. 1. How to practice the Socratic Method. Socrates, despite being one of the most influential philosophers in history, wrote nothing. At least, thats what people like to say. However, Plato, his most famous student, tells us that while in prison awaiting his execution, Socrates wrote poetry. More intriguingly, Epictetus, the famous Stoic philosopher who lived four centuries later, claimed that Socrates jotted down countless notes that were designed for his own self-improvement but never intended for publication. Another of his students describes how Socrates taught a young man to practice philosophy by means of a formal written exercise. For this exercise, Socrates drew two columns, the first headed Justice and the second Injustice. His companion was invited to list examples of wrongdoing under the heading of injustice, such as theft and deceit. Its often easier to understand our values if we begin by defining their opposites. However, the basic skill underlying the Socratic Method really comes into play in the next step. Socrates asked his friend to imagine any situations where the things hed listed under Injustice might be placed under the heading of Justice. For instance, a general who seized the weapons of the enemy during a war might be said to be stealing, but perhaps thats not unjust. Likewise, a father might be considered justified in concealing medicine in his sick childs food despite this being a form of deceit. Socrates was skilled at coming up with these sorts of examples. Training yourself to think of exceptions to rules and definitions can help you avoid applying them too rigidly. This skill is important because the advice and techniques we learn from self-help books are often of limited value. Whats good advice in one situation may become bad advice in another. Solutions that work well for some problems may backfire when applied to others. Wisdom consists of thinking for yourself by adapting rules to fit new situations. Socratess two-column technique only teaches one small part of his famous philosophical method, but its a great way to start thinking more flexibly and adaptively about life. 2. Generate alternative perspectives. Epictetus said, People are distressed not by events but by their opinions about events. This was one of the main inspirations behind cognitive therapy, the leading form of modern evidence-based psychotherapy. The idea goes back to Socrates, a century before the Stoic school of philosophy was founded. Modern psychological research has confirmed that our beliefs shape our emotions more than we normally assume. By changing the way we think, we can change the way we feel. Socrates, at times, behaved rather like a modern-day cognitive therapist. An obstacle stands in the way. Some of our beliefs are so entrenched that we find it difficult to imagine ever viewing events differently. When were gripped by strong emotions, such as fear or anger, it may feel natural to view certain events as catastrophic or certain people as unbearable. Socrates, at times, behaved rather like a modern-day cognitive therapist. He would ask his friends whether they imagined that the events that upset them might be viewed differently by other people. What you see as a catastrophe, someone else might view as bad but only temporary, whereas a third might even look at it as an opportunity. By becoming aware that multiple alternative perspectives are conceivable, you can attune to the way your beliefs influence your emotions. 3. Separate your thoughts from external events. Cognitive therapists say our beliefs are like colored lenses through which we look at the world. Suppose youre wearing blue lenses, which color the world with sadness. Theres a difference between looking at the world through your sad, blue lenses and looking at them. This shift in perspective can be compared to observing your own biases as if you were observing someone elses. When we can distinguish between our thoughts and external reality, we experience two main benefits. The most obvious is that our emotions tend to be reduced in intensity. The second is more subtle but arguably even more valuable: We become better at exploring alternative ways of looking at problems. With this flexibility, we find creative solutions to improve how things work out in the long term. Therapists today have fancy names for this, like cognitive distancing or defusion, but it basically means learning to separate beliefs from the things they refer to. It allows you to view your own thinking with greater objectivity and has been found especially helpful for emotional problems such as anxiety and depression. The simplest way to do this is by writing your thoughts down and observing them from a detached perspective. Another method is to tell yourself, I notice right now that I am having the thought . . . and then state the thought you were having as if you were putting it in quotation marks. You can also imagine that some thought or belief has been painted in big letters on a wall, picturing the color and shape of the letters or changing their appearance until you have a sense of the words being like external objects. Therapists may also ask their clients to repeat a troubling thought aloud rapidly for around 30 seconds or to say it more slowly, with longer pauses. Its interesting to try worrying in slow motion! These techniques allow us to experience a thought or belief with greater detachment by looking at our mental lenses rather than looking through them. Youre not avoiding the thought, and you can still discuss evidence for and against it. Youre just experiencing it from another perspective. I believe that Socrates gained this sort of detachment from his own beliefs by discussing them with his friends. He compared self-knowledge to an eye that sees itself, and the best way to achieve this, he thought, was by engaging in philosophical conversations where you view the other person as a mirror for the mind, in which you contemplate your thinking more objectively. 4. Illeism, meaning talking in the third person. When Socrates finished discussing philosophy with his friends, he would go home and continue the conversation with himself in private. He would imagine another Socrates interrogating him about his assumptions concerning wisdom, justice, and other virtues. Socrtes appears to have been known for referring to himself as if he was another person. A similar technique, which involves talking about yourself using your name or third-person pronouns, is called Illeism. It is occasionally used in modern psychotherapy to help clients manage anxiety and other distressing emotions. We often seem better at giving other people advice than solving our own problems. The psychologist Igor Grossmann heads a center that conducts research on the nature of wisdom at the University of Waterloo, in Canada. He was intrigued by a paradox: We often seem better at giving other people advice than solving our own problems. He and his colleagues carried out a variety of experiments and found that when people write about their problems in a journal using the third person, they exhibit more wisdom than when writing in the first person. He calls this method distanced reflection, and it can improve your ability to reason, especially about problems that normally evoke strong feelings. 5. Anger and perceived injustice. Philosophers have debated the nature of justice for thousands of years, but we dont normally think doing so is therapeutic. However, studies have found that individuals who suffer from clinical depression often perceive themselves as victims of injustice. Ancient Greek philosophers understood that anger is often associated with a desire for those we perceive as having acted unjustly to be punished. Cognitive psychologists have arrived at a similar conclusion:Anger often involves blaming others for violating some rule. Socrates insisted that the injustice of others could not harm him. He was not angry with the men responsible for his unjust trial and execution. Paradoxically, he believed that injustice harms the perpetrator more than the victim. Few people today would accept such a radical position, but we can imagine how it may have helped Socrates show extraordinary fortitude and resilience in the face of persecution. Get into the habit of asking what does you more harm: your anger or the things youre angry about? Although there are real injustices in the world, anger is seldom the most helpful response. In trivial cases, it may be best to let go of our sense of injustice so that we can move on. When facing more serious problems, it may be easier to replace anger with assertiveness. It can be challenging to decide whether our feelings are justified, but its important to spot when anger is doing us more harm than the wrongdoing were concerned about. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission.
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