I was an extremely shy girl in primary school and couldn’t make friends easily. My teacher, Mr. Doocy, called my mother and explained that I hadn’t spoken a single word in class. And we were more than half way through the school year. Even as a little girl, I knew this was unusual. I watched the free and happy interaction of my classmates with envy.

Mom tried to excuse my behavior as something that I would outgrow. But Mr. Doocy was still quite concerned about me. He asked Mom if I had something at home that I liked. He said he would arrange a show-and-tell activity for the class if I brought it to school. My mom told him about my cat who had given birth to several baby cats about three weeks earlier. I was crazy about those baby cats.

Then Mr. Doocy suggested I bring the baby cats to school the next day and introduce them to my classmates. It seemed that Mom didn’t think this show-and-tell activity would help me and hoped to discourage Mr. Doocy. She explained that I would have to bring the mother cat along with the six baby cats because they were too young to be separated from their mother. She probably thought this would put an end to the plan. But Mr. Doocy said that was fine.

I normally walked to school, but my mother drove me the next morning along with a big brown cardboard box. I struggled to walk toward the classroom with the heavy load. In no time, the group of baby cats caught the attention of my classmates. Their eyes lit up in wonder when they caught sight of my tiny treasures. My heart beat quickly against my chest as pride swelled within me. I had never felt so important in my entire nine years of life!

Mr. Doocy instructed me to sit on the steps outside the classroom so everyone could get a good look inside the container. “Can I hold one?” a little girl asked aloud with excitement. Then all the other children chimed in like a choir, begging to hold one of the baby cats.

I nodded and said, “Yes.”

With everyone sitting in the classroom, Mr. Doocy invited me to say something about my cats.

In a house far from the city lived John and his mother. John’s only hobby was wandering in the nearby picturesque forest. In its center was a shiny clear lake with schools of fish dancing in it. Lovely animals such as deer or rabbits were playing around and cute birds were singing in trees. Fascinated by the beauty and liveliness of nature, he desired to become a great artist and present all the breath-taking scenes to the world.

John studied in the local primary school. Life was not easy for John and his mom after his father died. Knowing what hard work his mother did to make ends meet, John really didn’t want his mother to worry. His mother knew the significance of education in life but she was against his dream of becoming an artist. “The profession of artist can’t aid a person in meeting his daily expenses,” she would say. But as each day passed, John’s dream became more passionate.

Due to the living circumstances, even buying some new colors would be a luxury. John only used the worn drawing file and limited colors for his daily practice. Though lacking fine painting materials, he never gave up drawing. He spent a significant amount of time staying in the forest, secretly perfecting his craft. With continuous hard work and a distinct gift for art, he drew beautifully.

One day John read about a competition being held in the town, whose deadline was only two days away. He got the perfect opportunity to fulfill his desire but he was in a dilemma (两难境地) as for the competition he needed special paints and some brushes. He didn’t have the courage to ask his mother for money as he knew her prejudice against art.

That evening his mom returned from work and handed him a few paper notes, saying, “This is for your lunch at school next month.” The money was enough for his desired materials! John’s face lit up.

Early the next morning, John secretly left home with the money.

A week later, a phone call came to John’s home.

3 . For generations, depression has been seen as an illness, disorder or even weakness. Such an idea makes sense because depression causes suffering and even death. But what if we’ve got it all wrong?

The common wisdom is that depression starts in the mind with abnormal thinking. That leads to symptoms like headaches, stomachaches, or tiredness. Now, models like the Polyvagal Theory suggest that we've got it backward. It's the body that detects danger and initiates a defense strategy meant to help us survive. That biological strategy is called immobilization, and it demonstrates in the mind and the body with a set of symptoms we call depression.

When we think of depression as unnecessary suffering, we are telling people with depression that they are not part of the group, they are not right and they don' t belong. That robs them of hope. But when we begin to understand that depression, at least initially, happens for a good reason we lift the shame. Instead, people with depression are courageous survivors, not damaged sick people.

The autonomic nervous system (ANS) is constantly scanning our internal and external environment for signs of danger. If our ANS detects a threat or even a simple lack of safety, its next strategy is the fight or flight response, which we often feel as anxiety. Sometimes the threat is so bad or goes on for so long, that the nervous system decides there is no way to fight or to flee. At that point, there is only one option left: immobilization.

The immobilization response is the original biological defense in higher animals. It dulls pain and makes us feel disconnected. Think of some reptiles (爬行动物), which shut down their bodies to avoid cold temperatures and the lack of food and water. In humans, people often describe feeling “out of their bodies" during extremely unpleasant events, which has a defensive effect of reducing the emotional shock. This is important because some things are so terrible, we don't want people to be fully present when they happen. What incredible capacity of our biology to find a way in hard times!

4 . The human body possesses an efficient defense system to battle with flu viruses. The immune system protects against the attack of harmful microbes (微生物) by producing chemicals called antibodies, which are programmed to destroy a specific type of microbe. They travel in the blood and search the body for invaders (入侵者). When they find an invasive microbe, antibodies attack and destroy any cell that contains the virus. However, flu viruses can be a terrible enemy. Even if your body successfully fights against the viruses, with their ability to evolve rapidly, your body may have no protection or immunity from the new ones.

Your body produces white blood cells to protect you against infectious diseases. Your body can detect invading microbes in your bloodstream because they carry antigens in their proteins. White blood cells in your immune system, such as T cells, can sense antigens in the viruses in your cells. Once your body finds an antigen, it takes immediate action in many different ways. For example, T cells produce more antibodies, call in cells that eat microbes, and destroy cells that are infected with a virus.

One of the best things about the immune system is that it will always remember a microbe it has fought before and know just how to fight it again in the future. Your body can learn to fight so well that your immune system can completely destroy a virus before you feel sick at all.

However, even the most cautious people can become infected. Fortunately, medical scientists have developed vaccines (疫苗), which are weakened or dead flu viruses that enter a person’s body before the person gets sick. These viruses cause the body to produce antibodies to attack and destroy the strong viruses that may invade during flu season.

5 . My dad is easy-going and has a gift for chatting. He ________ a fast food restaurant called Queenie’s Weenies, which is specialized in hot dogs. I work with my dad at the ________ on weekends.

One Saturday, we went ________. As we got into the checkout line, I ________ something: our cashier (收银员) was very ________! She ________ no smiles, no greetings and no small talk. Her “anger aura (光环)” was obvious and kind of ________ to me. When we ________ to check out, I was thinking that we should just pay for our things and leave quickly. My dad had a different ________. When it was our turn, he started ________ her.

Dad said, “Hi, how are you today? This is my son. I have a restaurant, and we ________ together. It’s called Queenie’s Weenies. Drop by my restaurant sometime and I will ________ you to my hot dogs. I’m good at cooking them.” By the time we ________ checking out, the cashier was smiling. She said, “Thanks, umm… I hope you and your son have a very nice day.”

Back in the car, Dad said to me, “The cashier was obviously ________ today. It happens to everyone. Smile ________ or give a few kind words, which is all it takes to make one a little more delighted.”

6 . Animal rescuer and cinematographer Douglas Thorn’s passion for animals began when he was a little kid. “I started rescuing orphaned baby animals,” Thorn says. “And I wanted to be a wildlife cinematographer.”

When Thron grew up, he did just that, working for shows like Discovery Channels Shark Week, filming the great white sharks off the coast of Santa Cruz, California. But Thron says it was the Paradise Fire in California in 2018 that “pushed” him to do animal rescue activism work, putting his aerial cinematography skills to good use.

At the time, Thron was filming a man who was rescuing cats after the fire using an infrared hand-held camera. The camera uses heat to detect the animals at night Thron and the man talked about how incredible it would be to put one on a drone to detect animals more easily. “The animal's body temperature will glow on the screen and you can pick them out among the bricks and stones,” explains Thron.

The first animal Thron ever rescued was a dog in the Bahamas after a category-5 hurricane hit, which wiped out hundreds of houses. Thron tested out putting an infrared scope on a drone and found the dog.

“The drone really shaves off critical time so that the really badly hurt animals are able to be rescued,” Thron says. Once the scope picks up the “heat signature of an animal”, Thron turns a spotlight on the animal and zooms in on it, so he and the rescue crews can go and save the animal.

Thron has basically been “going non-stop since then”. His TV show, Doug to the Rescue, shows some of his heart-warming animal rescues, including after Hurricane Laura in Louisiana in 2020 and after fires in Northern California and Oregon. Thron also helped rescue koalas after fires damaged parts of Australia in 2020.

7 . Njobati, a young woman from Cameroon, faced a challenging journey when she moved from her English-speaking area to a French-speaking area of the country to attend university. The sharp differences between these areas, once part of the British and French empires, made it difficult for her to fit in, which led her to examine her own identity—who she truly was.

Seeking guidance, she turned to her grandfather who also felt disconnected from his own culture. He expressed sadness about what the Nso had lost both culturally and materially, including Ngonnso statue. Ngonnso was the founder of Nso dating back to the 14th Century, whose statue was an important cultural symbol for the Nso. However, it was taken by the Germans in 1902 and has been housed in Berlin’s Ethnological Museum ever since.

Inspired by her grandfather’s desire and saddened by the loss of culture, Njobati made a promise to bring back the statue. She believed it would not only achieve her grandfather’s wish but connect her with her Nso heritage again.

Njobati did many researches about the statue and former unsuccessful attempts. She realized that restitution (归还) was actually about facing the colonial ( 殖民主义的) past. Njobati decided to try differently. To gather support online and offline, Njobati began a grassroots campaign. She organized meetings in community halls and churches, met people one-on-one, and used the power of social media.Through Twitter, she established contact with the Ethnological Museum.

Njobati’s tireless efforts paid off. She was told that a decision about Ngonnso statue was coming, which was an important moment for her.

“Finally, this is happening. Not just for me, but for the Nso people, and for Cameroon,” She cried. “This also lends a hand to other communities that are seeking justice for stolen culture relics.”

9 . For the past 13 years, Martin Burrows has been working as a long-distance truck driver. Spending up to five nights a week on the road can be a lonely business, leaving him with plenty of time to notice his surroundings. “I kept seeing more rubbish everywhere and it was getting on my nerves. I decided I had to do something about it,” he says. One day, he stopped his vehicle, took out a trash bag and started picking up the garbage. The satisfaction after clearing a small area was remarkable.

Before his time on the road, Burrows spent over two decades in the military as a vehicle driver. His service saw him stationed throughout Europe and also on tours in Afghanistan. After returning to civilian life, he was diagnosed with PTSD (创伤后应激障碍) and had a mental health crisis in 2017. His involvement in fundraising for Help for Heroes led him to meet a man who used model-building as a distraction from PTSD. Burrows realized that his act of roadside cleanup had a similar calming effect on his mental well-being.

By 2019, Burrows had begun using his free time on the road to regularly clean up garbage. A passerby encouraged him to set up a Facebook group, which he called Truckers Cleaning Up Britain. “I was worried I’d be the laughing stock of my town for putting videos and photos up of me cleaning but people started to join,” he says. “I was amazed. The local council stepped in and gave me litter-picking supplies and we’re up to almost 3,000 members now.”

Since truckers are so often on the move, the Facebook page acts as a means of raising awareness rather than a platform for organizing cleanups. Burrows expressed his intention to continue the cleanup efforts as long as his physical condition allowed, as he still found joy in the process.

10 . The history of humankind is littered with crafty and seasoned liars. Lying, it turns out, is something that most of us are highly skilled in. We lie with ease, in ways big and small, to strangers, co-workers, friends, and loved ones. Being dishonest is woven into our very fabric, so much so that it would be truthful to say that to lie is human.

Like learning to walk and talk, lying is something of a developmental milestone. While parents often find their children’s lies troubling —for they signal the beginning of a loss of innocence—Kang Lee, a psychologist, sees the emergence of the behavior in children as a comforting sign that their cognitive(认知的)growth is on track.

To study lying in children, Lee and his colleagues use a simple experiment. They ask kids to guess the identity of toys hidden from their view, based on an audio clue. The sound played has nothing to do with the toy. “So you play Beethoven, but the toy’s a car,” Lee explains. The experimenter leaves the room, using the excuse of taking a phone call —a lie for the sake of science—and asks the child not to peek at the toy. Returning, the experimenter asks the child for the answer, following up with the question: “Did you peek or not?”

Most children can’t resist peeking. The percentage of the children who peek and then provide false statements about it depends on their age. Among two-year-old, only 30 percent are mendacious. Among three-year-old, 50 percent lie. And by eight, about 80 percent claim they didn’t peek.

What drives this increase in lying is the development of a child’s ability to put himself or herself in someone else’s shoes. Known as theory of mind, this is the facility we acquire for understanding the beliefs, intentions, and knowledge of others. What then might be the best way to block the rapid advance of untruths into our lives? The answer isn’t clear. Technology has opened up a new frontier for dishonesty, adding a 21st-century twist to the age-old problem.