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The Situation
March 12, 2021

Radical Truth

By Rosemary Smith, Managing Director of Getting Better Foundation As I meet with educators all over the world about their fears for students’ schooling since the pandemic, racial tensions, polarization…
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Education
February 9, 2021

Education Closes the Gap that Legislation Leaves Open

Written by Joe Phelps There’s a lot of talk about legislating more governmental control of the major social media platforms. While there is room for legislation to hold digital services…
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Media
January 14, 2021

Social Media is Only Part of the Problem

Written by Joe Phelps, CEO, Getting Better Foundation Netflix’s documentary, ”The Social Dilemma”, exposed the motivations and technologies of social media platforms as well as the algorithms that drive them.…
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Crime
January 4, 2021

How fake news leads to conspiracy theories

Written by Rosemary Smith, Managing Director of Getting Better Foundation Besides being potentially avoidable tragedies, what do the Nashville Bomber, Russian Trolls, Black Lives Matter, Covington Catholic, Pizza Gate, Sandy…
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Media
September 29, 2020

Negativity Bias: “As a Man Thinketh” and Pollyanna

By Rosemary Smith, Getting Better Foundation, Managing Director “When the bad outweighs the good, for many, whether we realize it or not, it erodes our ability to have compassion and…
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Conflict
September 21, 2020

We all have misperceptions

…as a result of incomplete information. By Joe Phelps, Getting Better Foundation, founder As mentioned in Matt Ridley’s recent blog: The late, Hans Rosling, asked 1000 people: “Has the percentage of…
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Media
July 31, 2020

What We Say Matters

By Belinha De Abreu, PhD., author, researcher, friend of The Getting Better Foundation We live in troubling times.  The news in the past months have shown how conflicted our world…
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The Situation
June 8, 2020

(What Makes Us) TRUSTWORTHY?

P. Brown, author & friend of Getting Better Foundation It is only natural that we care mostly about ourselves. Our immediate family. Our friends. Maybe our neighbors. And just maybe…
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Media
May 11, 2020

Mind the Gap

Some words from our founder, Joe Phelps The lack of media literacy – or “Minding the Gap” – is a critical problem — worldwide. “Minding the Gap” is a term…
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The Situation
March 26, 2020

Are we boiling frogs?

Wikipedia says:  “The boiling frog is a fable describing a frog being slowly boiled alive. The premise is that if a frog is put suddenly into boiling water, it will jump out, but if the frog is…
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Media
March 12, 2019

Media Literacy: We could all use a bit more of it!

WHAT IS THE ISSUE? If you believe everything you read and hear about violent conflict, the environment, human health and poverty, you might think that the world has become a…
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Poverty
February 18, 2019

Poverty in Perspective

Is the world going to starve? The Problem: If you follow the news, the world can seem pretty grim at times.   We’re trained by some media to believe things are getting worse. We may extrapolate these…
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Education
February 13, 2019

Education: Are we making progress?

(Literacy, Intelligence, Technology, Gender, Curriculum) Literacy – One of the moments I’d like to take back was a teenaged argument with my Dad, when I’d called him ignorant and illiterate.  Today,…
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Healthcare
February 4, 2019

Healthcare: Are we making progress?

Because I’m a child of the 60’s, I was raised prior to the mumps or chicken pox vaccines.  When I was ten years old, The mumps showed up while I…
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Media
January 4, 2018

The Disconnect Between Pessimism and Optimism

By Steven Pinker, Time Magazine, January 4, 2018 According to the latest data, people are living longer and becoming healthier, better fed, richer, smarter, safer, more connected–and, at the same time,…
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Podcast Series
October 18, 2017

Getting Better Podcast: Dr. Gail Saltz

“Accepting that some things can’t be controlled, or might happen anyway, keeps you from having the chronic fear and anxiety of scanning in order to problem solve every single thing.…
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Podcast Series
October 4, 2017

Getting Better Podcast: Gregg Easterbrook

“We need to encounter and talk to people who are not exactly like us.” Gregg Easterbrook, author of The Progress Paradox: How Life Gets Better While People Feel Worse, talks about why,…
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Podcast Series
September 8, 2017

Getting Better Podcast: Paul J. Zak

“The most effective thing that trust does is reduce the frictions between individuals.” In this extended podcast, scientist, author and entrepreneur, Dr. Paul J. Zak, talks about the importance of…
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Podcast Series
August 31, 2017

Getting Better Podcast: Brooke Binkowski

“As journalism gets degraded, disinformation and misinformation becomes more prevalent.” In this Getting Better podcast, snopes.com managing editor, Brooke Binkowski, talks about the challenges facing responsible journalists in sorting out facts from…
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Podcast Series
August 24, 2017

Getting Better Podcast: Seth Godin

“We live in a world not based on return on investment, but a return on trust.” Seth Godin talks about trust and the responsibility that comes with freedom. As Seth…
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Media
July 22, 2017

40 Ways the World is Getting Better

By HumanProgress.org While most people already know that we live longer and earn higher incomes than our ancestors, many people fail to appreciate that the story of human progress is…
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Podcast Series
July 18, 2017

Getting Better Podcast: Matt Ridley

“Isn’t it amazing what we’ve accomplished in the last 50 or 100 years? …A total transformation in human life chances.” The bestselling author of “The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves,…
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Podcast Series
June 13, 2017

Getting Better Podcast: Michael Shermer

“Most moral progress came about because we proactively tried to something about it to make the world a better place.” Dr. Michael Shermer, author of The Moral Arc: How Science and Reason…
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Podcast Series
June 13, 2017

Getting Better Podcast: Barry Glassner

“We’re born with a drive to respond to scary things. Fear gets attention.” In this podcast, we hear from Barry Glassner, PhD, author of The Culture of Fear: Why Americans Are Afraid…
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Poverty
May 5, 2017

How To End Poverty in 15 years with Hans Rosling

By Hans Rosling and the BBC 15 years from now, nobody will still be living in extreme poverty anywhere in the world – that’s the pledge being made by President…
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Media
May 5, 2017

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales creates news service Wikitribune

By BBC News Fake news has dominated the headlines, fuelling the debate about the future of the media and the role of social networks. Tech giants are struggling to combat…
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Poverty
May 3, 2017

What it means to be poor by global standards

By Rakesh Kochhar The share of the global population that is poor plunged from 29% in 2001 to 15% in 2011, elevating the living standards of 669 million people, according…
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Crime
May 2, 2017

Voters’ perceptions of crime continue to conflict with reality

Despite double-digit percentage decreases in U.S. violent and property crime rates since 2008, most voters say crime has gotten worse during that span, according to a new Pew Research Center survey.…
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Crime
May 2, 2017

Dueling Claims on Crime Trend

By Lori Robertson President Barack Obama said there have been “huge drops in the murder rates” in cities like New York, Los Angeles and Dallas. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump…
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Conflict
May 2, 2017

The United States Is Not an Apocalyptic Wasteland, Explains Steven Pinker

By Phil Torres The Harvard cognitive scientist tells us how life is always getting better, despite what Trump has said. Donald Trump’s rise to power was driven in part by…
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Conflict
May 2, 2017

Are We Fundamentally Good or Evil? Neuroscience Has an Answer

By Nicola Brown What underlies every box office hit, bestselling novel, and most compelling video games? A fight between good and evil, of course. The argument over whether humans are…
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Media
May 2, 2017

What Is Driving the Rise of ‘Fake News’ and News Literacy Lessons to Spot It

By Gene Foreman and the News Literacy Project The “fake news” phenomenon was on vivid display in social media during the bitter 2016 presidential campaign. A typical example of the…
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Media
May 2, 2017

Mind Over Mass Media

By Steven Pinker NEW forms of media have always caused moral panics: the printing press, newspapers, paperbacks and television were all once denounced as threats to their consumers’ brainpower and…
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Media
May 2, 2017

Why worldview threats undermine evidence

By Michael Shermer Have you ever noticed that when you present people with facts that are contrary to their deepest held beliefs they always change their minds? Me neither. In…
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Crime
April 4, 2017

5 facts about crime in the United States

By John Gramlich February 21, 2017 Donald Trump made crime-fighting an important focus of his campaign for president, and he cited it again during his inaugural address in January. With the…
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Poverty
April 4, 2017

Global Extreme Poverty

by Max Roser and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina According to these household surveys, 44% of the world population lived in absolute poverty in 1981. Since then, the share of poor people has declined…
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Conflict
April 4, 2017

Americans’ Fear of Foreign Terrorists Is Overinflated

By Alex Nowrasteh One thing is clear from this presidential campaign: many Americans are scared of terrorists and immigrants. Donald Trump has managed to capitalize on that fear by conflating the two phenomena.…
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Media
April 4, 2017

Many Americans Believe Fake News Is Sowing Confusion

23% say they have shared a made-up news story – either knowingly or not BY MICHAEL BARTHEL, AMY MITCHELL AND JESSE HOLCOMB In the wake of the 2016 election, everyone from President Obama to Pope Francis has raised…
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