Michael Kovnat

Despite decades of urgency and alarm, progress on climate change has felt frustratingly slow. What if we’ve been going about it all wrong? Elizabeth Dunn and Jiaying “JZ” Zhao think there’s a missing ingredient in the conversation: joy. In their new book, Leave the Lights On, Liz and JZ draw on psychology, behavioral science, and sustainability research to argue that the most effective climate solutions aren’t rooted in guilt, fear, or self-denial.

The Big Idea: For most of history, old age was rare. Now it’s the norm, and that has reshaped who holds power, wealth, and opportunity in America. Without ever deciding to, we recreated humanity’s oldest political system: rule by elders. Why It Matters: Americans under 40 hold less than 5 percent of the nation’s wealth. Those over 54 hold nearly 72 percent. The median primary voter is about 65. Our social contract was written for a world with far fewer old people and it’s due for a rewrite.

The Big Idea: Therapy was designed to be something you graduate from, a tool for building agency to run your own life. But modern therapy culture has quietly inverted that mission: endless self-understanding has become a substitute for actual change, and a treatment meant to produce independence too often produces dependency instead. Why It Matters: Therapy has never been more accessible, accepted, or destigmatized, and yet anxiety and depression rates remain stubbornly high.