Nic Stone, best-selling young adult author, says she never saw characters like herself in books growing up. That’s why she’s on a mission to make sure every child feels represented by the books on their bookshelf. Her latest book, Dear Justyce, tells the story of a Black boy who ends up in juvenile detention after confessing to the murder of a police officer. Plus, Nic shares her #1 piece of parenting advice. “I think that the best thing that we can do for our children is to create in them a desire for awareness,” she says. “And I’m not just talking about awareness of the world and how the world functions, but also an awareness of themselves, an awareness of their emotions, an awareness of other human beings and their emotions.” 

Climate activist and founder of Plus 1 Vote, Saad Amer, talks about his leap from nature lover to climate activist at just 14 years old. Frustrated with the lack of meaningful climate action from lawmakers, Saad came up with a simple solution. “Let’s get rid of them.” That’s why Saad is encouraging you (yes, you) and all your friends — “your smart friends, your woke friends, your highly educated friends,” as he says — to get out there this November and VOTE! “A democracy will only represent the people who are voting,” he says. “And so if young people aren’t voting for a series of reasons, then of course the democracy is not going to represent the needs and the values of young people.”

Rachel Bloom, the Golden Globe-winning co-creator/star of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, reveals what it was like giving birth during the pandemic at the same moment her friend and music collaborator, Adam Schlesinger, was losing his battle with the virus. With COVID-19 as a humbling denominator, she confronts mortality with the same out-of-body clarity in a way that she hasn’t since that one time she took way too many mushrooms in Amsterdam. “There’s nothing more on the nose about as one person enters, one person is leaving,” she reflects. “Ten minutes after he died, I was breastfeeding because she needed food. So there’s something very egoless about, like, I can only grieve for so long.”

If you’ve ever sat through professional development as an educator, you’ve heard of Angela Duckworth. Both her research and personal experience in the classroom suggests that IQ isn’t always helpful in determining successful outcomes for students. Rather, a more important predictor of success is “grit,” a growth mindset, and feeling like you have a purpose that’s bigger than yourself. So how do we unlock grit and resilience in our kids, especially when the world is so uncertain and unpredictable? And what kind of impact will this period in our history have on our kids in the longterm? “Both the very recent events of the last few weeks and the still recent events of the last few months in the pandemic are all exactly what I study…this is historic.”