PUSHING THE LIMITS OF TRANSFORMATION
Who doesn’t love a whole new start? The chance to reimagine and remake our home, our job, our neighborhood or ourselves. And what about those among us who can pick up any raw material and hammer it into a work of art? Humans stretch themselves all the time to transform what was — into what could be. You’re about to explore and discuss the concept of TRANSFORMATION.
Read the featured book
Watch the transformation-themed featured video
Jumpstart your group conversation with our discussion questions
Pick a new themed topic, and repeat!
Take a look at the other offerings below, curated for this theme. How do people push the limits of transformation in each book or video? The joy is in the discovery! Making those connections as you read will enrich your follow-up conversations.
FEATURED BOOK
Lab Girl
Available In English & Spanish
Hope Jahren has structured her memoir — and the description of her own transformation — around the life cycle of plants. Specific stages in a plant’s life become metaphors for Jahren’s personal and professional milestones. As she transitions herself to a research...
Discussion Questions
HEATHER
Artist & Blacksmith
When she was 15 years old, Heather took a shop class in her home town of Somerset, WI. And that was the beginning of everything else. She’d found her medium. She could pick up a piece of metal and reshape it into any...
Watch in English
Spanish Subtitles
FEATURED VIDEO
Pushing the Limits
of Transformation
The Boy Who
Harnessed the Wind:
Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope
Available In English
If you ever doubt the impact you can make as a single individual, this book may shift your thinking. It’s a true story, of an ordinary person achieving the extraordinary. The phenomenal difference he makes for...
Discussion Questions
The Martian
Available In English & Spanish
Six days ago, astronaut Mark Wanted became one of the first people to
Now, he's sure he'll be the first person to die there.
After a dust storm nearly kills him and forces his crew to evacuate while thinking...
Discussion Questions
Why Journalists Have
an Obligation to
Challenge Power
You can kick Jorge Ramos out of your press conference (as Donald Trump infamously did in 2015), but you can never silence him. A reporter for more than 30 years, Ramos believes that a journalist's responsibility is to question and challenge those in...
Watch in Spanish w/ English Subtitles
How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain:
The New Science of Transformation
Available In English
In this original and groundbreaking book, Andrew Newberg, M.D., and Mark Robert Waldman turn their attention to the pinnacle of the human...
Discussion Questions
The Wright Brothers
Available In English and Spanish
Before Orville and Wilbur Wright came along, man could not fly. Not very far, anyway. And now they could. This is that story. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, David McCullough, guides us through how these courageous brothers viewed their work, their relationship, and the...
Discussion Questions
All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling-Down House
Available In English
With his pregnant wife and their 18-month-old son in tow, David Giffels scoured the environs of Akron, OH, in search of the perfect house. But nothing seemed right . . . until he spotted the beautiful, decaying Gilded Age mansion...
Discussion Questions
Why We Still Love Film: Analog Photography in the Digital Age
Why are younger generations embracing the slower process of shooting and developing film in a time when taking the perfect photo with our cellphones is cheap and instant gratification? Why...
Watch in English
Poetry that Frees the Soul
"It's said that to be a poet, you have to go to hell and back." So says Cristina Domenech, who teaches writing at an Argentinian prison. In this TEDTalk, she tells the moving story of helping incarcerated people express themselves. Understand themselves. And revel in the freedom of...
Watch in Spanish w/ English Subtitles