Alison Gopnik understands babies and children as the R&D division of humanity. From her cognitive science lab at the University of California, Berkeley, she investigates the “evolutionary paradox” of the long human childhood. When she first trained in philosophy and developmental psychology, the minds of children were treated as blank slates. But her research is helping us see how even the most mundane facts of a toddler or a teenager — from fantasy play to rebelliousness — tell us what it means to be human.

Civil rights legend Ruby Sales learned to ask “Where does it hurt?” because it’s a question that drives to the heart of the matter — and a question we scarcely know how to ask in public life now. Sales says we must be as clear about what we love as about what we hate if we want to make change. And even as she unsettles some of what we think we know about the force of religion in civil rights history, she names a “spiritual crisis of white America” as a calling of today.

Brené Brown says our belonging to each other can’t be lost, but it can be forgotten. Her research has reminded the world in recent years of the uncomfortable, life-giving link between vulnerability and courage. Now she’s turning her attention to how we walked into the crisis of our life together and how we can move beyond it: with strong backs, soft fronts, and wild hearts.

Fr. Greg Boyle makes amazingly winsome connections between things like service and delight, compassion and awe. He landed as an idealistic young Jesuit in a gang-heavy neighborhood of Los Angeles three decades ago. Now he heads Homeboy Industries, which employs former gang members in a constellation of businesses from screen printing to a farmers’ market to a bakery. This is not work of helping, he says, but of finding kinship.

The Wiz is a reimagining of the classic Wizard of Oz tale, complete with an all-black, all-star cast and Quincy Jones-produced soundtrack. Diana Ross stars as Dorothy, a 24-year-old school teacher who has never set foot outside her neighborhood in Harlem. When a violent storm transports her to a faraway place, she’s taken out of her comfort zone and yearns to find a way back. Lawyer Michael Strautmanis had never seen a movie that offered a warm portrayal of his experience growing up on the South Side of Chicago in a tight-knit African American community. His love for every aspect of the movie — from the iconic casting to the costume design and music — speaks to the idea that movies help us feel seen.

The Wizard of Oz is one of the most watched films of all time. When a tornado whisks Dorothy and her dog Toto from their Kansas home to the magical Land of Oz, Dorothy has to seek out its wizard to find a way home. Along the way, she makes new friends and encounters all sorts of obstacles — all made delightful by the movie’s iconic original music and use of color, which was groundbreaking at the time. Entrepreneur Seth Godin says the movie made a strong impression on him as a child: Seeing a young person take action inspired him to do the same. “It’s up to us,” he says, “and we could do it if we wanted to.”

Serene Jones describes theology as the place and story you think of when you ask yourself about the meaning of your life, the world, and the possibility of God. For her, that place is a “dusty piece of land” on the plains of Oklahoma where she grew up. “I go there to find my story — my theology. I go there to be born again; to be made whole; to unite with what I was, what I am, and what I will become.” In her work as a public theologian, Jones explores theology as clarifying lens on the present — from grace to repentance to the importance of moving from grieving to mourning.