EpicsFable & folk tale
The Squirrel and the Bridge
An army is building a bridge of rocks across the sea. The bears and monkeys carry huge boulders. And one tiny squirrel keeps rolling in the sand and running to the shore. Is that really helping?
KindnessFable & folk tale
Androcles and the Lion
A runaway slave hiding in a desert cave meets a lion with a wounded paw. Years later, in a roaring arena in Rome, they meet again.
True StoriesTrue story
The Dog Who Waited
Every evening, a big white dog waited at Shibuya Station in Tokyo for his master's train. One day his master did not come home. The dog kept waiting, for almost ten years.
For KidsClassic retold
The Elves and the Shoemaker
A poor shoemaker has leather left for just one more pair of shoes. He cuts it out, goes to bed, and in the morning, something wonderful is waiting on his workbench.
MotivationBiography
The Forest Man
As a teenager in Assam, Jadav Payeng found a bare sandbank in the Brahmaputra river, scorched by the sun. He began planting trees on it. Decades later, tigers and elephants walk through his forest.
Famous LivesBiography
The Lady with the Lamp
Florence Nightingale was expected to marry well and live a quiet, comfortable life. Instead she walked the wards of a filthy army hospital at night, and then used numbers to change how the world cares for the sick.
Life LessonsClassic retold
The Last Leaf
A young painter lies ill in a New York studio, counting the leaves on an ivy vine outside her window. When the last one falls, she says, she will go too.
True StoriesTrue story
The Little Ships of Dunkirk
In 1940, hundreds of thousands of soldiers were trapped on the beaches of northern France. To help bring them home, an extraordinary fleet set out across the Channel, of fishing boats, ferries, yachts and pleasure launches.
KindnessBiography
The Mother of Orphans
Thrown out of her home at twenty with a newborn baby, Sindhutai Sapkal survived by singing for food at railway stations. Then she began to take in other people's abandoned children.
Life LessonsClassic retold
The Postmaster
A young man from Calcutta is posted to a lonely village post office, where an orphan girl keeps house for him. Tagore's tender story of a bond that means far more to one than to the other.
ReflectionFable & folk tale
The Sage and the Scorpion
An old sage sees a scorpion struggling in the river and reaches in to save it. It stings him. He reaches in again.
For KidsClassic retold
The Ugly Duckling
One egg in the mother duck's nest is bigger than the rest, and the chick that hatches from it looks nothing like his brothers and sisters. Nobody wants him. Not yet.
KindnessTrue story
The Village That Hid Children
During the Second World War, the people of a poor mountain village in France opened their doors to strangers on the run. They hid thousands, and hardly ever spoke of it afterwards.
KindnessTrue story
The Visas of Chiune Sugihara
In the summer of 1940, a crowd of desperate refugees gathered at the gate of a small Japanese consulate in Lithuania. The diplomat inside had to choose between his orders and his conscience.
KindnessClassic retold
Two Old Men
Two old friends set off on foot on the long pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Only one of them gets there. Tolstoy's story of what it really means to keep a promise to God.
Life LessonsClassic retold
Where Love Is, God Is
A lonely old cobbler hears a voice in the night promising a visitor tomorrow. All day he watches the street from his basement window, waiting. Tolstoy's gentle story.
KindnessClassic retold
The Happy Prince
A golden statue who can see all the sorrow of his city asks a little swallow to give away his jewels and gold, one piece at a time. Oscar Wilde's tender fairy tale.
For KidsFable & folk tale
The Lion and the Mouse
A mighty lion laughs when a tiny mouse promises to repay his kindness one day. Then the hunters' net falls.
KindnessTrue story
The Man Who Saved 669 Children
In 1938 a young London stockbroker cancelled a skiing holiday and went to Prague instead. He told almost nobody what he did there, for fifty years.
KindnessTrue story
The Names in the Jar
In occupied Warsaw, social worker Irena Sendler helped smuggle Jewish children out of the ghetto, and buried their real names in jars so they could one day be found.
ReflectionClassic retold
The Three Questions
A king believes he would never fail if he knew three things - the right time, the right people and the right thing to do. Tolstoy's quiet parable about the answers.
Life LessonsClassic retold
Kabuliwala
A five-year-old girl in Calcutta becomes best friends with a tall Afghan fruit-seller. Years later he returns, and her father understands what they shared. Tagore's beloved story.
KindnessClassic retold
The Bishop's Candlesticks
A hungry ex-convict, turned away by every inn, is welcomed by a kind old bishop, and repays him by stealing his silver. The famous scene from Victor Hugo's Les Misérables.
True StoriesTrue story
The Town That Opened Its Doors
On 11 September 2001, dozens of airliners were ordered out of the sky and sent to a small town in Newfoundland. For several days its people looked after thousands of stranded strangers as if they were family.
KindnessHistorical narrative
Carols in No Man's Land
At Christmas 1914, in the first winter of the First World War, soldiers on opposite sides of the trenches laid down their weapons and met as human beings, if only for a little while.
KindnessOriginal story
The Umbrella at Platform Four
One rainy morning, an old man left a spare umbrella at a station with a handwritten note. He had no idea what it would start.