David Byrne’s Online Magazine Examines This ‘Catalyzing Moment’

Reasons to Be Cheerful, the online magazine founded by musician and author David Byrne, has just announced Now Anything Is Possible, a new reported series that explores the “once-in-a-generation potential of the extraordinary changes occurring around the world in response to COVID-19.”

Byrne started Reasons to Be Cheerful as a sort of self-therapy project, and it’s the first project of the not-for-profit organization Arbutus, which he created to “bring the exciting work of others to light via novel and innovative presentation.”

The series offers a glimpse of what governments, institutions, and communities can achieve in this new era and examines how the policies being enacted today can “outlast this crisis and move us toward a kinder, fairer, and more just society.”

“This is a catalyzing moment, and many of the changes that have been made or contemplated are going to be permanent –– some of those are good, and some deeply questionable,” says Byrne in a press release. “We at Reasons to be Cheerful, of course, want to know: how can we keep the good stuff? Who is doing it (it’s already happening) and how those ideas and initiatives are working out?”

Byrne recently penned the op-ed piece “The World Is Changing –– So Can We.” In it, he addresses the need for human connection in a time of self-isolation, writing, “What is happening now is an opportunity to learn how to change our behavior. For many of us, our belief in the value of the collective good has eroded in recent decades. But in an emergency that can change quickly.”

The piece ran in its entirety on Reasons to Be Cheerful, and an abridged version appeared in The Wall Street Journal. 

Reasons to Be Cheerful encourages its readers to weigh in about the changes through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.