Is it possible to have a building that can make you happy, sad, or even angry?
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
Consumers today have more power than ever before. The large and diverse selection of media available on newsstands means that customers know what they should be getting, and if they aren't satisfied with the service there's a host of Web sites and forums on which they can let everyone know.
Zinedine Zidane is sure of the quality most necessary to create a successful team: mutual respect.
Common opinion holds that diplomacy involves careful negotiation and an ability to bite your tongue. But what happens when the political situation in a country is so corrupt that you feel it is your moral duty to speak out?
When Americans go to the polls this November, there will be many factors that influence where they eventually decide to cast their vote:
We have all heard that time-worn phrase trotted out about everyone having at least one book inside them, and most of us like to believe it's true.
She is one of the world's most likeable and photogenic leaders, has her own YouTube channel, and is determined to change the face of learning in the Middle East.
Imagine a world without zero: The magic number that has given us everything from simple algebra to quantum physics, which forms the basis of modern computing in binary code and which, less profoundly, but perhaps more importantly, lets us know when we've drained our bank account with one too many shopping trips.
"The Spirit of..." team has been running an online poll asking viewers to choose who they think has been the most influential leader to have featured on the show over the course of the past twelve months.
Is it possible to have a building that can make you happy, sad, or even angry?
"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
Consumers today have more power than ever before. The large and diverse selection of media available on newsstands means that customers know what they should be getting, and if they aren't satisfied with the service there's a host of Web sites and forums on which they can let everyone know.
Zinedine Zidane is sure of the quality most necessary to create a successful team: mutual respect.
Common opinion holds that diplomacy involves careful negotiation and an ability to bite your tongue. But what happens when the political situation in a country is so corrupt that you feel it is your moral duty to speak out?
When Americans go to the polls this November, there will be many factors that influence where they eventually decide to cast their vote:
We have all heard that time-worn phrase trotted out about everyone having at least one book inside them, and most of us like to believe it's true.
She is one of the world's most likeable and photogenic leaders, has her own YouTube channel, and is determined to change the face of learning in the Middle East.
Imagine a world without zero: The magic number that has given us everything from simple algebra to quantum physics, which forms the basis of modern computing in binary code and which, less profoundly, but perhaps more importantly, lets us know when we've drained our bank account with one too many shopping trips.
"The Spirit of..." team has been running an online poll asking viewers to choose who they think has been the most influential leader to have featured on the show over the course of the past twelve months.
They are the tales of two very different people.
Change -- probably the single word used more than any other by President-elect Barack Obama to enunciate his vision of a post-Bush America.
Who do you feel has been the most inspirational leader featured on The Spirit Of in 2008?
In this end-of-year programme, "The Spirit of..." examines the financial crisis that has impacted the world and asks what financial and political world leaders can do to help.
The architecture of churches has undergone some major changes in the last century -- but has this been a change for the better or worse?
In November we step inside the world of design as show host Becky Anderson searches for the Spirit of Architecture.
Monstrosities, eyesores, nightmares of architecture -- call them what you like, ugly buildings are sadly all around us.
How do you pick the best buildings in the world? And what makes them stand out from the rest?
You can almost picture it now: Paris Hilton swallowed up by a tight-fitting futuristic designer space suit -- one hand waving at the on-flight camera, the other clasping a Dior "space traveler" handbag.
Professor Stephen Hawking, one of the world's great scientists, is looking to the stars to save the human race -- but pessimism is overriding his natural optimism.
Kofi Annan has an ambitious vision for Africa.
It's your turn to tell us at CNN who you think the great leaders of 2009 will be.
A new space race is officially under way, and this one should have the sci-fi geeks salivating.
It may be one small step for civilian space travel, but it's a leap for education.
"The moon's been there for about four billion years and it's moving further and further away from the earth. And it's been a destination or quizzical thing for humans for thousands of years, centuries; it's been something that you dream about." -- Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on "The Spirit of Space."
Getting "out of this world" with civilian space travel is not quite as simple as you may think.
Cosmologist, theoretical physicist and author, Stephen Hawking is possibly the world's greatest living scientist.
It's very rarely African cities get compared with their flashy European counterparts, yet, when it comes to cost of living Lagos isn't just competing with its neighbors in Europe -- it's beating them.
The humble mobile phone is driving a new revolution which some experts hope could bring fairer elections and democracy to some African states.
Writers can be notoriously prickly about new technology.
As the lights went down in the theater the low murmur built to a thunderous ovation as the odd-looking man in the crumpled suit and bowler hat took to the stage.
"Do you ever listen to stories? You do. You don't even know you do. Also you tell stories all the time."
Beautiful and intelligent, and balancing a modern outlook with a deep concern for her people, Jordan's Queen Rania seems in many ways to represent the optimistic face of the Middle East's future.
Britain's rundown housing estates and deprived inner cities will be the setting for a new project that aims to use classical music to lift children out of the poverty trap.
When you grow up in a place of war, your realities are inevitably driven by the violence surrounding you.
In sport, being the best is not just about the having the greatest players. Here are five teams that have gone from zeroes to heroes, and in the process left their mark on sporting history.
A veteran of over 20 years of mountain climbing, Dave Bunting has been in some pretty tight scrapes.
Derek is compiling a survival guide on how to cope after the total collapse of society. It is, as you can imagine, a big job.
Imagine a life where each morning you cycle to work, and come home at night to tend your allotment and eat a dinner of locally produced food.
For any onlookers it must have appeared a strange spectacle.
James Lovelock refers to himself as a "planetary doctor."
It could be argued when Tony Blair left the office of Prime Minister in June, his parting from the public stage was mourned by few but chief among those mourners were Britain's satirists. The characteristics of the Blair government with its emphasis on spin and sound bites created a wealth of material for top British satirist Craig Brown.
A question. What connects Facebook enthusiasts in China busy translating the social networking site into Mandarin and a community of orthopaedic surgeons swapping ideas on how to treat spinal injuries?
When the English inventor Henry Bessemmer launched his extravagant cure for sea-sickness in 1875 it must have seemed like a sure thing.
Home to up to 10 percent of all known species, Mexico is recognized as one of the most biodiverse regions on the planet.
Commentators who have watched the conflict in Northern Ireland play out for decades call the peace process a miracle.
When Brian Burton, a little known DJ operating under the name of Danger Mouse, released "The Grey Album" in 2003, he brought to mainstream attention a new form of musical genre made possible by the advance of modern technology and the Internet. He also inadvertently sparked a debate about record labels' monopoly of music ownership.
Michelle Forbes' son Leon was an aspiring hip-hop musician when he was shot and killed near his home in South London at the age of 21.
"This here ain't no protest song or anything like that, cause I don't write no protest songs."
Since the early days of pop music, the music industry has been searching for the secret formula to writing a successful song -- for that special alchemy that separates a Grammy-winner from a dud. For a period in the 1970s and 80s, the self-styled King of Pop Michael Jackson seemed to have stumbled upon it, but somewhere along the line he, too, seems to have misplaced it.
White sand beaches, tropical rain forests and colorful coral reefs -- southern Mexico would appear to have it all.
The world's coral reefs are under threat. Overfishing, unsustainable tourism, coastal development, pollution, the global aquarium trade and climate change are having a devastating effect on these fragile ecosystems, according to the International Coral Reef Initiative.
Remember the days when a washing machine lasted for decades? If it broke down it could be fixed. But now it seems it is cheaper to discard our broken products and buy new ones. The side effects of our throwaway society are ever-larger waste mountains festering with toxic chemicals and the depletion of natural resources such as rare metals.
It could be argued when Tony Blair left the office of Prime Minister in June, his parting from the public stage was mourned by few but chief among those mourners were Britain's satirists. The characteristics of the Blair government with its emphasis on spin and sound bites created a wealth of material for top British satirist Craig Brown.
It's boom-boom time for comedians and satirists. They pack out tents at music festivals, clubs and pubs and fill up the prime time slots on TV and radio. They have colonized multimedia with podcasts, vodcasts and blogs. So if you need cheering up or feel like a laugh, there have never been more places to get it.
Finally you've decided to commit yourself to a sport -- you've brought the gear, you've joined a team, you've got the equipment -- then on your first try, an injury occurs. Doh!
Always last to be picked for the team? Couldn't catch a ball if your life depended on it? Got coordination skills that make you a laughing stock?
Who'd be a chugger? It's a thankless task -- standing on the High Street often in the rain, wearing a fluorescent vest, hold in a clipboard and trying to get someone, anyone, to stop and talk to you -- and maybe even donate some money.
When we asked you last week to share your dreams with us, some of the most inspiring responses came from the world's poorest countries.
It doesn't have to be Christmas for you to start thinking of giving -- how you can do it, where you can do it and those most likely to benefit from your gifts.
In an age of unromance, of Internet dating, of gut reaction cynicism -- I love hearing a story about how Lenny Ann Low of Sydney met her fiancé Alan of Glasgow.
There is such a thing as being out of time: of looking at a map in your bedroom and realizing the most intriguing bits of the world have already been explored, that many indigenous groups had already been ruined by modern life, that vast tracts of rainforests or deserts or seas had also been spoiled by progress, that climbing Everest has become just another sport.
The discovery of HIV, a breakthrough in the treatment of bipolar disorder, the advent of the contraceptive pill ... CNN looks at some of the scientific discoveries that changed the world.
