As a new day begins –
Open hearts, minds and spirits to ideas time-honored and new as the changing times. Draw from poetry, well-remembered words and well-springs of inner wisdom. Take time to look ahead.

Forethought offers a reflective foundation for each day’s encounter with perhaps new and challenging ideas. This ‘listening to’, ‘feeding upon’ and ‘resting in’ shared time is an ancient sacred practice which can lead from the hearing of a few words to a deeper understanding of the themes of the day to follow.

James Chappel is the Gilhuly Family Associate Professor of History at Duke University and a senior fellow at the Duke Aging Center. He attended Haverford College, where he received a BA in History, and Columbia University for a PhD in History. His prizewinning first book, Catholic Modern: The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church, was published in 2018. Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age was published by Basic Books in November 2024. In addition to many academic venues, his writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Nation, and the New Republic. He is the senior warden of St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church, and he is currently writing a study of C.S. Lewis and the Second World War, also under contract with Basic Books. He lives in Durham, North Carolina.

Jeff Whittle, MD, MPH is Professor of Medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin and Associate Chief for Clinical Research at the Clement J. Zablocki VA Medical Center. He is a leader in the All of Us Research Program, which is enabling research aimed at understanding how individual differences in lifestyle, environment and biology affect health and disease. Such research will support the development of more personalized approaches to maintaining health and managing disease. He also leads the Milwaukee VA’s participation in the Million Veteran Program, a similar effort that focuses on Veterans using the VA healthcare system. His personal research has focused on promoting the self-management of cardiovascular risk factors and mental health conditions. This research has been carried out in partnership with community organizations such as the American Legion. He has also worked to engage community members in the research process, from participating in choosing research topics, to advising regarding study design and helping to disseminate study results into practice.

Nicholas Epley is the John Templeton Keller Distinguished Service Professor of Behavior Science and Director of the Center for Decision Research at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He studies social cognition—how thinking people think about other thinking people—to understand why smart people so routinely misunderstand each other. He teaches an ethics and wellbeing course to MBA students called Designing a Good Life. His research has been featured by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Wired, and National Public Radio, among many others, and has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Templeton Foundation. He has been awarded the 2008 Theoretical Innovation Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, the 2011 Distinguished Scientific Award for Early Career Contribution to Psychology from the American Psychological Association, the 2015 Book Prize for the Promotion of Social and Personality Science and the 2018 Career Trajectory Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology. Epley was named a “professor to watch” by the Financial Times, one of the “World’s Best 40 under 40 Business School Professors” by Poets and Quants, and one of the 100 Most Influential in Business Ethics by Ethisphere. He is the author of Mindwise: How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want, and of a forthcoming book to be published in May 2026 tentatively titled, A Little More Social: How Small Habits Can Make Us Happier, Healthier, and Better Connected.

Susan Magsamen is the founder and executive director of the International Arts + Mind Lab (IAM Lab), Center for Applied Neuroaesthetics at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. She co-directs the NeuroArts Blueprint project, a joint initiative with the Aspen Institute to establish neuroarts as a field integrating arts and aesthetics into medicine and public health. Susan is also the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Your Brain on Art: How the Arts Transform Us.

Magsamen developed Impact Thinking, a translational research model that applies scientific methods to arts and aesthetics to scale, disseminate and evaluate real-world applications. Her work explores how the arts and aesthetic experiences impact us and how this knowledge is translated into solutions in medicine, education and public health.

A learning specialist entrepreneur, Susan has founded several award-winning art-based learning companies—Curiosity Kits and Curiosityville—which have earned over 600 innovation and impact awards. She is also the author of seven books on the arts for children, families and educators.