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Tulika Bose

I'm a third-culture kid who's lived in The Gambia, Nepal, and India, and I need a new passport. Writing stories about incredible humans is my happy place. You might spot me in New York, scouring the streets for the best baklava. Find me on Twitter.

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The inspiring story of how a mother's love conquered people's fear.

When Lacey Buchanan was 23 weeks pregnant, she was told that her baby would probably die.

After her 18-week ultrasound, doctors had noticed something was wrong. Most likely, they told her, it was a cleft palate. But as more time passed, they grew increasingly concerned.

And by the time she arrived at the hospital to deliver her baby, no one knew if he would live.

To everyone's surprise, though, her son was born and he survived.

But he was born with a condition so rare that it's one of only 50 recorded cases in the world — Tessier cleft lip and palate, classifications 3, 4, and 5.

This condition, induced by amniotic band syndrome, caused her son's skull to fail to knit together in the womb, resulting in a large V-shaped cleft from his mouth into his eyes. As a result, Christian was born without eyes. He couldn't even close his mouth.

The team at Vanderbilt University Medical Center had never seen a case like it.

Image via Lacey Buchanan, used with permission.

Lacey and her husband, Chris, were overjoyed that their son was alive. But they were also completely overwhelmed. They couldn't take their newborn home right away, and he needed surgery when he was just four days old to close an exposed part of his head.

Then, before he turned three months old, Christian needed a second surgery.

For Lacey, this was extremely difficult.

Not only was she a new mom with a baby in and out of the hospital, but she was also a law student with a full-time job. It was hard to balance everything, and at one point, she said, she had a breakdown.

"I was thankful that Christian had lived, but there was a point when I started saying, 'Why me? Why my child? What have I done to deserve this?'" she recalls.

"Motherhood can make you feel so ill-equipped," she says. "It can make you feel like you're constantly failing. Am I doing enough? Am I screwing up this little tiny human?"

Image via Lacey Buchanan, used with permission.

Then, when the family started taking Christian out in public, she felt judged.

People would point and stare. They would even come up to Lacey and make rude, hurtful comments.

"What's wrong with him?" people would ask. And when Lacey posted a picture of her young son on Facebook, one woman even told her that she was selfish for not aborting him.

These comments really upset Lacey — they felt like personal attacks on her and her son. And they were from strangers.

But instead of giving up, Lacey decided to be proactive and stand up for herself and her child. So she made a video — with handwritten notecards — to explain what happened to him.

Soon, her inbox was flooding with calls, messages, and notes of encouragement. The world had seen Christian, and they wanted to let her know that they cared about him.

"I was shocked. Absolutely shocked," Buchanan says. As a mother, she felt validated. Suddenly, everything didn't seem quite so hard.

Five years later, Christian is a happy, active little boy. He takes karate lessons.

Image via Lacey Buchanan, used with permission.

He plays Christmas carols on the piano.

Image via Lacey Buchanan, used with permission.

He loves Superman.

Image via Lacey Buchanan, used with permission.

And though he can't see, he is still just a normal little boy who likes playing outside in the fall leaves.

As for his mother, Lacey, she's fulfilled her childhood dreams of becoming a lawyer.

Image via Lacey Buchanan, used with permission.

And she's planning to use her new law degree to help mothers who are struggling to navigate the complex bureaucracy of disability law, like she once did.

To someone unfamiliar with how the law works, the red tape can be overwhelming, she says. "I wouldn't have even known this world existed if it hadn't been for Christian."

She also decided to write a book about her family that hits bookshelves Jan. 10, 2017.

Being a parent is one of the hardest jobs there is, and all parents, at one point or another, doubt themselves.

Though it was scary for Lacey to balance work and school with being a mom to Christian, she succeeded. Having him was a gift in a different kind of wrapping paper, she says.

And it taught her to be a better mom and to be a better human.

And the biggest lesson she learned is also the biggest piece of advice she has for other mothers: "You are enough. If you weren't enough, you wouldn't have had this child."

These bread revolts changed history. We should know why.

The history of bread wars have a lot to tell us about conflicts today.

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You might have heard the saying "We're only three square meals away from anarchy."

It turns out that for many people throughout the centuries, that meal was ... bread.

Bread is actually one of the oldest, cheapest prepared foods in the world, with archeological evidence dating it back at least 30,000 years.

Historical accounts of breadmaking often say the Roman Pliny the Elder first detailed how the skim from beer was used to aerate bread. In ancient Egypt, the workers who built the pyramids are believed to have been given a daily allowance of bread loaves.

Grain farmers in ancient Egypt. Image via iStock.

Even today, a word used in Egypt for bread is "aish," which means "life." It's also considered haram, or taboo, to cut bread with a knife in many Middle Eastern countries.

If you're like many Americans, you might wonder what your love/hate relationship with all of that gluten-y, carbelicious goodness has to do with centuries of civil conflict or even the recent Syrian crisis.

It turns out that there's an actual historical correlation between an increase in grain prices and civil unrest.

A crowd throws bread in Stockport, Lancashire, in 1842. Image via Getty Images.

That's because bread, a magical alchemy of grain, yeast, and water, has managed to sustain poor people for centuries. Historically, when people could no longer afford bread, they knew they would starve. So they revolted.

Entire nations have even toppled because of a lack of access to bread. We might not realize it, but bread uprisings throughout history have a lot to tell us about the global crises of today.

Here are five of the bread revolts that have changed the course of history:

1. Flour Wars, France, 1775

Original lithograph of the French Revolution, 1789. Image via Getty Images.

Surprisingly, Marie-Antoinette may never have told French peasants to eat cake. According to historians, it might have actually been France's famous Flour Wars that played a major role in the French Revolution. Catalyzed by a poor grain yield and rising grain prices, scholars found more than 652 French food-based riots from 1760 to 1789 that ultimately led to the French Revolution in 1789.

2. Flour Riots, New York, 1837

Representation of depressed economic situation in America before the panic of 1837. Image via Getty Images.

When a depression caused flour to jump from $7 per barrel to $20 in 1837, two New York companies, Eli Hart & Co. and S.H. Herrick & Co., were accused of hoarding it. The public took action, and soon after, rioters destroyed 500 bushels of flour and 1,000 barrels of wheat in Hart's shop. The mob grew so violent that they had to be restrained by the Seventh Regiment.

3. Richmond Bread Riots, 1863

Southern women feel the effects of the rebellion and create bread riots. Image via Library of Congress.

In 1863, a mob of Confederate housewives took to the streets with axes in Richmond, Virginia, chanting "bread or blood" while ransacking and looting shops for flour. Prompted by flour prices that had risen 10 times in two years as well as dealing with a tone-deaf leader, the women decided to take things into their own hands. They didn't take just the flour — they took a wagon of beef and 500 pounds of bacon, too.

4. Egyptian Bread Riots, Egypt, 1977

A woman protests with bread in Cairo in 2007. Photo by Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images.

In 1977, Egypt decided to stop subsidizing basic food staples such as wheat and bread. As a result, many poor Egyptians took to the streets. Hundreds were killed, and even more were injured. The riots went on for two days until the government reinstated the wheat subsidies that so many poor Egyptians depended upon.

But that wasn't Egypt's last bread revolt...

5. The Arab Spring, 2008-2011

A protester holds bread in Tunisia in 2010. Photo by Fethi Belaid/AFP/Getty Images.

In 2008, sudden global increases in grain prices compounded with inflation that led to riots in Egypt, reminding a lot of people of the tumultuous events of 31 years prior. Government-subsidized flour, which had once sold for $3.14 per 100 kilograms, suddenly shot to $377 on the black market. Because 40% of Egyptians lived in poverty, many of them couldn't afford to live without the bread that the government helped them afford. Riots swept the nation, and several people were killed in front of government bakeries.

In 2010, as global grain prices continued to rise, Tunisians also began to revolt, bread in hand. The toppling of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in 2011 became the climactic beginning of a major destabilizing shift of an entire region, known as the Arab Spring.

Many people said the Arab Spring was a revolution of the hungry.

Egyptian protestors hold bread in 2013. Photo by Khaled Desouki/AFP/Getty Images.

The current crisis in Syria is also a prime example of what can happen when people don't have enough to eat.

Though it might be hard to fully understand Syria's current problems, some researchers think that it has to do in part with access to bread. At one point, Syria was the only country in the entire region that was completely self-sufficient in food production, specifically in wheat crops such as barley.

Experts have argued that it was a massive crop failure due to drought and possible climate change from 2006 to 2009 that drove Syrian farmers to finally challenge their ruler. When Syrian President Bashar al-Assad fired back, he also explicitly targeted bread bakeries that fell under rebel control.

For much of the world's poor, bread is a life-sustaining necessity. But numerous factors, such as worldwide droughts, are causing grain to become harder and harder to grow.

Syria and Egypt are part of what was once known as the Fertile Crescent, the area of the world where people first started to grow grain and form civilizations. But now, the grain that once made their lands famous is becoming harder and harder to access. When this delicate balance of access to basic foods is upset, history shows us that whole communities — and entire nations — can topple.

If history is an indication, where bread and grain become scarce, civil unrest follows. Now that's something to chew on.

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If riding an elephant was on your bucket list, here's why you might change your mind.

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If you traveled to Thailand, Vietnam, or India five years ago, chances are you were offered an elephant ride.

For many travelers, the opportunity to perch atop an eight-foot, 6,000-pound animal while slowly lumbering through a lush rainforest was at the very top of a bucket list.

It’s a different story if you’re looking for an elephant ride in 2016. Many tour companies, led by Intrepid Travel, are banning the popular activity from their tours.

But why?

Well, to understand that, you first might want to understand a few things about elephants and what making them "ridable" entails.

Studies have indicated that like us, elephants are empathetic creatures — they help each other in distress, grieve for their dead, and feel emotions.

A 2013 study conducted on Asian elephants found that they comforted each other both physically and verbally in times of distress, making small noises while simultaneously stroking each other with their trunks in a show of empathy that's similar to chimpanzees.

Thailand elephant sanctuary. All images via Intrepid Travel.

African elephants will also scatter the bones of their dead. And some scientists even think that elephants cry real tears.While scientists aren't 100% certain, there is research that suggests that elephant tears are associated with grief and loss.

There are even case studies that show elephants performing acts of altruism and heroism for other elephants. In a famous study in 2006, researchers observed elephants' behavior toward a dying matriarch (who they dubbed Eleanor) and found that one elephant tried to rescue the dying elephant. When Eleanor did die, elephant families from miles around came to pay their respects.

Because elephants are such intelligent and emotional animals, it can be easy to believe they enjoy performing for and interacting with humans, like many domestic animals do. But that's not the case.

Elephants are wild animals, not domestic ones like dogs and cats. They're complex social animals that have to endure severe trauma to be ridden.

Baby elephants in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

In order to get them to carry people on their backs, paint pictures, or play with soccer balls, young elephants need to be broken, a process that's often referred to as "the crush" in places like Thailand.

A centuries-old practice that's been handed down throughout generations, "the crush" or "phajaan" as it's called in Thai literally means the process of breaking a young elephant's spirit. When the elephants are young, they're stripped from their mothers, tightly bound, beaten with long sharp spikes, and cruelly deprived of food and water.

If all of this sounds terrible, know that there's some good news. The tide is finally turning on elephant rides.

Tourism companies across the board are making the ethical choice to not put elephant rides on the menu. More than 100 travel agencies, led by Intrepid Travel, have pledged to remove elephant rides, including shows with elephants, from their itineraries.

Thailand Elephant Sanctuary.

PETA has been pretty vocal about the treatment of elephants and started reaching out to travel companies about it in the last few years. After PETA initially reached out to Intrepid Travel, the travel company wanted to know more. So, they lent support to the research of captive elephant venues conducted by World Animal Protection.

It turns out that the demand for elephant rides had also caused a dramatic increase in elephant poaching — specifically in places like Southeast Asia where elephants were already endangered. And, the research found that only 3% of elephant tourism offerings in Southeast Asiatreated elephants humanely.

Because of this, Intrepid Travel decided to change their rules and also teach fellow travelers to be mindful of attractions, like elephant rides, that actively exploit animals. They also run a not-for-profit, The Intrepid Foundation, that lets tourists contribute to the company's efforts to help improve animal welfare, stop human trafficking, and eradicate poverty — all while exploring the world.

There are many ways to appreciate the beauty and majesty of elephants in a humane setting.

Thailand Elephant Sanctuary.

If you still want to make sure you can catch a glimpse of your favorite tusked friends, there are a host of other organizations that rescue and rehabilitate elephants. Instead of riding an elephant, try visiting Thailand's Elephant Nature Park or donating to the friends of the Asian Elephant hospital — the first hospital to provide an elephant with a prosthetic leg.

Greenwashing (making something look sustainable and ethical when it really isn't) can be common when tourists and elephants are involved, so if you're unsure about an activity, it can be helpful to check watchdog organizations (like PETA or Traffic) that are closely monitoring animal tourism.

When companies pave the way for ethical travel by making sure that all animals are loved and respected along the way, everybody wins.

On a plane ride back from Ketchikan, Alaska, a flight attendant stopped to compliment a passenger on his startling blue eyes.

Days later, the flight attendant, Mardra, received a three-page handwritten love letter from Chris, the blue-eyed passenger, with his phone number inscribed at the bottom. They met in person on a layover two weeks later, the entire flight crew in tow to catch a glimpse of the fated mystery man.

"You know, I was married, and I have a child," Mardra told Chris. "If you're not fine with that, thank you for coming out."

"I would love to take you out to dinner," he replied. A year later, they were married.

Chris and Mardra marrying in 1981. Photo courtesy of Chris Jay.

Though their earnest romance might seem like it was lifted directly from the pages of a Nicholas Sparks novel, Chris and Mardra Jay will tell you there's more to their story.

It was the 1980s. She was black, and he was white. It had been a long time since 1967, the seminal year that Mildred and Richard Loving famously used their own love to overturn the ban on interracial marriage. Still, there was a long way to go.

Mardra recalls that often her husband's acquaintances wouldn't treat her with respect.

"They would say, 'You know your wife is colored, right?' Right in front of me," she says, adding that she felt like the two of them were a classroom for people who had never been exposed to an interracial couple.

Chris, 67, and Mardra, 72. Image courtesy of Chris Jay.

Now in their 60s and 70s, Chris and Mardra know there's been a lot of progress since they were young. Once a rarity, multiracial children are the second-fastest growing segment of the U.S. population according to official census data, and interracial marriage has lost much of its former taboo.

We spoke to four other interracial couples about their relationships in America today, and how far they think the nation has come.

1. Jill and Juan Cortés.

Juan, 60, and Jill Cortés, 55. Image courtesy of Jill Cortés.

Though no one would say it, Jill Cortés often suspected the neighbors were only polite to her and her Latino husband, Juan, because of his social status.

"Sometimes I feel that they wouldn't have talked to us, but they did because Juan was a doctor. If he was a blue-collar worker, maybe people wouldn't have associated with us," she recalls.

Juan said that friends and family were always supportive, though he didn't remember a lot of interracial couples — or racial tolerance — growing up when his family would visit Texas.

"I remember being a teenager and being afraid to walk into a restaurant," he says. "I worry it's headed that way again."

2. John Krause and Maria Chua.

John Krause, 48, and Maria Chua, 45. Image courtesy of John Krause.

When John Krause and Maria Chua got married, they had to contend with racism from his mother.

One night after dinner, she took Maria aside to tell her that "it would be very difficult for the children."

"It literally got to the point where I had to tell my parents, if I have to pick between my parents and Maria, I'm picking Maria," Krause says, adding that, "sometimes people don't realize when they're being racist."

John's parents eventually came around, and the couple now has two daughters.

3. Neelam Pathikonda and Lisa DeWolf.

Lisa DeWolf, 43, and Neelam Pathikonda, 39. Image courtesy of Neelam Pathikonda.

After meeting on Facebook through mutual friends, Neelam Pathikonda asked Lisa DeWolf on a date.

"I saw Lisa and pretty much lightweight stalked her online," Neelam says with a laugh. After they met, Lisa sold her house, quit her job, and moved to L.A. to be with Neelam. They married in 2013, in a traditional Hindu ceremony.

Neelam Pathikonda and Lisa Dewolf during their wedding. Photo courtesy of Neelam Pathikonda.

The wedding made some family members — especially those who hadn't originally supported their union— change their mind.

"With the legalization of gay marriage and our big Hindu wedding, my mom definitely came around. She realized that this wasn't a phase," Neelam says, adding that it had been 12 years since she had come out.

When the couple finally had a child, Neelam's father came around too.

Lisa and Neelam are nervous about what a Trump presidency will mean for them and their daughter. Still, they don't plan on giving up their rights anytime soon.

"I think that certainly there has been progress made. Queer clubs used to be raided by the police, and as a community, we've come so far and we're still demanding more," Neelam explains.

4. Ben and Constance Hawkes.

Ben, 30, and Constance Hawkes, 29. Photo courtesy of Ben Hawkes

Growing up as millennials, Ben and Constance Hawkes noticed a change in how mixed-race couples were treated.

"I've been pleasantly surprised with how supportive my friends and family have been," Ben says, acknowledging that being white, he can't speak for his wife's experience.

For Constance, she's had to contend with annoying comments about how "well-spoken" she is or people's ideas that racism no longer exists.

Despite the deep hostility felt through the election cycle, Ben and Constance are hopeful.

"We've just seen so much more representation of mixed-race couples in TV shows, in the media," Constance explains.

The last law banning interracial marriage in the United States was officially repealed in Alabama in 2000. Yet today, race relations in the U.S. are at a boiling point.

We've come a long way since 1967, but these couples and their experiences shed light on ways we can create a more tolerant world.

A 'Simpsons' animator's real-life struggle inspired a cartoon for kids with disabilities.

As long as animator Chance Raspberry can remember, he's held a pencil in his hand.

When he was 11, Raspberry broke the family VCR by skipping it backward and forward, pausing it to copy the images from Disney's "Sleepy Hollow" into an old notebook. Other days, he sat hunched over the desk in his room, mimicking the jet-black pen strokes that made Spiderman come to life.

For Raspberry, drawing pictures was a window to the rest of the world.

It was the '80s, and at the time, he was coping with Tourette's syndrome, a disorder health professionals and people close to Raspberry knew little about. It meant he often engaged in behaviors that no one could predict or control.

The tics, which started as unusual bouts of excess energy, often caused Raspberry to do dangerous things — like venture into the street in the middle of a preschool class.

Image courtesy of Chance Raspberry.

Once, Raspberry alarmed his preschool staff by perching on top of a jungle gym, pretending to shoot classmates with an imaginary bow and arrow. When they told him to stop, he literally couldn't.

As a result, Raspberry was often sent home, his parents pleading with school administrators who didn't understand him and his behavior. When he was 8, the tics started to manifest in sudden, violent outbursts.

"The worst tics were when I would repeatedly slap myself across the face. I would have to hit myself in alternating patterns of five and 10. On top of that, I had this tic where I needed to rub my right cheek against my right shoulder, and eventually I got a rash," Raspberry explains.

When he felt alone, Raspberry found solace in the zany world of cartoons, where high energy was normal.

Image courtesy of Chance Raspberry.

He began to draw. But being an artist — and one with a disability — didn't make everything easier for Raspberry. Classmates would often try to startle him just to see what he would do. Sometimes, they would even ruin his drawings.

"I remember I used to make this sound, like ‘weeee,’ obsessively. One time I left my desk to find that this drawing I was working on for hours was gone. I came back, and the drawing had this ‘weee’ written all across the top. It was destroyed, and I was really mad, because it had taken me so long,” Raspberry recalls.

He channeled all of his energy into his drawings, even ignoring the occasional teacher who would rip the pencil sketches from his hands in class and crumple them into the trash. Despite it all, his drawings got better and better.

16 years, countless hours, and thousands of cartoon sketches later, Raspberry ended up with a career drawing the same unruly boy who inspired him as a kid: Bart Simpson.

Image courtesy of Chance Raspberry.

Raspberry says he always loved Bart "because he's this outsider, rebel spirit — but he's never been ashamed. He doesn't regret being different."

"I think as a kid who had these feelings of being an outsider and being different, I loved watching Bart getting into trouble and seeing these stories told through the eyes of someone my age," he says.

After winning a group Emmy for his work on the Simpsons at 28, Raspberry decided he wanted to do more for other kids with neurological differences. He wanted to help those kids — and people around them — understand why thinking differently needs to be not only accepted, but celebrated.

Drawing from his own childhood experiences, Raspberry found the inspiration for the new animated show he's developing called "Little Billy."

Little Billy Harper. GIF courtesy of Chance Raspberry.

Like Raspberry, Billy is a young boy with a neuro-cognitive disability — only Billy's is a fictional one called "ultra-hyper-sensitivity." People around Billy don't often understand him, and some people even find him dangerous.

“I am basing this on my actual life, and I had all of these issues with my teachers and not getting along or following the order of things," he says. The show is largely based on Raspberry's life around age 4, when his abundance of energy made him realize he was different from other kids.

In 2014, Raspberry raised $30,000 on Kickstarter to help bring "Little Billy" to life. He's currently finishing the pilot and continues to work full time as a character layout artist on "The Simpsons."

Image courtesy of Chance Raspberry.

Raspberry channeled his abundance of energy into creating the completely hand-drawn series — the trailer alone required a whopping 1,372 drawings.

The goal of the series is to tap into the nostalgia of childhood in an entertaining, healing way while also creating visibility around what it's like to grow up with special needs.

"The show will explore in full in an honest way how a family that is dealing with this goes through it, how they’re affected," Raspberry says.

"Just because we're different, it doesn't mean we're broken."

Watch the trailer for "Little Billy" below:

In 1962, a chance encounter with Martin Luther King Jr. would transform the life of a young medical student named Larry Brilliant.

Larry Brilliant with an early Apple II computer. All images courtesy of HarperCollins.

Dr. Brilliant would go on to help eradicate smallpox, direct Google.org, help save 4 million people from blindness, and become one of the foremost experts in global pandemics.

But at 19 years old, Brilliant was holed up in his dorm room, subsisting on stale peanut candy and comic books, grief-stricken at the thought of losing his father to cancer.

One rainy Michigan day, Brilliant pulled himself out of his dorm and stumbled into an auditorium to see a black preacher from Atlanta, Georgia, speak of hope, truth, and justice.

Only 60 students stood in a cavernous room meant for 3,000. The school administrators were embarrassed by the low turnout, but Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t. Chuckling warmly, he told the assembly, “Why don’t y’all come up here. That way, there’s more of me to go around.”

Martin Luther King Jr. at the University of Michigan, 1962.

Brilliant joined the others at King's feet and sat transfixed as a one-hour lecture turned into six.

“[King] famously talked about the arc of the moral universe that would bend towards justice, but it wouldn’t bend on its own. You have to jump up, drag it, twist it, pull it down towards justice. You have to influence that arc,” Brilliant said.

The experience changed Brilliant. He knew he couldn’t just lie around feeling unmotivated.

Brilliant started a journey of self-discovery and transformation that would help save the lives of millions in the process.

Inspired by King, Brilliant became an activist. He marched in civil rights rallies. In 1970, he delivered a Native American baby on Alcatraz Island during a standoff with the United States government. He even saved the life of a former Green Beret who attacked him on the island with a knife.

Larry Brilliant at Alcatraz Island.

Ensuing fame led to a call from Warner Brothers, and soon, Brilliant was starring in a "Woodstock on wheels" film called "Medicine Ball Caravan," playing a doctor alongside musical luminaries like Alice Cooper and B.B. King. Then, he ended up taking a caravan across the Khyber Pass with his wife, Girija, and his best friend, a hippie named Wavy Gravy.

Brilliant's adventures can seem too wild to be true. But, through it all, he was on the way to finding his destiny.

In 1972, Brilliant ended up in the Himalayas at the feet of a holy man. The guru, named Neem Karoli Baba, clasped Brilliant's hand and gave him the realization of a deep, profound, and universal love for everyone in the world.

Brilliant with his guru, Neem Karoli Baba.

“These machines that we live in, these bodies, they don’t come with an operating manual, and I did not know that mine was capable. I didn’t know where the on switch was that loved everybody. But he turned it on,” Brilliant said of their meeting.

The guru — who referred to Brilliant as "Dr. America" — told him that his destiny would be to work to cure one of the worst pandemics of all time: smallpox.

Smallpox killed over 300 million people in the 20th century, and it was wreaking havoc on families in India.

Following the instructions of his guru, the now 27-year-old Brilliant took the 17-hour train ride to the World Health Organization headquarters in New Delhi. But success didn't happen overnight for the young doctor.

“I was kicked out in 30 seconds," Brilliant said. "I walked in with a dress on, and a beard down to my knees, and it was a gown. But you know, they thought it looked like a dress. It was an ashram robe. And they kicked me out." 13 attempts later, he finally got the lowest paid job there.

In just a few years, Brilliant went on to lead a WHO team that would play a key role in eradicating smallpox.

Smallpox eradication team from Chota Nagpur.

Brilliant recalled that there were staff from 170 different countries in the WHO smallpox eradication program — all fighting the disease together despite deep division among many of their countries.

"In the middle of the Cold War, Russians and Americans worked together to eradicate smallpox, and the people sitting around the table were from every race, every religion, every language you could think of," Brilliant said.

The team was greater than the sum of their parts, and in 1975, they won. Brilliant saw the last case of killer smallpox with his own eyes: a girl named Rahima Banu. After contracting the disease at 2 years old, she was cured.

Rahima Banu, the last known smallpox patient.

Brilliant went on to mobilize friends — including Steve Jobs, whom he had met in his Guru's ashram in India — to do even more good.

He contacted former members from WHO and created Seva, an organization that gave sight to 4 million blind people.

He became executive director of Google.org and won the TED Prize. He laid out his wish for an early warning system to stop pandemics and helped create Google Flu Trends.

He chaired the Skoll Global Threats Fund, becoming one of humanity's greatest hopes in the fight against global pandemics.

Ultimately, Brilliant is one of the biggest heroes in global health today.

Larry Brilliant gives polio vaccine drops in Chitrakoot, Uttar Pradesh, India.

He's truly lived a "brilliant" life. Just like many of us, he’s struggled with depression and fear, and he's wondered what his purpose was — but he's always known to listen.

"I used to tell my students when I was a professor, always expect the imponderabilia. That’s a made-up word," Brilliant said. "It’s a little creature that comes upon you when you least expect it and whispers in your ear something you haven’t thought of. Always expect that little unexpected twist. Always be willing to listen."

Brilliant’s story teaches us that incredible human accomplishments can only be achieved through faith in ourselves and joining together with a common goal in mind. It takes all of us to bend the arc of the moral universe toward justice.

You might know Danai Gurira from "The Walking Dead."

She plays the fierce, zombie-slaying Michonne on TV, but this Zimbabwean-American actress is fighting to rid the world of an epidemic in real life.

Image via Gene Page/AMC.

Gurira grew up in southern Africa in the 1980s and '90s and witnessed the horrors brought about by the rise of HIV/AIDS in local communities.

She's since decided to use her platform to help.

Image via iStock.

Gurira is an advocate for Nyumbani Village in Kenya — the first village in Africa founded for children and elders living with HIV/AIDS.

When the pandemic began to rise in Africa, a startling number of children born with HIV were abandoned. Many more who lost their parents to AIDS were turned away from orphanages. Families were fractured as middled-aged people died, leaving behind the very young and elderly.

The founder of Nyumbani, Father Angelo D'Agostino, first opened an orphanage on a shoestring budget that only supported two children. After he died, his organization realized his greatest dream: a holistic, beautiful village for orphans and grandparents living with HIV/AIDS.

Located on more than 1,000 acres of land, Nyumbani Village is a vibrant, sustainable community complete with free schooling, health care, and psychosocial support.

It's a thriving hub for innovative green technology and building methods where residents grow and harvest their own food. Instead of housing children in traditional orphanages, Nyumbani prefers to create loving families by pairing kids with grandparents who also have AIDS.

Photo via Ben Curtis/CBS News/AP.

Nyumbani — which means "home" in Swahili — has since given thousands of children and elders affected by AIDS a place to live and thrive. It’s also become a model for other African villages who are affected.

Currently 69% of the 34 million AIDS-affected people worldwide live in sub-Saharan Africa. That's why we need to support organizations like Nyumbani.

Gurira believes that looking out for others is central to the spirit of African culture.

"I love what Nyumbani's doing because it brings back the integrity of that really essential component of African life, which is, we take care of each other," Gurira said.

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