The Health Curve
The Health Curve simplifies complex health topics, introduces impactful ideas shaping the future of human health, and raises awareness of critical health issues affecting underserved communities. By making these topics more accessible to the public, it aims to empower individuals and communities on their health journeys with credible information and practical tools.
On the podcast, I speak with a wide range of voices — from public health scientists, clinicians, and entrepreneurs to advocates, artists, and coaches — exploring health from multiple angles. Together, we unpack the science, challenge assumptions, and tackle the growing gaps left by misinformation and failing healthcare systems.
The Health Curve Podcast is hosted by Dr. Jason Arora — Oxford- and Harvard-trained physician, public health scientist, yoga and mindfulness instructor, and award-winning health innovator - Forbes 30u30, Fulbright Scholar, Harvard Public Health Innovator Award-Winner, and Aspen Health Fellow.
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Disclaimer: This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always consult your doctor or a qualified healthcare provider regarding any medical concerns.
The Health Curve
Why Compassion Is Vital for Human Health - with Lonnie Ali and DeVone Holt, The Muhammad Ali Center
Compassion is more than kindness—it’s the ability to notice suffering in others and take action to relieve it. Far from being abstract or vague, compassion has measurable effects on our biology, our health, and the well-being of entire communities. Research shows it lowers stress, improves immune function, strengthens social bonds, and even helps societies thrive. However, it is rarely talked about in the context of human and societal health.
In this episode of The Health Curve Podcast, host Dr. Jason Arora is joined by Lonnie Ali, Co-Founder of the Muhammad Ali Center and wife of the legendary Muhammad Ali, and DeVone Holt, the Center’s President & CEO. Together, they explore why compassion is a vital ingredient for human health and societal resilience.
At the heart of the conversation is the Muhammad Ali Index - the first tool designed to measure compassion across U.S. communities - and its inaugural application, the 2025 Compassion Report. Lonnie and Devone share how this data-driven approach carries forward Muhammad Ali’s legacy, showing that compassion can be tracked, strengthened, and scaled to drive positive change.
This episode is a reminder that compassion is not just a virtue—it’s a measurable force for human flourishing.
Links:
The Muhammad Ali Center - https://alicenter.org/
The Muhammad Ali Index - https://aliindex.org/
Welcome to the HealthCurve podcast. I'm your host, jason Arora. Today, we're exploring why compassion isn't just a moral ideal. It's a vital and measurable force for human health and societal well-being. To help us unpack this, I'm honored to be joined by Lonnie Ali, co-founder of the Muhammad Ali Center and wife of the legendary Muhammad Ali, and Yvonne Holt, president and CEO of the Muhammad Ali Center. Let of the legendary Muhammad Ali and Devon Holt, president and CEO of the Muhammad Ali Center. Let's get into it. It's a real pleasure to have you both here. Thank you so much for joining me, hi.
Speaker 2:Jason, thank you for having us. I'm Lani Ali. I was Muhammad's wife for 30 years, but I'd known him since I was six years old, and the Muhammad Ali Center, which is located in Louisville, kentucky, is a testament to his legacy, is the repository of his physical legacy, as well as his philosophical legacy and the gifts that he left us, and it is the center's mission to activate and mobilize that legacy, to inspire a generation, another generation of changemakers, and to create social justice, equal justice for all people, and inspire them to be as great as they can be.
Speaker 3:Jason thanks for having us Devon Holt, the CEO of the Muhammad Ali Center, and it's one of the greatest professional honors of mine to carry the legacy of Muhammad. We in many instances know him as a boxer, but he was so much more than that, and so this work that I get to do in helping to build and maintain and expand on his legacy is helping the world understand how a man who built a career knocking people out built a beautiful life by picking people up, and so that's the work that I get to do every day. It's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 1:Amazing. So everyone in the world has heard of Mohammed Ali. He remains a great hero of mine and countless others around the world for his athleticism and his activism.
Speaker 2:Can you tell me a bit more about why you founded the Center and what the goals of the Center are that we felt were an inspiration to so many, and the places that we would travel, where you would see children where that spark of hope had gone out of their eyes.
Speaker 2:You know they had lost hope for the future and we felt this was some way to give back, to continue that legacy, because when Muhammad would come, everybody would light up right, everybody would be happy and, you know, joining around him adults as well as children, and he was that spark that gave him that hope.
Speaker 2:So we felt that that would be something to leave for generations to come, to leave that legacy.
Speaker 2:And it was so thick and rich and powerful it was really hard to try to tease out what we wanted to put in it. So it took a while to get it done, but we wanted to do it before he passed away, while he was still well and living and people could come there to see him, where he could actually put his physical handprint on that space and instruct us as how he wanted this done, and he was able to do that. So not only does it have a museum component to it it's 96,000 square feet, but it is shaped along his values that directed him in life and from those values, those six core values, which are dedication, conviction, respect, spirituality, giving and courage. Conviction, respect, spirituality, giving and courage. We have developed programming that emanates from the Center for Youth as well as adults and recently, because of things that have happened and COVID and the toxic polarization that has gone on, we have decided that to activate what was core to his legacy compassion.
Speaker 1:Okay, and we are here today to talk about compassion and its impact on the health of individuals and communities, so this is a great segue for this the official definition of compassion the feeling or emotion when a person is moved by the suffering or distress of another and by the desire to relieve it. You've shared before, lonnie, that Muhammad Ali believed compassion was the strongest force we have in the fight for justice. Can you help us understand what compassion meant to him personally and why he believed in it so much?
Speaker 2:Well, like I said, I've known Muhammad since I was six and he was 22. It was right before his fight with Sonny Liston, the first fight. Oh, wow, Okay. So that takes us back some right, Even though I'm only how old am I Never mind.
Speaker 2:But anyway, this man was like that when I met him when I was six years old. I mean, it just emanated from him. That's who he was to his core then and I think he was born like that. So for him compassion was something like breathing. It was something he did every day, without thought, just natural for him, and it energized him. He loved it when he would walk up on somebody and they'd want his autograph or they'd want this or they'd want to talk to him and he'd had an opportunity to connect with them, to see that light in their eyes, to see them light up, you know, and it just mesmerized him. And then he also took opportunities to spontaneously just walk into places, to surprise and make people because he knew he could make people happy into children's hospitals, into retirement homes, into churches he didn't care Wherever there was a congregation of people he was going to go.
Speaker 2:We walked into a juvenile detention center in Los Angeles and I remember we were walking down the street to go there, we had to park a little bit distance and there was no scheduled visit, right, this is Muhammad getting up to side and I'm going down to the juvenile detention center to see those kids.
Speaker 2:And we passed a guy who was coming toward us, who looked down on his luck he probably was living on the streets or close to it and we got about five or ten feet past him and Muhammad stopped, turned around and started running back toward the man and I thought where is he going toward the man? And I thought where is he going? So he went back and he touched this guy on the shoulder and the guy turned around and realized who it was, because he had had his head down when he passed us. Of course he lit up, his face lit up and Muhammad dug in his pocket, took all the money he had in his pocket and put it into this guy's hands. And I know I can. I'll never forget him walking back with this Muhammad, with this smile on his face about what he had just done. And when he got up to me I said Muhammad, why did you do that? That man didn't ask you for anything, he said, I know, but he looked like he needed it.
Speaker 1:Now we get into what's happening behind this, right in the human body. Compassion has powerful effects on health. Yes, there are studies on its numerous effects in the brain and the body and they've shown that compassion will reduce stress. It will reduce inflammation, lower blood pressure, improve cardiovascular health, boost immune function, improve mental health, improve social bonds. There's a science behind this simple concept that we just defined, and we know it makes us feel good when we do it.
Speaker 1:So there's a scientific basis for this. We've evolved as a species to want to do this. It's good for us and it's good for the people around us, right? It's almost a survival mechanism and it's great for thriving. Why aren't people more aware of this, Devon?
Speaker 3:You know, I think part of what we've started to see nationally, globally, is isolation in ways that have us more focused on the person we see in the mirror than the person that we see across the parking lot, and part of that now is work that we're working to unwind, I think, so much polarization that's continued to rise around the world, toxic rhetoric, as Lonnie said, has continued to find its way into our environments and those things have unfortunately seemed to pit us against one another. And then you add the isolation on top of that that many people begin to experience and you remove yourself from the opportunities to show compassion. And part of what we recognize in some of the work that we've done is that compassion exists on a number of different levels, but it starts with self-compassion, and self-compassion is something that can be built or it's something that can be destroyed, based on how you respond to life's challenges. In many cases, we find people are burnt out, exhausted. That sounds familiar.
Speaker 1:Frustrated.
Speaker 3:But it's in those scenarios where we find ourselves less compassionate, showing less compassion to ourselves and, as a result, showing much less compassion to the people around us. And so, to foster compassion, we encourage people to start with self-compassion. Take care of yourself. Get you eight hours of rest if you can. I know, I tried last night. It didn't happen. You eight hours of rest, if you can, I know I tried last night eight hours of rest, you know.
Speaker 3:Unwind every once in a while, go for a walk, experience nature, unplug from the cell phone and the internet. Those are things that tend to build up self-compassion and give us the ability to have compassion for others. And so to your definition. I think it's important that we recognize compassion and empathy are relatives, but empathy is the feeling that you build for someone else's suffering. Compassion is the action that you take in response to that feeling, and so we're trying to get people to move beyond the empathy that you might be able to feel when you look at something on your social media feed and take action in a compassionate way that has you getting up out of your seat and beginning to do something in response to that feeling.
Speaker 1:Right, and we've talked about the science of this, we've talked about how it makes people feel. But a lot of people will probably still feel that this is quite woolly and oh, it's a nice thing to do or something like that. But you guys did something amazing with the Muhammad Ali Index and published the first application of it in the Compassion Report. So I want to talk about that next. Can you tell us about the Muhammad Ali Index and how it works, how you came up with it?
Speaker 2:Well, we came up with it as a, I guess we could say. It grew out of the toxic polarization and the way we were responding to one another after COVID. I mean, covid sort of stuck, put everybody into their corners, right, and people didn't find community with each other. They found it online.
Speaker 1:But this happened in families as well. Right Exactly, Families were pitted against each other internally.
Speaker 2:You know how algorithms work. You know they put you with people who think just like you. And it got to a point where people if you didn't think like me, I don't like you, I don't want to be around you. And then that's when the hateful rhetoric comes out. Well, people who support the center have been long associated with the center.
Speaker 2:Compassion, like I said, was sort of at the core of Muhammad's legacy, but it's something we may have taken for granted. We thought everybody knows this Giving's one of the core principles. That's part of compassion, so we didn't really activate it. Well, it came to a point where we realized this is really who this man was. He was the torchbearer of compassion. He lived it every day and we need to activate that part of his legacy. And that's what we did. We knew people would respond to us in this oh, that's such a touchy feeling thing. You know you can't measure that. How do we know? Well, we engaged the very astute and professional team of Sparks and Honey, who is a cultural intelligence agency, to do this research for us, and it was based on their proprietary AI technology and programming, or however they do it, and behavioral research as well, because there were 5,483, I think, respondents in 12 pilot cities that were filled out surveys and that together is how we got this data that has been analyzed and utilized in this report that has become the index.
Speaker 2:What the index does? It tracks and it predicts compassion across America through these 12 diverse cities, pilot cities. But it is only a snapshot in time. It was done from August of 24 through October of 24. Just last year that's last year right before the election. So it'd be very interesting and we plan to do it annually and expand it to include eight additional cities and rural areas, because rural areas wasn't in this one to see how that's changed in the 12 cities that were there initially and where it measures on the other eight. But you have to sort of know where you are, to know where you're going, and so this is not only an ability to track and predict. It also offers an opportunity for cities and governments and institutions and organizations to institute policy and action to create that compassion. This is a diagnosis Right. There are recommendations that we have given.
Speaker 1:And doing this kind of real-world research is challenging. It's challenging even for things that have been well-defined for a very long time. So this is a first-of-its-kind, groundbreaking approach to measuring compassion. Mohammed would like that you know being the first.
Speaker 1:Yeah no, of course, absolutely, but I don't come from the US. I'm from the UK, ancestrally from India. This is a global thing and this can be reflected in the way things can be improved globally. Let's talk a little bit more about the findings. We could talk a lot about the methodology and all that, but I would encourage everyone to read the report. We'll include a link in the show notes afterwards. What were some of the key things that stuck out and what was surprising when you did this across these 12 cities, over 5,000 people?
Speaker 3:Well, we did this research surveyed people, ai technology, scrubbed online social media platforms to understand how people were interacting in a compassionate way, or lack thereof, in those spaces and ultimately, we took all of this research data and created what we call net compassion scores for these 12 pilot cities. And these cities ranked in this net compassion score, which topped out at a positive 100 and bottoms out at a negative 100. Well, the city that ranked the highest in that 12 pilot city list was Seattle, at a positive 16.
Speaker 1:Even with the weather there. Even with the weather? No, I absolutely love Seattle.
Speaker 3:Positive 16. Louisville, kentucky, came in second at a positive 15. And then Las Vegas bottomed out at a negative 13. And I think part of what that told us in a quick snapshot of that data is two things One, that we've got a lot of work to do to improve how we show compassion in America how we show compassion in America. The other thing that we saw with Las Vegas bottoming out on the list at a negative 13 is that things could get a lot worse, and so it gave us a snapshot and an understanding of where we are in real time, but then added in recommendations on work that we know will help move communities to more compassionate places, and so the idea wasn't just to share the data, but to also offer recommendations and then ultimately move into an activation strategy where we begin to bring this work to life in places around the country.
Speaker 2:I was going to say. Some of the things that we found very interesting in this report was that 61% of Americans over the past four years have felt that decline in compassion. They feel that they indicated that on these surveys. However, there's been a 4,000% increase in the search for compassion content online.
Speaker 1:So people want it, they want it.
Speaker 2:Yes, they want this. And, to be honest with you, even though we feel this toxic rhetoric and this polarization that's going on, compassionate acts have really not dropped off per se, in fact, because the behavioral part of this report, this research, is sort of nuanced in the fact that it showed that people are still doing philanthropy, people are still responding to people in need, especially when it's, you know, catastrophe-related, like hurricanes, flooding. That kind of people still come to people's aid and even it's even gone up a little bit. So compassion is still there, but, as Devon said, it's a muscle that has to be flexed every day and we can build that muscle so that it spills over into not only our lives but the lives of our families, our friends, our communities, our nation.
Speaker 1:We'll get back to this conversation in just a moment, but if you're finding this episode helpful, here's a quick ask Take a second to follow or subscribe to the Health Curve podcast wherever you're listening, and if someone else in your life would benefit from this episode or any of the others you've heard, please send it that way. All right, let's get back to it. Let's talk a bit more about the results, because there were some more surprising stats in there, right? So we had nearly two thirds of Americans, as you said, say they feel a decline in their compassion in the last four years. People are searching for it more online, massively, so a lot more what?
Speaker 2:are some of the other results that you saw. Well, that one in three Americans think that compassion is part of the American dream. I mean, so that tells you that this experiment that we call America compassion is part of that. A third of Americans feel that that is an important component of compassion. But it was also surprising that there's been a 14% decline in our attitudes of compassion toward people outside of the United States over the last three years. So we've become less compassionate, which is interesting because it sort of coincides with climate change and people seeking refuge in other places because they have to, or else
Speaker 2:they're going to die right, unless there's some innovative way technology that we can address some of the issues that they're facing where they live. I don't think people want to leave home, but they have to leave home for their well-being. And then I think that it gives us an opportunity to sort of examine this research, to examine compassion, as Devon said, with ourselves, but also how we project and bring that compassion to communities. Because those of us that scored high which was and I don't even want to call it high, because it really wasn't Seattle and Louisville it's because we care about community health, the mental health of our citizens. We care about the homeless. We care about food insecurity for those people. We care about green spaces where people can continue to connect and be active and engage, because that's really what it's about. It's about that humanity. We found out from COVID. We are social animals. We need each other, as much as we may not like it.
Speaker 3:And try to deny it.
Speaker 2:We need each other. To survive, to be healthy, to be happy, we need each other.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the Zoom card games didn't really cut it during.
Speaker 2:COVID and the lockdowns. We tried.
Speaker 1:There are a couple of things in the report that stood out as well that I just want to touch on before we get to you know. How do we translate the data into action? Like, what do we do with this amazing data? So it was also found that there was a decrease in empathy towards marginalized groups in general which is worrying right.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, marginalized groups, and I think the biggest group that suffered that was people who had criminal records or had been incarcerated, but also for people who were wealthy. That's sort of the dichotomy of it all is that you got this people over here who had criminal records. You have people here who had made a lot of money. People don't really have a lot of empathy for them.
Speaker 1:They're the other for most people.
Speaker 2:They are the other, they're not one of us. And immigrants, of course, immigrants have suffered, as you said, with that, because they are the other as well, people who do not think like us. In fact, they also found I forgot the percent, it might've been 43% of people will only date people who politically think like they do. Now, that is really interesting, isn't it.
Speaker 1:It is. That was never one of my criteria. All my wife's there we go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I don't know where that, but I can see where it happened. But it's just sort of odd that it would create that kind of situation where if you vote this way, I don't want to date you, or you think like this that I don't want to date you.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think people's political views as a dimension of who they are may have become more of a thing in the social media age, where people just can easily go online and say whatever they want.
Speaker 2:Well, they've allowed. We have allowed our political leanings and thinkings to define who we are. I mean, really, you walk up to somebody I think we're all guilty of this People you may see in the airport anywhere and think I don't know about them I wonder how they voted. Or people with tattoos and beards.
Speaker 1:I bet they voted for X or whatever.
Speaker 2:Right, exactly. But I'm going to tell you something. I was on a plane once, not long ago, a few months ago, going to Atlanta from Phoenix, and there was a woman on the plane that was sitting. Well, she was there first. I was sitting next to her, my seat was assigned there in these pods, and she was the nicest person First, as soon as I sat down, introduced herself to me, told me just a wonderful down home.
Speaker 2:She was from South Carolina. Just lovely, lovely, lovely woman, somebody I could be friends with. She said I'm a capitalist and I believe in capitalism because she was a hairdresser. She was a hairdresser but her husband must have been wealthy. She took out a picture of her daughter who must have been adopted because she was Hispanic. Beautiful, but she was Hispanic. So I knew that this child had to have been adopted her only child and I knew she didn't vote like me, but she was the nicest person and that taught me a lesson, even though I knew it. It taught me do not put labels on people. It doesn't matter how somebody votes. That does not define who they are as individuals. That does not mean you cannot find common ground. You can't be nice to somebody or have fun with them diagnosis on compassion in America.
Speaker 1:Now we're going to see what we can do about it and we will measure it again. What has driven these trends in the last few years, in your view or based on what you found from your research? I think?
Speaker 2:part of it is with COVID. I think it's social media and we spend too much time on, you know, with our faces in a device instead of looking at each other and having constructive discourse. We've become intolerant, and I also think it's the rhetoric from the top and it's the media. You know, I think the media has driven a lot of this, this toxic discourse, because they've engaged in it, and when you start presenting people with ideas that are mainly only to serve them, you know, and they feel like they're the marginalized group and all of a sudden they're the group that's becoming power.
Speaker 2:So, people latch on to that.
Speaker 1:You found from your study that cities with a higher net compassion score perform better in fostering mental health, housing, community programs, active participation in the community, stronger communication, community development, all these things. And that takes us to what do we do with this data to translate that into progress in more places, like, how do we get at improving not just individual health but community health through compassion?
Speaker 3:Well, that's the next step in the process, so it wasn't just enough for us to share the data.
Speaker 3:It was now time for us to figure out how do we take this and put it into action, and so we have 12 pilot cities, and in those 12 pilot cities we have what we call impact partners, and we're working through a process right now of figuring out how we bring compassion agendas to life in those respective places. Louisville, kentucky, is where the Muhammad Ali Center is located in those respective places. Louisville, kentucky, is where the Muhammad Ali Center is located, and so we are meeting regularly now with local organizations, community activists or businesses to really begin to think about what a local agenda will look like in Louisville and how we build that out based on the knowledge that we have here. So part of what that means, though, is that the pathway to compassion in each of these 12 cities is likely to look and feel different, based on the needs of those particular communities. So, for instance, I will tell you, lonnie and I had an opportunity to spend some time with Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, and she was giving me a call.
Speaker 1:I live in LA.
Speaker 3:Next time. But when we met with her she's intrigued by this work and says that their embrace of it in Los Angeles she would want it to be tied to how they are addressing the homeless population in Los Angeles. That's where she feels like compassion probably needs to be flexed the most in that space, and so that will look different from community to community. But the idea for us is not to write a prescription for these communities, as much as it is to suggest that these are what we recognize as solutions to those problems and ask those communities to identify how they piece a puzzle together for themselves that solve a problem in their respective communities. The work is in piecing together that puzzle.
Speaker 1:This is a framework, though, that you've developed right, so anyone can apply it to their local community, and this has global relevance, right. Because, human beings are human beings everywhere.
Speaker 3:And to that point I will tell you. The phone has started to ring and we're having conversations with some entities beyond the United States, again suggesting that there are no borders for compassion. Compassion is something that every society needs in order to function at its highest level.
Speaker 2:And, believe it or not, one of the first calls we got from out of this country was from Ukraine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting times we live in, but it's things like this that help us make sense of the craziness of the world and what we can do about it. So, if we dig a little bit deeper on going from the data to action, what are some of the other examples that you saw from your study that you thought, okay, we're going to now have this conversation around this data point in this particular city and this is what we can help this particular locality work on?
Speaker 3:next, so I can tell you real.
Speaker 3:Specifically in Louisville, kentucky, the conversation is how do we get to know our neighbor better? Because you are more likely to exercise compassion when you know your neighbor right. It's not so easy to walk by your neighbor if you see them struggling, if you know your neighbor. And so the idea is to figure out how we create spaces, events and activities that bring people together in ways that allow them to truly begin to know one another. And so that doesn't sound like rocket science, but it is a real solution to the problem. And so those are conversations, discussions that we're having now. Believe it or not, we're already getting interest from some philanthropists who love this idea of us figuring out how we break down the borders and bring people together to have conversations and get to know one another. Those are real solutions, and you know they don't necessarily have to be these over-the-top approaches to doing this work, as much as they are really intentional efforts to bring people together and let go of those boundaries that divide us, and let go of those boundaries that divide us.
Speaker 2:But I will tell you, aspirationally, the goal is to get to where Muhammad was. Muhammad didn't have to know you to show you compassion. He felt it and he displayed it and gave it to you freely, regardless of who you were, where you were or what position you occupied in life. He didn't care. You were a human being, a creation of God, and that's all he cared about. And people that's why I said people that's why people loved him so much, because he was so authentic in that. And that's where we're trying to get to aspirationally where people this 14% of you know decline in compassion toward people who live in other places.
Speaker 2:That would never happen with him, it would have gone up 14% or more. You know, I always say it's hard to be like Muhammad. Used to be hard to be like Mike. No, but it's hard to be like Muhammad. And I mean because it's difficult but it's doable, because Muhammad said impossible is nothing. We can do this If we want to survive. We only have one planet and that planet's getting smaller and smaller. We are so interconnected in ways we don't even understand. It's important that we feel that compassion and, first, that empathy toward people who do not look like us, live near us, worship different, think different.
Speaker 1:Where would Muhammad want this initiative to go next?
Speaker 2:Physically.
Speaker 1:Just in general, You've done this groundbreaking study. What's next? What would he say? Okay, this is what you should do next.
Speaker 2:He wouldn't, Because Muhammad never asked anybody to follow him. He just set the example he did every day. He did what he thought God wanted him to do. He never told you to follow him, unless you were his wife or his children. We didn't escape that.
Speaker 2:But, he never asked anybody to follow him. He just did what he thought he was supposed to do. And all of this that's going on would not faze him in one iota. He would just keep doing what he thought he was supposed to do. And all of this that's going on would not phase him in one iota. He would just keep doing what he was doing.
Speaker 1:And that's what we have control over, right, that's what we can only control what we do.
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:Right In terms of what you will do next after this study. Again, you've got this amazing data. Now You're working with different localities and organizations to try and translate that now into real-world action. Can you do all of this? What's?
Speaker 3:next for the center, the initiative? What's the next study going to be? The quick response to that answer is can we do all of this? The answer is no. It takes partnership to do this work. The Muhammad Ali Center is a beacon.
Speaker 3:We want to present ourselves as a beacon and a driving force to help make this work happen, but the reality is, if we're really going to make the impact that we believe we can, it's going to require partnerships. It's going to require donors, it's going to require supporters, it's going to require broadcasting the message, like we are here today. All of those things play a part in helping us move the needle forward, and so for us now, the idea is to build on what we've created. We started with 12 pilot cities. We're having conversations now about identifying eight additional cities to add to that list so that now we go back into 2025 for the 2026 report with a much grander city-based pool of data from. So that's a significant portion of what happens next.
Speaker 3:But even beyond that, we're still having the conversation about how we bring this work to life in these respective places, and so we're having conversations with corporate partners who are thinking through, talking through, working through how we align ourselves to do this work on grand scales. There are foundations and philanthropists that are in conversation with us about how we support this work financially, because it does require resources in order for it to be sustained over time. And then, looking beyond the borders of America, what does that look like? To take this work globally? How do we do that and what does that mean for this work moving forward? Because I do believe the world needs more of Muhammad, so we want to give them just that.
Speaker 2:And you know from your background, jason, that what you give energy to amplifies, it grows so eventually. I don't know if Devon wants to do this, but this is what Lonnie wants to do. You know how they have in US World News and Reports they have the 100 best or the best colleges to attend. I want this compassion index, that result, to be published in publications such as that, not just US News and World Report, but in lots, so people can see where they live, because that's the kind of magazines and publications that policymakers read. It means something to them. Nobody wants to be sitting at a bottom with the lowest score.
Speaker 2:So it's going to be a little bit competitive and it'll get the attention of the people we need to get the attention of, because they're going to want their cities to be more compassionate, to be welcoming to others, because you can't keep things quiet. If you want to make impact, you got to amplify it. So communicate it, because that's one of the things that the report found is that, even though some cities have policies and programming in place to combat isolation and loneliness and build compassion, nobody knows about them.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Because they're not amplified, they're not communicated. Well, well, I'm going to make sure this is.
Speaker 1:Well, people talk about the World Happiness Index. Quite a lot Happy city should be spoken about in the same way right. So we'll do our best to amplify the message. Thank, you. In closing, what simple advice would you give to listeners to practice more compassion in their daily life? You know we talked about people have control over themselves. As a starting point, what's the key takeaway you could give everyone?
Speaker 2:sign, that pledge. It sort of activates in your mind I've got to do something and to flex that compassion muscle intentionally every day in some way. I don't care if you start out small, I don't care if it's one act, just keep doing it every day.
Speaker 3:And I agree with Lonnie I think we have to be intentional Again, moving beyond empathy. I think a lot of us can speak of empathy. It's a feeling we have. You watch television and you feel something. You listen to music and you feel something. But we want people to take the next step, and it doesn't have to be grandiose. That's the thing saving the city you live in, saving your street. It could be something as simple as shoveling the snow in your neighbor's driveway, blowing the leaves and raking the leaves. For the person who has difficulty getting out doing that for themselves, it doesn't have to be difficult. These can be very simple acts, but I need us to be thoughtful and intentional about taking those steps, starting with ourselves, spending time to make sure that we have the energy and the will to do compassion work. It starts by making sure that the person you see in the mirror is somebody you like and is given the time and the attention they need in order to respond in compassionate ways.
Speaker 1:Devon and Lonnie. Thank you so much for joining me, this has been wonderful. Congratulations on your great work and we need to all support it, and I think we know where we need to go next.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for helping us amplify this message.
Speaker 1:Thank, you, Jason. Thank you so much.