The Hero's Journey

Welcome to the Hero’s Journey, a newsletter from the Heroic Imagination Project! We’re thrilled that you’re here with us and, actually, we’re thrilled to be here as well. It’s been a long time...

Welcome to the Hero’s Journey, a newsletter from the Heroic Imagination Project!

We’re thrilled that you’re here with us and, actually, we’re thrilled to be here as well. It’s been a long time since Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Patreon, or email were able to reach all of the people who want to interact with us, and with one another, and so we’re happy to be able to make use of this platform to combine a lot of the features of those other apps all in one place.

At some point or another, you signed up to receive communications from the Heroic Imagination Project, the Hero Round Table, or the Hero Construction Company — and, as such, you probably know us. We’re Matt Langdon and Ari Kohen. We’ve been running the Heroic Imagination Project, alongside Phil Zimbardo and a gang of exceptional people, for the past four years; we’ve been speaking around the world; we’ve been publishing cutting edge research on heroic behaviour; and we’ve been conducting educational training programs online and in person for a variety of audiences.

If this isn’t for you, apologies for the interruption, and you can simply unsubscribe with the click of a button at the bottom of the email.

Our vision for this newsletter is three-fold:

First, we’re going to use this space to launch what we believe will be the definitive book on the motivations behind heroic behaviour. Back in 2006, Phil put out a challenge to scholars: he wrote that we knew a lot about why people ended up doing terrible things, but we didn’t know very much at all about why people chose to do good things. In 2017, with our colleague Brian Riches, we published a paper that sketched out a few possible answers. We’ve been doing research ever since and now we’re ready to start getting more definitive. If you stay subscribed, you’ll get to follow along as we put our thoughts about this crucial question on paper, ask us questions about what we’re thinking, and help us refine our thinking as we go.

Second, we’re going to invite HIP Board members and heroism studies researchers to contribute pieces—some shorter, some longer—that reflect on heroism in the news, on their research, on new ideas for others to consider, and the like.

Finally, we’ll be regularly sharing news about HIP with you: training opportunities, international summits, Hero Round Table conferences, updates from the Board, and anything else that seems important.

This newsletter is free — and it always will be. But can you support our nonprofit organization financially? Sure! HIP is a registered 501©3 in California and your donations are tax deductible to the extent allowed by U.S. law. You’ll see that there’s a subscription model here that will help HIP to continue its global work. And you can—and should—share our newsletter with your friends, family, colleagues, and strangers on the street. Passing this along to others helps us to get our message out far and wide.

As a first piece of news, we’ve begun 2025 with a new structure at HIP. I (Matt) am now the Executive Director, working regularly with an Executive Board consisting of Ari Kohen (President), Brian Riches (Vice President), Thomas Sartor (Secretary), and Ellie Jacques (Treasurer). The at-large board is made up of Allison Evans and Vanja Pešić with new additions to be introduced as they’re welcomed aboard.

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