Pangea is the name that was given to the supercontinent that included the entire landmass of our planet prior to the breakup of the continents. Please calendar Pangea Day for Saturday, May 10th at 2:00-6:00p.m. EDT. On that day, gather with your family, friends, and neighbors, and join me and countless others around the world for a powerful, first-of-its kind experience - a remarkable program of films and talks celebrating our common humanity. I predict that this will be the biggest global event since the Live Earth concerts.

Our world is becoming ever smaller and interdependent. An important consequence of this is that it will take a global perspective to tackle the issues that matter - war, terrorism, poverty, disease, human rights, environment, climate change.... Yet the people trying to solve them are almost all serving narrow mandates on behalf of their nation, religion, or tribe. What's wrong with this picture? There is a disconnect between the nature of the problems and the means the world is deploying to tackle them. "The world" itself doesn't even seem to have a seat at the table!

Yet there's no reason this has to be the case when the 21st century is offering us the means to begin a truly global conversation - to start nurturing that identity we share: humanity. Some use the language of promoting global citizenship, or reducing cross-cultural suspicion, or expanding our circle of empathy, or eliminating the "us/them" mode of thinking. These goals are all linked, and any progress toward them is a very big deal.

Today's media have the power to humanize "the other" - to help people make the mental switch from "them" to "us". You won't just be watching films - you'll be watching the world watching. There will be live audience images from around the world. Watching a film about reconciliation is one thing, but watching it while simultaneously witnessing the reactions of people who traditionally hate each other will be something else altogether. Telling stories through film is especially powerful in this regard. At the start of a film, you see someone strange looking; at the end, you feel kinship. There's no moral effort involved here - it's just a natural mental repositioning. I believe that is the mental shift that holds the key to our shared future. As the Pangea Day website says, "Films can't change the world, but the people who watch them can."

There will be about 20 films ranging in length from two to 15 minutes with most of them around five minutes long. They all tell powerful stories, often without language, of what it is to be human. They are funny, touching, dramatic, inspiring. There will also be a dozen powerful three-minute talks from scientists, filmmakers, storytellers, and global visionaries. However, don't dismiss it as a warm-and-fuzzy peace-fest - the project builds on the latest ideas in anthropology, psychology and technology. While I doubt if Pangea Day will lead to an outbreak of world peace, I do think it will lead to a
sense of possibility: the possibility that we can use technology as a force for good, that peoples' minds are not locked in a dark place forever, that our global village can start the long journey from "us/them" to "we."

Pangea Day will be available on Current TV, the pioneer of citizen-empowered media, or you can watch the live video stream on the Pangea Day website. Please go there right now, have a look at the trailer, search by zip code for a public screening near you, and browse the promotional videos of choirs from different countries singing each other's national anthems. A French choir sings ours, and it's a hoot! Another trailer I really like is on YouTube.