What happens at the margins: a bystander steps forward, a leader allows meaning to flourish without them, a seed hears the rain coming. This week, the most interesting things are happening at the edges in #TheEdit.

• Revising the bystander effect. It turns out to be far more complicated, and far more hopeful, than the myth suggests – The Power of Us 
• Good leadership isn’t about creating meaning – people bring that themselves. It’s about having the courage not to get in its way – Big Think 
• Embrace the edge! Brilliance and kindness shine brightest when far from the comfortable centre. Even nature is more generative there too – Aeon 
• What AI is actually doing to the workforce. Your organisation should bet against outsourcing critical thought, creativity and human connection to something “trained on yesterday”; at some point AI will run into problems inventing tomorrow – The Atlantic Podcast 
• Plants can sense the sound of rain, a new study finds. Experiments by MIT engineers show rice seeds sprout faster to the sound of rain – MIT News 
• Can you focus on a piece of art for 10 minutes? Inviting you to spend uninterrupted time looking at “Cityscape” by Romare Bearden, from 1976 – The New York Times 
• Maslow never drew a pyramid. Cognitive psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman reimagines human potential as a sailboat – security in the hull, purpose in the sail – and asks what it means to really let your uniqueness shine – The Beautiful Truth