← Today, Explained
Today, Explained
Why you have to be optimistic
00:29:36
When the world is on fire, it’s difficult to stay hopeful. But our future depends on it.
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- [00:01]
Jonathan Hill
Support for Explain it to Me comes from Starbucks. Vibing to the hook of your favorite song, stepping outside and immediately feeling the sun on your face, sipping a refreshing drink. Those are the moments that energize us. And if that third one sounds particularly enticing, you might be due for a new energy refresher from Starbucks. It's the flavors you know and love. And now, with a boost of energy, try the all new energy refreshers at Starbucks. Where do we find hope in this world?
- [00:34]
Ari Wallach
I think, frankly, that optimism is a denial of reality.
- [00:38]
Jonathan Hill
My real everyday world is nothing like what the media often makes it out to be, and that gives me hope. On this show, we try to give you useful info to help you navigate the world around you. But real talk, there's an elephant in the room. Like we're on the cusp of a technological revolution and it might come for all of our jobs. Or here's how you can show up for your community in a crisis because the government isn't going to help or want some financial advice. Well, just kidding. The global economy is unstable and the world's falling apart, and yet somehow we have to go to work and do laundry and prepare for the future. There must be a way to face this. I'm Jaclyn Hill, and this week on Explain It To Me from vox, we're going to find out how.
- [01:35]
Jamil Zaki
My name is Jamil Zaki. I'm a professor of psychology at Stanford. I run a lab where we study things like empathy and kindness and the way that people show up for one another. And I'm an author. My latest book is called Hope for Cynics.
- [01:50]
Jonathan Hill
Okay, Jamil Zaki, friend of the show what is the difference between hope and optimism? I feel like we use them interchangeably. But is there a difference?
- [02:01]
Jamil Zaki
Huge difference. And this is really important. So optimism is the belief that the future will turn out well. And optimistic people tend to be pretty happy, they tend to be pretty healthy, but they can also be a bit complacent. I mean, if you think a bright future is on the way, you can kind of hang out on your couch and wait for it to arrive. Hope is, by contrast, the idea that the future could turn out well, but that we don't know what the future holds. And so a hopeful person feels as though, yeah, things could turn out well, but I need to work to make that happen. Being hopeful is not the same as being a Pollyanna. In fact, being hopeful acknowledges and embraces that things are difficult and asks, where can we go from here?
- [02:46]
Jonathan Hill
Yeah, I'm glad you brought up this idea of being a Pollyanna, because I've seen the phrase toxic optimism as a way to suggest that, you know, when we tell people like, oh, it's gonna be fine, it's gonna be great, but it's not. Are there times where we're trying to get people to gaslight themselves into thinking things are better than they are?
- [03:03]
Jamil Zaki
I think absolutely. If you tell people that they can only believe a certain thing that is limiting their connection to reality. But let's think about the other side of this as well. I think a lot of the times we're almost gaslit into being more negative than we need to be. I think a lot of the times there's actually pressure to be negative about the future because there's the view that if you're positive, you must be a Pollyanna, sort of, you know, rearranging the decade chairs on the Titanic. And if you think about it, yes, an optimist might not feel like they have to fight for anything because everything's going to turn out well, but a pessimist might not fight for very much either. There's a bunch of research that finds that people who are hopeless and cynical are less likely to vote or take part in social movements. And I often think that people in power, authoritarian regimes even actually benefit a lot when people are hopeless. In fact, I think that a lot of propaganda is meant to make people hopeless because that negativity keeps people frozen in place. And that's exactly what those, you know, authoritarian powers often want.
- [04:14]
Jonathan Hill
I think people assume there's a naivety if you're not cynical or if you're not pessimistic.
- [04:20]
Jamil Zaki
There's an old quote. Always predict the worst and you'll be hailed as a prophet. You know, where, where I do think that there's an inher inherent sense that negativity and wisdom are the same thing. And there's evidence from psychology that bears this out. So research finds that 70% of people believe that cynical folks who have a negative outlook on humanity are smarter than non cynical individuals. And 85% of people think that cynics are socially smarter. Like they're better able to tell who's lying and who's telling the truth. I think that that's a stereotype in our culture, but it's also one that's wrong. Right. So the data actually find that cynical people are not any smarter than non cynics and they're actually worse at knowing who's lying and who's telling the truth. So I think it's important to try to break that down when we can.
- [05:11]
Jonathan Hill
What do we know about people who are able to maintain being hopeful in dark times? What makes them able to do that?
- [05:22]
Jamil Zaki
Well, let's again stipulate that these are not folks who think that the world is great. When I think about hopeful people, I think about activists. You know, was Nelson Mandela optimistic and thinking that everything was going to turn out great when he was in his jail cell? Hope is a stubborn, active sense of the world. It's an acknowledgement that things are not what we want now, but a sense that they could improve and that we have something to do about it. So hopeful people, as the science bears out, one, have the ability envision that better future. Two, they have a will to pursue it. Right? They have that grit and that sort of that passion to actually continue going for a goal even if it's difficult. And third, they have something known as way power, which is that they're able to map a path between where they are and where they want to be. And oftentimes that way power, that sense that what I do makes a difference, requires not being alone. So hopeful people often aren't hopeful just on, you know, as individuals, they find communities of people who want the same positive change that they do, and they work together towards creating that change.
- [06:39]
Jonathan Hill
You know, every week we ask people to call in, and when we asked people how they're cultivating optimism in their lives, I honestly thought, I was like, oh, no, people aren't gonna call. They won't have anything to say. Everything is bad. But. But I was wrong.
- [06:55]
Caller 1 (Community Member)
I heard you guys ask how people are staying optimistic.
- [06:59]
Caller 2 (Community Member)
Right now, for me, it's sitting down and putting pen to paper.
- [07:03]
Caller 1 (Community Member)
I have faith where I believe that God's got my back. I go out to dinner with my friends for a night and I just feel like I've taken the biggest deep breath.
- [07:12]
Jamil Zaki
If we're experiencing the world through our screens, it seems like, first, everything is terrible, and two, everybody knows that everything is terrible. The other, the funny thing is that when we return to our local communities, when we actually ask people about their lives, a, they're doing wonderful things and you realize how excellent the average person is on a bunch of dimensions. And two people are finding hope. They're finding reasons to be optimistic.
- [07:39]
Caller 1 (Community Member)
I'm currently hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, and something that has really shown me and giving me hope in humanity is all of the trail angels making sure that hikers have water and food and are feeling taken care of.
- [07:58]
Caller 2 (Community Member)
I go out, organize with my friends
- [08:00]
Caller 1 (Community Member)
get out in the community.
- [08:01]
Caller 2 (Community Member)
Just learn more about what my people need out here.
- [08:05]
Caller 1 (Community Member)
For me, that was joining roller derby. I'm not the greatest at it, but I found community, and it's a lot of fun. And I hope everybody out there can find their own local derby pack.
- [08:18]
Jamil Zaki
You know, a great thing about human beings, in my opinion, is that we like each other more the closer we get to one another. So research finds, for instance, that most Americans do not think that most people can be trusted. We've become a very cynical nation. But if you ask people, what about the folks in your neighborhood? And this is not just your friends and family, but, you know, your grocer, your bus driver, your barber, people feel so much better about the folks that they actually encounter in real life.
- [08:48]
Jonathan Hill
Some of the other responses we got had to do with hobbies.
- [08:52]
Caller 2 (Community Member)
I play guitar, play a lot of video games. I go to the gym. I cook occasionally.
- [08:58]
Caller 1 (Community Member)
I've been doing a lot of knitting projects. I keep hope by going outside and gardening. It's so beautiful to see life come out of seemingly nothing.
- [09:10]
Jonathan Hill
I remember that people really were trying all kinds of stuff at the height of the pandemic, and it seems like it's still the case. Like, I call 2026 the year of the hobby. Like, I don't know, I'm just going outside and trying things. What makes that such an effective strategy?
- [09:27]
Jamil Zaki
Well, first, what. Tell me about your 2026 hobbies. What's. Which one has brought you the most joy?
- [09:33]
Jonathan Hill
I've gotten back into film photography. I used to do it in high school, and I just go shoot film all around the city. You know, my friends, their kids have a birthday party. I show up with my film camera. Cherry blossoms. Oh, I definitely have the camera for that. Just going on a little walk, camera everywhere.
- [09:50]
Jamil Zaki
And do you find that using this film camera, it sounds really fun. Does it bring you a sense of hope or optimism to do this?
- [09:58]
Jonathan Hill
Oh, yeah. Oh, well, first of all, you just look at the world a little bit differently. It's like, oh, look at that shadow. Look at that angle. What's the reflection off that building? But also, when you have a camera, especially a film camera, people love to stop and talk to you. Especially, like, older people. They're like a film camera. I haven't seen that in so long. And then they just start chatting with you, and you're like, wow, look at us chatting.
- [10:21]
Jamil Zaki
I love that. And, you know, again, I love this idea of noticing more, you know, a lot of the data from my lab, from lots of other labs Suggests that, yes, you know, we don't want to gaslight people into ignoring the bad things in life, but a lot of us go around missing the good things in life. And so I think of cultivating hope as a practice of noticing. Not a practice of ignoring the bad side, but a practice of balancing that with a sort of real attention to what is beautiful. And I think, you know, in general, hobbies are a chance for us to pay attention to things that we care about and often bring us, as has for you, in connection to people who turn out to be often pretty great.
- [11:07]
Jonathan Hill
Something that I feel like needs to be acknowledged is that this is not the only time in the world where life has been hard. Humanity has survived a lot, and our listeners called in and really reminded us of that.
- [11:24]
Caller 1 (Community Member)
My grandparents were black activists in New Orleans, Louisiana, during the Civil Rights movement. And just seeing the things they had to go through and hearing their stories and seeing where life is now. Both of my grandparents survived and met in Auschwitz. I would ask them how they made it through, and they kind of gave, like, a very biblical but true answer. Hope. It's just the one thing nobody could take from you. Even as we see these same patterns of violence and patriarchy, you know, repeating fascism, like, repeating themselves in awful, unimaginably terrible ways, I do think it's a useful exercise to look at the ways that we also are making progress in the same breath.
- [12:16]
Jonathan Hill
Is that an argument that resonates with you?
- [12:19]
Jamil Zaki
Absolutely. One practice that I use is to think back to what life was like for my parents or for their parents. Right. I mean, we've been through so much, and I'm not saying that everything will turn out well, but. But generally speaking, we are a resilient species, especially when we're able to come together.
- [12:44]
Jonathan Hill
So humans tend to be resilient. And when we focus that power on building something new, extraordinary things can happen. That's next. Support for Explain it to Me comes from Starbucks. There's a palpable energy to storytelling, and it's an energy we harness to bring you a special series like this one. With that in mind, it's worth remembering the little things we do in community to energize ourselves, like sharing a cool, brightly flavored drink over conversation under the afternoon sun. It's a refreshing ritual that could be perfectly captured by the Starbucks new energy refresher. And it comes in great flavors. Mango, dragon fruit, strawberry, acai, mango, strawberry, plus a handful of tasty variations with lemonade or coconut milk, like the pink energy drink. The point is, nobody is immune to a little slump in energy, especially in the afternoon. The science is clear on that. The key is remembering. There's always a path forward to feeling renewed and re energized. Try the all new energy refreshers at Starbucks. It's explain it to me. I'm jq. Do you ever think about what life will be like a generation from now? Or maybe two or three generations? Ari Wallach does. He's host of the PBS documentary series A Brief History of the Future. And he's also a futuristic. Which is what exactly?
- [14:25]
Ari Wallach
So we don't predict what's going to happen. What we do is we study patterns over history, over culture, over ways that the world has been and potentially could be. And then we step back and we help people and institutions make choices within that matrix. Fundamentally, the role of a futurist, I believe, is to help us, the current generation, become great ancestors. My father was born in the 1920s in a small shtetl in Poland. And if you know your history, you know things didn't go well for him and his family. By the time he was a teenager, he lost his mother and sister in Auschwitz. He eventually escaped the Jewish ghetto and joined the Jewish underground and the resistance, and from there became a Nazi hunter after the war and eventually made himself a citizen of Mexico, where he met my mom, who was a student of Buckminster Full.
- [15:20]
Caller 2 (Community Member)
People say to me, I wonder what it'd be like to be on a spaceship. And I say to you, you don't really realize what you're doing because everybody is an astronaut. You all live aboard a beautiful little spaceship called Earth.
- [15:36]
Ari Wallach
So I grew up in a home where, on the one hand, my father had firsthand knowledge of what could go wrong. And my mother is a student of Buckminster Fuller, who was also a futuristic was focused on what could go right. So what I was able to do, thankfully, is realize that we exist in that tension, that we can't be rainbows and unicorns about tomorrow, nor can we stick our head in the sand and say, it's just terrible and it's just going to happen, but that we actually have to do something. We're in what I call this intertidal, the old systems, the ways of doing things, the institutions that have really kind of held us together, especially in the west, for the past couple of hundred years, are crumbling. And in that intertidal moment, we're seeking not just answers of what could be, but we're really trying to figure out, what do we avoid? How do things go wrong and how do I avoid that. Now, that being said, that's not the way you actually want to run a planetary civilization. What you want to be asking yourself is, what if we got it right? What is it that we want to see actually manifest and happen? I mean that in terms of democracy, in terms of how we work, in terms of how we live, what we eat, how we educate, we have to start thinking about what it is that we want, not just what it is that we don't want.
- [16:56]
Jonathan Hill
There were times when Americans were more excited about the future, though, right? Like, what are a few moments in history where people were really feeling optimistic about where we're going and what were they thinking about then?
- [17:10]
Ari Wallach
The thing that jumps out to me is the 1893 World's Columbia Exposition, the World's Fair in Chicago. We have to remember this was the beginning of the turn of the century. No one had ever actually seen electricity. Maybe they'd heard about a light bulb or seen one, but you could actually walk into the Chicago World's Fair and see whole city blocks illuminated. There was this idea that there was a new era coming, that there was actually progress. And then fast forward 1939, the New York World's Fair, to see the exhibits of 58 nations.
- [17:47]
Caller 2 (Community Member)
Crowds pour in from subways, trains, buses and cars half a million strong.
- [17:51]
Ari Wallach
The theme was the World of Tomorrow. Hundreds of thousands of people visited the Futurama exhibit and they went on this fun little train where they would see the futures of work and of kitchens and home life and sports and, you name it.
- [18:05]
Caller 2 (Community Member)
The nation's foremost companies present the magic of today that paves the way for the miracles of tomorrow.
- [18:12]
Ari Wallach
Most recent was probably the space race of the 1960s.
- [18:15]
Caller 2 (Community Member)
Dramatic strides by both sides in the space race give promise of major developments in man's efforts to actually send human explorers into the far reaches of the solar system.
- [18:25]
Ari Wallach
I mean, to be able to come together and go off planet again was a vision of what was possible.
- [18:30]
Jonathan Hill
If you look at what was going on in the world during those times, you know, I think in 1893, the country was going into severe economic depression. And in 1939, when there was the New York World's Fair, there was a world war going on. How were people able to stay optimistic during these times where it's like, no, there are actual crimes against humanity taking place.
- [18:57]
Ari Wallach
The upward trajectory of Homo sapiens on planet Earth has been just that, an upward trajectory. There has been no better time to be alive, as far as I'm concerned, In the past 50,000 years, in this very moment. And you could say that moving back over the past several decades, all the way into, you know, into the. Even into the late 1930s. And the reason was that we had shared visions of improvement. We saw that things would get better. You know, you visit New York City before the advent of the streetcar and it was covered in horse manure, and all of a sudden that totally disappeared. So people had a real, true, visceral sense that things could move forward. It wasn't ignoring the reality, but it was seeing that there and feeling in your daily life that there was a possibility of a better tomorrow.
- [19:44]
Jonathan Hill
Are there ways that being optimistic has tangible impacts on our present? Like, is this just about the future or does this impact our now too?
- [19:53]
Ari Wallach
Oh, look, when you're optimistic as an individual, you save more, you have better health, you make better decisions, whether you want to invest, what kind of relationships you want to have, what kind of jobs you're going to take, things that you're going to pursue. It's all embedded within this vision of what we call your future self or your future society. Societies that put forth a vision of who and what they want to be more often than not as individuals, they actually healthier, more comfortable, more satisfied lives.
- [20:26]
Jonathan Hill
You talk to a ton of people for this documentary series that you did that aired on pbs and I wonder who's someone you spoke with who has a vision for the future you found really inspiring.
- [20:39]
Ari Wallach
I was fortunate enough to travel the world and what I consistently found was not just great ideas about better tomorrows, but people who were willing to start even at a small scale and eventually expanding, actually executing on those ideas. I met Boyden Slatt from the ocean cleanup.
- [20:58]
Boyden Slatt
I was 16 years old. I went scuba diving in Greece and I was hoping to see all these beautiful things. Then I looked around me and I just saw a garbage dump. I just saw more plastic bags than fish.
- [21:09]
Ari Wallach
He's like, why don't we just take all the plastic out of the ocean? Everyone's like, you're nuts. You can't do that. Now daily they have these massive kind of drone barges that are sucking in plastic by the ton outside of river outlets and throughout the ocean.
- [21:23]
Boyden Slatt
These are what you call pellets, and these are the building blocks for any new object. So you can just mold this into something new. And the idea is that we are producing durable, sustainable products out of this and with that help fund the cleanup.
- [21:41]
Ari Wallach
So it's again, these individuals that have a shared sense of agency and a long term mindset that kind of blew me away. And there's more of them than you would think. We need to think of the future very much as a verb, not as a singular place. But it's something that we consistently do that leads us to having meaningful lives for ourselves and for those to come. Because we know that we are contributing to a story that came about way before we were here and will continue long after we are here.
- [22:20]
Jonathan Hill
Coming up. Sometimes life feels like a parody of itself. What happens when you just lean into that?
- [22:38]
Interviewer/Host Assistant
This is advertiser content from Starbucks. Jonathan, I think of you as the queen of answering questions.
- [22:45]
Jonathan Hill
Oh, my gosh. Thank you. What question do you have for me today?
- [22:48]
Interviewer/Host Assistant
Okay, talk to me about energy levels. Why is it that it's sometimes I feel total ways of exhaustion.
- [22:54]
Jonathan Hill
So like you can't focus, you're falling asleep, that kind of thing.
- [22:58]
Interviewer/Host Assistant
Exactly. And then at some points I'm just totally fine. Why is that happening and is there anything I can do to help it?
- [23:05]
Jonathan Hill
Yeah. So the peaks and slumps throughout the day, we have all been there. So that's mostly because of our circadian rhythm. It's basically the cycle our body goes through in a 24 hour time period and it controls things like metabolism, hormones and energy.
- [23:22]
Interviewer/Host Assistant
So that's like the reason I feel tired before bed and well rested in the morning.
- [23:26]
Jonathan Hill
It's our circadian rhythm. It's a totally natural biological response.
- [23:30]
Interviewer/Host Assistant
So when I want to just close my eyes and put my head down on my desk, what can I do about that?
- [23:35]
Jonathan Hill
According to my research, one of the best things you can do do is get up and walk around, get your blood flowing, maybe call up a friend and grab a coffee or a tea.
- [23:43]
Interviewer/Host Assistant
That sounds really nice right now.
- [23:45]
Jonathan Hill
You want to go do it?
- [23:46]
Ari Wallach
Yeah. Yeah.
- [23:48]
Interviewer/Host Assistant
Long story short, we all need moments throughout the day to refresh. And Starbucks has you covered with their new energy refreshers. Your go to lift. To help you stay energized throughout the day, try the all new energy refreshers at Starbucks.
- [24:04]
Jonathan Hill
We're back. It's explain it to me. I'm jq. Like I said earlier, we heard from lots of listeners about how they're finding reasons to be hopeful these days. One caller in particular really surprised us.
- [24:18]
Quinn Richards
Hey there. I am Quinn Richards and I'm in Portland, Oregon. I'm an artist, a designer, and also a clown.
- [24:29]
Jonathan Hill
What does the life of a clown look like these days? Like, what kind of clowning around do you do?
- [24:34]
Quinn Richards
Clowning can look like a lot of things for a lot of different people. For me, I like to think of myself as like Your neighborhood clown. I just really enjoy having a very relatable, kind of more pedestrian type of clown character that can help people get over their fear of clowns, can help people just, like, kick back and have a good time. I mean, I think being relatable and being silly is very healing for a lot of people, I would say the main thing that really defines a clown is play. It's often very exploratory, it's very iterative, and it's also very participatory. I'd say another major element of clowning which feels particularly relevant to 2026 is that clowns are characters that openly make mistakes, but they're gonna die trying to solve them. And I think that persistence reminds us all that it's okay to make mistakes, but it's also, you wanna, you know, pick yourself up with your little boots and keep trying.
- [25:44]
Ari Wallach
Again,
- [25:47]
Quinn Richards
there's this way in which you can be honest under the guise of comedy, and it allows you to actually be more direct. And it also allows audiences to digest it more because there's a bit of levity and irony to what you're saying. The world is so absurd, and at times it kind of feels like the only way to respond is to kind of rise to that level of absurdity. Especially here in Portland. We're always in the headlines for such kind of silly things, like Long live the toad at the protest. But you know what I love so much about clowns, at least how it's represented in Portland, is it's a really kind of radical and queer space. And I think it reminds us all that it's much cooler to be weird and to be authentic. And I think that there's more opportunity for those unexpected solutions. Because I think whatever is going to happen in the future for how we build collective action, it's going to be unexpected, and you have to create opportunity for that.
- [27:06]
Jonathan Hill
Yeah. You recently posted this Clown Manifesto. I want to know who wrote it and if you'd mind reading some of it to us.
- [27:15]
Quinn Richards
Yeah, I would love to read it. This was written by a clown here in Portland. Their name is JoJo. Their clown is Raggedy Andro, and they helped organize a clown parade last year. Stand together to hurl the heavy boot of hopelessness off our hearts and fill the streets with whimsical, defiant joy. And we had, like, over 200 clowns that joined us and just tried to bring a little unexpected silliness to People's Day. And so they wrote this manifesto for the event. Okay, so here it goes. Joy is a tiny trumpet in your bones. Do not let beastly fear settle in your stomach. Do not let your wild abandon be tamed. Your pleasure has the power to disrupt the status quo. Revel in each lashing of change. Delight in the despicable. Now wallow in the humiliation of becoming. Your wonder is not childish, it is ancient. Your joy is not foolish. It's sacred.
- [28:35]
Jonathan Hill
And that's our show. I hope you find some joy this week. Also consider becoming a VOX member. Members help us make this show week after week and also get to listen ad free. Head to Vox.com members to learn more. We have some episodes coming up soon about burnout at work and in our personal lives too. What does burnout feel like for you and what helps? I'm especially looking at all you folks in the sandwich generation, people taking care of your kids and your parents at the same time. Give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email askvoxox.com this episode was produced by Avishai Artsy and was edited by Ginny Lawton. It was fact checked by Melissa Hirsch and engineered by David Tadashore. Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy and I'm your host, Jonathan Hill. Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Support for Explain it to Me comes from Starbucks Burnout can happen to anyone, but there's always a way to get your flow back. Take your afternoon slump, for instance. It's a phenomenon we all know too well. Sometimes all it takes is a reassuring word from a friend or a sip of a refreshing drink. So the next time you're looking to refocus and re energize, you can hit up a friend and grab a Starbucks New Energy Refresher together. Try the All New Energy Refreshers at Starbucks.