Today, Explained - Why you have to be optimistic

Episode Date: April 12, 2026

When the world is on fire, it’s difficult to stay hopeful. But our future depends on it. This episode was produced by Avishay Artsy, edited by Jenny Lawton, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by David Tatasciore, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Photo by Hasan Tacan/Anadolu via Getty Images. If you have a question, give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email [e-mail]. Listen to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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? I think, frankly, that optimism is a denial of reality. 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 John Glyn Hill, and this week on Explain It to Me, from Vox. We're going to find out how together. My name is Jemiel 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. 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? 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? 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 going to be fine, it's going to 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? 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 positive.

you must be a Pollyanna sort of rearranging the deck 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 authoritarian powers often want.

I think people assume there's a naivety if you're not cynical or if you're not pessimistic. There's an old quote, always predict the worst and you'll be hailed as a prophet. You know, where I do think that there is an 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-synics,

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. What do we know about people who are able to maintain being hopeful in dark times? What makes them able to do that? 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. 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 to 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. 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. 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, not. No. People aren't going to call. They won't have anything to say. Everything is bad. But, but I was wrong. I heard you guys ask how people are saying optimistic right now. For me, it's sitting down and putting pen to paper. 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.

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 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.

I'm currently hiking the Pacific Crest Trail and something that has really shown me and given me hope, in humanity is all of the trail angels, making sure that hikers have water and food and are feeling taken care of. I go out, organize with my friends, get out in the community, just learn more about, you know, what my people need out here. 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. 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. Some of the other responses we got had to do with hobbies.

I play guitar, play a lot of video games. I go to the gym. I cook occasionally. I've been doing a lot of knitting projects. I keep help by going outside and gardening. It's so beautiful to see life come out of seemingly nothing. 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? Well, first, tell me about your 2026 hobbies. Which one has brought you the most joy? 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. And do you find that using this film camera sounds really fun, does it bring you a sense of hope or optimism to do this? 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 mean, seen that in so long. And then they just start chatting with you. And you're like, wow, look at us, chatting. 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, suggest that, yes, 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. 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. 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. Is that an argument that resonates with you? 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 generally speaking, we are a resilient species, especially when we're able to come together. 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. It comes in great flavors. Mango dragon fruit, strawberry assayi, 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-energize. Try the all-new energy refreshers at Starbucks. It's explained 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 futurist, which is what exactly? 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 and a small stettle 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 Fuller. People say to me, I wonder what if you'd 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 about a beautiful little spaceship called Earth.

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, as a student of Buckminster Fuller, who was also a futurist, 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 100 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? 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. 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? 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 sense. 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, crowds pour in from subways, trains, buses and cars, half a million strong. 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. The nation's foremost companies present the magic of today that paves the way for the miracles of tomorrow. Most recent was probably the space race in the 1960s. Traumatic 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. I mean, to be able to come together and go off planet again was a vision of what was possible. 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? 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, 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 street car, 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 they're, and feeling in your daily life that there was a possibility of a better tomorrow. Are there ways that being optimistic has tangible impacts on our present? Like, is this just about the future, or does this impact are now, too? 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 have healthier, more comfortable, more satisfied lives. You talked 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. I was fortunate to travel the world. And what I consistently found was not just great. great ideas about better tomorrow's, but people who were willing to start, even at a small scale and eventually expanding, actually executing on those ideas. I met Boyden Slat from the ocean

cleanup. 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. 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. These are what you call pellets.

And these are the building blocks for any new object. So you can just malt 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. So it's again, these individuals that have a shared sense of agents, 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. Coming up, sometimes life feels like a parody of itself. What happens when you just lean into that? This is advertiser content from Starbucks. Johnclan, I think of you as the queen of answering questions. Oh my gosh, thank you. What question do you have for me today? Okay, talk to me about energy levels.

Why is it that it's sometimes I feel total ways of exhaustion? So, like, you can't focus, you're falling asleep, that kind of thing? 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? 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. So that's like the reason I feel tired before bed and well-rested in the morning. It's our circadian rhythm. It's a totally natural. biological response. So when I want to just close my eyes and put my head down on my desk, what can I do about that? According to my research, one of the best things you can do is get up and

walk around, get your blood flowing, maybe call up a friend and grab a coffee or a tea. That sounds really nice right now. You want to go do it? Yeah. Yeah. 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. We're back. It's explained 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.

Hey there. I am Quinn Richards and I'm in Portland, Oregon. I'm an artist, a designer, and also a clown. What does the life of a clown look like these days? What kind of clowning around do you do? 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 going to 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 want to pick yourself up with your little boots and keep trying again. 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 protests.

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 it's going to be unexpected and you have to create opportunity for that. 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. 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. 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. 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 slash 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 1-800-6-1845 or email AskVox. This episode was produced by Aval Shai Artsy and was edited by Ginny Lawton. It was fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, and engineered by David Tattashore.

Our executive producer is Miranda Kennedy, and I'm your host, John Glenn Hill. Thank you so much for listening. I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Support for Explained 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.