How to Find Hope in a Cynical World
The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos
Pushkin Industries
4.7 • 14.6K Ratings
🗓️ 9 September 2024
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
It’s hard to stay hopeful these days. Stanford professor Jamil Zaki has been studying the incredible depth of human kindness for decades, but even he gives in to cynicism when he doubts our ability to be civil and cooperative.
That’s a shame - because shedding cynicism and grasping hope will make you happier and healthier. Jamil and Dr Laurie Santos look at the scientific evidence showing that we should be more trusting of other people and optimistic about our facility to work together.
Jamil's book Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness is out now.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Pushkin. |
| 0:07.0 | As a happiness professor, many people assume that I'm a beacon of optimism, that I always look on the bright side of life, to quote the Monte Python song. |
| 0:22.0 | But some days I feel pretty doubt about things. |
| 0:25.2 | Some days it feels easier to look on the bleak side of life. |
| 0:29.1 | Childish nicknames, the crazy conspiracy theories, this weird obsession with crowd sizes. |
| 0:35.6 | Please stick to policy don't get personal. They're getting personal all night long these people |
| 0:40.1 | limited narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the |
| 0:44.0 | The prosthetic low-life |
| 0:46.7 | scumbag who happened to be black. |
| 0:49.6 | But for my terrorist. |
| 0:50.8 | My terrorist, my terrorist, |
| 0:52.0 | by your turn on my terrorist. I mean politics and all the polarization right now. |
| 0:56.8 | I mean politics and all the polarization right now |
| 0:59.8 | pretty bleak climate ridiculously bleak, racism, poverty, war, bleak, bleak, |
| 1:06.0 | but thinking about all these problems doesn't just make me feel helpless. |
| 1:11.0 | It also gets me super frustrated with the other members of my species. |
| 1:14.8 | Sometimes I just want to be like, fellow humans, come on. |
| 1:18.9 | My the only one who sees all these problems, |
| 1:21.5 | my the only one who wants everybody to stop yelling at each other on Twitter long enough to actually |
| 1:26.2 | start fixing things. Even just saying it out loud makes me feel isolated and yucky and just bleh. |
| 1:33.0 | I'm guessing that you may have felt something similar on your worst days. |
| 1:37.0 | Like me, maybe you've wondered if there's any way to fight all the division and disillusionment and despair that seems to have taken over our public conversation. |
... |
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