Find Hope and Banish Cynicism... Coming Sept 9

It's hard to stay hopeful sometimes. Things can look pretty bleak and divided, especially around election time. But if you're losing hope in your fellow humans, stop and listen to the science. Other people are kinder, friendlier and more co-operative than you might think.   

Using insights from his new book Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness, Stanford's Jamil Zaki joins Dr Laurie Santos for a special season to show why we shouldn't be so cynical about our fellow citizens and why being more open and trusting can help us live happier and healthier lives. 

The series begins Sept 9.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Even though I'm a happiness expert, there are times
when I find it hard to feel hopeful. From the
climate to poverty, to politics to conflicts around the world,
things can sometimes feel pretty bleak.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
There's the childish nickname the crazy conspiracy theories.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Did you see Barack Fusan Obama last night?

Speaker 4 (00:39):
She was taking shots at your president?

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Especially around election time, it seems like we're all divided
and angry. If the only political conversation you have is
your uncle Chad screaming at you about politics.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
He just wants to get in an argument, He just
wants to shit on you.

Speaker 1 (00:55):
But it's not just all those uncle Chads and polarized
political fights. It feels like we're losing faith in one
another and in our own agency.

Speaker 3 (01:02):
Nothing I do will matter, Nothing anyone I know does
will matter.

Speaker 4 (01:06):
So I wish I didn't have to hear about this.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
I'm doctor Laurie Santos, and in our new season of
the Happiness Lab, we'll look at why we're all feeling
so cynical these days and what we can do to
fight these nasty feelings. And we'll get inspiration from one
of my favorite new books, Hope for Cynics The Surprising
Science of Human Goodness. It's by famous Stanford psychologist and
my good friend Jamil Zaki.

Speaker 2 (01:30):
Thanks Laurie, and hello Happiness Lab listeners. I've been studying
the science of kindness for decades, but even I get
a little cynical. Sometimes Cinics don't just assume that things
are bad, but also that there's nothing we can do
to improve the situation.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
I actually hate politics. Our politicians are not afraid of us.
They aren't worried about winning our vote or if we
like what they're doing.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
But research shows that cynicism hurts us in almost every
way scientists can measure. Cynics are prone to depression, loneliness,
and unhappiness. They even die younger than non cynics. If
cynicism was a pill, it'd be a poison. So I
got inspired to fight it. My new book, Hope for
Cynics tells the story of how we got into this

(02:14):
predicament and how we can find a more hopeful path
again listening to the science about what people are really like,
which is often better than we assume.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Well. For the course of this new series, Jamille and
I will meet people who learned about the dangers of
cynicism and are trying to do something about it.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
We know this doesn't feel right. I think we all
know that something is wrong in our culture, in our politics,
and that we need to do better, and that we
can do better.

Speaker 1 (02:40):
And it'll be quite a journey. We'll head to a
Caribbean island to meet some of the world's meanest monkeys,
and we'll cross the Siberian wilderness to find out how
wolves help one another out. Closer to home, we'll meet
a twenty something who led a campaign to fight a
two hundred year old law that was harming our community.

Speaker 3 (02:57):
There is no guarantee we were going to be successful.
If anything, everybody told us all the reasons we would fail,
and yet we were.

Speaker 4 (03:04):
Willing to try anyways.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
And we'll talk to a CEO who's optimism about his
employees to a radical new business model.

Speaker 4 (03:11):
I have never seen anything like this. We're asking people
to do a month without pay. They did it out
of compassion for their fellow team members, and the feedback
we got all of a sudden, in this world where
everybody was falling apart, they felt safe.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Just like my book, this new series will be full
of surprises. We'll hear what doctor Martin Luther King taught
America's psychologists and what people often get wrong about Darwin's
ideas of human nature. And we'll see study after study
showing that it's possible to find hope in one another
because most people are better than we realize.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
My assumption, my feeling, my hunch is that a lot
of us are actually looking for a way to disagree
and still be in relationships with each other.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Our new season on Finding Hope will launch on September ninth,
but Jimmielle's fabulous book Hope Forcinix is out now, so
you should grab yourself a copy where of you buy
your books.