0:01

I'm Dalia Lithwick and I'm host of

0:03

Amicus, Slates podcast about the law and

0:05

the US Supreme Court. We

0:08

are shifting into high gear coming

0:10

at you weekly with the context

0:12

you need to understand the rapidly

0:14

changing legal landscape. The

0:16

many trials of Donald J. Trump, judicial

0:19

ethics, arguments and opinions at

0:21

SCOTUS, we are tackling

0:23

the big legal news with clarity

0:25

and insight every single week. New

0:28

Amicus episodes every Saturday wherever

0:31

you listen. Politics

0:35

has never been stranger or more online,

0:38

which is why the politics team at Wired

0:40

is making a new show, Wired Politics Lab.

0:43

It's all about how to navigate the endless stream

0:45

of news and information and what to look out

0:47

for. Each week on the

0:49

show, we'll dig into far right

0:52

platforms, AI chatbots, influencer campaigns and

0:54

so much more. Wired

0:56

Politics Lab launches Thursday, April 11th. Follow

0:59

the show wherever you get your podcasts. What

1:09

could go right? I'm Zachary

1:12

Carabell, the founder of The Progress Network

1:14

joined as always by Emma Varvalukas, the

1:16

executive director of The Progress Network. And

1:19

this is our weekly progress report, which

1:22

is an adjunct to our longer

1:24

What Could Go Right interview podcast,

1:26

which you can also listen

1:28

to on whatever platform you are listening to

1:30

this, as well as signing

1:32

up for our weekly newsletter, What Could Go

1:35

Right, which is free. We're going

1:37

to look at some stories that aren't quite so poisonous, although

1:40

there are plethora of those as well, just not

1:42

ones that we often can

1:44

find, which is why we have

1:46

The Progress Report. That's why

1:49

we have The Progress Network. It's why we

1:51

have What Could Go Right. And

1:53

of course, it's why we

1:55

have Emma Varvalukas, who has

1:58

scoured the known universe. for

2:01

stories of things that are working,

2:04

or at least of people that are trying

2:06

to make things work. Okay,

2:08

today, Zachary, we are going to start

2:10

off with a little discussion about the

2:12

emotional state of the world. And in

2:14

fact, we can know about the emotional

2:16

state of the world because there are

2:19

places like Gallup that go

2:21

out and do annual surveys

2:23

about the world's emotions. So we're talking

2:25

146,000 interviews across 142 countries. All about,

2:27

yeah, if people are

2:34

feeling more positive emotions on

2:36

the regular or more negative

2:38

emotions. That's like a really

2:41

magnified version of Pixar's Inside

2:43

Out. I was actually thinking

2:45

that it's like a really magnified version of when you

2:47

go to the toilet in a public area and they

2:49

ask you to like rate your bathroom experience from like

2:51

the frowny face to the smiley face. Yeah. One

2:54

of the weird things in the world like, really? Yeah. Do

2:57

I have to do this? Do I have

2:59

to give you a face? Yeah. And like

3:01

in theory, everyone's just washed their hands, but

3:03

also like you just don't want to touch

3:06

the thing that's inside the toilet. But anyway,

3:08

the point is the Gallup, you know, if

3:10

we're talking about the toilet survey technique, they

3:12

have found that the world has recovered to

3:15

pre-pandemic levels of positivity. So

3:17

positivity, yeah, in their definition, they

3:19

measure people's daily experience of enjoyment,

3:21

learning or doing something new or

3:23

interesting, I think is one of

3:25

them. If you are well rested

3:27

was one of them. And now

3:29

I'm forgetting there's one more. And

3:32

then the negative emotions are like, did

3:34

you feel angry, sad, stressed, worried, kind

3:36

of run-of-the-mill negative stuff. So

3:39

there was a pretty big dip in

3:41

those positive daily experiences over the pandemic.

3:43

People under 30 actually recovered a year

3:45

before everyone else. But now everyone is

3:47

back to their pre-pandemic levels of positivity

3:49

and it's actually a world high. It's

3:52

not the first time that we've reached

3:54

a world high of positivity, but it

3:56

kind of seems to like that seems

3:58

to be the upper. limits

4:00

of people's positivity for the last 10

4:03

years, but we have returned. We

4:05

have returned. We are resilient. Which highlights

4:07

once again this sort of

4:10

profound multicultural, somewhat

4:13

head-scratching disconnect between

4:17

what people feel and think about

4:19

their own individual lives versus what

4:21

they feel and think about whatever

4:23

us collectively is. And so that

4:26

we've talked a whole bunch about lots

4:29

of people feeling pretty

4:31

good about their jobs, about their

4:33

careers, about their own individual finances,

4:35

but thinking that the economy is

4:37

just terrible or thinking pretty

4:40

favorably of their local school, but

4:42

thinking education is terrible or thinking

4:44

pretty favorably of their local elected

4:47

officials, but thinking that

4:49

Congress or parliament or you

4:52

name the collective body is terrible and

4:54

corrupt and awful. And

4:56

that seems to be more than just an

4:58

American phenomenon. And we

5:00

have posited lots of theories about

5:02

that. How is it that people

5:05

can be feeling relatively sanguine about

5:07

their own lives and incredibly negative

5:09

about all of our lives collectively?

5:12

Some of that's because the world

5:14

in which we function information-wise is

5:17

overpopulated by stories of

5:19

everything going wrong and how

5:21

messed up all the systems are and less

5:23

populated by sort of individual

5:26

stories of things going well. But be

5:29

that as it may, that's just yet

5:31

another indication of there

5:33

are a lot of individual humans who

5:35

will aver that they are doing

5:38

okay. I mean, not like everything's fine

5:40

and great. A human life

5:42

without struggle is rarely a lived life,

5:44

certainly not an introspective one. But

5:47

it does point out this

5:49

continual kind of odd moment

5:51

we're living in. Yeah, that's what was so

5:53

striking to me looking at these figures is

5:55

that the world is just from a data

5:57

point of this is way more

5:59

positive. Ryan

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Wireless. islands

12:00

survival than we have had in the past.

12:03

Wow. That's a counterintuitive observation,

12:05

right? That somehow these islands have their

12:08

own, I don't know, boy in ecosystem.

12:10

That's probably totally wrong cause they don't

12:12

float on the water. So that's a

12:14

ridiculous thing to say, but the point

12:16

being that there is some adjustment

12:19

to, to sea levels. Yes. As

12:21

you say, within reason, if they got

12:23

inundated, if sea levels suddenly rose 10

12:25

feet in a matter of

12:27

months, it probably would all

12:30

bets will be off. But then all bets would be

12:32

off globally. We'd all be screwed. So that's a, another

12:34

kind of hypothetical that may not be the most useful.

12:37

But that's interesting that there's, you

12:40

know, more, some ecosystem adjustment than we

12:42

were aware of. And I look at

12:44

it, it does highlight that while

12:46

there's a lot that we know about how the

12:49

planet works, there's also a lot that we don't

12:51

know about how the planet works. And this, I

12:53

think is just one more iteration

12:55

thereof of, we're still discovering a

12:57

lot about what's the ability of

12:59

the planet to adjust to climate

13:02

change over time, obviously, let alone

13:04

humans to adjust to that. So

13:07

this is one of these like, huh, we

13:09

may be more resilient than we

13:11

think we are. Yeah. And like new space

13:13

for beaches. Exactly. So

13:16

is that, And that kind of removes the

13:18

whole tourism statement that some of these islands

13:20

have been flirting with, like, see them now

13:23

or else, or, you know, visit

13:25

this year because you may not be able to. Well,

13:28

like I still do it for parts of the island, right?

13:30

Like visit the north side. Go

13:32

to the north side now before it's underwater. Marshall

13:36

Islands Tourism Board. Right.

13:39

Not, not, not as much as an

13:41

enticing message, but I'm sure

13:43

they'll adjust. So

13:46

that is it for today. Thank you,

13:48

Emma, for sifting through. We will take

13:50

a 4th of July break,

13:54

which obviously highlights the American-centric aspect of

13:56

the podcast. Emma's in Greece, but she

13:58

will also be taken. a 4th of

14:00

July break just cuz and

14:02

we will be back in mid-July.