
Good Friday good news: speed friending, fire fungi, and the science of sleep
This week starts with casino Easter eggs and a prom-posal, because apparently Good Friday is full of surprises. Then Arielle and Karissa get into the actual news: a teenager built a working microplast...
3 Apr 19min

Touching the Veiled Christ, urban coyotes, and the truth about your allergies
Arielle and Karissa are back this week, and the stories span everything from marble sculptures in Naples to coyote dens in American cities. A museum in Naples opened its barriers so blind visitors cou...
27 Mar 20min

From psilocybin to ocean robots: 10 solutions you'll actually want to hear about
This week, Arielle and Karissa cover a tiny African island paying locals to protect its rainforest, the lion DNA case that just sent two poachers to prison, and new research on music, overthinking, an...
20 Mar 21min

Golden frogs are back, bacteria are eating cancer, and cherry blossom season is almost here
Spring is in the air, and so is this week's roundup of solutions, breakthroughs, and good news worth sharing. Arielle and Karissa are back together after last week's Sambhali Trust guest interview, an...
13 Mar 14min

(Guest Interview) From 18 Women to 80,000: How Sambhali Trust is Empowering Girls in India | International Women's Day 2026
This episode is dedicated to Badan Kanwar. In the early 1990s, a woman named Badan Kanwar was widowed in Rajasthan, India. Her world shrank the way it does for widows there — she lost status, voice, a...
6 Mar 48min

New Year, New Us: The Optimist Daily Weekly Roundup goes bigger with 10 solutions
It's our first episode of the year! And the Optimist Daily Weekly Roundup is officially refreshed. Karissa and Arielle kick off the new format (hello, "tasting menu" of all ten weekly solutions), expl...
27 Feb 18min

Holiday gifts for a loved one with cancer + a powerful Miwuk land-back victory near Yosemite
This week, Arielle and Karissa dive into two very different but deeply connected stories about what it means to truly support healing. First, we unpack new research on what people going through cancer...
19 Des 202521min

Should kids be banned from social media? Inside Australia's bold online safety experiment
Australia just became the first country to ban social media accounts for kids under 16... but will it actually keep them safer online? In this episode, Arielle and Karissa unpack the data that pushed ...
12 Des 202524min




















