How to Be Hopeful: Caitlin Moran and New Scientist Look to the Future
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
So at new scientists, we're relentlessly optimistic. We're always looking for solutions to the world's problems. But we're not immune to anxiety or despair. Which is why we're very excited to see Catelyn Moran's new book, How to Be Hopeful. Kathleen joins us today for a special episode, How to Be Hopeful with Science. Welcome, Catelyn. Yeah.
Well I've invited myself on here like some kind of cuckoo in the nest. I was like 'cause like when I was writing a book called How to Be Hopeful, often I find that the thing that makes me most hopeful is the new scientist. I've literally I'm fangirling to be in the room right now. I insisted on coming on here to talk about it. Subscriptions to the new scientist have been uh presents to all my friends. Whatever they say, they're anxious. I'm always like, I hear your pain, you obviously can talk about this. But also read this. This will help you. There's always something in there every week that just makes you go. Because we're very I mean I I write about this in the book, but when we talk about what the news is, we don't think about what the news means.
And almost always the news is bad news. You know, the the equivalent would be like if someone goes in and like shoots up or burns down a hospital and kills thirty-eight people in it. That's headline news across the world. But if the day before a surgeon in there saved the lives of 49 people, we will not hear about it. Yeah. It's that thing about you know, we do not hear the forest grow, but we hear uh the fall of the axe. So and I I can remember Nicholas Witcher in the nineteen eighties saying we shouldn't we should be doing fifteen to twenty percent of the daily news bulletins on hopeful things, legislations that have changed things, wars that have been solved, uh the increases in medicine and medical knowledge.
Um and he was laughed out of town at the time. And I can remember some of the bad boys of news like Jeremy Paxman just going, even if the news makes our listeners want to slit their veins, we should still be serving it to them. Yeah. But thirty years down the line we can see from the amount of uh fall off in audience numbers Audience members just don't want to hear bad relentless bad news anymore. So that's the thing I love about the new scientist. There is always good news in there. There's hopeful things and the quietest stories that are more like the forest growing, the story of progress that is happening, often isn't one simple s sort of one hit news story. It's a quiet story and when you follow these every week, this is genuinely what gives me hope in the world.
So we're gonna try and distill that into a mega episode today where we're gonna talk about eight recent developments in science that give us all hope. From New Scientists, this is the world, the universe, and us, I'm Dr. Penny Sarche. And
I'm Dr. Rowan Hooper.
Before we get to our first item, Catelyn, perhaps you could um set up the premise of your new book for us.
Yeah, so I mean, like almost everybody else, I've been incredibly anxious and despairing about the future. Or all the conversations all my friends are having. Everybody just, you know, the recurrent conversation we all have, these are particularly terrible times. Conversations about the future, which even when I was a child were hopeful. When you talked about the future, you were talking about things getting better. That's gone into reverse. We presume the future's gonna be worse. The statistics on the rise of anxiety and hopelessness are are truly terrifying, particularly in younger generations. So I I reached my apogee of hopelessness around about the time of my menopause. There's something about estrogen leaving your body which makes you feel completely bleak.
And the solution that I came up with at that time was that civilization was a busted flush. And I was going to do what the rich people did and make my apocalypse bunk hole somewhere in the countryside and get a polytunnel, have my own water source, and just seed from civilization and form my own. So I went as far as as putting a deposit on an isolated farmhouse in Wales where I could dig my own well.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–7:11
2
What is the premise of Caitlin Moran’s new book *How to Be Hopeful*?
7:11–13:51
3
How does the panel explain the rise of anxiety and why does it matter for hope?
13:51–19:39
4
Why is solar energy considered the biggest beacon of climate hope right now?
19:39–28:44
5
How are AI‑assisted drug discoveries like ‘protacs’ changing medicine?
28:44–39:30
6
What breakthroughs are enabling crops to produce their own fertilizer?
39:30–46:48
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from The World, the Universe and Us
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