How to be less cynical (w/ Jamil Zaki)

0:00Banking with Capital One helps you keep more money in your wallet with no fees or minimums on checking accounts and no overdraft fees. Just ask the Capital One Bank Guy. It's pretty much all he talks about, in a good way. He'd also tell you that this podcast is his favorite podcast, too. Ah, really? Thanks, Capital One Bank Guy. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com slash bank. Capital One and a member FDIC. The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving. Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast.

0:40No bulky overhead. No rigid long-term contracts. Just the right expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork. Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com. Post a job for free and get started today. I'm no tech genius, but I knew if I wanted my business to crush it, I needed a website now. Thankfully, Bluehost made it easy. I customized, optimized, and monetized everything exactly how I wanted with AI. In minutes, my site was up. I couldn't believe it. The search engine tools even helped me get more site visitors. Whatever your passion project is, you can set it up with Bluehost.

1:19With their 30-day money-back guarantee, what have you got to lose? Head to Bluehost.com to start now.

1:31You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. I've spent almost all of my life living in big cities. And something that I've noticed is that there's this idea out there that the people who live in big cities are cruel or callous. That if you live in a big metropolis, people don't care about each other. But that has not been my experience, not at all. I mean, sure, people are gruff and they're often in a rush, but I am always struck by how excited people are to help out a stranger. In every place that I have ever lived, if you look lost, someone is going to come up to you and ask if they can give you directions.

2:06If you're a parent at the bottom of a staircase with a big stroller, some random person is going to pick up the front end of that stroller and help you get it up the stairs. And if you fall down, someone's going to laugh at you, but someone else is going to check to make sure that you're okay. And now for whatever reason, when I see those moments of kindness, I often think about them as exceptions to the rule, right? Like, oh, that's nice that there's one nice person out there who helped that old lady across the street rather than just pushing her down into traffic and stealing her purse like most people.

2:32But the thing is, that's actually not what most people would do. Compassion, empathy, optimism, and faith in our fellow humans, those are not as fleetingly rare as it might appear from just watching the news. Today's guest, Jameel Zaki, is a psychologist who studies empathy. And Jameel believes that while we might think empathy is in danger of disappearing completely from our world, that does not have to be the case. Here's a clip from his TED Talk where he explains that many of us don't fully understand how it is that empathy works. For centuries, philosophers and scientists have told us it's a trait inherited through our genes, hardwired into our brain, something that you either have or don't have.

3:12I call this the Roddenberry hypothesis because Gene Roddenberry enshrined it into the characters of the greatest television show of all time, Star Trek The Next Generation. No, that is not up for debate. Thank you. I'm glad to have so many fellow Trekkies here. On one side, we have the USS Enterprise's ship's counselor, Deanna Troy, known throughout the galaxy for her empathy. She catches other people's feelings and can read their mind. On the other side, we have the android Data, who doesn't feel emotions himself and can't tell what other people are feeling either. According to conventional wisdom, each of us has a level of empathy somewhere between these two.

3:55And like our adult height, we're stuck there for life. So that means if empathy is too hard for you, there's nothing you can do to overcome your limits. And if our collective empathy is dwindling, we can't do anything about that either. This is all pretty fatalistic. Thankfully, it's also wrong. Why is that wrong? And why is there cause to be hopeful? We're going to have Jamil's answers to those questions and many more in just a moment. But first, a quick break.

4:32This episode is brought to you by Monarch Money. Before trying Monarch Money, I had a vague sense of my finances, but couldn't tell you exactly what was going on in all of my different accounts. So when I actually connected with Monarch, I discovered some pretty surprising stuff. Turns out I wasn't being as strategic with my money as I could be. What really impressed me about Monarch is how it brings your entire financial picture together in one clean interface. No more juggling multiple apps or digging through different websites just to see where you stand. Monarch is user-friendly and, best of all, completely ad-free.

5:05Monarch even makes it easy for my husband and I to share information. Monarch is built for busy people who want to stay on top of their finances without the headache. The Wall Street Journal named it the best budgeting app of 2025, and honestly, I can see why. Don't let financial opportunities slip through the cracks. Use code HUMAN at monarchmoney.com in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50 % off your first year at monarchmoney.com with code HUMAN.

5:37If you love to travel, Capital One has a rewards credit card that's perfect for you. With the Capital One Venture X card, you earn unlimited double miles on everything you buy. Plus, you get premium benefits at a collection of luxury hotels when you book on Capital One travel. And with VentureX, you get access to over 1 ,000 airport lounges worldwide. Open up a world of travel possibilities with a Capital One VentureX card. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. Lounge access is subject to change. See CapitalOne.com for details. The market's uncertain. Revenue's tight and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving.

6:15Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead. No rigid long-term contracts. Just the right expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork. Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com. Post a job for free and get started today.

6:41Today, we're talking about empathy and optimism with Jamil Zaki. Hello, I'm Jamil Zaki. I'm a professor of psychology at Stanford University and author of the book Hope for Cynics. You have focused a lot of your research on empathy and the fact that empathy is a skill that we can build upon. So I think that for many people, especially people who haven't read your book or heard your TED talk, that is a counterintuitive idea. Many of us think of empathy as an innate quality. Tell me a little bit more about that and why you believe that it is a skill. I think a lot of us think that humanity and people in general change very little, at least in terms of who we fundamentally are.

7:22Sure, we might get taller or shorter, we might gain skills, might get better at chess, worse at Scrabble over time. But we don't think that we change at a fundamental level. And in fact, I would say that one of the central messages of all psychology and neuroscience over the last 50 to 100 years is that change is all we do. And that we change at every level, in essence, that psychologists can measure. Our brains change over the course of our lives, not just in response to injuries, but in response to our choices and habits. Our levels of intelligence can change over time. Our personalities can change, and we can change them on purpose.

8:04So yes, I think you're right that the idea of empathy changing, the ability to care, the idea that we might get better or worse at that feels counterintuitive. But I think that's because, in general, we feel more fixed than we really are. And I don't want to blame people for that. We change super slowly, so it's easy to forget that change is happening at all. But when you look more closely, including at the data on empathy, that change is the definition, not the exception. I feel like, you know, as you said, we have this idea of ourselves where we think we're so much more stable. And yet sometimes people are better at seeing it in the past.

8:42Like if you ask, are you the same as you were 20 years ago or 10 years ago? Most people are like, well, I think I've grown and improved a little bit since then. Or maybe you've gotten worse since then. But either way, you don't think you're the exact same. but we tend to not have that same idea going forward. There's a name for this in psychology. It's the end of history illusion. The idea that we have been changing, but we're done. History, when it comes to ourselves and our personal development, is over. So my friend Dan Gilbert surveyed lots of people between, I think, the ages of 17 and 70.

9:15And he asked them, how much do you think you've changed in terms of your personality, your preferences, and your values over the last 10 years? And how much do you think you will change in the next 10 years. And people felt like they were very much different than they had been. 30-year-olds in Dan's study said, my goodness, my 20-year-old self makes me cringe all the time. I'm nothing like him. But they thought, well, but you know what? I'm done. I'm done changing. And when I'm 40, I'll be similar to how I am now. 40-year-olds beg to differ. They think they're completely different than they were at 30, but that they have finished changing and they'll be the same when they're 50.

9:54And I think that this idea that we're fixed is comforting. We want to know who we are. We want to have a foundation that we can rest on. And it can be destabilizing to realize that actually we're a work in progress. But I also think it can be really empowering, right? The ship of your life is sailing. There's no brakes, but you have the rudder in your control. You know, it feels like what we've already discussed just in the first couple of minutes here, it's psychology, but it's also related to the work that you do at the social neuroscience lab, right? I guess this would seem to me to fall into the realm of what it means to have a social idea of neuroscience.

10:32Absolutely. The notion is that our brains aren't just changing because we study math or learn guitar. They're changing in community. And actually, the communities that we choose to live in or the ones that we don't choose to live in but live in anyways, shape us at a physiological level into the people who we become. That's why it's so important to, when we can, choose our friends and choose our loved ones, because that's the same as choosing your future self. One of the things I really appreciate about you in your work, and especially in translating your academic work into public-facing materials, is you come up with these concepts that are very backed by research studies, by actual peer-reviewed papers, but they also have the terminology that I think any of us can get and understand.

11:23And so one of the terms that you've used is an empathy gym. And that's the idea that if empathy is something that's a skill that we can grow and strengthen, that there are ways that we can go to work that muscle out. So what are some of the empathy gyms that people listening can go to, and why would they want to do that? So let me take the second part of your question first. Why should we want to grow our empathy? A lot of people don't take that as a given. I don't think that we need to. The evidence is really clear. Empathic individuals tend to benefit themselves and the people around them in all sorts of ways.

11:58Empathic people tend to be happier, less stressed. They report lower levels of depression and loneliness. They excel in their work if their work involves people, which at least as of now, AI notwithstanding, that's most jobs. And in general, empathy helps us navigate the world. We are fundamentally social creatures. So feeling connected and being connected are one of the things that help us flourish. Empathy also helps the people around us. Empathic teachers benefit their students, empathic bosses, their employees, empathic spouses, their partners. so it's really something that we can invest in that's for us and for others.

12:39Now that's the why to the how there's a lot of different strategies we can use so one of the most famous and best studied is also one of the oldest there are meditation techniques for instance compassion meditation that can build our empathy while changing our brains in the process immersing ourselves in storytelling like novels and plays builds our empathy not just for fictional characters but for real people. And then connecting, especially with people who are different from ourselves, can broaden our empathy more efficiently than almost anything else. Your first book was about empathy. It was about building empathy.

13:18It was the war for kindness, building empathy in a fractured world. You have this new book, Hope for Cynics, The Surprising Science of Human Goodness. And one of the ideas that you talk about in Hope for cynics is this concept of hopeful skepticism. There's a counterintuitive nature to just even that phrase. So tell us, what is hopeful skepticism? Yeah, so hopeful skepticism has two pieces to it. The first is a skeptical mindset. So skepticism and cynicism are often confused with one another, but they're really different. Cynicism is the blanket assumption that most people are greedy, dishonest, and untrustworthy.

13:55And it leads to all sorts of negative consequences we can talk about later. Skepticism is not a particular belief about people. Rather, it's this scientific mindset where you want to gather data. You don't want to rest on your assumptions. You want to learn about the world and about people. It's, in essence, a curious way of approaching people. The hopeful piece is injecting into that data-driven, open-minded view of the world, the understanding that many of us have an overly negative default setting, that when we think about people, we often don't give them the benefit of the doubt, and we often underestimate them.

14:37So hopeful skepticism is saying, well, rather than assuming anything, I want to learn about people, but I want to start with the stipulation that probably people are better than I think in a bunch of different ways. And I want to take that knowledge with me as I try to learn about them. You're preaching to the converted here in the idea that like the idea of hope, the idea of empathy, those are things that I really care about. You don't end up on a show about being a better human unless you believe that there is some fundamental chance of becoming a better human and other people being it. It would be hilarious if every episode of the show was just like, not going to work.

15:11Sorry, don't believe you. But I think that this is where I see a really clear and interesting link between the books is that like, we have to have empathy for other people and have empathy for ourselves if we are going to believe that things can get better. But I think there's also this piece to kind of the argument against your books and not the good argument, but like the dark side of that you're fighting against, which is, I think that there's a real like cultural idea that smarter people are less hopeful and that smarter people are less empathetic because they're like, look, everyone, if you really get it, you know, everyone's trying to screw everyone else.

15:51And if you really get it, you got to take what you can while you're here, because it's going to get worse. You don't get accused of being naive or being an innocent, little gullible sap when you say that. Obviously, you are an extremely educated, successful professor. You have a PhD. You're not some ignorant, naive fool. And yet there's this cultural idea that being hopeful, that being empathetic, that those are associated with cluelessness. So what do you think about why that is and how do we fight that? Well, first of all, the enemy is right here with us, right? So I feel these doubts all the time.

16:28I certainly hear them from other people when I talk about hope and increasing our trust. People say, gosh, what are you, some type of rube or chump? You're just naive and gullible. And I feel that way myself sometimes. It's really easy to get into this defensive mode and to feel as though the only smart thing to do is to have our guard up all the time and to not trust people. But when we can, I think it's important to look at the evidence, right? The cultural glamorizing of cynicism, as you're really sharply describing, has its own name in psychology. It's called the cynical genius illusion, because it turns out that most people hold the exact stereotype we've been talking about.

17:07If you ask people who's smarter, cynics or non-cynics, about 70 % will say cynics are smarter than non-cynics. If you ask who's socially smarter, for instance, who would be better at picking out liars from truth tellers, 85 % of people think cynics will be better lie detectors. In other words, most people put their faith in people who don't put faith in people. But the thing is, it's an illusion for a reason. Most people are wrong. It turns out that in study after study, cynics do less well than non-cynics on cognitive tests, on math tests, on analytical reasoning. If you assume everybody's on the take, you stop really paying attention to the clues that you need to pick out who's telling the truth and who isn't.

17:55So you're right. We have this cultural sense that, well, cynicism obviously is the smart way of approaching life. I've had that sense inside myself. But if you look at the data, the opposite is true. Cynicism is an assumption about people masquerading as wisdom. There's also certainly hope can be a collective action. And you talk about how there's collective empathy. One of the reasons why I think it sometimes can feel like the sophisticated answer for me is because it's so easy for one person to puncture that. If one person just acts like an absolute unmitigated jerk, it really changes the level of empathy in the whole group.

18:40All of a sudden people are like, well, do I really want to help everyone else here? This person is just the worst. Even if there's 20 people who are all like, we're going to make a difference. If one person says, actually, none of this is going to matter because blank, it's hard to fight that. So what can I do when I'm in those places where it feels like the 20 get outnumbered by the one? I have this experience all the time. And our minds guide us to pay more attention to threats than to opportunities, pay more attention to harm than to helping. And you can see why that would make sense almost from an evolutionary perspective.

19:16We need to protect ourselves. So looking out for warnings, paying lots of attention to that one person who's really mean or really hopeless seems like the smart and safe thing to do. But oftentimes that gets us a hugely backwards sense of who's actually in our group. The loudest people are often the ones with the most negative opinions. You know, the people giving life one star reviews on Yelp. It's really easy to pay attention to them. But a great way to take a more even-handed approach is to, again, apply skepticism to our cynical reasoning. I found, my lab and I found that at Stanford, for instance, students systematically underestimated how empathic their peers were.

20:02They didn't realize how caring all the people around them were. And when they didn't realize that, they actually were less likely to open up, for instance, to a roommate or friend when they were going through a struggle and more likely to end up lonely. We ended up trying to help just by presenting students with real data. We showed them what their peers actually felt. We said 95 % of your peers said they like helping people who are struggling. More than 90 % said they want to connect with new people at Stanford. And simply showing people the data, simply showing them the numbers, helped them realize that they could trust the people around them.

20:38Now, I'm not suggesting we all survey every group that we're in. And that might make us less popular at parties. But I think it's important to, when we can, not over-rotate, not over-anchor on that one negative person. And ask ourselves, do an internal audit. Who else is around me? What do I know about how they feel? And oftentimes, we can be really pleasantly surprised that most people in our environment want compassion, care, and connection. And most people want hope as well. Okay, we're going to take a quick break, but then we will be right back.

21:24Ready to order? Yes. We're earning unlimited 3 % cash back on dining and entertainment with a Capital One Saver card. So, let's just get one of everything. Everything? Fire everything! The Capital One Saver card is at table 27 and they're earning unlimited 3 % cash back. Yes, Chef! This is so nice. Had a feeling you'd want 3 % cash back on dessert. Oh, tiramisu. Earn unlimited 3 % cash back on dining and entertainment with the Capital One Saver Card. Capital One, what's in your wallet? Terms apply. See CapitalOne.com for details. The market's uncertain. Revenue's tied and hiring on hold. That's why results-driven companies are using Upwork to keep work moving.

22:02Go to Upwork.com today and start hiring proven freelance talent fast. No bulky overhead. No rigid long-term contracts. Just the right expert right when you need them. Work smarter and faster with Upwork. Go to Upwork.com now and find your freelance expert. That's U-P-W-O-R-K dot com. Post a job for free and get started today. I'm no tech genius, but I knew if I wanted my business to crush it, I needed a website now. Thankfully, Bluehost made it easy. I customized, optimized, and monetized everything exactly how I wanted with AI. In minutes, my site was up. I couldn't believe it. The search engine tools even helped me get more site visitors.

22:43Whatever your passion project is, you can set it up with Bluehost. With their 30-day money-back guarantee, what have you got to lose? Head to bluehost.com to start now.

22:56And we are back. Looking at the data and understanding accurately how other people feel is one way to build empathy and to build hope. What are other practices that people listening can put into place in their lives? I present myself, I think of myself as a recovering cynic. So I use all of these strategies all the time. When I try to get myself out of that hole, there are three things that I do. I try to think differently. I try to act differently. And I try to share differently. Thinking differently means adopting this hopeful, skeptical mindset that we've been talking about. It means being open to evidence, auditing my own inner life, right?

23:32If I find myself coming to the worst conclusions about people, especially when I'm stressed and burnt out, it's so easy for me to think the worst about people, I try to just hit the pause on that inner chatter and challenge my thinking. I call it being skeptical of my cynicism. I say, wait a minute, in your mind right now, it's playing a tape that says that people don't care about each other, or we don't care about social issues, or everyone's out for themselves. What evidence do you have for that? How would you defend that if you had to present it as a real argument? And oftentimes, I realize I don't have very much evidence for my cynical assumptions.

24:10The second thing is to act differently by collecting new social data. There's a couple of ways of doing this. One is taking calculated leaps of faith on other people, choosing to trust, not just because it feels good, but to try to give other people a chance to show us who they are and to tell them, hey, I'm choosing to trust you because I believe in you. A second way of collecting more social data that I've tried, because I'm sort of a secret introvert. I sort of do a lot of public speaking, but actually I'm quite shy. So I'll just challenge myself to go and strike up conversations with strangers or deepen a conversation with an acquaintance, even when everything in my system is screaming not to because I think that the conversation will be awkward or terrible, because I know from the data that actually those conversations are better than we expect.

25:01And then the last piece is to share differently. So I try when I can, especially with my kids, to do what I call positive gossiping. That is not just talking about the worst things that people do, which is so tempting just to talk, you know, take a reality TV perspective on life and focus on all the people out there cheating and stealing, but rather to catch people doing good things and spread that information to talk about the good things that people are doing. All of these habits are meant to address and reverse the biases in our mind, the biases to pay attention to the worst and to assume the worst about the people in our lives and people in general.

25:42I love the idea of positive gossiping. And it feels, obviously, it's a great thing to do with kids. It also feels like a thing you could absolutely do with adults. It makes me think how nice it is when someone notices a thing that I've done and they tell other people about it. Like, oh, I noticed that you took our friend who is feeling sick. You brought them some food. That's so nice for you. I'm like catching someone doing something kind or good and then spreading the word about it. And just to add a little bit to it, expressing gratitude and saying what we're thankful for in other people's behavior to them is something that we often don't do.

26:16We often assume that third grade teacher who had a really positive impact on us just knows it. we don't have to tell them or that the friend who listened to us during a hard time, they must already know how positive an impact they had. So I don't have to tell them. We further think it might be awkward to just go up to somebody and say, hey, you made a big difference in my life. Thank you. And it turns out we're dead wrong when we thank people for things, when we point out the positive things that they're doing. As you're talking about with this example, it has a huge effect on those individuals who have already acted kindly.

26:50It reinforces them. It strengthens your connections as well. So I think that positive gossip can feel kind of hokey. It can feel a little bit saccharine. And we fear that, oh, maybe it's going to be awkward to do this. It's actually really wonderful for everyone involved much more than we realize. When I was teaching in an elementary school, one of the master teachers who had been there for a really long time and really made such an obvious impact on kids' lives. One of the tricks that she told the rest of us at a professional development day was when you have negative feedback or when something has gone wrong, make that a phone call or an in-person conversation with the parents.

27:29But when you have positive feedback, when something has gone right, when they've done something amazing, write that down in a letter and send that home, send a hard copy home because that can go up on the fridge. They can see that. That's what you want to have a physical piece of evidence for. I love that. Again, it speaks to the importance of just saying the good things. When bad things happen, we need to talk about them. It's an emergency. But when good things happen, it feels like a luxury to talk about them. I wish it didn't. I wish that we felt more of an imperative to do that. There's also a lot of discomfort that many people feel when being thanked or complimented.

28:05So how can we allow people to thank us? So first of all, that discomfort might live more in our mind as the thanker than it does in the actual mind of the thankee. But if you feel worried about making someone uncomfortable, write it down. That way somebody can receive it in their own time and in their own way. The important thing is that they know that they've made a difference for you. I wonder if some piece of this is also that there are some kind of broken cultural scripts or things that we see in movies and TV where when someone says something really heartfelt or kind to us, we feel like we're supposed to be performing.

28:44Am I performing this the right way or am I looking pompous or how is my face when they're saying something really kind instead of actually letting it in? And so if you get it in a way where you can process it over a longer period of time, it can sink in. And also, I know that I felt even when someone has said something really kind to me, I felt so awkward in the moment sometimes. But then later on, I've gone home and thought about it and said, like, wow, that was really nice. I'm so glad they said that to me, even though in the moment I was like, oh, no, I'm up. You know, truly had a verbal speaking a non-language to them.

29:15I wouldn't let that stop us from expressing what people mean to us. I think it's always a good idea, but it speaks to how we might want to do it. Do you think that if it was more the cultural norm to share gratitude and to be upfront about the positive impact people have had on us? So if you receive that feedback more often, you think you would feel less awkward about it? I know that me personally, structure allows me to take in and appreciate both constructive and positive feedback much better. Talking about like some of those corny or, you know, hokey things like my wife and I, we make time every week to say like, hey, here's something that I really appreciate that you're doing.

29:54And here's something that we should maybe like think about working on differently. And I am a person where if we didn't have this kind of what I still consider to be this like cringeworthy, like little family, we call it a check in. If we didn't have that, there's no way that I would bring up the hard parts. And I don't think I would hear the positive parts as deeply. See, I love that. And I think that structure is a way to be intentional about what we share and also the way that we think about our relationships and our lives, right? I mean, cynicism, I think of it as sort of a quicksand. You know, if you don't do anything, it's going to pull you in further, right?

30:30If you don't have structured time to share positive thoughts and also constructive thoughts, then a lot of us, I'll just speak for myself, get pulled towards the negative. Again, it sort of grabs our attention and it feels more urgent. So fighting that tendency is a matter of placing structures in our lives and in our minds to move us out of that steadily, to fight those default assumptions in whatever way we can. So this is a thing that I want to dive deeper into. I feel like I can find a lot of evidence that the world is really bad. A lot of evidence. There is no shortage. If I open a newspaper or I watch the news or I go on social media, anywhere I go, I am finding lots of evidence that the world is a cruel, brutal, violent place, and that people do not care for each other and do terrible things to each other.

31:26So that is a real struggle for me when I think about fighting cynicism. I wonder, is the looking for evidence more the seeing in your own personal life versus doing the research online or being informed about how the world works? I do too. I experience this all the time. And again, I in no way in talking about fighting cynicism mean to tell us to paper over or ignore real and massive problems throughout the world. I think that there are so many. It can be overwhelming. It's also important to realize, though, that when we tune in to the news or go online, we're seeing a particular slice of events on Earth, right?

32:12We are being fed really systematically information that is negatively skewed. There's something that psychologists and communication theorists call mean world syndrome. This is the idea that the more that people watch the news, and I guess now the more they spend time online reading about the news, the worse they think people are. the more that they feel like they're in danger. And that's maybe fine if truly what we're reading is accurate. But it turns out that the more that people read the news, the wronger they become about a bunch of different things. I'll give you just one example. From 1990 to around 2020, there were 27 national polls where Americans were asked, is violent crime getting worse or better, or is it the same as it was a year ago?

32:58In 25 out of those 27 polls, Americans said that violent crime was getting worse. So the picture that we're painting is of a nation that is just steadily turning into like Gotham City from Batman or something. You know, it's just as bad as it could be. Over that same 30-year span, FBI statistics show that violent crime in the U.S. decreased by 50%. And so there are ways in which you can be right that there are enormous problems. but the news isn't showing us the millions or billions of people who are working towards a better world, who are treating people well, who want things that we want as well, whether those are things like better policies for the climate or other positive changes, right?

33:42So I think, one, the problems are real, but two, it doesn't help when we're only focused on those problems and not given any evidence about the real solutions that people are pursuing as well. In both your books, you blend storytelling and science. And we've talked about some of the concepts from neuroscience and psychology and some of the research that you've done. I'd love to also have you share some of the stories that you find compelling, maybe around a person who found hope or was able to develop hope in this way that you talk about, this optimistic skepticism, this sort of hopeful skepticism.

34:20What's an example of someone who made a powerful change? The protagonist of my new book is my late friend and colleague, Emile Bruneau. Emile was a peace neuroscientist, which I didn't know was a thing before I met him 12, 14 years ago, my goodness. He was brilliant. He studied how we might use tools from science to diagnose why people hate one another and to develop interventions to stop them, to help them build compassion across lines of difference and conflict. His work was beautiful, but his outlook on life was even more powerful. He really saw the best in people. And when I met him, I thought, maybe this guy is really naive.

35:04I mean, his positivity was so intense. I thought, maybe this guy is sheltered, or maybe he just hasn't really lived. Maybe he hasn't been through any adversity. It turned out I couldn't have been more wrong. when Emil was born, his mother developed severe schizophrenia and basically couldn't raise him. And so he had this extremely difficult childhood. He really believed in his mother and his mother was very kind to him, but she struggled so much. And he saw how through her struggles, she still found ways to be there for him in the ways that she could. And the way that he put it is that his mother walked through darkness and spread light.

35:43And he made a choice as a child, as a teenager, to do the same thing, to despite the many hardships that he went through, to be hopeful. He chose hope in a defiant way, not in a naive way. And later in his life, about six years ago, he was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer and died far too young with a young family. I mean, his life ended in a tragic way. And yet even then he refused to give in to hopelessness. I remember talking with him and he ended up almost counseling me through the news about his illness. He said, you know, we all die, you know, but most people don't know how long they have.

36:26And he lived the rest of his life, even through his cancer with this profound. And I remember asking him, how do you do it? What should we do with your wisdom? And he said, yeah, I know I have this positive outlook. I know that not everybody feels this way. I wish that before I died, I could squeeze that outlook out of myself like tube coming out of a toothpaste and spread it so other people could use it if they want to. And I tell his story in the book just as a very small way of trying to advance his mission in that regard. Certainly, when we think about cynicism and a lack of optimism, politics right now and political division is a place where it's really hard for many people to see the optimism.

37:16So what's your outlook on the current social and political climate? First, let me say, I don't think that hope or empathy will fix the real structural problems that we're facing. I mean, the problem in the US isn't merely that we disagree. It's that there are real political changes and threats that are profound. And so I'm in no way saying, hey, if we feel better, everything's going to get better. That said, I think that one thing that stands in the way of making progress together as a culture is the cynicism that has pervaded our politics. And that's in a number of ways, but let me just share one.

37:56Across disagreement, we have so many cynical and inaccurate beliefs. So one thing that I try to do, and again, I struggle with this mightily myself, is to remember that when I think about a person I disagree with, I'm probably wrong. First of all, media outlets are probably giving me a picture of that person that is very wrong and specifically makes them scarier and more extreme than they really are. And so with that knowledge, I try when I can to look up, what do people I disagree with really think on a bunch of issues? It turns out that there's an enormous amount of common ground in the US, way more than we realize.

38:35And we're almost, I think, by the media being shuttled away from realizing that, right? I think we're almost taught to ignore any common ground and focus on our most toxic divisions. But I try to remember that actually that's leading us to be wrong about each other. And actually, if you look at the data, we do have more in common than we realize. That doesn't fix anything I know, but maybe it opens a door to finding those common values and connecting further, even in this incredibly toxic environment that we're in. I think that cynicism is such a sad state of affairs because it really hurts us, our relationships and our communities.

39:14But on the other side of that is some really good news, which is that when we start paying more attention, pleasant surprises are everywhere, especially in the people around us. It's not a coincidence that talking to you has made me feel more hopeful and less cynical about the future. The rest of us have to do the things that will improve the world. We have to have hope. We have to have empathy because the alternative is not tolerable. It's not livable. Yes. I'm not telling us to be optimistic. Optimism is the assumption that things are going to be great. Hope is different. Hope is the idea that things could improve and the empowered notion that we can play some role, even a small role, in pushing that improvement along.

39:58When we conclude things will certainly be awful, as you said, we almost guarantee that they will get worse. And I think it's our job as people on this planet to not give in that easily and to fight for what we believe in together. Thank you so much, Jamil Zaki. It has been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. I cannot recommend more highly that people buy both of your books and practice the ideas that you have talked about here. I really appreciate you making the time to be on the show. Thanks so much, Chris. This has been truly delightful.

40:31That is it for this episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Jamil Zaki. His new book is called Hope for Cynics. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and other projects at chrisduffycomedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is brought to you on the TED side by a group of hopeful cynics that includes Daniela Balarezzo, Ban Ban Chang, Chloe Shasha Brooks, Lainey Lott, Antonia Leigh, and Joseph Debrine. This episode was fact-checked empathically by Julia Dickerson and Mateus Salas. On the PRX side, we have got a team winning the war for kindness while fighting the battle of booking guests.

41:07That's Morgan Flannery, Norgil, Maggie Gorville, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. And of course, thanks to you for listening to our show. This would not be possible without you. If you are listening on Apple, please leave us a five star rating and review that is the biggest way that we get out to new listeners send this episode to someone who you think would enjoy it share it with them send them an email or a text or just grab them in person and force headphones into their ears and make them listen to our show i probably don't do that but one of the other ways we will be back next week with even more how to be a better human thanks again for listening and take care

42:06Thank you. slash bank. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC.