Three countries to reach Mars' orbit by the end of this month
The pandemic has restrained life here on Earth, but it hasn’t stopped humans from pushing boundaries in space. In fact, spacecraft from the United Arab Emirates, China, and The United States are all scheduled to reach Mars this month after launching from Earth last summer. All three countries Read More...
New device may soon create water out of thin air in desert environments
There are more than 1.1 billion people worldwide who still lack access to clean drinking water, while about 2.7 billion are subject to water scarcity. Transporting clean and safe water to these places over long distances and hard-to-cross terrain represents a real logistical hurdle. Thanks to, a Read More...
7 empowering personal actions to combat climate anxiety
A few months ago we hosted a webinar on managing emotional inflammation, specifically in the context of climate anxiety. In a world where climate news can be overwhelming, if not downright depressing, it can be hard to find the motivation to pursue climate action. If you feel like your own Read More...
Future of work: Salesforce declares the end of the 9-to-5 workday
As many people have been asked to work from home during the pandemic to prevent the spread of the virus, a good number of companies have decided to make it a permanent thing and give their employees more flexibility to choose when and where they work from. Now, the computing company Salesforce is Read More...
We could soon use hills as batteries to store solar and wind energy
While solar and wind power are now the cheapest sources of energy across the world, energy storage remains one of the biggest hurdles preventing a full switch to renewables. This is because it’s still quite expensive to use batteries for storing power. A startup, however, has figured out a new Read More...
Thought Leader Series: Reflections on optimism from an Emissary
We use our Thought Leader Series as an opportunity to amplify the voices of some of the world’s most prominent thinkers and to evaluate more critically the complex topics we cover here at The Optimist Daily. Sometimes we are lucky enough to find great thought leaders within our own Emissary Read More...
Feeling like a fraud? Five strategies to manage the “imposter phenomenon"
Do you ever feel like you’re not good enough? You are not alone. In 1978, graduate students Suzanne Imes and Pauline Rose Clance realized that they had the same feelings of inadequacy and anxiety and that many other female students struggled with similar thoughts as well. Imes, a Read More...
Ikea is turning this Swedish city into a hub for green-minded projects
Last month, Ikea made it into the Optimist Daily after purchasing nearly 11,000 acres of forest in Georgia to protect it from being developed. Today, we bring you a whole new initiative from the furniture giant that involves turning the Swedish city of Helsingborg into a sustainable community. In Read More...
Forgotten conch shell in museum identified as oldest known wind instrument
Archaeologists discovered a treasure hiding in plain sight after a 17,000-year-old conch shell that lay forgotten for more than 80 years in a museum collection has been identified as the oldest known wind instrument of its type. During a recent inventory of items at the Muséum de Toulouse in Read More...
This electricity-free device can cool buildings in an eco-friendly way
Air conditioners are among the world’s hungriest energy consumers, and as the planet becomes warmer and the demand for cooling systems increases, the strain on the environment from air conditioners is only expected to grow. In a bid to find a way to passively cool our buildings, researchers at Read More...