Episode Description:

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, and quitting smoking. Oh, and the hummingbirds are on their way.

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Transcript:

Karissa 

Hey everyone, I’m Karissa. 

Arielle 

And I’m Arielle. And welcome to this week’s Optimist Daily weekly roundup. 

Karissa 

Yeah, excited to share all the good news that was on The Optimist Daily this week. Make sure to sign up for our free daily newsletter if you want these updates every day. 

Arielle 

Or you could also follow us on our socials. We are @OptimistDaily on everything except for X. There we are @OdeToOptimism. And since we’re new to this kind of iteration of the podcast, we would love it if you could comment, rate, subscribe, share. 

Karissa 

Yeah, we want to hear from you. Speaking of hearing from you, we want to say thank you to our Emissaries of the Optimist Daily and let you know that next week you should be getting an e-mail to fill out a form if you want to give a shout out to someone in your life who is making a difference. 

Arielle 

That’s for all of the Emissaries, but also if you wanted to sign up and become an Emissary and give us a little bit of a donation, then you would also get the shout out, which I think we’re just going to pick a few every week or, depending on how many we get, we’ll pick some and then read them out on the podcast so that you can… Yeah, shine some light on maybe a charity that you really appreciate or just someone in your life who is doing good for you and the community.  

Karissa 

Yeah.  

Arielle 

But how about we dive into the solutions that we had this week? 

Karissa 

All right, so I’m going to dive into the first one. It’s called How paying people to protect a rainforest is rewriting colonial history on a tiny African island. So, there’s a tiny island off the coast of West Africa that scientists call the African Galapagos. And I didn’t even know about this island before this article. But it’s so biodiverse that new species are still being found there. 

Arielle 

I was quite interested in seeing this article because I have actually been here. 

Karissa 

Really? How was it like to visit? 

Arielle 

It was amazing. It was in 2024, my partner and I went to Ghana, and then we went to this little island called Sao Tome. And actually, the article is about Principe, but the country itself is Sao Tome and Principe, these two islands. So, I guess technically I haven’t been to Principe, but these two islands are right next to each other and they have a lot of the same biodiversity and everything. It felt… every beach was a private beach. There are vegetables and fruit that grow there that don’t grow anywhere else. So as an adult, putting a vegetable in your mouth that looks like, say, a cucumber, and then you taste it and it tastes… like nothing you’ve ever tasted before was quite the experience. 

Karissa 

Yeah, that sounds amazing. It sounds like such a diverse island and a very cool experience. And unfortunately, this island was built on the cacao slave economy. But the industry collapsed after independence in 1975, and it’s left descendants of Angolan and Cabo Verdean laborers to subsist by forging and farming. The Faya Foundation has signed up nearly 3,000 islanders and 60 plus percent of adults to an environmental protection code in exchange for quarterly cash dividends to them. One thing to note is it’s funded by a billionaire. So, I mean, it’s kind of conditional, I guess, that was something that was mentioned in the article, to his funding. And so, it was Mark Shuttleworth, who is the South African billionaire who famously bought a ticket to space not too long ago. And he’s committed roughly about $110 million total to this project. So that’s an important thing to note. But these dividends have been going out and it’s kind of life-changing to the people there, so… 

Arielle 

It’s a really interesting method, like a conservation method. And I do like this idea that the locals who are there are helping to steward the land properly instead of like having this weird fenced off area that’s supposed to be protected, but then it’s really separate from all of humanity. 

Karissa 

Exactly. 

Arielle 

Yeah, that just seems like a waste to me. And that’s not really a natural way to live. We need to figure out how to live with nature, without harming it so much. So yeah, it’s a cool idea. We’ll see how it goes. 

Karissa 

This article talks about how one resident who used to have to just forage in the forest for survival is now being able to, you know, lead scientific expeditions to where new species are being discovered and really have like educational and financial benefits. So, check out the article if you want to learn some more, but it’s an interesting idea.  

So, another solution we had this week is How to find your personal aesthetic when the internet keeps showing you everyone else’s. Personal style is just always changing as you change, and this made me reflect on some of my personal aesthetic choices over the years. What are some highlights of your personal aesthetic, either now or throughout your lifetime? 

Arielle 

Ooh, highlights. I was not the most fashionable girl growing up, and then I lived a long time on a beach where, like, a bikini was a whole outfit. So, I had a very beachy look when I came to Amsterdam, and it was really here that I had to build a sense of personal style. I think lately, I’ve realized that I’m not really one to play with color, but I like bigger shapes and texture. So, I’m still in the process of developing this personal style, but like oversized, textured, but like black most of the time, if I’m being honest. That’s kind of what we’re doing right now. 

Karissa 

I love it. 

Arielle 

How about you? 

Karissa 

Well, I would say maybe it’s more like California cowboy coastal something. 

Arielle 

Yeah, like coastal grandmother. 

Karissa 

Yes, coastal grandmother, coastal cowboy, which was like kind of a trending buzzword, I feel like a couple of years ago. But I think I was on that way before it was trending because I mean, California has a beach and I live in a very like country-ish area. So, lots of cowboy influence being from the cowboy capital of the world is my town’s name. This quote that was in the article from Leandra Medine Cohen said, “You can’t know your style until you know yourself.” There was another quote that stood out in this article too from Lydia Okello, and she says, “It’s okay to gradually morph into the next iteration of your personal style, like an Animorphs cover,” which is funny. And true, but I mean, I mean, we’re always gradually evolving and different seasons and chapters of our lives may have different personal styles.  

So, this article has a lot of good pointers, such as, you know, finding reference points or making a mood board. So go check it out if you need some help on finding out your personal style.  

We had a solution called Why 24 minutes of music may help reduce anxiety according to research. And this stood out to me because I was like 24 minutes, why exactly 24 minutes, which we’ll get into in just a second.  

So, two studies in 2022 and 2025, both published in PLOS journals, looked at music and anxiety, and both found benefits from music paired with auditory beat stimulation, ABS. And ABS, or binaural beats, is where two slightly different sound frequencies are played in each ear, but the brain perceives a third rhythmic pulse during this, which can nudge brainwave activity toward calmer states, and it’s called brainwave entrainment.  

And these kinds of beats are found in music like lo-fi playlists. I don’t know if you’re into listening to that, Arielle, but I know when I was in college, I actually enjoyed listening to lo-fi study music. And that’s had a big moment recently, especially amongst the youngsters, I would say. 

Arielle 

The youngsters is such a funny way to put it (laughs), but yeah, I get what you mean. It makes you sound way older than you are. 

Karissa 

I know, exactly. Even though I used it… (laughs) 

Arielle 

Playlists like this that are super easily accessible and already categorized and organized —that’s a fairly new thing. 

Karissa 

Well, exactly, yeah, because things like Spotify or Apple Music weren’t around. I would say it is a newer trend, but it is helpful. 

Arielle 

Karissa, I’m just wondering why 24 minutes exactly? 

Karissa 

So, this article says that the brain needs a few minutes to settle in, kind of like the beginning of a meditation session where you’re just, you know, grounding and getting into your space. But after that adjustment, there’s enough time left for the calming effects to build. 36 minutes worked too in these studies. But 24 minutes is more practical for every day. 

Arielle 

All right. Well, I mean, I read this article and then I YouTubed this like ABS thing and it is really calming. I think I do recognize like the general sound of it in some study playlists that I’ve played for myself before. 

Karissa 

Yeah. 

Arielle 

Also, my dog is chewing. So, if any listeners can hear that, I’m sorry. 

Karissa 

It might just be her way to relieve anxiety. So, I can’t blame her. Okay, so I’m going to move on to another solution called Scotland legalizes water cremation, giving families a greener third option. And I won’t get too much into the process because with cremation and end of life, it can get a little morbid, I suppose. But just know that it is more environmentally friendly. And it’s worth noting that Archbishop Desmond Tutu chose water cremation as well. So, I kind of liked that it went with a theme, I guess, in the Optimist Daily that we’ve written about before of green burials.  

We had an article last year that ended up in our top of 2025 solutions that was about a mushroom casket that biodegrades. And that was pretty interesting. So, there’s a lot of cool, environmentally friendly ways to be buried or laid to rest that are out there.  

And on a different note, You can’t spot reduce belly fat, but you can lose it. Here’s what the science says works. Spot reduction is a myth. We can’t just target our belly or any other area on our body to lose weight from. We had to just do it all together. There’s two types of fat. Subcutaneous fat, which is the kind you can pinch, not particularly dangerous. So that’s, even though cosmetically we might be concerned about it, it’s not too much of a worry.  

But there’s visceral fat, which is deep inside the abdomen. And that’s highly inflammatory and medically significant because it could be associated with risks for cardiovascular disease, liver disease, insulin resistance, even dementia. There are some tips in this article on how to reduce belly fat. They had a couple of studies that were tracking men over 12 years, and it says how strength training is an effective method to reduce the waistline more so than any other exercise. And we kind of know that that’s been a huge discussion over the years in the health and fitness industry and strength training will help just overall your entire body and just a whole bunch of different kinds of exercises as well. Keeping a pretty good rotation of different types of exercise is the best. 

Arielle 

Yeah, and like, this article is not really supposed to be; we’re not like shaming any types of bodies. It’s just, I think it’s also… there’s a lot of medication-fueled weight loss talk going on right now. And this piece is more about what you can do to address that with just lifestyle changes. And of course, there’s a growing pushback against extreme diet culture. And this is a piece that’s more about none of that toxic mindset behind weight loss, but more about a holistic change. And it’s framing it around metabolic health rather than like just an aesthetic lens. 

Karissa 

Exactly. 

Arielle 

All right. Well, I guess I will take over from here. I was really excited to see this article because it kind of tickled my true crime addiction. I’m really, like, into true crime podcasts right now, which I know is kind of basic and cliché, but here I am.  

The article title is The DNA database built to protect lions just helped convict the people who killed one. A pair of poachers in Zimbabwe were just convicted using the lion’s own DNA, and that’s the first time this has ever happened anywhere in the world. The twist is that the evidence was collected years before the crime when conservationists were just doing routine field work. And that same database that tracked the lion’s movements ultimately helped put his killers in prison, which actually kind of mirrors a lot of cold cases that are getting solved today because there’s all this like 23andMe or like advancements in DNA. science or the science, behind it, I don’t know I’m not a scientist.  

But in the 60s people collected genetic material from a crime scene and they couldn’t really do anything with it at that time with the technological limitations. But now they’re like able to identify exactly who the culprit was. So, I just think it’s really cool. And it’s great that it’s now spreading towards the wildlife trafficking, or just wildlife crime in general, because it just seems really hard to pinpoint specific poachers who are responsible for killing these magnificent and endangered species. 

Karissa 

Yeah, exactly. Cracking down on poaching is an incredibly important issue going on across the world right now. So, this is pretty interesting that they could use a DNA base to track them down just like… how it’s used in humans. Really interesting. 

Arielle 

Yeah, it’s so cool. CSI-style forensics for wildlife. 

Karissa 

Wildlife edition. Maybe that needs to be the next iteration of the show. We’re in the wildlife field. That could be a good spin-off. 

Arielle 

I mean, this stuff can be used not just for lions but for other, basically any trafficked species with a DNA database. So, I’m excited to see what happens here, but I’m not going to give away too much of the article because it’s a really interesting read.  

The next one is A single dose of psilocybin gave smokers 6 times better odds of quitting than the patch. So, there’s this new study out of Johns Hopkins, and it found that a single dose of psilocybin gave smokers more than six times better odds of quitting than nicotine patches. And this wasn’t over a course of like, a long treatment. It was just one dose.  

This kind of therapy doesn’t target nicotine receptors. It works through neuroplasticity and it shifts your perspective. So, it’s not really a substitution, but it’s kind of shifting how you’re thinking about the habit altogether, which I think ultimately leads to you… “you” being the smoker, if you’re out there, having to exert less willpower over not smoking.  

So yeah, this is definitely worth a read. So go check it out, especially if you’re a smoker and you really want to quit, because quitting smoking is one of the hardest health goals to achieve.  

All right, the next article is also about habits. It’s called Overthinking is a learned habit and therapists say you can unlearn it. Maybe through mushrooms as well (laughs), but that’s not what they’re talking about. 

Karissa 

So, we don’t know if there’s any scientific studies on that yet, but maybe in the future. 

Arielle 

This article is about, you know, how you can just get into your head about, like, someone not texting you back because, I don’t know, you make up this whole story. Maybe they’re mad at you, or they hate you, or, you know, it’s just all of this unwarranted negative self-talk. And that’s not necessarily anxiety. It’s this coping strategy that the brain has learned to just like overthink and overthink and overthink. And when someone just tells you to stop overthinking, first of all, that’s annoying. And secondly, it just doesn’t work because it doesn’t address any of the root of the problem. And this piece, does. 

Karissa 

This one was interesting to read because I mean, I am guilty of overthinking quite a lot. And like you said, it’s just annoying to hear, “Well, just stop overthinking.” You can’t just stop overthinking unless you take some of these tips. 

Arielle 

Yeah. I’m not going to go through all of them, but one of them that I liked that I think I can apply, well, all of them I can apply, but this one stood out to me, was the facts versus stories. So, for instance, going along with the texting example, they haven’t texted is a fact, but they’re mad at me, they hate me, they don’t like me anymore. That’s just a story you’re telling yourself and you just have to learn how to separate them. And I think that would be very helpful for whenever I’m in one of these spirals, which inevitably happens at least once in a while. So yeah, I would definitely recommend checking it out if overthinking is also something you struggle with.  

The next article is called How robots and drones are cleaning the ocean floor across Europe. 

Karissa 

Very cool and interesting. 

Arielle 

Yeah, very futuristic, right? Most ocean cleanup efforts focus on what’s floating on the surface, but the majority of marine litter actually sinks and disappears into the seabed. The EU has been funding a fleet of AI-powered robots to go after what everyone else has been missing. And there’s a surprising bonus application at the end that has nothing to do with plastic. But again, I will let you read that. 

Karissa 

This one kind of surprised me because I didn’t even realize that a lot of sea litter ends up at the bottom of the sea, but it makes sense. But I just think of any like ocean litter and that’s kind of what’s portrayed in the media and stuff is just like a floating plastic island out there and plastic floating around, but there’s so much more that can just sink. 

Arielle 

Out of sight, out of mind. If you can’t really see it, then you’re not really thinking about solving the problem. So, I think that this is really cool that they are sending robots and drones down to places that actually aren’t even safe for humans to go to. The pressure down there, like it’s just not sustainable or feasible to have people diving down to like search for all of this litter at the bottom. So yeah, it’s a really, it’s a really cool solution for a problem that I wasn’t even really thinking about.  

And the last solution that we are going to be sharing with you today is a very spring-like solution. It’s called Hummingbird migration 2026, when they’ll reach your garden and how to get ready. 

Karissa 

I love it. I love hummingbirds and I’m so excited to see them. 

Arielle 

Read this article and you’ll know exactly when to prepare to see these hummingbirds. Right now, hummingbirds are already making their way north from Mexico and Central America. Some are crossing open water completely alone, running on stored fat they spent weeks building up. This week we looked at when to expect them by region and what you can do to make your yard a real pit stop on one of nature’s most demanding journeys. 

Karissa 

I’m going to have to make sure my grandma saw this article because she loves the hummingbirds in her backyard. And I know she mentioned the other day how she has to prepare for them and go get a new hummingbird feeder. So, I’ll make sure she sees these tips. 

Arielle 

Cute. We don’t have hummingbirds in Europe. I actually just looked it up. And it was kind of scary what I found. We don’t have hummingbirds, but there is something that is often mistaken for a hummingbird here in Europe, and it’s called the hummingbird hawk moth. And I highly suggest looking it up because it looks like a hummingbird, but it’s an insect. It’s huge. And I think I can convince myself that it’s cute after a while, but when it first popped up on my Google image search, I was like, whoa, oh my gosh. 

Karissa 

Oh my gosh, whoa. 

Arielle 

But yeah, that’s what we have to look forward to, the hummingbird hawk moth here on this side of the pond. But you guys go ahead, get your yards and gardens ready. 

Karissa 

Over here in the Americas, we can see these cute little hummingbirds. So, get ready. 

Arielle 

Well, that was it for our roundup this week. We do have a really nice quote that we’re going to end off on. Karissa, take it away. 

Karissa 

Well, on the note of hummingbirds, I had to choose this quote to share. And it says, “Like the hummingbirds sipping nectar from every flower, I fly joyfully through my days, seeing beauty in everything.” And that is from Amethyst Wyldfyre. So as always, we thank you for tuning into the solutions from The Optimist Daily and finding that positivity out there in the world. 

Arielle 

Yes! Thank you so much for joining us this week, and we will see you next week with more solutions. 

Karissa 

Bye, everyone.  

Arielle 

Bye.