The Optimist Daily’s Weekly Roundup
With Arielle Tiangco and Karissa Garcia
Do you like the stories from around the world that recognize and celebrate the people and events making a positive change? Tune in to The Optimist Daily’s Weekly Roundup, where our solutions-focused stories continue, and hear behind-the-scenes discussions from the people bringing you the news.
Episodes
September 11, 2026
NYC bans AI for 500,000 students, and seven other solutions
An approach to treating degenerative blindness has been in development for more than ten years across research institutions in Spain. The result is not a surgery, a gene therapy, or an implant. It is eye drops. Light-activated compounds that restored vision in blind animal models by stepping in where lost photoreceptors used to be, without disturbing the underlying disease.
Arielle and Karissa cover eight solutions this week, including the country's broadest AI ban for over half a million students, a urine test that spots bladder cancer with 92% accuracy, and what steel wind turbine foundations are inadvertently doing for marine life around Long Island.
Nominate a Local Changemaker (30 and under): https://us20.list-manage.com/survey?u=d2e7810fd2bcf24fb1144a7e2&id=6e0ab37520&e=28025b5010
Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422924
If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: podcast@optimistdaily.com.
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The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.
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Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes
PLAY 22:11 min
September 04, 2026
AI music banned from Australia's charts, Roman telescope launches, a biodegradable balloon and much more!
Arielle and Karissa are reunited after a few weeks apart, covering a wide range of solutions this episode: a new telescope that survived two White House cancellation attempts, the decade-long trial that settles the statin-and-dementia debate once and for all, and a biodegradable balloon that took three years and hundreds of failed experiments to get right.
Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422883
If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: podcast@optimistdaily.com.
Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.
Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.
The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.
Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d
Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes
PLAY 26:37 min
August 28, 2026
Niger restored 5 million hectares without planting a single tree plus nine other things going right
Karissa hosts solo this week while Arielle recovers, covering ten solutions including the world's first wild bird flu vaccination program for Phillip Island's little penguins, France making unsolicited telemarketing calls flat-out illegal, and what Baltimore is doing with $400 million in opioid settlement money.
transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422844
If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: podcast@optimistdaily.com.
Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.
Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.
The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.
Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d
Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes
PLAY 21:00 min
August 21, 2026
(Guest Interview) Catch up with Kristy: clean energy, leaving California, and embracing the slow life
Many of the long-time listeners of The Optimist Daily's podcast will recognize Kristy Jansen's voice. She's the former co-host and Executive Director of this show, and she's back, joining Arielle and Karissa from Mérida, México, to catch them up on what happened in between: the clean energy industry from the inside, and what it's like to start over somewhere new when you didn't really pick the timing.
Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422807
If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: podcast@optimistdaily.com.
Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.
Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.
The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.
Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?gift=Y%20http://
Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes
bird in rainforest.wav by reinsamba -- https://freesound.org/s/19257/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
PLAY 26:20 min
August 14, 2026
Taking our own advice on slowing down this summer
Arielle checks in solo to explain why the Kristy guest episode is getting a little more time. Both she and Karissa have been doing what they always say matters most: showing up, fully present, for the people they love. Babies, weddings, miles between people who love each other.
Sometimes slowing down really is the solution.
Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422764
If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: podcast@optimistdaily.com.
Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.
Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.
The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.
Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d
Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes
PLAY 03:16 min
July 31, 2026
Liquid air batteries, dolphins saved by plastic bottles, and an empty weekend a month
Dolphins fatally swim into fishing nets because the nylon is acoustically too similar to water for their echolocation to pick up. A researcher at Newcastle University wondered if attaching something that does produce an echo might change that. The dolphin-saving solution may surprise you.
Ten solutions this week with Arielle and Karissa. Also in the episode: energy storage technologies that sound like science fiction but are getting serious investment, India's first domestically built hydrogen train, and the garden sign that looks like a win but means your plant is struggling to survive.
Stay tuned til the end for a wonderful Emissary Shout-Out that will brighten your day!
Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422684
If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: podcast@optimistdaily.com.
Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.
Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.
The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.
Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d
Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes
PLAY 28:23 min
July 24, 2026
The science of soccer-stress, salsa dancing for depression, and why summer slips away
Watching a tense soccer match nearly doubles cardiac event risk, and cortisol could start rising fourteen hours before kickoff. With Spain just taking the World Cup, a fair portion of the world's population has basically been running a biological experiment on itself.
Arielle and Karissa also get into the neurological reason summer keeps slipping away, an Oxford trial where eight weeks of salsa classes outperformed existing tools for depression and anxiety, and a brush swab for oral cancer that returns results in under an hour — no scalpel needed.
Stay tuned til the end for a wonderful Emissary Shout-Out that will brighten your day!
Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422640
If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: podcast@optimistdaily.com.
Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.
Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.
The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.
Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d
Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes
PLAY 28:37 min
July 17, 2026
Wildfire satellites, Seine city cooling, and parenting securely attached kids
Greece just launched the world's first satellite constellation built specifically for wildfire detection. It can spot a fire measuring only a few feet across, a huge improvement on conventional satellites, which start flagging fires when they're already the size of a cruise ship.
Ten solutions this week with Arielle and Karissa, including the first gallery in history dedicated entirely to women artists and five French food principles that have nothing to do with tracking macros.
Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422600
If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: podcast@optimistdaily.com.
Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.
Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.
The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.
Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d
Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes
PLAY 28:57 min
July 10, 2026
500 years of the soccer cleat, a world-first burn treatment, and green hydrogen in California
Every player at this year's World Cup is wearing the end result of 500 years of iteration on a single piece of equipment. It started with factory workers hammering hardware store nails into their boots for traction on wet British turf.
Ten solutions this week with Arielle and Karissa: the world's first exome therapy for burn patients, a California canal that generates electricity while cutting water evaporation by 70 percent, a copper compound that goes after Alzheimer's in a completely novel way, and what will truly help you when you feel… "off."
Special shout-out to Karissa's friend Amy! (Listen to this episode to find out why.)
If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to podcast@optimistdaily.com.
Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422551
Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.
Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.
The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.
Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d
Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes
PLAY 25:43 min
July 02, 2026
Coffee waste as fuel, Nepal same-sex marriage rights, and understanding heat domes
Stanford researchers took cartilage from patients already getting knee replacements (about as degraded as joint tissue gets) and discovered how it could regenerate itself. The cells weren't replaced or reprogrammed; they just shifted back toward a younger pattern of behavior, which is the part that feels almost too good to be true.
Alongside that, Arielle and Karissa cover the two heat domes expected to merge over the US around July 4th and what extreme heat actually does to the body, Nepal becoming one of the most LGBTQ-inclusive countries in South Asia after a binding Supreme Court ruling, and why London's 40 percent drop in air pollution deaths is both genuinely good news and more complicated than it sounds.
Stay tuned til the end for another inspiring Emissary Shout-Out!
Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422514
If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: podcast@optimistdaily.com.
Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.
Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.
The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.
Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d
Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes
PLAY 23:58 min