Dr. Deepika Chopra, known as the Optimism Doctor, makes a surprising admission: she isn’t a natural optimist. In this conversation, she explains why optimism is a learned skill and not a fixed trait, how it differs from happiness, and why real optimists see setbacks clearly rather than wishing them away. She also shares how she put her own tools to the test while writing The Power of Real Optimism during her young son’s serious illness. Plus, a worst-case-scenario exercise for anxious minds, and why you should end each day, not with a to-do list, but with a “ta-da list.”

Margaret Hathaway and Karl Schatz traded New York City for a goat farm in Maine. Then a pandemic-era cookbook project led them to create Community Plate, a series of story-sharing potluck suppers that bring strangers together over food. They've now hosted 51 suppers across Maine. In this conversation, they share what makes the gatherings work, from rectangular tables and real china to phone-free dinners and food-focused story prompts, and how anyone can start one in their own community. This optimistic couple is making a dent in the loneliness epidemic and would love to see more efforts like theirs take off in other parts of the country.

News can feel relentlessly negative, but as this week’s guest points out, that’s a choice about what gets covered, not a reflection of what’s actually happening in our communities. Mebane Rash is the founder and CEO of EdNC, a nonprofit, paywall-free online newsroom that covers every public school and all 58 community colleges in North Carolina. She joins Bill to talk about building a newsroom on the principle of “do no harm,” why her team aims to be the best in the world at listening, and how being in schools day in and day out makes it hard not to be optimistic.

Mebane started EdNC in 2015 with three people and a mandate to “fail forward, fail fast.”Today her 15-person team spends four days a week on the road in all 100 counties, and half of EdNC’s readers now live outside North Carolina. When Hurricane Helene devastated the western part of the state, EdNC didn’t just report on the damage; they used that same reporting to write grants and bring funding into the hardest-hit counties, earning the NorthCarolina Press Association’s Public Service Award. She also shares what she saw in Singapore’s classrooms, why she’s never seen cell phones be a real problem in thousands of school visits, and how she thinks about AI as just the latest change teachers will figure out, as they always have.

Joe Fiveash — a longtime digital media executive with stops at the Weather Channel, IBMWatson, and Raycom Media — joins Bill Burke to talk about Introships, the nonprofit he now leads that helps college students figure out what career path is right for them before they chase a traditional internship. What started over a decade ago as a handful of Atlanta parents pooling their kids together for office rotations has grown into a structured program now serving students nationwide. Joe walks through how Intro ships works — combining personality and career aptitude testing, live presentations from professionals across dozens of industries, weekly group coaching, and one-on-one guidance — all designed to help students identify the intersection of what they're good at, what genuinely interests them, and what can support a living. He also discusses how the program intentionally opens doors for first-generation college students who don't have built-in industry connections, why human-to-human relationships still matter in an AI-driven hiring landscape, and why spending time with young people leaves him more optimistic about the future, not less.

John and Lowell share the origin story of the project, how it's expanded into events like Can We Connect? (which brings 250+ students together at the Augusta Civic Center), and how students themselves are taking the work into their own hands-organizing intergenerational dialogues, community conversations, and even a nationwide online class built around the question, “Is American democracy on fire?” It's a hopeful, practical look at how young people are relearning face-to-face conversation in a digital, polarized world.

Educators John Holdridge and Lowell Libby join Bill Burke to talk about the Can We?Project-aMaine-based initiative launched in 2018 that teaches high school students the mindset and skills needed for constructive dialogue across political, social, and cultural divides. Through full-day retreats held in schools across Maine (and now New Hampshire), students learn to move past their first instinct to react and their second instinct to rationalize, and instead reach what one student memorably called her “third thought”-genuine understanding.

John and Lowell share the origin story of the project, how it's expanded into events like Can We Connect? (which brings 250+ students together at the Augusta Civic Center), and how students themselves are taking the work into their own hands-organizing intergenerational dialogues, community conversations, and even a nationwide online class built around the question, “Is American democracy on fire?” It's a hopeful, practical look at how young people are relearning face-to-face conversation in a digital, polarized world.

Sam Demma had his sights set on a professional soccer career from age five — training in Italy at 13, playing for one of Canada's top club teams by 17 — until three major knee injuries and a torn labrum ended that dream in his final year of high school. What came next is the subject of this conversation: how Demma rebuilt his sense of purpose, first through small volunteer garbage cleanups with a friend, then through public speaking, and eventually through writing. Just shy of his 27th birthday and about to publish his third book, Return on Goodwill, Sam has delivered close to 800 talks across four continents. In this episode, he shares the stories behind his books —Empty Your Backpack, born from a conversation with a bullied student, and Be Someone's Taco, inspired by a pandemic-era gesture that brought a friend to tears — and unpacks the idea at the heart of his new work: that doing good with no expectation of return has a way of coming back around.

Comedian, speaker, and humor coach Mike Goodwin joins Bill Burke for this special summer encore presentation of a classic Blue Sky episode. Mike shares how a difficult, sometimes volatile childhood in Camden, South Carolina sparked his lifelong instinct to use humor to ease tension - a skill that carried him through four years in the U.S. Army, a career in higher education and college counseling, and eventually onto stages with America's Got Talent, DryBar Comedy, Lifetime, BET, and Amazon Prime.

Julie Roland’s background is impressive and remarkably varied. She’s a retired naval aviator, a magician, a law school graduate, a political staffer, and founder of the community-building non-profit Just Tryna Make Friends. In this Blue Sky episode, Julie spreads her infectious optimism about how the arts can be used to connect people at a time when so many forces are pulling us apart.

Older Americans are struggling with social isolation more than ever. This can lead to challenges with mental and physical health as people age, and one nonprofit is having great success trying to do something about it. Life Story Club uses scheduled Zoom and phone calls form members to share stories about their past, present, and plans for their future. In this Blue Sky conversation, interim director and geriatric specialist Dr. Jennifer Wong describes how this life-changing organization operates.

Lynda Ulrich and her daughter Liesl Ulrich Verderber are the mother-daughter team behind The Goodness Exchange, a global positive-news platform founded in 2014 to help people cut through today’s negative nose with research-backed, solutions-focused storytelling. On thisBlue Sky episode, they describe how they came to their optimistic outlooks at different stages of their lives and have managed to work together to create a remarkable platform for hopeful and uplifting stories.

Before Stan Andrisse was sentenced to ten years in prison for a Class A drug felony, the prosecutor had asked for a life sentence, suggesting that the defendant was irredeemable. In the years since, Stan, now “Dr. Andrisse” has proved this attorney and many others wrong. While in prison, he discovered an interest in science and endocrinology and today is a tenured professor at the Howard University College of Medicine. To create similar opportunities and career paths for others who are or have been incarcerated, he founded the non-profit From Prison Cells to PhD.

Kevin Lowe has come a long way since he was seventeen years old and lost his eyesight during a medical procedure gone wrong. In this Blue Sky conversation, Kevin describes how he’s rallied from this devastating event to live a life full of resilience, purpose, and optimism. This episode concludes with a surprise musical feature, courtesy of Kevin himself.

Amy King watched the devastating aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and seeing people sheltered in a leaking football stadium inspired her to work with her husband on shelter solutions. The result was Pallet, a company that makes safe, secure, and easily assembled temporary shelters. In this episode she shares her inspiring story and details about her remarkable company.

Mimi Nicklin left a successful career as a marketing executive to take on the task of educating the world on the value and power of empathy. In this episode, Mimi describes the alarming “empathy deficit,” its root causes, and practical strategies like self-empathy and “ALUR” (Authenticity, Listening, Understanding, Recognition) that she espouses to reconnect our workplaces and world.