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hope

concept · in 78 videos (2007–2026)

Orientation toward a good outcome that is not assured, which John holds is the correct response to a broken world and to consciousness. He champions radical hope, available to all people at all times, and often calls hope 'the thing with feathers'. He sets it against despair and nihilism, and most recently defines it as a demanding decision made over and over.

Videos by year: 2007: 1 · 2008: 1 · 2009: 1 · 2010: 1 · 2011: 1 · 2013: 1 · 2014: 1 · 2016: 3 · 2017: 3 · 2018: 4 · 2019: 8 · 2020: 6 · 2021: 5 · 2022: 6 · 2023: 9 · 2024: 6 · 2025: 12 · 2026: 9

Also known as: the thing with feathers, radical hope, is it reasonable to be hopeful, hope as a discipline

Threads

Also named in the threads: The Anthropocene Reviewed: John's podcast reviewing facets of the human-centered planet (2017) · John writes his first nonfiction book, The Anthropocene Reviewed (2020) · John watches AFC Wimbledon beat the Milton Keynes franchise with a last-minute goal at Plough Lane (2024) · Something Worth Knowing: Hank's TED-inspired event and Complexly fundraiser (2026)

Often together

What comes up in the same parts of the videos; the number is how many parts.

Something Worth Knowing (3) · collective action (10) · progress (10) · AFC Wimbledon (12) · meaning of life (7) · child mortality (5) · COVID-19 pandemic (4) · global health (3) · Project for Awesome (9) · A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor (3)

What the videos say

The most important statements of each year; all statements.

2007

  • 2007-05-25 · May 25th: FreeMonkey's Tour — Hank concludes the feeling is not wishing anyone dead but realising there is a lot of future still to come that he will see, which makes him hopeful. (hedged) — 00:03:04

2008

2009

  • 2009-11-03 · This Machine Pwns n00bs! — John says Hank's songs are not just funny and insanely catchy but also meditations on how and why to be hopeful in a broken world, even the one called I'm Not Edward Cullen. — 00:00:25

2010

  • 2010-10-13 · On Hope and Chile — John: we live in an irreparably broken world, but the amazing thing is not that humans refuse to give up hope; it is that we are right to hold on to it. — 00:02:10
    • John: not all stories end happily, but hope gives us as a species and as individuals what we otherwise wouldn't have, a chance. — 00:02:32

2011

  • 2011-08-05 · Vidcon: Thoughts from Places — John says that whenever anyone whines about teenagers' intellectually disengaged tastes he will play them 3,000 people singing a song about quarks, which makes him hopeful about the world. — 00:01:13

2013

  • 2013-04-16 · Flags and Helpers — John says some people do not want that world, but we will not give it up, and we can always look in hope to the helpers and try to be among them. — 00:01:27

2014

2016

  • 2016-01-26 · Billionaires and Radical Hope: Thoughts from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland — John: Acknowledging it is easier to say from a privileged position, John believes human progress is possible though not inevitable, and is convinced of and moved by the radical hope behind millennia of human effort. — 00:02:56
  • 2016-08-16 · Some Good News: 16 Ways 2016 Is Not a Total Dumpster Fire — John says he really believes that, in spite of it all, hope is not misguided. — 00:03:41
  • 2016-11-09 · My Post-Election Thoughts — John says Orin was born into a better America than his grandparents', made better by people whose hope, from Alabama restaurant counters to Normandy's beaches, held the line in far darker times. — 00:02:53
    • John says hope is not idealistic or silly but the founding emotion of our species. (hedged) — 00:03:12
    • John says it is not naive to hope we can bend the arc of American history toward justice, because our ancestors did so in the face of unimaginable difficulty. — 00:03:16
    • John closes by quoting 'the great American poet of the human heart' (Emily Dickinson): hope is the thing with feathers that never stops at all. — 00:03:25

2017

2018

  • 2018-05-01 · How to Win — John says you also have to hope and go on: even when losing and a tie feels like winning, pick up the ball, run it back to midfield and believe the game is still winnable. — 00:03:08
  • 2018-05-15 · Seven Maps to Better Understand the World — John thanks mapmakers for giving him hope and also, when appropriate, fear. — 00:03:14
  • 2018-12-04 · When it All Seems Like Too Much — Hank: People regularly ask Hank, who knows a fair bit about the situation we are putting ourselves into, whether he has any hope left; he finds the loss of hope terrible because he does not think you can do anything without it. (hedged) — 00:00:29
    • Hank's view of climate change, which he knows better than most big problems, gives him more hope for others: like crime, justice, racism or suffering, it has no binary fixed-or-broken state. — 00:01:50
    • Hank says a recipe he has seen work for others and himself, the 'pie and ice cream of activism', is care mixed with hope: hopeful, caring people get him to act. — 00:02:14
    • Hank says care comes easily to him, but at various times in his life he has lost his grip on hope. — 00:02:32
    • Hank thinks almost all of humanity's great work has been done not out of despair but out of hope. (hedged) — 00:03:30
  • 2018-12-07 · BABIES! The 2018 Project for Awesome is here… — John calls it the central hope of human history that we accumulate, share and pass on knowledge so well that yesterday's babies may within decades solve problems that feel unfixable. (hedged) — 00:01:03

2019

  • 2019-01-29 · Do You Believe in Miracles? — John is very interested in radical hope: the idea that hope is available to all people at all times. — 00:00:57
    • John believes in radical hope not from theology or philosophy but because he has seen that even with little cause for hope, hope is the correct response to the human condition, as Flutie and Phelan showed. — 00:00:57
    • John wants to be unalone in his hope: nothing beats being in a room or stadium with people whose hope points the same way and who love the same thing. — 00:01:26
    • John says it is never wrong to be hopeful, and anyone who says otherwise hasn't watched enough AFC Wimbledon games. — 00:02:54
  • 2019-02-19 · Battling Apathy and Searching for Meaning on Question Tuesday — John thinks we must see and listen to the pain but also the joy, hope and progress, in individual lives and as a species; that is how he escapes the apathy trap. — 00:03:24
    • John says he has felt despair at pain and found justification for it, but believes despair is simple and humanity complex: there is cause for despair, and for other feelings. — 00:03:24
  • 2019-02-26 · The Necessity to Struggle / The Futility of Effort — John works when he feels hope, when he can, in F. Scott Fitzgerald's words, hold in balance the sense of the futility of effort and the sense of the necessity to struggle. — 00:02:55
  • 2019-04-30 · The Thing with Feathers — John says the players kept playing for each other and their community as if the situation were not hopeless, even when it was. — 00:01:55
    • John's favorite thing about humans: we are relentless, we don't know when we're licked, and even when we should give up, we don't. — 00:01:55
  • 2019-05-03 · What Game of Thrones is Really About — Hank: For Hank hope, the thing with feathers, is not a binary switch but a constant push on the bell curve of suffering: each millimeter is a child saved from waterborne illness or a family not forced to flee. — 00:04:41
  • 2019-08-06 · Uncertain and Afraid — John acknowledges that he is hopeful and thinks the data supports his hope. — 00:00:58
  • 2019-11-01 · On Looking Up to Your Little Brother — John: For John these were matters of life and death: he needed radical hope, the theologians' idea that hope is available to all people at all times, even the dead, and he still depends on it. — 00:02:10
  • …and 3 statements more in 2019 — all statements of 2019

2020

  • 2020-03-31 · Let's take a walk. — John thinks of a Lucille Clifton poem that ends 'The future is possible' and feels hope in it. — 00:03:25
  • 2020-07-07 · You're a Rock Star — John: It really is a hopeful novel, John says, and he needs hope not abstractly but to get out of bed in the morning. — 00:00:29
    • For John despair is not just unpleasant but dangerous, and flimsy or simplistic hope does little to counteract it. — 00:00:29
    • The book manages one of the hardest tricks in fiction and life: never denying horror, suffering and injustice while acknowledging beauty, wonder and kindness; that hope is useful. — 00:00:29
  • 2020-07-14 · The ice we skate is getting pretty thin. — John: Hank's line gave John permission to produce joy even when worried and when so much is horrible; he must make room for seeking and making joy, because that cultivates hope. — 00:02:55
  • 2020-08-03 · you're bundled up now? wait till you get older. — John: For John, seeing old pictures is a reminder that now feels permanent but isn't, and that mere despair never tells the whole story. — 00:02:10
  • 2020-09-01 · get the show on — John says the podcast is really about hope and whether it is justified, people being wonderful and horrible, and humans being too powerful yet not powerful enough to reshape the climate beneficially. — 00:00:29
  • 2020-12-31 · Auld Lang Syne: The Anthropocene Reviewed — John: Such hope is not foolish, idealistic or misguided: John believes hope is, for lack of a better word, true. — 00:19:50 · also in: We're here because were here., John's Review of Auld Lang Syne

2021

2022

  • 2022-01-21 · How to Be Hopeful About Doomsday — Hank: Asked to give remarks, Hank agreed only if he could be hopeful; going last after speakers explaining why things are bad made it a challenging writing assignment. — 00:00:27
    • Humans are the universe talking to itself about itself; we are so worried because this is really wonderful, so we are protecting something great. — 00:01:25
    • Humans constantly do things that were once impossible, like this conversation, and in the future we will do many things that are currently impossible. — 00:02:24
  • 2022-03-01 (said on 2022-02-27, implied) · Hard Week — John says mere despair never tells the full human story. — 00:01:27
    • What breaks John's heart and leads him toward despair is also where he finds hope: there is nothing inevitable about it. — 00:02:26
  • 2022-03-11 · Is it All Hopeless? — Hank concludes we never know where we're headed and times are rarely precedented, but no one is acting hopeless, which gives him plenty of hope. — 00:03:16
  • 2022-04-26 · An Amazing Day — John says everyone is committed to a film expressing the book's ideas: people's pain is real and deserves attention and validation, and there is hope even when your brain says it isn't. — 00:03:10
  • 2022-09-29 · The Kony 2012 of Roads - Solar Freakin' Roadways — Hank says the solar roadways moment, like Kony 2012 two years earlier, came from a good impulse, hopefulness: people felt the internet might stop a Ugandan warlord or create roads that melted ice, warned about moose and generated more electricity than their cars used. — 00:02:36

2023

  • 2023-02-21 · Maybe Art Only Needs to Be — John says the P4A reminds him that hope is the correct response to consciousness. — 00:02:33
  • 2023-03-14 · The Seduction of Despair — John says despair is the wrong response to consciousness because we are going to change the world together, so we should be thoughtful about how we do it. — 00:03:00
    • John says destruction is fast, loud and dramatic, reparative work slow and quiet; that's where his hope is, in big projects (a maternal hospital in Sierra Leone, US voting rights) and quiet human moments. — 00:03:10
  • 2023-05-09 · on hope — John says hope is not an abstract consideration for him but a prerequisite for his survival, though the word is fuzzy, and he wants to understand what we mean by it. — 00:00:00
    • John says by hope he means needing to believe consciousness is worth it: biological awareness, despite its misery, consternation and pain, is nonetheless valuable. — 00:00:42
    • John says that by hope he means needing to believe that love, connection, art and collaboration are, for lack of a better term, worth it. (hedged) — 00:01:10
  • 2023-05-23 · Rough Week — John: Since Hank said he was fine with prayers, John prays for him and for all of us that we be justified in our hope and unalone in our sorrow. — 00:02:34
  • 2023-08-22 · The Panera Phenomenon — John says the MCOE is not a symbol of hope but an activation of hope; English lacks a word for hope realized, which is telling, but that is how he feels. — 00:00:29
  • 2023-09-14 · Talking Tuberculosis, GeneXpert, J&J, and more with MY HEROES — John grants that despair is easy before overwhelming problems but says hope is the correct response to the miracle of human consciousness; together we can make a better world. — 00:58:42
  • 2023-12-19 · End of a Rough Year — John says the test's existence is cause for hope and celebration and a testament to research, the scientific method, the sharing of knowledge and the talent and hard work of Cepheid's people. — 00:01:13
    • John says he finds hope in community and collaboration, in making meaning together by making change together: in the 'we's of his life, TB fighters, Nerdfighteria, his family and Indianapolis. — 00:01:56
    • John says he ends the year feeling that two human capacities carried both brothers and the broader us this far: collaboration and hope. — 00:04:35
  • …and 5 statements more in 2023 — all statements of 2023

2024

  • 2024-03-05 · THE BEST DAY — John says he was out of his body, in a light-soaked plane where all hope is rewarded; the whole stadium was in ecstasy and breathless joy flooded him. — 00:03:07
    • The game could have gone the other way and usually will, but sometimes we are reminded hope is the thing with feathers and fall in love with the broken world again. — 00:04:29
  • 2024-06-04 · how it all ends — John guesses ancient humans, like us, couldn't hope in forever but hoped in themselves and future generations; we embody their hope as future generations will embody ours. (speculative) — 00:04:22
  • 2024-06-25 · taking a break — John: As his goodbye for now, John says despair is a lie and hopelessness is a lie. — 00:03:05
    • John says he struggles to tell himself this, and in July he will work on telling himself what he has told viewers all along: that hope sings the tune without the words and never stops at all. — 00:03:05
  • 2024-08-20 · Thoughts from Places: BROMLEY! — John says he was there for the hope that kept Wimbledon alive when the Football Association said it shouldn't exist, that brought Bromley into the league, and that kept him here in hard times. — 00:02:55
  • 2024-11-12 · BELIEVE: The Jimmy Glass Story — John defines hope as the belief in an unlikely and inevitably temporary reprieve: every victory is fleeting, every reprieve temporary. — 00:04:17
    • John says the Carlisle fans were right to hope they could score from the corner, and Glass was right to abandon his goal and become a striker. — 00:04:17
    • John grants the old saying that it is the hope that kills you, but says hope also saves you, and in his experience the two are not mutually exclusive. — 00:04:38
  • 2024-12-17 · About THAT Scene in Looking for Alaska — John says the novel is about radical hope, that hope and forgiveness are available to all people at all times, and about how we go on when loved ones cannot. — 00:03:53
    • John says the radical hope at the center of the book is a Christian idea he wrote about because of his own Christian faith. — 00:04:52

2025

  • 2025-01-03 · My 2025 Bingo Card — Hank says history gives him hope: humans keep messing things up and fixing them, making terrible decisions and then correcting them. — 00:02:28
  • 2025-01-14 · So I Bought My Team a Pro Football Player — John toasts Marcus, Wimbledon and ridiculous, sublime, unconquerable hope, which, as Wimbledon's advertising hoardings used to say, is the thing with feathers. — 00:04:23
  • 2025-02-18 · Gastrointestinal Hypermotility in Tuatara — John: The P4A gives John hope: he has only his little bucket for the fire, but others have theirs, and together we accomplish vastly more than alone. — 00:02:55
  • 2025-03-04 · The ANXIETY IS PALPABLE — John says the book tries to tell a hopeful story about human health because he believes all true stories must be hopeful, and that there are reasons for hope, or at least reasons not to not feel hope. — 00:01:15
  • 2025-03-18 · ITS ALL HAPPENING — John says Nerdfighteria is the best and touring constantly reminds him he cannot afford to be hopeless; cynicism is not the right response now. — 00:03:49
    • John says it feels like we live at the end of the story, but this is the middle of the story, and together we have to fight for a better end. — 00:04:18
  • 2025-04-22 · The Unimportant Things — John says football and the documentary remind him that hope is correct: not always rewarded, with as much heartbreak as joy, but correct because things might get better, especially when we orient our love together. — 00:03:23
  • 2025-06-13 · Moving to Hope from Hopelessness (3 ways) — Hank's first way to hope: hopelessness is usually the less rational position, presented by a brain that cannot imagine the actual infinite and bizarre world. — 00:00:58
  • 2025-06-17 · My Religion — John: Forgiveness available to all people at all times, even beyond death, is radical hope, John's ground of being and the backbone of his theology: hope is not always rewarded but always justified. — 00:01:56
  • 2025-10-01 · Real Reasons for Hope — John's last reason for hope: our lives feel like a story from birth that ends today, but today is not the end of the story, it is the middle. — 00:04:52
  • 2025-10-09 · I Like Being Alive — John calls the felled trees' regrowth a metaphor for hope: they won't look as they did, yet they survive; hope sprouts different but undiminished from the wounds we inflict and survives the unsurvivable. — 00:03:36
  • 2025-11-11 · John's Annual Psychophysical Decline — John says he knows this experience is temporary, that hope remains the correct response to consciousness, and that despair is a lie, even if a very convincing one. — 00:00:29
  • …and 7 statements more in 2025 — all statements of 2025

2026

  • 2026-01-06 · Hope Is Not a Feeling — John recently got an email about hope from a friend going through absolute hell, which took him back to when he and Sarah were engaged. — 00:00:00
    • John argues hope is like love: both seem easy but are demanding, and hope is not just a feeling of encouragement but a decision and a practice. — 00:01:56
    • John defines hope as a decision made over and over to believe that the world and those in it matter, and that there is cause to believe things can get better. — 00:02:26
    • John rejects the view that serious people embrace nihilism: nihilism is the easy choice, because then nothing you do matters, while durable hope is harder and more nuanced. — 00:02:55
    • John notes the circular fact that deciding on a hopeful worldview makes hopeful outcomes likelier: believing the world is worth saving makes reducing under-five deaths likelier. — 00:03:24
    • John concludes hope is not only a feeling but also a good decision, a commitment that must be made continuously and so a practice. — 00:03:53
    • What John really thinks is that we have to decide on hope, especially when the feeling of hope is distant. — 00:04:23
  • 2026-01-09 · There is Only One Source of Value — Hank concludes that, as a hopeful worldview makes hopeful outcomes likelier, believing lives should be full, rich and long today is likely the most effective path to such a future. (hedged) — 00:03:53
  • 2026-02-03 · Does the truth still matter? — John thinks the truth still has some power he feared it had lost amid memes and deepfakes; for now that is where he finds hope, if a thin one. — 00:04:23
  • 2026-02-14 · Project for Awesome 2026 part 3! — John: As AFC Wimbledon draw level, John says life is full of surprises and hope is always the correct response to consciousness: not always rewarded, but always justified. — 00:37:55
  • 2026-04-14 · Babies. Babies. Babies. — John says more mothers receiving dignified care gives him hope: when despair creeps in he is reminded that together we can do extraordinary things, though also catastrophic ones. — 00:05:21
  • 2026-09-18 · John was Wrong about YouTube Views — Hank says the event reminded him not just why but how we hope: the question is not where to find hope but how to do it, maybe a topic for another video. — 00:09:51
  • …and 8 statements more in 2026 — all statements of 2026