AI transcript
0:00:14 I’m Guy Kawasaki, and this is the Remarkable People podcast, and you know very well, we’re
0:00:16 on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:20 And helping me today is the remarkable Bill Burke.
0:00:25 And Bill Burke is, shall I say, Mr. Optimism.
0:00:31 He is the founder of the Optimism Institute and host of the Blue Sky podcast.
0:00:36 And the Blue Sky podcast is called Blue Sky podcast, because once you get above the clouds,
0:00:38 it’s nothing but blue sky.
0:00:42 So this is all about optimism.
0:00:48 And he has a very rich background about journalism in general, but he was the CEO of the Weather
0:00:51 Channel and president of TBS Superstations.
0:00:57 So this is not some clown who just wants to be an influencer positioning himself as some
0:00:58 kind of guru.
0:01:00 This guy knows what it’s happening.
0:01:02 So Bill, let us talk about optimism.
0:01:04 Are you ready to go?
0:01:05 Let’s go.
0:01:11 I’m ready.
0:01:14 So Bill, you know, I, I mean, let’s just cut to the chase.
0:01:17 I got to start you off with a nice softball.
0:01:18 Easy question.
0:01:19 Okay.
0:01:20 Okay.
0:01:27 So right now, right before the election, are you optimistic about the future of America?
0:01:31 And if you are, or are, tell me why.
0:01:33 I am optimistic about the future of America.
0:01:37 I think we are going through a challenging time for sure.
0:01:41 But one of the reasons I started this work is I’m a big history buff.
0:01:45 And it’s really helpful, I think, to put anything that’s going on today in the context
0:01:46 of history.
0:01:50 I interviewed Kevin Kelly, who you may know from Wired Magazine in the old days.
0:01:54 And he said, if you only read the news, you’ll think things have never been worse.
0:01:57 But if you read history, you realize things have never been better.
0:02:01 And today, when people say, and how many times you hear it, we’ve never been this divided
0:02:04 as a country, which is not true.
0:02:08 We fought a civil war for four years, you know, the summer of 1968, if you study it
0:02:14 was so divisive between Vietnam and campus protests where I take comfort and believe
0:02:15 me, I have my concerns.
0:02:18 I am not blind, and I’m a realist.
0:02:22 But the ideals and ideas that we were founded on are going to support us if we stay true
0:02:23 to them.
0:02:25 And so I am cautiously optimistic, but generally optimistic.
0:02:29 And as Warren Buffett said, you never make money betting against America.
0:02:30 And I agree with that.
0:02:34 I believe an optimist believes that tomorrow can be better than today and that they have
0:02:36 a role in making it.
0:02:38 And so you have to stay engaged.
0:02:39 You have to.
0:02:43 So if the person you’re voting for does not win, you stay engaged and you keep working
0:02:48 and you keep exposing things you think are wrong and you keep trying to hold up the ideals
0:02:51 of America, believe me, it is a concerning time.
0:02:53 I understand that.
0:02:58 But I think my concern is that when people lose hope, they become apathetic.
0:03:00 And once that happens, it’s over.
0:03:05 And so you have to keep bringing yourself back to the founding documents of this country.
0:03:09 I interviewed a gentleman recently who’s written a terrific book, African American Guy, who
0:03:14 talks about what it’s like to know that we have documents that were written by slave
0:03:18 owners, but understanding that once their ideas are out in the world, they don’t own
0:03:19 them anymore.
0:03:23 And so we can believe brilliant ideas from flawed men.
0:03:26 And I think that’s what we need to hang on to.
0:03:30 So I think, yeah, it’s going to be a challenging stretch, but we got to stay engaged.
0:03:31 Another line.
0:03:35 And then I’ll stop that I heard recently was that action absorbs anxiety.
0:03:37 And I really like that.
0:03:41 And I think if we sit around and read polls all day and try to game, and if this happens
0:03:45 and that’s going to happen, it’s far better if you really care about this to make phone
0:03:49 calls, knock on doors, do something, stay active.
0:03:50 And I really believe that.
0:03:54 But I am not so naive to think that this isn’t a challenging time, but we’ve always
0:03:56 lived in challenging times.
0:03:57 I got us.
0:03:59 I share your anxiety.
0:04:01 I share your optimism, too.
0:04:06 So let me ask you some, do you believe that optimists are born or made?
0:04:08 I get to ask this a lot, and I’ve thought about it a lot.
0:04:11 I think this sounds like a cop out, but I think it’s true.
0:04:14 I think it like a lot of things is a little bit of both athletes.
0:04:20 I grew up with some phenomenal athletes and the ones who made it a long way had the gift,
0:04:22 but they kept working at it.
0:04:23 They worked at it hard.
0:04:26 I am probably born on the optimistic side.
0:04:28 In fact, I was embarrassed to find out recently.
0:04:33 My sister found my high school yearbook that I did not have my senior yearbook.
0:04:37 And when I went to the sort of class elections page, like most likely to this or most likely
0:04:43 to succeed, we actually voted on class optimists and it was me and Maura Quinlan.
0:04:48 And so I guess I had that 40 years ago, but I have to work at it.
0:04:51 And it’s one of the great joys of doing this work is I look for good stories.
0:04:53 I actively try to stay positive.
0:04:56 I don’t wallow in negative social media.
0:04:57 It’s not helpful.
0:04:58 It’s not good for my health.
0:05:02 And if you’re looking for goodness, it’s everywhere.
0:05:04 I live in New York City now.
0:05:08 And when I walk to work, I take my AirPods out and I look around.
0:05:12 And there is so much going on, little things of goodness, the stranger paying the stranger’s
0:05:13 dog.
0:05:18 The police officer helping someone who can’t speak English, find where they’re going to
0:05:23 someone dropping groceries in the crosswalk and 10 people rush to help them.
0:05:25 People are good, but for the most part.
0:05:28 And the more you look for that, I think the better off you’ll be.
0:05:35 Do you think that the opposite of optimistic is pessimistic or realistic?
0:05:38 I think it’s pessimistic and realistic is funny.
0:05:42 I interviewed Bert Jacobs, who you may know, he founded Life is Good, the apparel company.
0:05:45 The whole reason for being is optimism.
0:05:49 And he said, “Realists lack imagination.”
0:05:52 And I think that optimism should be balanced with realism.
0:05:56 So guys, if you and I started a company tomorrow, a tech company, a chip company, and we said
0:06:00 to our employees in five years we’re going to be worth more than NVIDIA, that’s silly.
0:06:04 That’s optimistic, but it’s not realistic and it’s silly and no one’s going to pay attention
0:06:05 to that.
0:06:06 I think it’s pessimism.
0:06:08 I think optimism can be very realistic.
0:06:12 Again, I’m very aware that we live in tricky times.
0:06:13 We always have.
0:06:14 So I think it’s pessimism.
0:06:17 And I think it’s okay to balance your optimism with some realism.
0:06:19 In fact, I think it’s important.
0:06:24 The other thing I’d say too that’s related, optimism isn’t toxic positivity.
0:06:28 It’s not, and it’s not a belief that things are always going to be great.
0:06:29 They’re not.
0:06:30 They’re just not.
0:06:32 I’ve had some troughs in my life for sure.
0:06:36 Many people listening to this podcast are probably going through a terrible time.
0:06:41 It’s more how you try to look at that, how you try to find the silver linings once you’re
0:06:42 on the other side.
0:06:43 That’s what it’s about.
0:06:48 If someone comes to you with a terrible cancer and you say, “Well, look on the bright side,
0:06:52 you’ve got a great physician,” it’s like, “Well, okay, there might be a time and a place
0:06:57 for comment like that,” but that’s toxic to someone who’s just gotten that diagnosis.
0:06:59 So that’s an important balance, I think.
0:07:04 So I’m interested in how you define toxic positivity.
0:07:09 Is it these gurus that would run $2,000 a day, sessions at the Ritz Carlton and tell
0:07:11 you, “Look to your right.
0:07:12 Look to your left.
0:07:13 You’re both winners.
0:07:14 Shake your hands.
0:07:15 Stand up.
0:07:16 Change the world.
0:07:17 You’re all going to be rich.”
0:07:20 When does optimism turn toxic?
0:07:21 Yeah.
0:07:24 That sounded pretty toxic what you just described.
0:07:28 And I’m forgetting the name of the book, and I’m pretty sure she was on your podcast about
0:07:34 workplace being real with people in the workplace, and they use toxic positivity as a negative.
0:07:38 So this is a weakness of mine when I was a manager, when it came time for employee reviews
0:07:39 and that sort of thing.
0:07:41 I had trouble giving the tough feedback.
0:07:42 I wasn’t very good at it.
0:07:47 I wanted everyone to be happy and like me and be positive, and that’s toxic.
0:07:51 If I’ve got someone at the workplace that’s not doing a good job and I just keep telling
0:07:56 them they’re great, and meanwhile I’m building a file to terminate them, that’s toxic.
0:08:01 So I think when you asked that first question, if I said, “We have nothing to worry about.
0:08:02 This election is going to be fine.
0:08:03 There won’t be any violence.
0:08:04 There won’t be any…”
0:08:05 That’s not realistic.
0:08:06 And I think that’s naive.
0:08:07 It could happen.
0:08:13 Do you think a pessimist is an optimist who has been disappointed?
0:08:14 No.
0:08:16 No, I’ve been disappointed.
0:08:22 I mean, no, I think it’s more of an outlook on the world and I think it’s often self-imposed.
0:08:23 And you know this guy.
0:08:27 Some of the most optimistic, positive people you ever talked to have been dealt the worst
0:08:29 hands in life.
0:08:33 I recently interviewed, or I interviewed a while back, a podcast just came out with
0:08:36 a guy who was a five and a half year POW in Vietnam.
0:08:41 And when you listen to him, he’ll say, “I was blessed to be in a room with three other
0:08:42 guys.
0:08:47 I was lucky because I wasn’t married and I wasn’t worried about my wife.”
0:08:52 He’s a word blessed and lucky to describe being in the Hanoi Hilton in a six and a
0:08:56 half by seven foot cell with three other guys, right?
0:08:59 So that was disappointing when he got shot down.
0:09:05 That was very disappointing, but somehow he’s able to find the positive.
0:09:10 At least he didn’t miss any Super Bowls with the Detroit Lions in when he was in Hanoi
0:09:11 Hilton.
0:09:12 You had to go there.
0:09:13 You had to go there.
0:09:14 Hey, listen.
0:09:17 They are turning things around.
0:09:22 I was born in Detroit and we moved when I was little and I’ve hung on to this team.
0:09:24 I always tell my kids, “It’s like anything else.
0:09:27 You got to stick with them through thick and thin and now we’re having a moment.”
0:09:28 We’ll see.
0:09:36 Fingers crossed.
0:09:42 One of my favorite books when I was growing up was a book called Paper Lion, and I’m
0:09:43 sure you know that, right?
0:09:44 George Plimpton.
0:09:49 George Plimpton quarterback for the Detroit Lions for a summer.
0:09:50 Brilliant book.
0:09:51 He was an amazing guy.
0:09:52 Yeah.
0:09:53 Yeah.
0:09:54 They’ve had some tough … Yeah, that’s a trivia question.
0:09:59 There are four NFL franchises that have never appeared in a Super Bowl and we’ve just
0:10:00 described one.
0:10:04 If any of your listeners can do the other three without Googling, they’d be among the
0:10:05 first.
0:10:10 I know a lot of people, but … We got sidetracked by the Detroit Lions, but I also had people
0:10:11 on my podcast.
0:10:14 They were in prison for 22 years.
0:10:16 Their parents were crack addicts.
0:10:21 They got diagnosed with ALS and they’re not wallowing in the mire.
0:10:24 They have definitely positive outlooks.
0:10:25 Right.
0:10:26 No.
0:10:32 Again, you asked if a pessimist is an optimist who’d been disappointed, ALS diagnosis is
0:10:37 a huge disappointment, and somehow the people you describe are able to see their way through
0:10:38 it.
0:10:39 I think it’s really important.
0:10:40 Yeah.
0:10:44 Do you think there’s such a thing as being too optimist?
0:10:49 I think if it goes … If you stretch the definition again to being completely unrealistic,
0:10:51 that’s not helpful.
0:10:54 If I just say, “Yeah, I’m making this up, but yeah, I can cross the road.
0:10:55 That bus isn’t coming so fast.
0:10:56 I can do it.”
0:10:57 Yeah.
0:11:00 That’s a stupid example, but you know what I mean.
0:11:06 There are times when just being just foolishly, unrealistically optimistic, that’s not helpful.
0:11:07 No.
0:11:09 But I think that’s an extreme.
0:11:14 I don’t observe a whole lot of that, but I’m having trouble thinking of a real example
0:11:15 of that.
0:11:17 But I hear your point and I think, “Yes, that is a danger.”
0:11:25 Can you discuss the subtle differentiation that I think devil’s advocacy is a good thing
0:11:31 that somebody should be telling the emperor he or she has no clothes.
0:11:38 So how do you straddle the fine line between being a constructive devil’s advocate and
0:11:39 a pessimistic downer?
0:11:40 Yeah.
0:11:42 No, I think it’s funny.
0:11:48 You’re asking questions that are of a vein of a lot of what I hear because I think people,
0:11:49 and it’s funny.
0:11:50 I’ve said this many times.
0:11:54 I wish every interview I did that my wife could sit behind and roll her eyes when I talk
0:11:57 about how positive I am because I have my moments too.
0:11:58 And we all do.
0:11:59 And that’s realistic.
0:12:04 And again, I think not telling the emperor that he or she is naked is toxic positivity.
0:12:06 It’s hiding from those tough conversations.
0:12:11 And anyone listening, yourself included guy, if you ever took that deep breath and had
0:12:16 that tough conversation with someone that you’d been putting off, how great does it feel after?
0:12:19 And how often are they appreciative?
0:12:21 Even times I’ve terminated people.
0:12:23 I’ve looked them in the eye, explained why.
0:12:29 I did a huge, pretty large layoff of a division when I was at the Weather Channel and sweating
0:12:30 it out.
0:12:32 But when we told people, we explained why.
0:12:34 We showed them the numbers and the financials.
0:12:35 We gave them out placement.
0:12:39 I went to lunch just to clear my head and I came back and this very large guy who was
0:12:44 part of the group that had just been terminated was walking towards me in the parking lot.
0:12:49 And I wanted to pretend I’d forgotten my keys, but I kept walking and he threw out his arms
0:12:50 and he hugged me.
0:12:51 And I said, “What are you doing?”
0:12:54 He said, “I’ve been laid off other places.
0:12:55 You guys handled it so well.
0:12:56 I really appreciate it.
0:12:57 You’re good people.”
0:13:00 And I don’t know if I’m going to answer your question, but I think taking those tough conversations
0:13:04 on but doing it forthrightly and honestly and helping people the best way you can, that’s
0:13:06 the best you can do.
0:13:10 Life’s going to hand you tough situations for sure.
0:13:17 So I saw you on the Today Show and you had one of the greatest lines I’ve ever heard,
0:13:21 which is, “Show me a list of pessimistic successful leaders.”
0:13:22 Yeah.
0:13:25 I stole that most of my stuff.
0:13:26 That was from Bert Jacobs.
0:13:30 He says, “I challenge people, bring me the list of history’s great pessimists.”
0:13:35 And someone threw out some name of some obscure person, I don’t know who it was, but I’m sure
0:13:36 maybe you could come up with one.
0:13:38 But I think it’s true.
0:13:41 Someone said to me also, “You don’t want to follow someone who says, ‘Hey, follow me.
0:13:46 I’ll take you someplace worse.'”
0:13:47 Same idea.
0:13:49 And guys, think about the people you have followed.
0:13:51 Think about when you’ve been a leader.
0:13:52 How did you do it?
0:13:57 I’m sure you painted an optimistic picture that people wanted to get behind you and follow.
0:13:58 Absolutely.
0:13:59 Yeah, absolutely.
0:14:00 Absolutely.
0:14:06 In that sense, you could make the case that Steve Jobs for all his asshole-ness was an
0:14:08 absolute optimist.
0:14:09 Absolutely.
0:14:10 A dreamer and an optimist.
0:14:14 And by the way, I know that you were around when the Think Different campaign came on.
0:14:18 And I was fortunate enough, I worked with Ted Turner and then I was his ghost writer
0:14:19 for his autobiography.
0:14:21 Here’s another trivia question.
0:14:26 That first video ad that showed all the different people, Einstein and all the others, there
0:14:29 are two people in that ad who are still alive.
0:14:34 And one of them, I just said his name, Ted Turner, and the other one’s in a somewhat
0:14:35 similar field.
0:14:38 It’s a fun question, isn’t it?
0:14:39 Let me think about that.
0:14:40 Not American.
0:14:44 Oh, I don’t want to bring this podcast to a halt, but I might stump you, and it looks
0:14:45 like I have.
0:14:47 Wait, I’ll type it into Chad GPT.
0:14:48 Yeah, exactly.
0:14:50 I could save you the trouble.
0:14:51 Okay.
0:14:52 It’s Burke GPT.
0:14:55 Who’s the answer?
0:14:56 Richard Branson.
0:14:57 Yeah.
0:15:00 Ian Tedder, the only two from that ad who are still alive and it’s still brilliant.
0:15:02 I get choked up every time I see Ted on there.
0:15:07 I had the poster, the Think Different of Ted on the poster was him in a sailboat racing
0:15:08 in the America’s Cup.
0:15:11 So anyway, I digress.
0:15:14 That is a good digression though.
0:15:19 So just give us a 60 second analysis of Ted Turner, then since you wrote the book.
0:15:20 Oh gosh.
0:15:21 Yeah.
0:15:22 Talk about an ultimate optimist.
0:15:23 The guy had more setbacks in his life.
0:15:28 He was brutal childhood, difficult father who committed suicide when Ted was in his
0:15:29 early 20s.
0:15:32 He lost his sister a few years before that to Lupus.
0:15:36 It’s probably definitely contributed to his father’s challenges.
0:15:41 So now he did inherit a small billboard company, but he was one of the great doers of all time.
0:15:46 I think history is going to reflect very positively on his impact on the media world.
0:15:52 And then what people forget or aren’t as aware of, he was really one of the big, first big
0:15:58 mega philanthropists granting or making a pledge for a billion dollars to start the United
0:16:03 Nations Foundation, a billion dollars when he was worth $3 billion, okay.
0:16:07 And what he’s done in preservation of land, he owns two million acres around the world.
0:16:09 It’s all preserved.
0:16:10 He’s a real…
0:16:11 I love the guy.
0:16:12 I owe him a lot.
0:16:15 He’s very different and he had his asshole-ness on occasion.
0:16:21 He could be very tough, but he was a genuinely good human being who overcame all kinds of
0:16:22 odds to do what he did.
0:16:23 I’m a fan.
0:16:27 Sure sounds like it.
0:16:30 You want to give us insights into Jane Fauna too?
0:16:31 Sure.
0:16:32 Sure.
0:16:33 She’s a great way.
0:16:38 So very similar in that her mother committed suicide and you want to talk about a way to
0:16:39 bond with someone.
0:16:44 So Ted read in the newspaper that she was getting divorced from Tom Hayden and he called her
0:16:45 out of the blue.
0:16:46 They’d never met.
0:16:47 “Bye, Ted Turner.”
0:16:49 And she said, “Ted, this has just happened.
0:16:50 I need six months.
0:16:51 Give me a break.”
0:16:55 And so he writes in his date timer six months later to the day.
0:16:56 He called her back.
0:16:58 He said, “It’s been six months.”
0:17:00 She understands Ted better than anyone I’ve ever met.
0:17:02 She was a great interview for the book.
0:17:07 She really gets him and understands him and it’s an overused expression.
0:17:09 They’re soulmates in a very interesting way.
0:17:10 They just couldn’t live together.
0:17:12 Ted can never be alone, literally.
0:17:13 He’s never alone.
0:17:16 He’s got a separation anxiety thing.
0:17:17 And he can never sit still.
0:17:21 So if you’re married to him and you want to have your own life, it’s very hard to do.
0:17:24 And let’s just say Jane Fauna enjoys having her own life.
0:17:28 She’s still out protesting and getting arrested.
0:17:30 So yeah, she’s a fascinating person.
0:17:33 I was lucky to get to know her a little bit too.
0:17:34 Wow.
0:17:35 Wow.
0:17:39 This is a tangent I didn’t expect to go on.
0:17:46 I originally brought this quote up about, “Show me a list of pessimistic successful leaders.”
0:17:49 Because I’m going to try to pin you down a little bit, okay?
0:17:50 Oh, geez.
0:17:52 You’ve been trying to pin me down this whole time.
0:17:53 All right.
0:17:59 So now I want you to show me a list of successful optimistic media publications.
0:18:04 Like every media publication, it seems to me focuses on negativity.
0:18:05 So why are they successful?
0:18:06 Oh, yeah.
0:18:07 It’s brutal.
0:18:08 Yeah.
0:18:09 No.
0:18:11 So that’s, and I think one of the reasons I’m doing this work is probably some sort of
0:18:13 a guilt trip having been in that business.
0:18:16 Although I, luckily, particularly when I was at the Weather Channel, there wasn’t a lot
0:18:18 of sensationalism or negativity.
0:18:22 We are, as a species, we are primed to respond.
0:18:28 Some people say to bad things, interviewing Richie Davidson, who’s a neuroscientist who’s
0:18:29 fascinating.
0:18:32 He says we’re actually hardwired to notice difference.
0:18:37 And I like that in this context because his point is that bad news is the exception.
0:18:38 It’s different.
0:18:39 It’s dramatic.
0:18:42 And so if you want to, you want to get people to watch your newscast, you don’t have a reporter
0:18:46 stand there and say, “I’m standing somewhere where there hasn’t been a war for 60 years.”
0:18:51 Or you don’t say, “I’m standing at LaGuardia Airport, where a thousand planes landed successfully
0:18:53 this last week.”
0:18:59 You go to the exceptions and I will go to my grave believing that a lot of these negative
0:19:04 bad stories are life’s exceptions and they grab your interests.
0:19:09 And my concern is that nothing does it better than social media.
0:19:15 And in ways that traditional television never could, it’s following your likes, it’s following
0:19:19 what you forward, it understands who you’re following.
0:19:20 And I’ve experienced this.
0:19:22 I cleaned up my feeds when I started this work.
0:19:26 And just as those algorithms can pull you down into despair and doom, they can pull you up
0:19:29 into some really great things.
0:19:32 So there are smaller positive news outlets.
0:19:35 A lot of people cite to me, and I haven’t watched it in a while, I should, the CBS Sunday
0:19:38 morning show is quite positive.
0:19:43 One of the reasons I had, I pushed to get on with Oda and Jenna on the Today Show, that’s
0:19:46 an hour of positivity for the most part.
0:19:52 There are smaller ones that I’m in this little ecosystem now of people doing similar work.
0:19:57 One of my personal heroes, David Byrne, has started Reasons to Be Cheerful, which is a
0:19:59 five-year project he’s been at at five years.
0:20:04 It’s a newsletter about Reasons to Be Cheerful, news stories you haven’t heard.
0:20:06 There’s a gentleman in Australia named Angus Hervey.
0:20:10 He’s twice the last two big TED conferences he’s presented.
0:20:15 He has an organization called Fix the News, and it’s all about reporting positive news.
0:20:18 So there are people out there trying it, but they don’t have the audience of CNN and MSNC
0:20:19 and Fox.
0:20:20 And that’s why.
0:20:26 If TED would be frustrated, CNN was started to be down the middle news, and slowly by
0:20:32 slowly Fox came along and MSNBC, and it is hard to play it down the middle and do positive
0:20:33 stories.
0:20:34 It’s tough.
0:20:40 You mentioned social media about 30 seconds ago, and I would love to hear the Bill Burke
0:20:46 analysis of how should you deal with social media and news consumption?
0:20:48 What do you do these days?
0:20:52 Yeah, and again, my wife would be rolling her eyes because she knows I could work harder
0:20:53 at this.
0:20:58 But I think the first thing is, I’m not going to say anything you haven’t heard before,
0:21:01 but use it less.
0:21:03 Choose who you follow really wisely.
0:21:08 Every time you click a like or a forward, that’s a vote, and it’s a vote that’s going
0:21:10 to be rewarded with more of the same.
0:21:12 I hate news alerts.
0:21:14 I tell this story about it.
0:21:18 We were with our daughter, a beautiful lake up in Maine, and her pocket buzzes, and she
0:21:23 pulls it out, and it’s eight people were killed in a stampede at a concert in South Korea.
0:21:25 It’s a very sad thing.
0:21:31 She’s an empathetic person, but the next hour of the day, she was so bummed out about this
0:21:35 thing that happened in South Korea that, again, it’s very sad.
0:21:39 There’s absolutely nothing she can do about it, and she’s letting it rob her of this wonderful
0:21:40 day she could be having.
0:21:45 I think we fall prey to that really badly, and if someone could tell me the last time
0:21:48 they got a news alert that was positive, I’d love to hear it.
0:21:50 Or frankly, something you need to act on.
0:21:55 A weather alert is one thing, and I have a bias towards weather alerts, but there’s a
0:21:56 tornado getting the basement.
0:21:57 That’s a good alert.
0:22:02 But if famous person just died yesterday at 82, you’re just kind of sad.
0:22:06 I didn’t really need to know that, not this minute for sure.
0:22:07 So I think that’s a big part of it.
0:22:10 But really, I say look hard at cleaning up your feed.
0:22:14 I was fascinated when I started doing it, I said, “Why do I keep seeing this nasty stuff
0:22:15 from this person I don’t even know?”
0:22:18 And I’m like, “Oh, my friend follows them.”
0:22:22 Because my friend follows them, somehow it’s kicking over to me, I think I need to unfollow
0:22:24 my friend.
0:22:25 It takes discipline.
0:22:29 I think, guy, I get frustrated because I have my issues with social media and some of the
0:22:33 business models, but it’s on us, too.
0:22:37 And I do get frustrated when people present themselves as helpless victims.
0:22:40 The best analogy I can come up with, and it’s not a great one, but if you’re on the sidewalk
0:22:44 and you’re thinking about what you can have for lunch, and there’s a fast, unhealthy fast
0:22:50 food joint and a healthy joint over here, and you go into the fast food place, don’t be mad
0:22:52 at the fast food restaurant.
0:22:54 That’s on you, right?
0:22:57 Don’t complain about Facebook when you can’t stop.
0:22:58 You have agency.
0:23:00 Up next, on Remarkable People.
0:23:05 Yeah, so we talked a little bit about cleaning up your media habits.
0:23:08 We focus on social media, but all media habits, that’s a great way to do it.
0:23:10 It’s an uphill climb with a lot of people.
0:23:37 I truly believe that understanding and reading more history really helps you understand how
0:23:40 a big mahalo to you for doing this.
0:23:46 Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
0:23:51 So if we can get down really tactically, what social media platforms do you use?
0:23:53 It’s kind of a crutch, but it’s true.
0:23:58 I use it way more than I did before I started this institute, and one of the good things
0:24:02 I’ll say about social media is the opportunity for someone like me to promote to people that
0:24:04 I wouldn’t have otherwise.
0:24:07 So I can say all of them.
0:24:13 I’m using the biggies for that, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, a little bit
0:24:14 of TikTok.
0:24:16 I have no idea what’s going on on TikTok.
0:24:17 But I don’t spend a ton of time.
0:24:23 I’ve used Twitter as sort of a curated news feed, and again, very careful about who I follow,
0:24:24 but it serves up, it fix the news.
0:24:26 I got another great story this morning.
0:24:29 It’s one of the ways I help, I find guests is through social media.
0:24:33 But I also do a lot of, I love newspapers.
0:24:39 And when you ask about social media, I challenge people, the older ones of us in this audience.
0:24:45 When I was a kid or watching my parents, you’d read the newspaper in the morning, maybe one
0:24:51 or two, you’d go to work, you’d work till whenever, you’d come home, maybe you’ll watch
0:24:55 Walter Cronkite or The Nightly News, and then you get up and do it again.
0:25:00 At three o’clock in the afternoon, my dad wasn’t getting a text about a stampede in
0:25:01 Korea.
0:25:03 You know what I mean?
0:25:09 We’ve become such junkies, and so much of it is not useful or actionable.
0:25:13 And I don’t think we’re evolutionarily, and here I’m stepping out of my expertise, because
0:25:20 I’m the farthest thing from a scientist, but I’ve heard others say this too, evolutionarily,
0:25:23 we grew up caring about our family and our little village.
0:25:28 We didn’t know what was going on 15 miles away, let alone 3,000.
0:25:33 And so we just bomb ourselves with all this data and all this information, all this negativity
0:25:37 and all, here’s the craziest thing that politicians said.
0:25:39 And then I’ll say one more thing about politics.
0:25:43 A friend of mine called six months ago, Donald Trump said something outrageous that day.
0:25:46 “Can you believe what he said today?”
0:25:49 And I said, “Is that going to change how you vote in November?”
0:25:51 “Of course not, I’d never vote for that guy.”
0:25:56 Then why are you allowing him to ruin your after?
0:25:58 He’s going to do it again tomorrow.
0:26:00 That’s not helpful.
0:26:03 Okay, I’ll offer my soapbox.
0:26:07 You asked for it.
0:26:09 You think your wife would give me an interview?
0:26:11 I would love to talk to your wife.
0:26:12 I have done this several times.
0:26:15 Now you’ve crossed the line, guy.
0:26:16 Next question.
0:26:19 I’ll take that as a no.
0:26:25 My wife, very fairly in this, but she will say, and I’ve seen her say this, that I am
0:26:28 more fun to be around since I started this work.
0:26:29 No doubt.
0:26:30 There’s no doubt.
0:26:33 I spend my, when I read the paper, I read all the bad stuff and I’m looking for the
0:26:34 good stuff.
0:26:35 And it’s a delight.
0:26:37 I highly recommend it.
0:26:41 Wait, so do you actually subscribe and get a physical paper?
0:26:46 No, nowadays I only get the Sunday New York Times physical.
0:26:48 I lived 20 years outside of Portland, Maine.
0:26:53 I get the Portland paper on my iPad, but it’s actually, it looks like the physical paper.
0:26:54 So I get the whole thing.
0:26:59 So I’m pretty much New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Portland Press Herald in Maine.
0:27:00 And I think it’s helpful.
0:27:04 Read the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
0:27:05 That’s the other thing.
0:27:09 I think that getting spoon fed, the stuff, if you start the day with this side of center
0:27:14 and or this side of center, and then you just keep hearing stuff that just blows up your
0:27:20 balloon on either side, you end the day farther off than angry or, and that’s not healthy.
0:27:26 I’ve been having this running one sided battle with the guy who runs Instagram and other
0:27:27 people at Metta.
0:27:34 And I’m telling them, just give me a preference that I can set so that I only see what the
0:27:38 people I have manually followed or posting.
0:27:40 I don’t want your algorithm.
0:27:43 Just give me an algorithm with no algorithm.
0:27:45 And I would pay for that service.
0:27:46 Absolutely.
0:27:47 No, it’s a great point.
0:27:52 So yes, you have to be on guard, not to mention the advertising stuff.
0:27:55 You’re having a conversation with someone about a vacation in Mexico and you open up
0:27:56 Instagram.
0:27:58 There’s three ads for vacations in Mexico.
0:28:02 It’s like, wait a second, but yeah, why are we seeing stuff we didn’t want?
0:28:07 Well, I mean, you would think from just a marketing perspective that there could be one
0:28:13 social media platform where the inherent selling point is we have no algorithm.
0:28:17 The algorithm is you choose who to follow and that’s what you’ll see.
0:28:19 Yeah, it’s funny because you said you’d pay for that.
0:28:23 I think one of the challenges is they’re very scared to introduce subscription fees.
0:28:25 I think that’s a big part of it.
0:28:26 It’s got to be free.
0:28:29 So if it’s going to be free, the only way you’re going to pay for it is really targeted
0:28:31 and effective advertising.
0:28:35 And I think that they’re stuck on that, but you might pay a reasonable amount of money
0:28:37 that adds up pretty quickly.
0:28:40 A couple of bucks a month, I learned that in the cable business when you had a basic
0:28:43 cable package, 25 cents a month is going to this channel.
0:28:46 That adds up pretty quickly when a hundred million people are watching.
0:28:48 I’ll drink one less cappuccino a month.
0:28:49 It’s not a problem.
0:28:50 Yeah, exactly.
0:28:51 Yeah.
0:28:52 Okay.
0:28:58 So in your videos and stuff, you discover this concept of Stephen Covey about the circle
0:29:05 of influence versus the circle of concern versus the circle of control, right?
0:29:06 Yeah.
0:29:07 I love it.
0:29:10 For my listeners, just explain that concept.
0:29:12 It’s a very interesting concept.
0:29:14 And then I’m going to try to pin you down one more time.
0:29:15 Oh, gosh.
0:29:16 You’re brutal.
0:29:17 Okay.
0:29:19 Circle of concern is the biggest one.
0:29:25 And so that takes in, we haven’t even mentioned climate change, these big existential or sometimes
0:29:28 challenging stuff, and you’re concerned about it.
0:29:31 But for the most part, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it.
0:29:34 If you try to do something about it, you might have an impact, but it’s not going to change
0:29:35 things overnight.
0:29:39 Circle of influence is much smaller, but you have more influence.
0:29:40 So that’s your friends, your family.
0:29:42 You can make your workplace better.
0:29:44 You can make your home life better.
0:29:45 Circle of control.
0:29:49 And I’ve got to go back and see how Covey defines it, because to me, that’s really tight.
0:29:50 How much do you really control?
0:29:52 To me, it’s like the circle around me.
0:29:54 I can’t control my family.
0:29:56 I can’t control my dog.
0:29:57 So I think that’s really tight.
0:30:00 So I tend to focus on influence and concern.
0:30:04 And what Covey says is the more you focus on your circle of influence, the better you’re
0:30:05 going to feel.
0:30:09 That circle can actually grow a little bit, because you start impacting the marketing
0:30:13 team at your company, and then that spills over to the finance team.
0:30:14 And that can be really powerful.
0:30:19 And if we spend the whole day, if I spent the day looking out the window and thinking
0:30:23 about climate change, it’s not a healthy thing to do.
0:30:28 And even, I’ll say this guy, I worry sometimes too, that as you focus so much on that huge
0:30:32 circle of concern, it robs you of some of the joy that you can have.
0:30:34 And you’ve probably heard this before too.
0:30:38 But on an unseasonally warm day in the Northeast, someone steps outside and says, “Oh, it’s
0:30:39 beautiful day.”
0:30:40 Climate change.
0:30:41 That’s why it’s warmer.
0:30:42 It’s climate change.
0:30:44 Now, again, I’m not dismissing climate change.
0:30:45 It’s just a serious thing.
0:30:50 However, we’re talking about very small increases in temperature around the globe.
0:30:54 So if it’s an unseasonally warm day in April, it’s an unseasonally warm day in April.
0:30:55 That’s not all climate change, right?
0:31:01 And it robs us of these joys, I think, and that’s not a healthy place to be.
0:31:06 That robbing comes from this large circle of concern, valid as it is, about something
0:31:08 like climate change.
0:31:14 But don’t you think that if people took this attitude to an extreme, it would say, “Well,
0:31:19 I can’t do anything about climate control, so I’ll buy a Ford 150 and get eight miles
0:31:25 per gallon, and I’ll drive at two blocks,” and there are things that individuals can
0:31:26 do?
0:31:27 Absolutely.
0:31:28 No.
0:31:29 And I didn’t say just abandon the circle of concern.
0:31:33 I think if you carry it around as baggage all day, that’s really unhealthy.
0:31:34 No, absolutely.
0:31:38 In fact, one of the reasons I espouse optimism, I think it’s the pessimists who say, “Screw
0:31:39 it.
0:31:42 I’m just going to drive a big SUV,” because climate change, we’re doomed.
0:31:43 It’s too late.
0:31:44 We missed it.
0:31:47 So let’s just enjoy it while we can.
0:31:51 One reason I started this work is hearing young people say, “I’m not going to have children
0:31:55 because it’s why bother the world’s going to end in 30 years because of climate change.”
0:32:00 And again, obviously, not having children is a very valid choice, but if it’s made because
0:32:06 you’re convinced the world’s going to end in 30 years, then why bother doing anything?
0:32:15 I made a unilateral decision that banned bottled water in our house, and now we only drink
0:32:17 liquid death.
0:32:21 Liquid death comes in aluminum cans, although you could make the case that we’re still
0:32:27 shipping water and burning carbon fuel shipping water around, but still it’s better than bottled
0:32:28 water.
0:32:33 When someone looks back on this era, bottled water, I think it’s going to … Today, if
0:32:36 you ask someone around the world, if they look at our bottled water habit, it’s bizarre.
0:32:41 We had the greatest drinking water in the world by a lot, and yet that’s a whole other subject,
0:32:44 but I’m glad you’re doing something about it, it’s always troubled me.
0:32:50 Well, my water doesn’t come from Fiji, I’m just telling you.
0:32:53 As you drink your plastic bottled water.
0:32:57 Yeah, this is silver, so I filled this up in the sink.
0:32:58 Nice try.
0:32:59 Nice and corrected.
0:33:00 Nice try.
0:33:01 All right.
0:33:08 So, I have one last question for you, and this question is, let’s suppose that people
0:33:12 are listening to this and say, “Man, I have seen the light, I’m not going to be filled
0:33:15 with negativity, I’m not going to be reading all the bullshit, I’m not going to be worried
0:33:18 about Donald Trump ending America, blah, blah, blah.”
0:33:24 So now they want to know, “Okay, Mr. Burke, you are the king of optimism, how do I get
0:33:31 started on this path towards optimism, what’s the tactical and practical steps that I take?”
0:33:36 Yeah, so we talked a little bit about cleaning up your media habits, and we focus on social
0:33:39 media, but all media habits, that’s a great way to do it.
0:33:40 It’s an uphill climb with a lot of people.
0:33:45 I truly believe that understanding and reading more history really helps you understand how
0:33:49 good we have it today, and really fun, interesting history.
0:33:53 I read a great book about, there’s a Joshua Chamberlain’s guy from Maine, it was a Civil
0:33:54 War hero.
0:33:58 You read this book and they just casually mentioned the next two children died in childbirth and
0:33:59 blah, blah, blah, blah.
0:34:07 You look at the actual numbers of longevity and infant mortality and vaccines, and it’s
0:34:11 incredible what we have, and if you can put that in the context of history, you’ll feel
0:34:13 better about the world.
0:34:16 And again, try to catch people being good.
0:34:17 Look for the goodness.
0:34:22 It’s the old, Mr. Rogers, Fred Rogers said that when he was looking at scary stuff on
0:34:25 the news, his mother would say, “Always look for the helpers.”
0:34:31 So when they saw the scary fire on the nightly news, look for the helpers.
0:34:36 The response in the aftermath of these hurricanes, watching what people go through to save other
0:34:37 people is incredible.
0:34:43 We’re an amazing species, and history, clean up your media habits.
0:34:46 Those are the biggest for me, and of course, listen to the Blue Sky podcast on a weekly
0:34:47 basis.
0:34:51 Seriously, talk about your podcast and talk about the Optimism Institute.
0:34:52 Let’s link.
0:34:53 I’m all about it.
0:34:54 Yeah.
0:34:55 The Optimism Institute.
0:34:57 You’re talking to an evangelist here.
0:34:59 Yeah, exactly.
0:35:03 We were lucky enough to do a one-year academic fellowship in 2022, and it was designed for
0:35:08 people later in their careers, trying to make a social impact in what they did next.
0:35:12 We have colleagues and friends working on climate change and homelessness and really
0:35:13 important things.
0:35:14 I got this idea.
0:35:15 This is a niche I could try to fill.
0:35:19 I really feel like it’s a big problem for the society, how negative we’re getting.
0:35:22 I started it in early ’23.
0:35:26 The Optimism Institute.com was available, so I grabbed it.
0:35:28 You’re talking basically to the entire institute.
0:35:29 I have some free answers.
0:35:30 You help me.
0:35:31 The name’s I’m like tongue-in-cheek.
0:35:35 As you said, I got the name Blue Sky from a meditation prompt that there’s always Blue
0:35:36 Sky above.
0:35:38 You got to get your head above the clouds to see it.
0:35:43 Every week, what I’ve tried to do versus some of these good news sites, quote unquote,
0:35:45 say they’re great and I love them.
0:35:48 I read them, but it’s like, “There’s a new bike lane in Amsterdam.
0:35:49 That’s great.”
0:35:50 Or, “There’s this.
0:35:51 That’s great.”
0:35:54 I try to talk to people when I can who are working on the very challenges that make us
0:35:55 pessimistic.
0:35:59 A guy who’s written a book about political divisions, someone who’s working on homelessness,
0:36:04 someone who’s working on helping people out of prison get employment, the toughest stuff.
0:36:09 But they come at it with a sense of hope and optimism and a solutions orientation.
0:36:12 That’s another one, by the way, the Solutions Journalism Network.
0:36:17 They are working on more news stories and training newsrooms around the country to do
0:36:19 more positive news.
0:36:20 That’s how it came about.
0:36:24 I just released my ’71 or ’72 episode.
0:36:25 You know what it’s like.
0:36:26 It’s a grind.
0:36:27 It’s a beast you got to feed.
0:36:31 I tell you every time, I’ll do an interview and then a few weeks later, I’ll edit it.
0:36:35 I forgot what a great conversation it was and what an amazing person this was.
0:36:38 Starts feeding on itself because people are like, “Oh, I heard you’re interviewing this.
0:36:39 You got to talk to this guy.
0:36:41 You got to talk to this woman over here.
0:36:42 She’s doing incredible work.
0:36:43 It’s everywhere.”
0:36:46 It’s been a real pleasure and privilege for me.
0:36:52 Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve had this much fun doing work as I have here.
0:36:55 I’m my own boss and I want to blame myself when I mess up.
0:36:56 Yeah.
0:36:57 I’ve had a great time.
0:36:58 I get to meet people like you.
0:37:01 I mean, truly, you start doing this work and then you realize there are all these other
0:37:06 people out here doing things that are similar and you bring so much positivity in the world.
0:37:09 It’s ridiculous when I look at the list of people you’ve had on this show.
0:37:14 Again, I think somehow I got put in the wrong pile, but it’s been great to meet you and
0:37:16 speak on the subject that I care a lot about.
0:37:21 This is, in a sense, my podcast, Remarkable People.
0:37:22 It’s Remarkable People.
0:37:24 It’s not Remarkable Pessimists.
0:37:25 Yeah, right.
0:37:28 Again, yeah, let’s know and go through your list and see if there’s anyone you’ve ever
0:37:32 interviewed for your show that you would describe.
0:37:34 As a pessimist, nope.
0:37:36 Would you indulge me in something, guy?
0:37:38 I would indulge you in almost anything.
0:37:39 Well, okay.
0:37:44 I won’t push it, but I mentioned the person stepping outside on a warm day and going into
0:37:45 gloom about climate change.
0:37:48 There’s a man named David Vondrell.
0:37:53 He writes for the Washington Post and I use this in a high school graduation speech I
0:37:57 gave on this subject, but it’s during the pandemic and I think it’s something we could
0:37:58 all relate to.
0:38:02 He looks out the window and there’s a beautiful bright red cardinal sitting in a tree.
0:38:06 Right when he sees it, he remembers an article he just read about how bird species are getting
0:38:09 killed off because of climate change.
0:38:13 He’s having this internal battle of can I actually enjoy how beautiful this bird is
0:38:17 or am I going to, so can I just read to what he wrote because it’s different than anything
0:38:18 I could ever do?
0:38:23 He says, he settles on deciding that it’s okay to enjoy the bird.
0:38:29 He says, quote, “Joy is becoming counter-cultural in fashion instead as a heavy coat of doom.
0:38:34 Anxiety and depression are endemic,” psychologists tell us, “and why wouldn’t they be when optimism
0:38:38 and cheerfulness are taken as signs of obtuseness?
0:38:43 When happiness is a dead giveaway that someone either doesn’t know or doesn’t care how
0:38:47 very bad things are, here’s where that cardinal finally lands.
0:38:54 One cannot usefully address a threat to birds if they do not delight in individual birds.
0:38:58 One cannot meaningfully answer the climate crisis if they lack excitement about the human
0:39:02 capacity for invention and reinvention.
0:39:06 One cannot make progress towards equality and inclusion if they don’t see and love
0:39:13 the potential of humankind, enemies included, and one cannot build the future if one fears
0:39:14 the future.”
0:39:15 Wow.
0:39:21 That is certainly a good way to end this.
0:39:22 Thank you.
0:39:29 Thank you, sir, for this great 46 minutes and 10 seconds of optimism.
0:39:34 And I bet it’s going to help people be even more remarkable.
0:39:37 Thank you so much for being on my podcast.
0:39:38 It’s an honor and an privilege.
0:39:39 Thank you.
0:39:43 And all of you listeners, thank you for tuning in.
0:39:48 Madison, thank you for making this happen, and Tessa Nizmer did all the background research.
0:39:52 And I have two great sound designers, and then Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez.
0:40:00 So that’s my team, and we’re trying to make everybody remarkable.
0:40:02 This is Remarkable People.
0:00:16 on a mission to make you remarkable.
0:00:20 And helping me today is the remarkable Bill Burke.
0:00:25 And Bill Burke is, shall I say, Mr. Optimism.
0:00:31 He is the founder of the Optimism Institute and host of the Blue Sky podcast.
0:00:36 And the Blue Sky podcast is called Blue Sky podcast, because once you get above the clouds,
0:00:38 it’s nothing but blue sky.
0:00:42 So this is all about optimism.
0:00:48 And he has a very rich background about journalism in general, but he was the CEO of the Weather
0:00:51 Channel and president of TBS Superstations.
0:00:57 So this is not some clown who just wants to be an influencer positioning himself as some
0:00:58 kind of guru.
0:01:00 This guy knows what it’s happening.
0:01:02 So Bill, let us talk about optimism.
0:01:04 Are you ready to go?
0:01:05 Let’s go.
0:01:11 I’m ready.
0:01:14 So Bill, you know, I, I mean, let’s just cut to the chase.
0:01:17 I got to start you off with a nice softball.
0:01:18 Easy question.
0:01:19 Okay.
0:01:20 Okay.
0:01:27 So right now, right before the election, are you optimistic about the future of America?
0:01:31 And if you are, or are, tell me why.
0:01:33 I am optimistic about the future of America.
0:01:37 I think we are going through a challenging time for sure.
0:01:41 But one of the reasons I started this work is I’m a big history buff.
0:01:45 And it’s really helpful, I think, to put anything that’s going on today in the context
0:01:46 of history.
0:01:50 I interviewed Kevin Kelly, who you may know from Wired Magazine in the old days.
0:01:54 And he said, if you only read the news, you’ll think things have never been worse.
0:01:57 But if you read history, you realize things have never been better.
0:02:01 And today, when people say, and how many times you hear it, we’ve never been this divided
0:02:04 as a country, which is not true.
0:02:08 We fought a civil war for four years, you know, the summer of 1968, if you study it
0:02:14 was so divisive between Vietnam and campus protests where I take comfort and believe
0:02:15 me, I have my concerns.
0:02:18 I am not blind, and I’m a realist.
0:02:22 But the ideals and ideas that we were founded on are going to support us if we stay true
0:02:23 to them.
0:02:25 And so I am cautiously optimistic, but generally optimistic.
0:02:29 And as Warren Buffett said, you never make money betting against America.
0:02:30 And I agree with that.
0:02:34 I believe an optimist believes that tomorrow can be better than today and that they have
0:02:36 a role in making it.
0:02:38 And so you have to stay engaged.
0:02:39 You have to.
0:02:43 So if the person you’re voting for does not win, you stay engaged and you keep working
0:02:48 and you keep exposing things you think are wrong and you keep trying to hold up the ideals
0:02:51 of America, believe me, it is a concerning time.
0:02:53 I understand that.
0:02:58 But I think my concern is that when people lose hope, they become apathetic.
0:03:00 And once that happens, it’s over.
0:03:05 And so you have to keep bringing yourself back to the founding documents of this country.
0:03:09 I interviewed a gentleman recently who’s written a terrific book, African American Guy, who
0:03:14 talks about what it’s like to know that we have documents that were written by slave
0:03:18 owners, but understanding that once their ideas are out in the world, they don’t own
0:03:19 them anymore.
0:03:23 And so we can believe brilliant ideas from flawed men.
0:03:26 And I think that’s what we need to hang on to.
0:03:30 So I think, yeah, it’s going to be a challenging stretch, but we got to stay engaged.
0:03:31 Another line.
0:03:35 And then I’ll stop that I heard recently was that action absorbs anxiety.
0:03:37 And I really like that.
0:03:41 And I think if we sit around and read polls all day and try to game, and if this happens
0:03:45 and that’s going to happen, it’s far better if you really care about this to make phone
0:03:49 calls, knock on doors, do something, stay active.
0:03:50 And I really believe that.
0:03:54 But I am not so naive to think that this isn’t a challenging time, but we’ve always
0:03:56 lived in challenging times.
0:03:57 I got us.
0:03:59 I share your anxiety.
0:04:01 I share your optimism, too.
0:04:06 So let me ask you some, do you believe that optimists are born or made?
0:04:08 I get to ask this a lot, and I’ve thought about it a lot.
0:04:11 I think this sounds like a cop out, but I think it’s true.
0:04:14 I think it like a lot of things is a little bit of both athletes.
0:04:20 I grew up with some phenomenal athletes and the ones who made it a long way had the gift,
0:04:22 but they kept working at it.
0:04:23 They worked at it hard.
0:04:26 I am probably born on the optimistic side.
0:04:28 In fact, I was embarrassed to find out recently.
0:04:33 My sister found my high school yearbook that I did not have my senior yearbook.
0:04:37 And when I went to the sort of class elections page, like most likely to this or most likely
0:04:43 to succeed, we actually voted on class optimists and it was me and Maura Quinlan.
0:04:48 And so I guess I had that 40 years ago, but I have to work at it.
0:04:51 And it’s one of the great joys of doing this work is I look for good stories.
0:04:53 I actively try to stay positive.
0:04:56 I don’t wallow in negative social media.
0:04:57 It’s not helpful.
0:04:58 It’s not good for my health.
0:05:02 And if you’re looking for goodness, it’s everywhere.
0:05:04 I live in New York City now.
0:05:08 And when I walk to work, I take my AirPods out and I look around.
0:05:12 And there is so much going on, little things of goodness, the stranger paying the stranger’s
0:05:13 dog.
0:05:18 The police officer helping someone who can’t speak English, find where they’re going to
0:05:23 someone dropping groceries in the crosswalk and 10 people rush to help them.
0:05:25 People are good, but for the most part.
0:05:28 And the more you look for that, I think the better off you’ll be.
0:05:35 Do you think that the opposite of optimistic is pessimistic or realistic?
0:05:38 I think it’s pessimistic and realistic is funny.
0:05:42 I interviewed Bert Jacobs, who you may know, he founded Life is Good, the apparel company.
0:05:45 The whole reason for being is optimism.
0:05:49 And he said, “Realists lack imagination.”
0:05:52 And I think that optimism should be balanced with realism.
0:05:56 So guys, if you and I started a company tomorrow, a tech company, a chip company, and we said
0:06:00 to our employees in five years we’re going to be worth more than NVIDIA, that’s silly.
0:06:04 That’s optimistic, but it’s not realistic and it’s silly and no one’s going to pay attention
0:06:05 to that.
0:06:06 I think it’s pessimism.
0:06:08 I think optimism can be very realistic.
0:06:12 Again, I’m very aware that we live in tricky times.
0:06:13 We always have.
0:06:14 So I think it’s pessimism.
0:06:17 And I think it’s okay to balance your optimism with some realism.
0:06:19 In fact, I think it’s important.
0:06:24 The other thing I’d say too that’s related, optimism isn’t toxic positivity.
0:06:28 It’s not, and it’s not a belief that things are always going to be great.
0:06:29 They’re not.
0:06:30 They’re just not.
0:06:32 I’ve had some troughs in my life for sure.
0:06:36 Many people listening to this podcast are probably going through a terrible time.
0:06:41 It’s more how you try to look at that, how you try to find the silver linings once you’re
0:06:42 on the other side.
0:06:43 That’s what it’s about.
0:06:48 If someone comes to you with a terrible cancer and you say, “Well, look on the bright side,
0:06:52 you’ve got a great physician,” it’s like, “Well, okay, there might be a time and a place
0:06:57 for comment like that,” but that’s toxic to someone who’s just gotten that diagnosis.
0:06:59 So that’s an important balance, I think.
0:07:04 So I’m interested in how you define toxic positivity.
0:07:09 Is it these gurus that would run $2,000 a day, sessions at the Ritz Carlton and tell
0:07:11 you, “Look to your right.
0:07:12 Look to your left.
0:07:13 You’re both winners.
0:07:14 Shake your hands.
0:07:15 Stand up.
0:07:16 Change the world.
0:07:17 You’re all going to be rich.”
0:07:20 When does optimism turn toxic?
0:07:21 Yeah.
0:07:24 That sounded pretty toxic what you just described.
0:07:28 And I’m forgetting the name of the book, and I’m pretty sure she was on your podcast about
0:07:34 workplace being real with people in the workplace, and they use toxic positivity as a negative.
0:07:38 So this is a weakness of mine when I was a manager, when it came time for employee reviews
0:07:39 and that sort of thing.
0:07:41 I had trouble giving the tough feedback.
0:07:42 I wasn’t very good at it.
0:07:47 I wanted everyone to be happy and like me and be positive, and that’s toxic.
0:07:51 If I’ve got someone at the workplace that’s not doing a good job and I just keep telling
0:07:56 them they’re great, and meanwhile I’m building a file to terminate them, that’s toxic.
0:08:01 So I think when you asked that first question, if I said, “We have nothing to worry about.
0:08:02 This election is going to be fine.
0:08:03 There won’t be any violence.
0:08:04 There won’t be any…”
0:08:05 That’s not realistic.
0:08:06 And I think that’s naive.
0:08:07 It could happen.
0:08:13 Do you think a pessimist is an optimist who has been disappointed?
0:08:14 No.
0:08:16 No, I’ve been disappointed.
0:08:22 I mean, no, I think it’s more of an outlook on the world and I think it’s often self-imposed.
0:08:23 And you know this guy.
0:08:27 Some of the most optimistic, positive people you ever talked to have been dealt the worst
0:08:29 hands in life.
0:08:33 I recently interviewed, or I interviewed a while back, a podcast just came out with
0:08:36 a guy who was a five and a half year POW in Vietnam.
0:08:41 And when you listen to him, he’ll say, “I was blessed to be in a room with three other
0:08:42 guys.
0:08:47 I was lucky because I wasn’t married and I wasn’t worried about my wife.”
0:08:52 He’s a word blessed and lucky to describe being in the Hanoi Hilton in a six and a
0:08:56 half by seven foot cell with three other guys, right?
0:08:59 So that was disappointing when he got shot down.
0:09:05 That was very disappointing, but somehow he’s able to find the positive.
0:09:10 At least he didn’t miss any Super Bowls with the Detroit Lions in when he was in Hanoi
0:09:11 Hilton.
0:09:12 You had to go there.
0:09:13 You had to go there.
0:09:14 Hey, listen.
0:09:17 They are turning things around.
0:09:22 I was born in Detroit and we moved when I was little and I’ve hung on to this team.
0:09:24 I always tell my kids, “It’s like anything else.
0:09:27 You got to stick with them through thick and thin and now we’re having a moment.”
0:09:28 We’ll see.
0:09:36 Fingers crossed.
0:09:42 One of my favorite books when I was growing up was a book called Paper Lion, and I’m
0:09:43 sure you know that, right?
0:09:44 George Plimpton.
0:09:49 George Plimpton quarterback for the Detroit Lions for a summer.
0:09:50 Brilliant book.
0:09:51 He was an amazing guy.
0:09:52 Yeah.
0:09:53 Yeah.
0:09:54 They’ve had some tough … Yeah, that’s a trivia question.
0:09:59 There are four NFL franchises that have never appeared in a Super Bowl and we’ve just
0:10:00 described one.
0:10:04 If any of your listeners can do the other three without Googling, they’d be among the
0:10:05 first.
0:10:10 I know a lot of people, but … We got sidetracked by the Detroit Lions, but I also had people
0:10:11 on my podcast.
0:10:14 They were in prison for 22 years.
0:10:16 Their parents were crack addicts.
0:10:21 They got diagnosed with ALS and they’re not wallowing in the mire.
0:10:24 They have definitely positive outlooks.
0:10:25 Right.
0:10:26 No.
0:10:32 Again, you asked if a pessimist is an optimist who’d been disappointed, ALS diagnosis is
0:10:37 a huge disappointment, and somehow the people you describe are able to see their way through
0:10:38 it.
0:10:39 I think it’s really important.
0:10:40 Yeah.
0:10:44 Do you think there’s such a thing as being too optimist?
0:10:49 I think if it goes … If you stretch the definition again to being completely unrealistic,
0:10:51 that’s not helpful.
0:10:54 If I just say, “Yeah, I’m making this up, but yeah, I can cross the road.
0:10:55 That bus isn’t coming so fast.
0:10:56 I can do it.”
0:10:57 Yeah.
0:11:00 That’s a stupid example, but you know what I mean.
0:11:06 There are times when just being just foolishly, unrealistically optimistic, that’s not helpful.
0:11:07 No.
0:11:09 But I think that’s an extreme.
0:11:14 I don’t observe a whole lot of that, but I’m having trouble thinking of a real example
0:11:15 of that.
0:11:17 But I hear your point and I think, “Yes, that is a danger.”
0:11:25 Can you discuss the subtle differentiation that I think devil’s advocacy is a good thing
0:11:31 that somebody should be telling the emperor he or she has no clothes.
0:11:38 So how do you straddle the fine line between being a constructive devil’s advocate and
0:11:39 a pessimistic downer?
0:11:40 Yeah.
0:11:42 No, I think it’s funny.
0:11:48 You’re asking questions that are of a vein of a lot of what I hear because I think people,
0:11:49 and it’s funny.
0:11:50 I’ve said this many times.
0:11:54 I wish every interview I did that my wife could sit behind and roll her eyes when I talk
0:11:57 about how positive I am because I have my moments too.
0:11:58 And we all do.
0:11:59 And that’s realistic.
0:12:04 And again, I think not telling the emperor that he or she is naked is toxic positivity.
0:12:06 It’s hiding from those tough conversations.
0:12:11 And anyone listening, yourself included guy, if you ever took that deep breath and had
0:12:16 that tough conversation with someone that you’d been putting off, how great does it feel after?
0:12:19 And how often are they appreciative?
0:12:21 Even times I’ve terminated people.
0:12:23 I’ve looked them in the eye, explained why.
0:12:29 I did a huge, pretty large layoff of a division when I was at the Weather Channel and sweating
0:12:30 it out.
0:12:32 But when we told people, we explained why.
0:12:34 We showed them the numbers and the financials.
0:12:35 We gave them out placement.
0:12:39 I went to lunch just to clear my head and I came back and this very large guy who was
0:12:44 part of the group that had just been terminated was walking towards me in the parking lot.
0:12:49 And I wanted to pretend I’d forgotten my keys, but I kept walking and he threw out his arms
0:12:50 and he hugged me.
0:12:51 And I said, “What are you doing?”
0:12:54 He said, “I’ve been laid off other places.
0:12:55 You guys handled it so well.
0:12:56 I really appreciate it.
0:12:57 You’re good people.”
0:13:00 And I don’t know if I’m going to answer your question, but I think taking those tough conversations
0:13:04 on but doing it forthrightly and honestly and helping people the best way you can, that’s
0:13:06 the best you can do.
0:13:10 Life’s going to hand you tough situations for sure.
0:13:17 So I saw you on the Today Show and you had one of the greatest lines I’ve ever heard,
0:13:21 which is, “Show me a list of pessimistic successful leaders.”
0:13:22 Yeah.
0:13:25 I stole that most of my stuff.
0:13:26 That was from Bert Jacobs.
0:13:30 He says, “I challenge people, bring me the list of history’s great pessimists.”
0:13:35 And someone threw out some name of some obscure person, I don’t know who it was, but I’m sure
0:13:36 maybe you could come up with one.
0:13:38 But I think it’s true.
0:13:41 Someone said to me also, “You don’t want to follow someone who says, ‘Hey, follow me.
0:13:46 I’ll take you someplace worse.'”
0:13:47 Same idea.
0:13:49 And guys, think about the people you have followed.
0:13:51 Think about when you’ve been a leader.
0:13:52 How did you do it?
0:13:57 I’m sure you painted an optimistic picture that people wanted to get behind you and follow.
0:13:58 Absolutely.
0:13:59 Yeah, absolutely.
0:14:00 Absolutely.
0:14:06 In that sense, you could make the case that Steve Jobs for all his asshole-ness was an
0:14:08 absolute optimist.
0:14:09 Absolutely.
0:14:10 A dreamer and an optimist.
0:14:14 And by the way, I know that you were around when the Think Different campaign came on.
0:14:18 And I was fortunate enough, I worked with Ted Turner and then I was his ghost writer
0:14:19 for his autobiography.
0:14:21 Here’s another trivia question.
0:14:26 That first video ad that showed all the different people, Einstein and all the others, there
0:14:29 are two people in that ad who are still alive.
0:14:34 And one of them, I just said his name, Ted Turner, and the other one’s in a somewhat
0:14:35 similar field.
0:14:38 It’s a fun question, isn’t it?
0:14:39 Let me think about that.
0:14:40 Not American.
0:14:44 Oh, I don’t want to bring this podcast to a halt, but I might stump you, and it looks
0:14:45 like I have.
0:14:47 Wait, I’ll type it into Chad GPT.
0:14:48 Yeah, exactly.
0:14:50 I could save you the trouble.
0:14:51 Okay.
0:14:52 It’s Burke GPT.
0:14:55 Who’s the answer?
0:14:56 Richard Branson.
0:14:57 Yeah.
0:15:00 Ian Tedder, the only two from that ad who are still alive and it’s still brilliant.
0:15:02 I get choked up every time I see Ted on there.
0:15:07 I had the poster, the Think Different of Ted on the poster was him in a sailboat racing
0:15:08 in the America’s Cup.
0:15:11 So anyway, I digress.
0:15:14 That is a good digression though.
0:15:19 So just give us a 60 second analysis of Ted Turner, then since you wrote the book.
0:15:20 Oh gosh.
0:15:21 Yeah.
0:15:22 Talk about an ultimate optimist.
0:15:23 The guy had more setbacks in his life.
0:15:28 He was brutal childhood, difficult father who committed suicide when Ted was in his
0:15:29 early 20s.
0:15:32 He lost his sister a few years before that to Lupus.
0:15:36 It’s probably definitely contributed to his father’s challenges.
0:15:41 So now he did inherit a small billboard company, but he was one of the great doers of all time.
0:15:46 I think history is going to reflect very positively on his impact on the media world.
0:15:52 And then what people forget or aren’t as aware of, he was really one of the big, first big
0:15:58 mega philanthropists granting or making a pledge for a billion dollars to start the United
0:16:03 Nations Foundation, a billion dollars when he was worth $3 billion, okay.
0:16:07 And what he’s done in preservation of land, he owns two million acres around the world.
0:16:09 It’s all preserved.
0:16:10 He’s a real…
0:16:11 I love the guy.
0:16:12 I owe him a lot.
0:16:15 He’s very different and he had his asshole-ness on occasion.
0:16:21 He could be very tough, but he was a genuinely good human being who overcame all kinds of
0:16:22 odds to do what he did.
0:16:23 I’m a fan.
0:16:27 Sure sounds like it.
0:16:30 You want to give us insights into Jane Fauna too?
0:16:31 Sure.
0:16:32 Sure.
0:16:33 She’s a great way.
0:16:38 So very similar in that her mother committed suicide and you want to talk about a way to
0:16:39 bond with someone.
0:16:44 So Ted read in the newspaper that she was getting divorced from Tom Hayden and he called her
0:16:45 out of the blue.
0:16:46 They’d never met.
0:16:47 “Bye, Ted Turner.”
0:16:49 And she said, “Ted, this has just happened.
0:16:50 I need six months.
0:16:51 Give me a break.”
0:16:55 And so he writes in his date timer six months later to the day.
0:16:56 He called her back.
0:16:58 He said, “It’s been six months.”
0:17:00 She understands Ted better than anyone I’ve ever met.
0:17:02 She was a great interview for the book.
0:17:07 She really gets him and understands him and it’s an overused expression.
0:17:09 They’re soulmates in a very interesting way.
0:17:10 They just couldn’t live together.
0:17:12 Ted can never be alone, literally.
0:17:13 He’s never alone.
0:17:16 He’s got a separation anxiety thing.
0:17:17 And he can never sit still.
0:17:21 So if you’re married to him and you want to have your own life, it’s very hard to do.
0:17:24 And let’s just say Jane Fauna enjoys having her own life.
0:17:28 She’s still out protesting and getting arrested.
0:17:30 So yeah, she’s a fascinating person.
0:17:33 I was lucky to get to know her a little bit too.
0:17:34 Wow.
0:17:35 Wow.
0:17:39 This is a tangent I didn’t expect to go on.
0:17:46 I originally brought this quote up about, “Show me a list of pessimistic successful leaders.”
0:17:49 Because I’m going to try to pin you down a little bit, okay?
0:17:50 Oh, geez.
0:17:52 You’ve been trying to pin me down this whole time.
0:17:53 All right.
0:17:59 So now I want you to show me a list of successful optimistic media publications.
0:18:04 Like every media publication, it seems to me focuses on negativity.
0:18:05 So why are they successful?
0:18:06 Oh, yeah.
0:18:07 It’s brutal.
0:18:08 Yeah.
0:18:09 No.
0:18:11 So that’s, and I think one of the reasons I’m doing this work is probably some sort of
0:18:13 a guilt trip having been in that business.
0:18:16 Although I, luckily, particularly when I was at the Weather Channel, there wasn’t a lot
0:18:18 of sensationalism or negativity.
0:18:22 We are, as a species, we are primed to respond.
0:18:28 Some people say to bad things, interviewing Richie Davidson, who’s a neuroscientist who’s
0:18:29 fascinating.
0:18:32 He says we’re actually hardwired to notice difference.
0:18:37 And I like that in this context because his point is that bad news is the exception.
0:18:38 It’s different.
0:18:39 It’s dramatic.
0:18:42 And so if you want to, you want to get people to watch your newscast, you don’t have a reporter
0:18:46 stand there and say, “I’m standing somewhere where there hasn’t been a war for 60 years.”
0:18:51 Or you don’t say, “I’m standing at LaGuardia Airport, where a thousand planes landed successfully
0:18:53 this last week.”
0:18:59 You go to the exceptions and I will go to my grave believing that a lot of these negative
0:19:04 bad stories are life’s exceptions and they grab your interests.
0:19:09 And my concern is that nothing does it better than social media.
0:19:15 And in ways that traditional television never could, it’s following your likes, it’s following
0:19:19 what you forward, it understands who you’re following.
0:19:20 And I’ve experienced this.
0:19:22 I cleaned up my feeds when I started this work.
0:19:26 And just as those algorithms can pull you down into despair and doom, they can pull you up
0:19:29 into some really great things.
0:19:32 So there are smaller positive news outlets.
0:19:35 A lot of people cite to me, and I haven’t watched it in a while, I should, the CBS Sunday
0:19:38 morning show is quite positive.
0:19:43 One of the reasons I had, I pushed to get on with Oda and Jenna on the Today Show, that’s
0:19:46 an hour of positivity for the most part.
0:19:52 There are smaller ones that I’m in this little ecosystem now of people doing similar work.
0:19:57 One of my personal heroes, David Byrne, has started Reasons to Be Cheerful, which is a
0:19:59 five-year project he’s been at at five years.
0:20:04 It’s a newsletter about Reasons to Be Cheerful, news stories you haven’t heard.
0:20:06 There’s a gentleman in Australia named Angus Hervey.
0:20:10 He’s twice the last two big TED conferences he’s presented.
0:20:15 He has an organization called Fix the News, and it’s all about reporting positive news.
0:20:18 So there are people out there trying it, but they don’t have the audience of CNN and MSNC
0:20:19 and Fox.
0:20:20 And that’s why.
0:20:26 If TED would be frustrated, CNN was started to be down the middle news, and slowly by
0:20:32 slowly Fox came along and MSNBC, and it is hard to play it down the middle and do positive
0:20:33 stories.
0:20:34 It’s tough.
0:20:40 You mentioned social media about 30 seconds ago, and I would love to hear the Bill Burke
0:20:46 analysis of how should you deal with social media and news consumption?
0:20:48 What do you do these days?
0:20:52 Yeah, and again, my wife would be rolling her eyes because she knows I could work harder
0:20:53 at this.
0:20:58 But I think the first thing is, I’m not going to say anything you haven’t heard before,
0:21:01 but use it less.
0:21:03 Choose who you follow really wisely.
0:21:08 Every time you click a like or a forward, that’s a vote, and it’s a vote that’s going
0:21:10 to be rewarded with more of the same.
0:21:12 I hate news alerts.
0:21:14 I tell this story about it.
0:21:18 We were with our daughter, a beautiful lake up in Maine, and her pocket buzzes, and she
0:21:23 pulls it out, and it’s eight people were killed in a stampede at a concert in South Korea.
0:21:25 It’s a very sad thing.
0:21:31 She’s an empathetic person, but the next hour of the day, she was so bummed out about this
0:21:35 thing that happened in South Korea that, again, it’s very sad.
0:21:39 There’s absolutely nothing she can do about it, and she’s letting it rob her of this wonderful
0:21:40 day she could be having.
0:21:45 I think we fall prey to that really badly, and if someone could tell me the last time
0:21:48 they got a news alert that was positive, I’d love to hear it.
0:21:50 Or frankly, something you need to act on.
0:21:55 A weather alert is one thing, and I have a bias towards weather alerts, but there’s a
0:21:56 tornado getting the basement.
0:21:57 That’s a good alert.
0:22:02 But if famous person just died yesterday at 82, you’re just kind of sad.
0:22:06 I didn’t really need to know that, not this minute for sure.
0:22:07 So I think that’s a big part of it.
0:22:10 But really, I say look hard at cleaning up your feed.
0:22:14 I was fascinated when I started doing it, I said, “Why do I keep seeing this nasty stuff
0:22:15 from this person I don’t even know?”
0:22:18 And I’m like, “Oh, my friend follows them.”
0:22:22 Because my friend follows them, somehow it’s kicking over to me, I think I need to unfollow
0:22:24 my friend.
0:22:25 It takes discipline.
0:22:29 I think, guy, I get frustrated because I have my issues with social media and some of the
0:22:33 business models, but it’s on us, too.
0:22:37 And I do get frustrated when people present themselves as helpless victims.
0:22:40 The best analogy I can come up with, and it’s not a great one, but if you’re on the sidewalk
0:22:44 and you’re thinking about what you can have for lunch, and there’s a fast, unhealthy fast
0:22:50 food joint and a healthy joint over here, and you go into the fast food place, don’t be mad
0:22:52 at the fast food restaurant.
0:22:54 That’s on you, right?
0:22:57 Don’t complain about Facebook when you can’t stop.
0:22:58 You have agency.
0:23:00 Up next, on Remarkable People.
0:23:05 Yeah, so we talked a little bit about cleaning up your media habits.
0:23:08 We focus on social media, but all media habits, that’s a great way to do it.
0:23:10 It’s an uphill climb with a lot of people.
0:23:37 I truly believe that understanding and reading more history really helps you understand how
0:23:40 a big mahalo to you for doing this.
0:23:46 Welcome back to Remarkable People with Guy Kawasaki.
0:23:51 So if we can get down really tactically, what social media platforms do you use?
0:23:53 It’s kind of a crutch, but it’s true.
0:23:58 I use it way more than I did before I started this institute, and one of the good things
0:24:02 I’ll say about social media is the opportunity for someone like me to promote to people that
0:24:04 I wouldn’t have otherwise.
0:24:07 So I can say all of them.
0:24:13 I’m using the biggies for that, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, a little bit
0:24:14 of TikTok.
0:24:16 I have no idea what’s going on on TikTok.
0:24:17 But I don’t spend a ton of time.
0:24:23 I’ve used Twitter as sort of a curated news feed, and again, very careful about who I follow,
0:24:24 but it serves up, it fix the news.
0:24:26 I got another great story this morning.
0:24:29 It’s one of the ways I help, I find guests is through social media.
0:24:33 But I also do a lot of, I love newspapers.
0:24:39 And when you ask about social media, I challenge people, the older ones of us in this audience.
0:24:45 When I was a kid or watching my parents, you’d read the newspaper in the morning, maybe one
0:24:51 or two, you’d go to work, you’d work till whenever, you’d come home, maybe you’ll watch
0:24:55 Walter Cronkite or The Nightly News, and then you get up and do it again.
0:25:00 At three o’clock in the afternoon, my dad wasn’t getting a text about a stampede in
0:25:01 Korea.
0:25:03 You know what I mean?
0:25:09 We’ve become such junkies, and so much of it is not useful or actionable.
0:25:13 And I don’t think we’re evolutionarily, and here I’m stepping out of my expertise, because
0:25:20 I’m the farthest thing from a scientist, but I’ve heard others say this too, evolutionarily,
0:25:23 we grew up caring about our family and our little village.
0:25:28 We didn’t know what was going on 15 miles away, let alone 3,000.
0:25:33 And so we just bomb ourselves with all this data and all this information, all this negativity
0:25:37 and all, here’s the craziest thing that politicians said.
0:25:39 And then I’ll say one more thing about politics.
0:25:43 A friend of mine called six months ago, Donald Trump said something outrageous that day.
0:25:46 “Can you believe what he said today?”
0:25:49 And I said, “Is that going to change how you vote in November?”
0:25:51 “Of course not, I’d never vote for that guy.”
0:25:56 Then why are you allowing him to ruin your after?
0:25:58 He’s going to do it again tomorrow.
0:26:00 That’s not helpful.
0:26:03 Okay, I’ll offer my soapbox.
0:26:07 You asked for it.
0:26:09 You think your wife would give me an interview?
0:26:11 I would love to talk to your wife.
0:26:12 I have done this several times.
0:26:15 Now you’ve crossed the line, guy.
0:26:16 Next question.
0:26:19 I’ll take that as a no.
0:26:25 My wife, very fairly in this, but she will say, and I’ve seen her say this, that I am
0:26:28 more fun to be around since I started this work.
0:26:29 No doubt.
0:26:30 There’s no doubt.
0:26:33 I spend my, when I read the paper, I read all the bad stuff and I’m looking for the
0:26:34 good stuff.
0:26:35 And it’s a delight.
0:26:37 I highly recommend it.
0:26:41 Wait, so do you actually subscribe and get a physical paper?
0:26:46 No, nowadays I only get the Sunday New York Times physical.
0:26:48 I lived 20 years outside of Portland, Maine.
0:26:53 I get the Portland paper on my iPad, but it’s actually, it looks like the physical paper.
0:26:54 So I get the whole thing.
0:26:59 So I’m pretty much New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Portland Press Herald in Maine.
0:27:00 And I think it’s helpful.
0:27:04 Read the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times.
0:27:05 That’s the other thing.
0:27:09 I think that getting spoon fed, the stuff, if you start the day with this side of center
0:27:14 and or this side of center, and then you just keep hearing stuff that just blows up your
0:27:20 balloon on either side, you end the day farther off than angry or, and that’s not healthy.
0:27:26 I’ve been having this running one sided battle with the guy who runs Instagram and other
0:27:27 people at Metta.
0:27:34 And I’m telling them, just give me a preference that I can set so that I only see what the
0:27:38 people I have manually followed or posting.
0:27:40 I don’t want your algorithm.
0:27:43 Just give me an algorithm with no algorithm.
0:27:45 And I would pay for that service.
0:27:46 Absolutely.
0:27:47 No, it’s a great point.
0:27:52 So yes, you have to be on guard, not to mention the advertising stuff.
0:27:55 You’re having a conversation with someone about a vacation in Mexico and you open up
0:27:56 Instagram.
0:27:58 There’s three ads for vacations in Mexico.
0:28:02 It’s like, wait a second, but yeah, why are we seeing stuff we didn’t want?
0:28:07 Well, I mean, you would think from just a marketing perspective that there could be one
0:28:13 social media platform where the inherent selling point is we have no algorithm.
0:28:17 The algorithm is you choose who to follow and that’s what you’ll see.
0:28:19 Yeah, it’s funny because you said you’d pay for that.
0:28:23 I think one of the challenges is they’re very scared to introduce subscription fees.
0:28:25 I think that’s a big part of it.
0:28:26 It’s got to be free.
0:28:29 So if it’s going to be free, the only way you’re going to pay for it is really targeted
0:28:31 and effective advertising.
0:28:35 And I think that they’re stuck on that, but you might pay a reasonable amount of money
0:28:37 that adds up pretty quickly.
0:28:40 A couple of bucks a month, I learned that in the cable business when you had a basic
0:28:43 cable package, 25 cents a month is going to this channel.
0:28:46 That adds up pretty quickly when a hundred million people are watching.
0:28:48 I’ll drink one less cappuccino a month.
0:28:49 It’s not a problem.
0:28:50 Yeah, exactly.
0:28:51 Yeah.
0:28:52 Okay.
0:28:58 So in your videos and stuff, you discover this concept of Stephen Covey about the circle
0:29:05 of influence versus the circle of concern versus the circle of control, right?
0:29:06 Yeah.
0:29:07 I love it.
0:29:10 For my listeners, just explain that concept.
0:29:12 It’s a very interesting concept.
0:29:14 And then I’m going to try to pin you down one more time.
0:29:15 Oh, gosh.
0:29:16 You’re brutal.
0:29:17 Okay.
0:29:19 Circle of concern is the biggest one.
0:29:25 And so that takes in, we haven’t even mentioned climate change, these big existential or sometimes
0:29:28 challenging stuff, and you’re concerned about it.
0:29:31 But for the most part, there’s not a whole lot you can do about it.
0:29:34 If you try to do something about it, you might have an impact, but it’s not going to change
0:29:35 things overnight.
0:29:39 Circle of influence is much smaller, but you have more influence.
0:29:40 So that’s your friends, your family.
0:29:42 You can make your workplace better.
0:29:44 You can make your home life better.
0:29:45 Circle of control.
0:29:49 And I’ve got to go back and see how Covey defines it, because to me, that’s really tight.
0:29:50 How much do you really control?
0:29:52 To me, it’s like the circle around me.
0:29:54 I can’t control my family.
0:29:56 I can’t control my dog.
0:29:57 So I think that’s really tight.
0:30:00 So I tend to focus on influence and concern.
0:30:04 And what Covey says is the more you focus on your circle of influence, the better you’re
0:30:05 going to feel.
0:30:09 That circle can actually grow a little bit, because you start impacting the marketing
0:30:13 team at your company, and then that spills over to the finance team.
0:30:14 And that can be really powerful.
0:30:19 And if we spend the whole day, if I spent the day looking out the window and thinking
0:30:23 about climate change, it’s not a healthy thing to do.
0:30:28 And even, I’ll say this guy, I worry sometimes too, that as you focus so much on that huge
0:30:32 circle of concern, it robs you of some of the joy that you can have.
0:30:34 And you’ve probably heard this before too.
0:30:38 But on an unseasonally warm day in the Northeast, someone steps outside and says, “Oh, it’s
0:30:39 beautiful day.”
0:30:40 Climate change.
0:30:41 That’s why it’s warmer.
0:30:42 It’s climate change.
0:30:44 Now, again, I’m not dismissing climate change.
0:30:45 It’s just a serious thing.
0:30:50 However, we’re talking about very small increases in temperature around the globe.
0:30:54 So if it’s an unseasonally warm day in April, it’s an unseasonally warm day in April.
0:30:55 That’s not all climate change, right?
0:31:01 And it robs us of these joys, I think, and that’s not a healthy place to be.
0:31:06 That robbing comes from this large circle of concern, valid as it is, about something
0:31:08 like climate change.
0:31:14 But don’t you think that if people took this attitude to an extreme, it would say, “Well,
0:31:19 I can’t do anything about climate control, so I’ll buy a Ford 150 and get eight miles
0:31:25 per gallon, and I’ll drive at two blocks,” and there are things that individuals can
0:31:26 do?
0:31:27 Absolutely.
0:31:28 No.
0:31:29 And I didn’t say just abandon the circle of concern.
0:31:33 I think if you carry it around as baggage all day, that’s really unhealthy.
0:31:34 No, absolutely.
0:31:38 In fact, one of the reasons I espouse optimism, I think it’s the pessimists who say, “Screw
0:31:39 it.
0:31:42 I’m just going to drive a big SUV,” because climate change, we’re doomed.
0:31:43 It’s too late.
0:31:44 We missed it.
0:31:47 So let’s just enjoy it while we can.
0:31:51 One reason I started this work is hearing young people say, “I’m not going to have children
0:31:55 because it’s why bother the world’s going to end in 30 years because of climate change.”
0:32:00 And again, obviously, not having children is a very valid choice, but if it’s made because
0:32:06 you’re convinced the world’s going to end in 30 years, then why bother doing anything?
0:32:15 I made a unilateral decision that banned bottled water in our house, and now we only drink
0:32:17 liquid death.
0:32:21 Liquid death comes in aluminum cans, although you could make the case that we’re still
0:32:27 shipping water and burning carbon fuel shipping water around, but still it’s better than bottled
0:32:28 water.
0:32:33 When someone looks back on this era, bottled water, I think it’s going to … Today, if
0:32:36 you ask someone around the world, if they look at our bottled water habit, it’s bizarre.
0:32:41 We had the greatest drinking water in the world by a lot, and yet that’s a whole other subject,
0:32:44 but I’m glad you’re doing something about it, it’s always troubled me.
0:32:50 Well, my water doesn’t come from Fiji, I’m just telling you.
0:32:53 As you drink your plastic bottled water.
0:32:57 Yeah, this is silver, so I filled this up in the sink.
0:32:58 Nice try.
0:32:59 Nice and corrected.
0:33:00 Nice try.
0:33:01 All right.
0:33:08 So, I have one last question for you, and this question is, let’s suppose that people
0:33:12 are listening to this and say, “Man, I have seen the light, I’m not going to be filled
0:33:15 with negativity, I’m not going to be reading all the bullshit, I’m not going to be worried
0:33:18 about Donald Trump ending America, blah, blah, blah.”
0:33:24 So now they want to know, “Okay, Mr. Burke, you are the king of optimism, how do I get
0:33:31 started on this path towards optimism, what’s the tactical and practical steps that I take?”
0:33:36 Yeah, so we talked a little bit about cleaning up your media habits, and we focus on social
0:33:39 media, but all media habits, that’s a great way to do it.
0:33:40 It’s an uphill climb with a lot of people.
0:33:45 I truly believe that understanding and reading more history really helps you understand how
0:33:49 good we have it today, and really fun, interesting history.
0:33:53 I read a great book about, there’s a Joshua Chamberlain’s guy from Maine, it was a Civil
0:33:54 War hero.
0:33:58 You read this book and they just casually mentioned the next two children died in childbirth and
0:33:59 blah, blah, blah, blah.
0:34:07 You look at the actual numbers of longevity and infant mortality and vaccines, and it’s
0:34:11 incredible what we have, and if you can put that in the context of history, you’ll feel
0:34:13 better about the world.
0:34:16 And again, try to catch people being good.
0:34:17 Look for the goodness.
0:34:22 It’s the old, Mr. Rogers, Fred Rogers said that when he was looking at scary stuff on
0:34:25 the news, his mother would say, “Always look for the helpers.”
0:34:31 So when they saw the scary fire on the nightly news, look for the helpers.
0:34:36 The response in the aftermath of these hurricanes, watching what people go through to save other
0:34:37 people is incredible.
0:34:43 We’re an amazing species, and history, clean up your media habits.
0:34:46 Those are the biggest for me, and of course, listen to the Blue Sky podcast on a weekly
0:34:47 basis.
0:34:51 Seriously, talk about your podcast and talk about the Optimism Institute.
0:34:52 Let’s link.
0:34:53 I’m all about it.
0:34:54 Yeah.
0:34:55 The Optimism Institute.
0:34:57 You’re talking to an evangelist here.
0:34:59 Yeah, exactly.
0:35:03 We were lucky enough to do a one-year academic fellowship in 2022, and it was designed for
0:35:08 people later in their careers, trying to make a social impact in what they did next.
0:35:12 We have colleagues and friends working on climate change and homelessness and really
0:35:13 important things.
0:35:14 I got this idea.
0:35:15 This is a niche I could try to fill.
0:35:19 I really feel like it’s a big problem for the society, how negative we’re getting.
0:35:22 I started it in early ’23.
0:35:26 The Optimism Institute.com was available, so I grabbed it.
0:35:28 You’re talking basically to the entire institute.
0:35:29 I have some free answers.
0:35:30 You help me.
0:35:31 The name’s I’m like tongue-in-cheek.
0:35:35 As you said, I got the name Blue Sky from a meditation prompt that there’s always Blue
0:35:36 Sky above.
0:35:38 You got to get your head above the clouds to see it.
0:35:43 Every week, what I’ve tried to do versus some of these good news sites, quote unquote,
0:35:45 say they’re great and I love them.
0:35:48 I read them, but it’s like, “There’s a new bike lane in Amsterdam.
0:35:49 That’s great.”
0:35:50 Or, “There’s this.
0:35:51 That’s great.”
0:35:54 I try to talk to people when I can who are working on the very challenges that make us
0:35:55 pessimistic.
0:35:59 A guy who’s written a book about political divisions, someone who’s working on homelessness,
0:36:04 someone who’s working on helping people out of prison get employment, the toughest stuff.
0:36:09 But they come at it with a sense of hope and optimism and a solutions orientation.
0:36:12 That’s another one, by the way, the Solutions Journalism Network.
0:36:17 They are working on more news stories and training newsrooms around the country to do
0:36:19 more positive news.
0:36:20 That’s how it came about.
0:36:24 I just released my ’71 or ’72 episode.
0:36:25 You know what it’s like.
0:36:26 It’s a grind.
0:36:27 It’s a beast you got to feed.
0:36:31 I tell you every time, I’ll do an interview and then a few weeks later, I’ll edit it.
0:36:35 I forgot what a great conversation it was and what an amazing person this was.
0:36:38 Starts feeding on itself because people are like, “Oh, I heard you’re interviewing this.
0:36:39 You got to talk to this guy.
0:36:41 You got to talk to this woman over here.
0:36:42 She’s doing incredible work.
0:36:43 It’s everywhere.”
0:36:46 It’s been a real pleasure and privilege for me.
0:36:52 Honestly, I don’t know if I’ve had this much fun doing work as I have here.
0:36:55 I’m my own boss and I want to blame myself when I mess up.
0:36:56 Yeah.
0:36:57 I’ve had a great time.
0:36:58 I get to meet people like you.
0:37:01 I mean, truly, you start doing this work and then you realize there are all these other
0:37:06 people out here doing things that are similar and you bring so much positivity in the world.
0:37:09 It’s ridiculous when I look at the list of people you’ve had on this show.
0:37:14 Again, I think somehow I got put in the wrong pile, but it’s been great to meet you and
0:37:16 speak on the subject that I care a lot about.
0:37:21 This is, in a sense, my podcast, Remarkable People.
0:37:22 It’s Remarkable People.
0:37:24 It’s not Remarkable Pessimists.
0:37:25 Yeah, right.
0:37:28 Again, yeah, let’s know and go through your list and see if there’s anyone you’ve ever
0:37:32 interviewed for your show that you would describe.
0:37:34 As a pessimist, nope.
0:37:36 Would you indulge me in something, guy?
0:37:38 I would indulge you in almost anything.
0:37:39 Well, okay.
0:37:44 I won’t push it, but I mentioned the person stepping outside on a warm day and going into
0:37:45 gloom about climate change.
0:37:48 There’s a man named David Vondrell.
0:37:53 He writes for the Washington Post and I use this in a high school graduation speech I
0:37:57 gave on this subject, but it’s during the pandemic and I think it’s something we could
0:37:58 all relate to.
0:38:02 He looks out the window and there’s a beautiful bright red cardinal sitting in a tree.
0:38:06 Right when he sees it, he remembers an article he just read about how bird species are getting
0:38:09 killed off because of climate change.
0:38:13 He’s having this internal battle of can I actually enjoy how beautiful this bird is
0:38:17 or am I going to, so can I just read to what he wrote because it’s different than anything
0:38:18 I could ever do?
0:38:23 He says, he settles on deciding that it’s okay to enjoy the bird.
0:38:29 He says, quote, “Joy is becoming counter-cultural in fashion instead as a heavy coat of doom.
0:38:34 Anxiety and depression are endemic,” psychologists tell us, “and why wouldn’t they be when optimism
0:38:38 and cheerfulness are taken as signs of obtuseness?
0:38:43 When happiness is a dead giveaway that someone either doesn’t know or doesn’t care how
0:38:47 very bad things are, here’s where that cardinal finally lands.
0:38:54 One cannot usefully address a threat to birds if they do not delight in individual birds.
0:38:58 One cannot meaningfully answer the climate crisis if they lack excitement about the human
0:39:02 capacity for invention and reinvention.
0:39:06 One cannot make progress towards equality and inclusion if they don’t see and love
0:39:13 the potential of humankind, enemies included, and one cannot build the future if one fears
0:39:14 the future.”
0:39:15 Wow.
0:39:21 That is certainly a good way to end this.
0:39:22 Thank you.
0:39:29 Thank you, sir, for this great 46 minutes and 10 seconds of optimism.
0:39:34 And I bet it’s going to help people be even more remarkable.
0:39:37 Thank you so much for being on my podcast.
0:39:38 It’s an honor and an privilege.
0:39:39 Thank you.
0:39:43 And all of you listeners, thank you for tuning in.
0:39:48 Madison, thank you for making this happen, and Tessa Nizmer did all the background research.
0:39:52 And I have two great sound designers, and then Jeff C. and Shannon Hernandez.
0:40:00 So that’s my team, and we’re trying to make everybody remarkable.
0:40:02 This is Remarkable People.
In this episode of Remarkable People, join host Guy Kawasaki for an important conversation with Bill Burke, founder of the Optimism Institute and host of the Blue Sky Podcast. Together, they explore the vital role of optimism in today’s world, challenging common misconceptions about positivity and its impact on social change. Burke shares powerful insights from his journey through media leadership at The Weather Channel and TBS Superstation to becoming a champion of practical optimism. Discover how to maintain hope while staying grounded in reality, and learn practical strategies for cultivating optimism in an increasingly complex world.
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.