Welcome to the inaugural episode of The Black Goat! Our main topic is: How do you stay optimistic when everything seems fucked? But before that, we kick things off talking about who we are and why we are here. And we respond to our letter of the week, which asks how personally invested you should be in your research topic and whether it needs to be me-search.

The Black Goat is hosted by Sanjay Srivastava, Alexa Tullett, and Simine Vazire. Find us on the web at www.theblackgoatpodcast.com, on Twitter at @blackgoatpod, or on Facebook at facebook.com/blackgoatpod/.  You can email us at [email protected]. Our theme music is Peak Beak by Doctor Turtle, available on freemusicarchive.org under a Creative Commons noncommercial attribution license.

This episode was recorded February 17, 2017.