SUMMARY: 

Physician and medical ethicist Dr. Lydia Dugdale (Columbia University) argues hope isn’t a careless wish—it’s a practiced habit oriented toward a future good that’s hard but possible. We talk about hope as a communal discipline, the dangers on both sides—despair and false hope—how doctors actually handle prognoses, why imagination relates to hope, and whether “AI grief avatars” help or harm. Along the way: Aquinas, Augustine, and Howard E. Butt Jr. advising us to stay “steady in the saddle.” 

NOTES: 

• Hope You’re Well! No, But Really. - Echoes Magazine 
• Lydia S. Dugdale, MD | Division of General Medicine 
• The Lost Art of Dying – HarperCollins 
• Between Presumption and Despair: Augustine's Hope for the Commonwealth | American Political Science Review | Cambridge Core 
• SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: Hope, considered in itself (Secunda Secundae Partis, Q. 17)