The Optimist Daily's Weekly Roundup

If you have a teenager in your life and you've felt them pull away from conversations you used to have easily, this episode is for you.

Kathy Saulitis has spent three years going through what young people write and create when nobody is grading it: the poems, drawings, essays, and songs submitted to #CreateConnectCare, a youth mental health initiative that collected over 3,000 submissions this year from young people in all 50 states and 15 countries. She's seen the repeating themes. She has also thought a lot about what parents can actually do, and she's direct about it. Lilly Kacziba is 17, from Queens, New York, one of fewer than 20 teenagers chosen this year for the program's National Mental Health Youth Council. She explains, from her own experience, why teenagers go quiet and shut down... and it's not because they don't want to talk.

We are honored to release this Guest Interview on the eve of World Mental Health Day.

Kathy Saulitis

• Senior Advisor to the CEO, Chief of Staff & Marketing Lead, Creative Visions
• Director, #CreateConnectCare
• Creative Visions is a Malibu-based nonprofit and United Nations NGO, founded over 25 years ago by Kathy Eldon and Amy Eldon in honor of Dan Eldon, a Reuters photojournalist killed in Somalia in 1993. The organization supports creative activists working across documentary, music, poetry, advocacy, and youth change-making.
• Website: createconnectcare.org
• Instagram: @CreateConnectCare

Lilly Kacziba

• Student, Archbishop Molloy High School, Queens, New York (class of 2027)
• National Mental Health Youth Council, #CreateConnectCare (2026 cohort)
• One of fewer than 20 teenagers selected nationally; the only representative from New York.
• Since December 2025, Lilly has run seven peer mental health workshops at her school (three in-person, four online), open to any student at any skill level.

GET INVOLVED WITH #CREATECONNECTCARE

Website: createconnectcare.org

• Browse the full gallery and this year's award-winning work
• Read the poem "No Es Ilegal" and watch the dance performance for the Behind the Mask project
• Download the Teen Mental Wellness Day activity guide (March 2nd) — the program's most-downloaded resource, written by youth council members
• Find classroom resources and suggested projects for educators

For young people (ages 11–18):

• Try the Behind the Mask project anytime: one side shows what you let others see, the other shows what you keep hidden. Save it for the submission window.
• Submission portal opens: January 5, 2027
• Submission portal closes: March 31, 2027
• Awards announced in May, before end of school year

Coming May 2027:

• Stressolescence — a PBS documentary about stress and adolescence, featuring #CreateConnectCare and former youth council member Ryan.

MUSIC CREDITS

This episode features two original songs submitted to the 2026 #CreateConnectCare challenge:

• "Grow" — written and performed by Rayn S.
• "Worn" — written and performed by Merissa M.
• Both are award-winning submissions. The full gallery is at createconnectcare.org.

CRISIS RESOURCES

In the United States:

• 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline: call or text 988 (free, 24/7, English and Spanish)
• Crisis Text Line: text HOME to 741741 (free, 24/7)

International:

• findahelpline.com — directory of crisis lines in countries around the world
• befrienders.org — emotional support centers in more than 50 countries
• If someone is in immediate danger, call local emergency services.

Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1423087

If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: [email protected].

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The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.

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Theme and all other original music by Marvin Lanes

This week Arielle and Karissa cover the Colorado wildlife overpass that came in $15 million under budget and brought pronghorn back to habitat they hadn't reached in decades, what Japan's 107,000-plus centenarians reveal about diet and aging, Dolly Parton's Imagination Library expanding in London less than a month after her death, and more!

Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1423038

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If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: [email protected].

Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.

Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.

The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.

Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d

Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes

There's a startup training dogs to detect cancer across seven types… and there's over 90 percent accuracy across six hospitals.

This week Arielle and Karissa also cover a wildcat species science just got around to naming (local communities already had a name for it), bison reshaping a Mexican desert faster than anyone expected, and what Cambridge researchers found when they actually quantified how reading protects your brain.

Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1423005

Nominate a Local Changemaker (30 and under): https://us20.list-manage.com/survey?u=d2e7810fd2bcf24fb1144a7e2&id=6e0ab37520&e=28025b5010

If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: [email protected].

Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.

Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.

The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.

Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d

Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes

Most world maps show Greenland and Africa as roughly the same size… which is kind of unbelievable considering Africa is 14 times larger! This error has been built into classrooms, boardrooms, and institutions since 1569. Last week, 164 countries finally voted to fix it.

Arielle and Karissa also cover a solar ambulance built by university students that completed its first real-world test in rural Kenya, a student baking operation in Frisco, Texas that has raised over $8,000 for food-insecure kids, and why the best time to deal with weeds is probably right now.

Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422965

Nominate a Local Changemaker (30 and under): https://us20.list-manage.com/survey?u=d2e7810fd2bcf24fb1144a7e2&id=6e0ab37520&e=28025b5010

If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: [email protected].

Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.

Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.

The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.

Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d

Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes

An approach to treating degenerative blindness has been in development for more than ten years across research institutions in Spain. The result is not a surgery, a gene therapy, or an implant. It is eye drops. Light-activated compounds that restored vision in blind animal models by stepping in where lost photoreceptors used to be, without disturbing the underlying disease.

Arielle and Karissa cover eight solutions this week, including the country's broadest AI ban for over half a million students, a urine test that spots bladder cancer with 92% accuracy, and what steel wind turbine foundations are inadvertently doing for marine life around Long Island.

Nominate a Local Changemaker (30 and under): https://us20.list-manage.com/survey?u=d2e7810fd2bcf24fb1144a7e2&id=6e0ab37520&e=28025b5010

Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422924

If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: [email protected].

Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.

Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.

The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.

Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d

Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes

Arielle and Karissa are reunited after a few weeks apart, covering a wide range of solutions this episode: a new telescope that survived two White House cancellation attempts, the decade-long trial that settles the statin-and-dementia debate once and for all, and a biodegradable balloon that took three years and hundreds of failed experiments to get right.

Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422883

If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: [email protected].

Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.

Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.

The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.

Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d

Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes

Karissa hosts solo this week while Arielle recovers, covering ten solutions including the world's first wild bird flu vaccination program for Phillip Island's little penguins, France making unsolicited telemarketing calls flat-out illegal, and what Baltimore is doing with $400 million in opioid settlement money.

transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422844

If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: [email protected].

Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.

Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.

The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.

Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d

Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes

Many of the long-time listeners of The Optimist Daily's podcast will recognize Kristy Jansen's voice. She's the former co-host and Executive Director of this show, and she's back, joining Arielle and Karissa from Mérida, México, to catch them up on what happened in between: the clean energy industry from the inside, and what it's like to start over somewhere new when you didn't really pick the timing.

Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422807

If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: [email protected].

Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.

Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.

The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.

Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?gift=Y%20http://

Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes

bird in rainforest.wav by reinsamba -- https://freesound.org/s/19257/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

Arielle checks in solo to explain why the Kristy guest episode is getting a little more time. Both she and Karissa have been doing what they always say matters most: showing up, fully present, for the people they love. Babies, weddings, miles between people who love each other.

Sometimes slowing down really is the solution.

Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422764

If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: [email protected].

Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.

Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.

The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.

Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d

Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes

Dolphins fatally swim into fishing nets because the nylon is acoustically too similar to water for their echolocation to pick up. A researcher at Newcastle University wondered if attaching something that does produce an echo might change that. The dolphin-saving solution may surprise you.

Ten solutions this week with Arielle and Karissa. Also in the episode: energy storage technologies that sound like science fiction but are getting serious investment, India's first domestically built hydrogen train, and the garden sign that looks like a win but means your plant is struggling to survive.

Stay tuned til the end for a wonderful Emissary Shout-Out that will brighten your day!

Transcript link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/?p=1422684

If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: [email protected].

Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.

Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.

The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.

Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d

Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes