Support for this show comes from the Working Forests initiative. The Working Forest industry is committed to planting more trees than they harvest. More than 1 billion seedlings are planted in US working forests every year. From biologists to GIS analysts, hiring managers, accountants, working forest professionals have dedicated their focus towards sustainability, using their expertise to help ensure a healthy future for America's forests. They say they don't just plan for the future. They plant it. You can learn more at Working ForestsInitiative.com. Bear walls, clear surfaces, the minimalist aesthetic is having a moment. And for some, it's a form of resistance. I think a lot of people have a sense that we live in this very consumer society and feel kind of a desire and need to push back against that. How to live with less. That's this week unexplained to me. Two episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts. 2025 is over and I gotta say it felt like a long year. I mean, this TikTok came out in November and it just reminds me that so much happened last year. I can't even keep track of it all. But my feeling overall is that 2025 was pretty rough. So I decided to take a break from my daily doom scrolling to call on my Vox colleague, Senior Editorial Director Brian Walsh, for a little perspective check. In early 2025, I launched a new newsletter that comes out of your Saturday called Good News, which is pretty much exactly what it says on the tin. It's an attempt to sort of look at what's happening through an optimistic lens in the world and kind of push back against the negativity bias that basically infects all of us, such as in the media, but really the human race. Yeah, last year was like any other year where I feel like by December, you start seeing all of these memes kind of declaring this was the worst year and 2025 was no different. And I had a TikTok that I wanted to share with you. I feel here like I'm not even gonna lie. I feel like I can confidently say for most of us that 2025 was one of the worst goddamn years of our life. For real, like, can we talk about how awful this year was? I don't think I've ever heard a single person say, oh, 2026 is gonna be my year. I think we're genuinely all scared this time because I'm not even exaggerating when I say this year almost. So I have to say, don't disagree. I feel a lot like this young woman does. How do you feel about the last year, Brian? Do you also have a hard time kind of like parsing out the bad news from the good? It's all about a matter of perspective, right? It's all about what we, what we choose to look at and how we sort of see it in comparison to the past, you know, and I'm not surprised at TikToks that say the years, the worst year ever are the ones that are going to get fused and things because that is kind of the way our media works. It's where our media is always work. That's not new with social media, but it's probably particularly intense with social media. And we are a people that tend to sort of focus on the negative. But certainly when it comes to being in the media, we all know this. Like, if you tell people things are bad, that's something that's going to get to notice. But that often overlooks not just like individual good news stories, but like a longer term trend of things getting better. It's such that like, I'm pretty confident if you put 2025 against most of the years of being in these past, this one would come out pretty good. This is unexplainable. I'm Joanna Salatarov and this is the second edition of our good news segment. Can Brian convince me that things may not be as totally terrible as they seem? What for you are the good news highlights of 2025? One of my favorite stories involves a six month old baby who in February became the first person to receive a CRISPR therapy. That's the gene-out of the therapy. It was custom built for a specific mutation in their lethal urea cycle disorder. This is something that usually is essentially a death sentence for about half of affected infants or they need a liver transplant. Yet, now almost a year later, the baby is thriving, the baby is cured. This is just the beginning of the ability to use gene-out of things that can really target individual, often rare disorders. Those are the kind of ones that science often skips over because they're only affecting a very small number of people. It's expensive to create treatments. It's not a market for it. But gene-out of things, which is something we've been hearing about over the last decade, now we're finally getting the point where we can get ultrapersonalized therapies that will really change the lives and save the lives of kids and people and adults who otherwise really would have nothing for them. I look at that and be like, that's amazing. Here's a huge scientific advancement that now is actually paying off to save people's lives to make people better off. It starts with this, frankly, cute little six-month-old. Did this happen in the US? It did happen in the US, yeah. It was a team at UC Berkeley's innovative genomics institute that kind of led the way on that. Wow. So people are still able to do great work and make these discoveries even in spite of all of these funding cuts. Right. I mean, in many ways, when we get to something of that level, it's been in the works for a long time. Being editing itself, I think the earliest discoveries that got us in the road to Chris Berger go back to the 20th century, then it took years after the actual discovery of it to begin to get to these treatments. That is a long tale that, frankly, is vulnerable to being broken. I definitely worry about the future. I should say off the bat, like I can tell you a lot of great things that happened in 2025. That doesn't mean they're going to continue in the future. That's kind of a little up for debate, really, up for grabs, I think. But at the same time, it would be, I think, kind of mistaken or even blind, really, to just put those away to not look at those, either. I think we can hold both ideas in our minds at the same time, hopefully, without going completely insane and see that both things are possible. Both things are true. It's true. What are some other pieces of good news? I think perhaps the biggest piece of good news, I think, from this year is the fact that we saw across the board, what I say is all the everything bad trends actually turning around and beginning to bend towards a more positive direction. A lot of this comes out of the pandemic. In the pandemic, we have huge spikes in violent crime. We have huge spikes in drug overdoses. We have huge spikes in deaths to spare, including suicides. There's real concern. Was this just one off? Was it just a representation of this, frankly, social breakdown that occurred during the pandemic? Now we're seeing in 2025, like real shifts in that. There's argument to be made that we could be the US on the track for one of the steepest, one-year national homicide declines ever pushing the murder rate down for levels that haven't been seen since the 1960s. Here in New York City, we actually set a record, I believe, for the most days without a murder. Wow. That's a huge improvement. And yes, we're saying there's still crime. We've seen on the news. There's sadly still mass shootings, mass killings. But we're seeing a lot of that has declined. In the same way that I think we always see that's bad when those things are rising up, we should also recognize that we can make change. We can have success against some of these trends. We're actually seeing that. What's been attributed to that decline? That is one of the big questions that's out there. It's amazing. We had going back to I think to the early 1990s, we had the tail end of the great increase in violent crime in US cities going into that period. Then we had this long tail of decrease that went on for a couple of decades. There's enormous scholarly disagreement over exactly what causes both trends. There were people who said it was about changing policing. There were people who said that was completely overstated. There's generational changes that happen. Like, simply, how many young people do you have? A lot of violent crime is done by young people and young men. They often tend to be the victims of that as well. I think you had cities like New York improve economically, at least from the depths of the lead in the early 90s. You had changes in drug sale, drug consumption. I will say the most recent one, I think, the simple fact is that once you had the shutdown and breakdown that occurred during the pandemic, it really made people act out, I think, for a lack of a better term. I think there was a lot less control. Kids were not able to go to school. As you get back to normality, you see that change. I think some of this is working through the terrible social breakdown that was the pandemic and getting back on the track that we used to be. I think some of it really is just a natural reaction to when you see these huge spikes that can't go on forever. Eventually, they do break, almost like a fever. It's very important to continue to focus on. The fact is that this is very real. This is made life in US cities far safer than it was a few years ago. Yeah. And does the same go for drug use? Yeah. The number of people dying from drug overdoses is down about 24%. Considering that the fact of the opioid epidemic was so terrible, you had deaths that were above 100,000 a year when things were at their worst. To see that fall is an enormous victory. I think you did see improvement in response in the development and sort of distribution of stuff like Narcon, which can actually stop overdoses in progress and just greater awareness. We've seen this curve happen before. I really hope we never see anything as bad as we were seeing in the late 2010s in early 2020s. That was really horrible. But it is trending in a really much more positive direction than it used to be. There's still a lot of ground that has to be made up, but we're moving in the right direction. I do feel good about that. What are some of your other bullet points? Well, it's funny. I can stick on a bit of a similar subject, which is one of the biggest trends that's happening right now is a real frankly reduction in drinking alcohol. True. Yeah. To me, I've heard this. The young people, they do not like it. Not at all. Something like, among 12th graders, I saw in a study when I was writing about it a few months ago, reported alcohol use fell from like 75% in 1997, only 54% of Americans now say they actually drink alcohol, which is the lowest share since like 1939. Obviously, people enjoy alcohol and moderation, but it is linked to, I believe, something like 178,000 deaths a year in the US. Wow. So, even those relatively small declines really do add up in improvement of health and survival, in families that aren't destroyed by addiction. So, that's also, I think, a nice, calvary narrative to like kids these days are so reckless and, you know, what's wrong with them? Actually, they're quite safe. You know, there's some downsides to that too, but, you know, I don't think any more. This particular thing is downside, and most maybe you sell wine coolers, I guess. We do want to apologize to everyone in the wine cooler industry, who might be— I'm sorry, Mr. Barnaby. I'm sorry, Mr. James. You might be suffering these days. One last thing on the medical thing is, obviously, you know, one of the worst plagues we face is dementia and Alzheimer's. Yes. And while that's still something that we have no cure for, we are seeing really promising research that's looking at the possibility that certain viruses might play a role. There's a really fascinating study that I wrote about where older adults who are given the shingles vaccine were like markedly less likely to develop dementia than those who hadn't, and there seems to be some connection possibly there. Well, I think, look to the future, I think about 2026 and beyond, that's one area of research that I feel really optimistic about. And, you know, anyone who has been touched by that knows how amazing that would be. So that's something that's huge as well. That's amazing. In terms of the environment, is there any good news? The environment's a tough one. Let me start with one that, like, again, maybe this is more for people of my age. Like, you remember from their childhood about the ozone hole that was growing over Antarctica and was going to fry us all. That's one of the best long-term environmental news stories I've ever seen really, because we've seen that ozone hole thanks to actual concern in international action, going back to the 1989 Montreal Protocol to get CFCs out of the supply chain. We've seen that the ozone hole continue to shrink. Its peak area now is something like 30% smaller than it was in 2006, which was the record. It's closing weeks earlier than usual. I mean, that, you know, another area that's really great is renewable power. No matter what the Trump administration has tried to do, global renewable power capacity just keeps growing and growing and growing. Something like 4,600 gigawatts between 2025 and 2030. That's what we're expecting. And we've already had about that much installed so far in the world. So we're leading the way. So that is a huge, good news story. Like, we're going much faster than I think, even the most optimistic people thought 10, 15 years ago. I feel like now when I'm like laying in bed with anxiety, I'll just slowly imagine the hole in the ozone layer closing. It's like the new counting sheet. Yes. There are certain times for me where I am just like so hooked into the new cycle. You read one thing that upsets you when you keep reading and it kind of can turn into this like negativity loop for me. And I know for a lot of people, I'm curious how you are able to manage the input of so much information. And if that's ever a challenge for you, when it's your job to be immersed in these headlines all of the time. Yeah. You know, it's this new job, this part of the new job, this good news, they actually helps with that because it actually forces me to go out and look for good things, which otherwise would not be coming to me. So I think that's part of it. Honestly, a big other part of it is, you know, the ability to step back as well. I mean, that comes from like years of being a journalist where, you know, one thing is like you, you're going to get a longer sweep of time and you realize what seems like a huge story now will not necessarily be a huge story in a year's time. Well, not going to be remembered in five years time. Yeah. Weirdly like the single biggest factor though is understanding how bad things used to be. You know, like tens of thousands of people are still being murdered. Ten thousands of people are still dying to grow overdoses, but it is better than it used to be. And then if you really look a long sweep of human history, you realize, you know, I don't only born in 1800 anywhere. So you know, weird sense like a lot of what I do is kind of anchor myself and be like, well, it's not the, it's not the midst of the black death, which you know, it's not the most convincing argument for other people. Like if I go around, it could be worse, that's especially true. If you think about like global trends, things like extreme poverty, which has declined significantly over the last 30 years or did it with maternal mortality or childhood mortality, like it's still awful that this happens to so many people around the world, but at the same time, it is meaningfully important and good that it happens to so fewer people than it once did. And we actually, you know, all of us working together in some way in this world helped make that possible. I don't think that's something we report on a lot, but that is a true fact of the world. Support for unexplainable comes from Shopify. Every worthwhile journey starts with a handful of granola and a brain full of dreams. Dreams like, what if I discover a new species or a new genus? Dreams like, what if I paint a masterpiece that whispers some eternal troops to everyone who sees it? Dreams of winning the big race car trophy with your big, vast race car. Or dreams of building your own thriving business. That last one is a dream Shopify can help you with. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world. And according to their data, at least 10% of all e-commerce in the United States start with your own design studio and choose from hundreds of ready-to-use templates to make your online store. You can use their AI tools to help you with copywriting and glaming up your product photos and then use the platform to build a marketing campaign. You can turn those what ifs into a thriving business with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash unexplainable. Go to shopify.com slash unexplainable. And it's shopify.com slash unexplainable. And it's shopify.com slash unexplainable. Top companies choose Vanta, do security and compliance right. Get started today at Vanta.com. I think it weren't for the rotten things that happened in this world we couldn't put on the news show. Okay, so it seems like people did manage to pull off a lot of great things in 2025. What about 2026? I mean, kicking things off with military strikes and the capture of Maduro and Venezuela, all of the upheaval we're seeing here in the United States. We're only two weeks in and it has just been an onslaught of these big chaotic headlines. But if Brian is right, there's still some really good long-term work happening in the background that maybe we can look forward to. These are not perfect on this planet, but I do have some good news which is that we are going back to the moon. NASA's Artemis II mission is scheduled to fly sometime in the early months of 2026. That's going to bring four astronauts on a round trip around the moon. That's except to be the first in a series of missions in the years to come that will aim to establish a permanent outpost in the moon's southern pole. So if you don't like things on Earth, there might be some real estate elsewhere in the future. In the future, we're expecting to see a few major clinical trials that will test how the psychedelic direct LSD can help treat anxiety and depression. I think that's incredibly important because mental health disorders and the rise in those are very real, very great sources of suffering. And we've had a really hard time coming up with new treatments for it. LSD, another psychedelics, show a lot of promise. If these go well, we could see some version of LSD being approved as an alternative treatment as early as 2027. What are some other pieces of good news? One thing is that we're seeing a sheet of global movement away from fur. Just recently, I actually at Kenny Torella, who's a writer who really focuses on factory farming and animal welfare, wrote about how Poland, which had been the world's number two fur producer, is face it out completely. And we're seeing more of that down in states. We're seeing that around the world starting next September for the 2026 New York Fashion Week. There will be no fur at all. That's joining other major fashion weeks around the world. So I think we're entering a future where we just won't see that anymore. And when you think of how big an issue that used to be, I mean, PETA and throwing fake blood on people with fur, like that to me is a major victory. Beyond that, we're starting to continue to see improvement in things like K-3 eggs. Just slightly improving the welfare of the hundreds of millions, billions of hands that lay eggs for all of us. We're still seeing improvement, I think, in the technology of in vitro or lab cultivated meat, which if that ever becomes really economical. Have you ever tried it? Oh, I have tried it. I've tried a lap-grown salmon. It's pretty good. I've tried lap-grown chicken, which tastes like chicken. It's definitely there. Like, the technology exists. It's just, of course, it's pretty expensive right now. But, you know, that was true of other technologies. And if we can do that, the fact that it ever actually happened, I mean, that would be just a sea change. I think we're going to look back in like 100 years as, you know, factory farming and being one of the worst things humanity is doing right now. Yeah. And that's a technological solution that, you know, it's got a long way to go, but I do feel hope that it continued to improve, continued to become a little more economical and actually started to make a difference in the world. And as soon as the difference that people really dedicated activists could make, you know, that you really had to change people's minds. Like, what happened there was convincing people over time that this was just wrong to do. You know, one of the things where it should be a future perfect is, how do we make successful change? You know, looking back, like, how did we stop awful things around the world? Like, how did we improve things like working conditions? It's never easy. It takes time. Sometimes you get technological improvements that can kind of sidestep that. Like, maybe that will be lap-grown meat. But a lot of time, it's the hard work, the hard slow boring of changing people's minds. One of the things I always feel most optimistic about is that there never seems to be a shortage of people who want to do that as hard as it is. Can you tell us about future perfect too? Oh sure, yeah. Future perfect is a section at Vox that is dedicated in writing about things that are important, but also neglected, and then have what we call tractable solutions. So in practice, what that means is these big problems that, you know, out there in the world that people just kind of accept. What is your most outrageous prediction for this year? I think my most outrageous prediction is that I think there is a, I believe I put 60% chance that an AI-generated song will top the Billboard Hot 100. This has already happened that believe in country music. I mean, the streaming charts there, there was an entirely artificial cowboy act that scored in number one hit. I mean, the red is a, by the way, not saying this is a good thing to be called. Yeah. If you're not in favor of this, I want to put that out there right away, okay? Non-favor of algorithmic, non-real human bands that said like the technology is improving really rapidly. I think songs, the nature of them makes them coppable, and maybe there's something about the way pop works today that makes that even more likely. But I do think there's a good chance of that happening over the course of 2026, and that's not a good news prediction, but, you know, it's crazy to think of it. It is outrageous. It is outrageous, at the very least. Thank you to Brian Walsh for helping me feel a little more optimistic about the state of the world. If you like me, our need of some good news, you can subscribe to his Good News newsletter at Fox.com, and we will be linking it in the show notes. This episode was produced by me, Joanna Salatarov. It was edited by Meredith Hodd-Nott and Sally Helm. Mixing and sound design from Erica Wong, fact checking from Melissa Hirsch. Amy Padula is pure poetry, and Noam Hasenfeld is a top 10 AI country song. Jorge Justin Giulia Lungoria are editorial directors. Bird Pinkerton immediately asked Plattie, who made your guitar? It was made by a bird. A bird? Not just any bird. Plattie replied. A yard bird. Eric Flapton. Thanks to Brian Resnick for co-creating the show, along with Bird and Noam. If you have thoughts about the show or some good news that's brightened your spirits, please send us an email or leave it as a comment. You can email us at unexplainableatfox.com. You can also leave us a review or a rating wherever you listen. It is always appreciated. And if you're into supporting the show and all of Vox in general, join our membership program. You can go to Vox.com slash members to sign up. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we will see you next time.
