Good news for people who love bad news

Unexplainable

Vox

Science, Natural Sciences, Life Sciences

4.6 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2025

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Good news can be hard to find, especially when our brains — and the media — are biased against it. Guest: Bryan Walsh, senior editorial director of Vox, and author of the Good News newsletter This episode was made in partnership with Vox’s Future Perfect team.For show transcripts, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unxtranscripts⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠For more, go to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/unexplainable⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠And please email us! ⁠⁠⁠unexplainable@vox.com⁠⁠⁠We read every email.Support Unexplainable (and get ad-free episodes) by becoming a Vox Member today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠vox.com/members Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	All right, Brian Walsh.
0:17.1	That's me.
0:17.8	So you are the editor of the Future Perfect team.
0:21.6	You oversee the climate team.
0:23.6	You oversee some podcasts like yours truly.
0:28.6	So top editorial leader here, one of them at Fox.
0:33.6	Yeah, you could say that.
0:34.6	I think that's fair.
0:35.6	Fair to say.
0:36.6	Yeah. Could you pull up the
0:39.1	best performing Vox stories right now and we'll play a little game of good news, bad news?
0:45.0	Oh, boy, is it so embarrassing. Okay. Okay. Publish David. Top story. Pop story. Fox.com.
0:51.7	All right, top story. July 14th, Ian Milheiser.
0:56.0	The Supreme Court just handed Trump his biggest victory of a second term.
0:59.0	Well, I guess that's good news from someone's perspective.
1:02.0	True.
1:03.0	Okay.
1:04.0	July 18th, Constant Grady.
1:05.0	There's a bigger story behind Colbert's cancellation.
1:07.0	Yeah, I don't think the bigger story is that bad for the media is I'm pretty sure and bad for media freedom. Right, right, right. Oh, this is a good one. All right, July 23rd, Benji Jones, recent piece. The government stepped in to clean up a disaster in North Carolina. Then they created another one. I edited that story along with Paige Vega, our climate editor, and I, that was not, not positive, unfortunately.
1:48.0	Should I keep going? Yeah, yeah. Two or three more. Going down. Will we ever know why? Brian Coburger murdered the Idaho four. Just going to keep on going on that one. Yep, yep. The real reason why everyone's so mad over the Gen Z stare, I mean everyone's so mad. And they're like, oh, I love the way that Gen Zs look at me with dead eyes. Republicans now own America's broken health care system.
1:53.0	Nope.
	...

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