There's no shortage of things to worry about right now.

The seas are rising, the planet is overheating, the gap between rich and poor is growing,

there's political turmoil everywhere. It's tempting to despair, but what if, what if we look for hope instead?

Hope largely means the ability to still be here fighting.

My hope and optimism also sees what's blossoming out of these hard times.

Hope is that thing that gets you out of bed in the morning, and time in again, you come back and do that again.

I've hoped because I know this just can't be the best version of the world that we can have,

and I think that that's real for a lot of people.

Hope rises.

Don't go away.

Our special series on Hope is just around the corner.

As to the best of our knowledge from PRX.

Wisconsin Public Radio.

It's to the best of our knowledge.

I'm Anne Strangeamps.

When you look around the world right now, how hopeful do you feel?

When I first got a job, it was teaching at Yale Divinity School.

And that required doing some travel to do research and also talks.

This is Andre Willis.

He's a philosopher of religion at Brown University.

And what I began to see was suffering and despair were sort of much more noticeable than they had been.

I lost my job.

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