Hi friends, it's Anne.

A couple of years ago, to the best of our knowledge, produced a three-part series on Hope.

We had no idea back then just how much we were going to need it today.

But here we are.

A year into a global pandemic that's killed an unfathomable number of people,

a year that nearly broke many of us.

But we are still here.

And so today seems like a perfect time to hear this series again.

A perfect time for hope.

Keep listening.

Wisconsin Public Radio.

It's to the best of our knowledge.

I'm Anne Strange Champs.

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.

What happens?

I was the best of us, unfortunately.

I felt like the U.S. and even globally when I did foreign travel

...