4.4 • 5.1K Ratings
🗓️ 1 November 2025
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
On this weekend’s edition of The Optimist, reporter and self-proclaimed cynic Kyle Melnick goes on a journey with a dog. We’ll talk about what he learns, and the science of how dogs make us calmer, happier – and maybe even more trusting.
If you want more optimistic content on the weekends, let us know at [email protected] and [email protected] – and check out our newsletter.
Today’s show was produced and hosted by Maggie Penman and reported by Kyle Melnick. It was edited by Allison Klein and mixed by Ted Muldoon.
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| 0:00.0 | I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight... |
| 0:04.0 | And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke. |
| 0:08.4 | A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old. |
| 0:11.8 | And a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago. |
| 0:16.3 | How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? |
| 0:23.8 | Listen to heavyweight wherever you get your podcasts. |
| 0:32.2 | There's a question audio producers always ask in sound checks. |
| 0:36.6 | What did you have for breakfast today? |
| 0:38.8 | I had, I made like really fluffy pancakes, bacon, eggs. No. I'm sure he did not eat breakfast. |
| 0:45.9 | I haven't eaten anything today. I'm Maggie Penman and that is my colleague, Kyle Melnick. |
| 0:53.5 | Kyle and I are both reporters for The Optimist, the section here at The Post that brings you inspiring, hopeful news, stories about things that are going right in the world. |
| 1:03.1 | But Kyle approaches the beat from a very different angle than I do. |
| 1:07.6 | Depending on your outlook, I'm a pessimist or a realist. |
| 1:11.6 | I would describe myself as a cynic. |
| 1:14.6 | Do you ever think about the irony that you work for the optimist? |
| 1:18.6 | Yeah, when I got hired on the optimist, a lot of people thought it was humorous. |
| 1:26.6 | To me, Kyle is one of those classic kind of old-school news reporter types. |
| 1:31.7 | He's really smart and funny, but super deadpan. |
| 1:34.6 | He has a very dry sense of humor. |
| 1:36.6 | And he's skeptical of everything. |
| 1:40.0 | As the journalism saying goes, if your mother says she loves you, check it out. |
| 1:44.3 | And that is basically Kyle's worldview. |
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