Hey there, Stephen Dubner. Do you ever find yourself in an endless cycle of negative thinking?

If so, congratulations. You're normal. At least that's what the psychologists tell us.

Today on the show, an episode we first published in May 2020 during a particularly bad moment

in the COVID pandemic. It's called Reasons to Be Cheerful. A few things have changed since

we first put out this episode, so we will provide updates at the end. Also, we are working on a follow-up

to this episode about negativity in the media. You should hear that one sometime in the next month or so.

And make sure you listen to the very end of this episode because we have an important announcement

about a new show, yes, another new show in the Freakinomics Radio Network. But for now, here you go.

Reasons to Be Cheerful.

This episode is not about the COVID-19 epidemic, unless you think it is. You'll understand what I mean as we proceed.

Let's start with a long-time journalist. I'm John Tierney. For years, Tierney wrote for The New York Times.

He and I actually worked together there for a few years, but way before that when he was just starting out.

One of my first jobs, I was a summer intern at the Philadelphia Bulletin, and I was a little man on the Totem Pole,

and there was a heat wave, and they asked me to do the weather store kind of a dread assignment.

What is there to say about the weather? So I was flailing around, and I was calling the police stations at the Jersey Shore,

where a lot of people in Philadelphia would go during a heat wave. And I was asking for news,

nothing was going on. They said except traffic is kind of heavy. And so I started asking them,

I said, is this the worst traffic you've ever seen? And the desk sergeant said,

no, it's always heavy in August. It's a normal August. But I finally found one desk sergeant who said,

yeah, I guess I would say it's the worst I've ever seen. And I never asked him, like, is this your first

weekend working? And my lead the next day is in what police call the worst traffic in history.

And even at the time, I realized this was pretty sleazy. And I would just wonder, why did I do that?

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