Optimism in the Age of Fear with Gregg Easterbrook

Air Dates: July 14-16, 2018

The conventional wisdom—the story that dominates public life—is that the world is falling apart. Literally, our infrastructure is crumbling. Our politics are devolving.  Sea levels are rising. Gregg Easterbrook reminds us, however, that the reality of human experience is not that bleak and that there is opportunity in tackling the great issues we face.

Gregg Easterbrook is the author of eleven books, including The New York Times bestseller, The Progress Paradox. He has been a staff writer, national correspondent or contributing editor of The Atlantic for nearly 40 years. Easterbrook has written for The New Yorker, Science, Wired, Harvard Business Review, The Washington Monthly, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times. He was a fellow in economics, then in government studies, at the Brookings Institution, and a fellow in international affairs at the Fulbright Foundation. In 2017, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

His latest book, It’s Better Than It looks: Reason for Optimism in an Age of Fear, explains that the world is in a much better place than the news and social media leads us to believe. Easterbrook offers specific actions to overcome today’s challenges and hope to the masses.

“Story in the Public Square” airs on Rhode Island PBS in Rhode Island and southern Massachusetts on Sundays at 11 a.m. and is rebroadcast Thursdays at 7:30 p.m. An audio version of the program airs Saturdays at 8:30 a.m. & 7:30 p.m. ET, Sundays at 5:30 a.m. ET, and Mondays at 12:30 a.m. ET on SiriusXM’s popular P.O.T.U.S. (Politics of the United States), channel 124. “Story in the Public Square” is a partnership between the Pell Center and The Providence Journal. The initiative aims to study, celebrate and tell stories that matter.