Jamil Zaki is a Professor of Psychology at Stanford and the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab, where he has spent more than 20 years studying how people connect, and what happens when we stop trusting one another. He is the author of The War for Kindness and, most recently, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness.

The book makes a case that's genuinely comforting: people are better than we think they are, and the evidence is everywhere, once you know how to look.

Frank and Jamil talk about why our picture of each other is so much darker than the truth, how to think like a hopeful skeptic instead of a cynic, what AI is doing to trust, and a simple dinner-table habit Jamil's family calls positive gossip.

In this episode, we discuss:

[03:58] A Cynicism Generating Machine: Fifty years of falling trust, why Jamil's Stanford students are not the selfish generation the stereotype claims, and the junk-food analogy for your news feed.

[09:05] The Wallet Test: The Toronto Star dropped 20 wallets around the city with money inside. Readers predicted one in four would come back. Four out of five did. The story at the heart of Hope for Cynics, and why people are especially good when things go badly.

[13:40] Cynic vs. Hopeful Skeptic: Cynics start with a conclusion and look for evidence. Skeptics think like scientists. Jamil on why cynics "actually are pretty naive," and why the first step is to fact-check your own cynical thoughts.

[17:10] Earned Trust and Psychological Brussels Sprouts: How treating people like "the folks you hope they are" flips a vicious cycle into a virtuous one, and what brain scans reveal when we give.

[20:54] Positive Gossip: The dinner-table habit Jamil's family practices, the red-car effect that explains why it works, and the late friend whose hope inspired the book.

[24:25] A Recovering Cynic: Jamil turns the question on Frank, why this show is "a positive gossip engine," and the neonatologist who did Jamil's family a crazy good turn.

[29:27] Turing Fatigue and the Social Router: What AI is doing to trust right now, why Jamil went back to blue-book exams, and how the same technology could be rebuilt to point us toward each other.

My Sincere Thanks

Because of listeners like you, our show now ranks among the top 5% of most-downloaded podcasts by volume per month. Your support has helped take our little idea to celebrate generosity and good deeds and turn it into one of the most-listened-to podcasts available. Thank you for being part of a community that celebrates people who do good things for others.

Please help us continue to grow by subscribing on your preferred podcast platform and sharing our show with friends.

Lyz Glick Best was married to Jeremy Glick, one of the passengers who fought back against the hijackers aboard United Flight 93 on September 11, 2001. That morning, from her parents' farmhouse in the Catskills, Lyz spent about 30 minutes on the phone with Jeremy. They stayed calm. They assessed the situation together. And he told her what he wanted if he didn't make it off the plane.

Twenty-five years later, Lyz joins us for a tribute episode — to Jeremy, to everyone aboard Flight 93, and to all the victims and families of September 11th. She told the first part of this story in the 2004 book Your Father's Voice. This conversation is about the man behind the title — and the life Lyz built for their daughter in the years since.

In this episode, we discuss:

[03:08] High School Sweethearts: The first day of ninth-grade biology, 1984 — and the girl Jeremy told his mom he was going to marry.

[05:45] "Who's Working the Chess Pieces": Falling out of touch, a chance collision in a New York City bar, and a national judo title won without a coach.

[14:10] A Father for 12 Weeks: The video of Jeremy narrating a diaper change — and the joy their daughter Emmy inherited from him.

[17:38] "Redemption of Sky": The remarkable poem Jeremy wrote at 16 or 17, published in his school's literary magazine – and which made its way to Lyz after 9/11.

[19:05] The Phone Call: About 30 minutes on the phone — staying calm, making a plan, and what Jeremy asked for if he didn't make it home.

[28:09] The Tuesday Group: The 9/11 widows who were pregnant or with young children — and how they learned that trauma and grief heal differently.

[35:30] Finding Joy After Loss: The life Lyz rebuilt, her husband Jim's quiet crazy good turn, and marking 25 years since the day honored at the Flight 93 National Memorial.

Image: Courtesy ACCESS

Stephen Macedo and Frances Lee are both professors of politics at Princeton. Together they wrote "In Covid's Wake: How Our Politics Failed Us" (Princeton University Press), named one of the best books of 2025 by The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, and The Economist, and featured on The New York Times' "The Daily" and PBS NewsHour.

The book asks a question few want to spend time with: how did we actually handle the pandemic — and what would we do differently next time?

We invited Stephen and Frances on Crazy Good Turns not to relitigate COVID or assign blame, but to look back honestly so that when the next crisis comes, we do a little better.

Macedo is a political theorist who has written widely on constitutional law, ethics, and public policy; Lee is a leading scholar of Congress and political polarization.

In this episode, we discuss:

[04:53] The Book Almost No One Asked For: Why Lee wasn't sure anyone would want to read In Covid's Wake — and why she felt it needed to exist anyway.

[07:34] Why We Look Away (This Wasn't The First Time): On the strange quiet that settled after the pandemic — and the echo of 1918, when the country did much the same thing following the Spanish flu.

[14:47] No Commission, No Reckoning: We studied 9/11 and the Challenger. We never launched that kind of honest look back at COVID — and Lee explores why.

[17:23] Who Suffered the Most: How a response framed as protecting the vulnerable, they argue, so often landed hardest on essential workers, small businesses, and our kids.

[26:57] The Case for a "Team B" in Every Crisis: Macedo on what he calls an "effortful pause" — room for dissent, and a wider table than just the experts who already agree.

[38:06] Reasons for Hope: Why Macedo thinks we will do better next time, and why he's bullish on students who were in junior high in 2020.

My Sincere Thanks

Because of listeners like you, our show now ranks among the top 5% of most-downloaded podcasts by volume per month. Your support has helped take our little idea to celebrate generosity and good deeds and turn it into one of the most-listened-to podcasts available. Thank you for being part of a community that celebrates people who do good things for others.

Please help us continue to grow by subscribing on your preferred podcast platform and sharing our show with friends.