We have been busy over here in Granite Goodness land! Our summer was spent doing live events, speaking engagements, and working on a couple secret projects I am excited to unveil soon. If you are ever curious, we regularly update our timeline page with notable activities.

We put on a panel at NH’s Coastal Climate Summit a few months back. One of my favorite themes from that discussion was the difference between seawalls and living shorelines as strategies to adapt to changing coastlines.

Seawalls are strongest on the day they are installed, and become weaker over time as the ocean batters them.

In contrast, living shorelines are weakest when they are installed, but grow in strength and efficacy as vegetation and marsh mature into storm-buffering systems.

This is not so different from how I think of the news!

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Excited to share our next live show is coming up on Wednesday August 12 in Concord, NH. I’ll be sharing again this week to our full list of 2,000+, but you all (114 and counting!) are the inner circle of optimists : )

Get your tickets here, use code SAVE50 for a discount!

Come watch me somersault (literally) into a conversation with 4 local business leaders about how they do well while doing good.

The panel will feature:

• Ben Conniff: Co-founder, Luke’s Lobster

• Julianna Dodson: Executive Director, Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship (and past Granite Goodness guest!)

• Emily Warren: Director of People & Culture, W.S. Badger Company

• Cody Whelan: Co-founder, Treeline Outfitters (and past Granite Goodness guest!)

We’ll be collaborating with our friends at NH Businesses for Social Responsibility for this event, showcasing how these people and their organizations are changing the game on:

• Creating real “third spaces”

• Environmental stewardship & sustainability

• Reimagining rural economies

• Youth career paths

…and more, brought to you in classic Granite Goodness fashion. As always we’ll also be joined by acclaimed local indie-folk rockstars Sneaky Miles, whose music we use for the podcast.

Check out our first two live shows if you want to get a sense of what they’re like:

3S Artspace Local Podcasters Night

Rex Theatre

Hope to see you there!

Now please enjoy some fresh good news from around the globe. Here are seven of my favorite stories lately:

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I cannot believe there are now over 100 of you. If you haven’t shared your info yet and would like to be displayed on our page, please let me know!

If you missed it, the recording from our last live show is now out.

Kicking off the new month with some fresh good news from around the globe. Here are seven of my favorite stories lately:

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Returning to you here with another edition of our Optimists Club newsletter.

We had a great night on Friday at our second live show. Official pictures to come but here are a couple previews!

A bunch of our Optimists Club members joined us there! Thank you to Laura Cleminson, Ryan + Rae Lambert, Brittany Carr, Anna Paddock, Matt Doubleday, Nikki Schultz, Andrea Martin, and Jesse Lore (who also was our generous show sponsor via Green Wave Electric Vehicles)

GOOD NEWS

I am often asked how I can be so optimistic. In this issue, I’ll tell you how.

Granite Goodness is just one among many organizations devoted to telling optimistic stories. There is a wide and growing network devoted to this mission, and they are where I got the idea to bring this concept to New England.

Even in the short time I’ve been doing this (20 months) I have also observed a shift amongst major media outlets. More and more, they are investing resources into optimistic solutions journalism.

I thought it would make for a fun piece to compile all of my favorite sources together. A curation of good news curators!

I also hope this list may serve to show fellow media people that solutions journalism is not just a niche thing, but increasingly seen as a savvy investment by traditional media outlets.

We’ll share some of our favorite good news stories lately at the bottom for Optimists Club members.

MY TOP PICKS

(est. 2014)

Based out of Australia, this team is “the world’s leading solutions journalism newsletter” boasting ~80,000 subscribers across 195 countries. I would agree with that assessment. These people are the true originals, and have been at it for over 10 years. They were formerly known as Future Crunch, and I have a vintage t-shirt to prove it.

When I need to explain people what I’m doing and why, I literally pull up their website, and simply say “I am trying to do this, but for New England.”

Their testimonials page is also a work of art. It’s like they literally just published every nice thing anyone’s ever said about them. The page is enormous and feels so human. My dream is to style my Optimists Club page after it— impractically large and positive.

(TPN, est. 2020)

Headquartered at the New America Foundation, this organization was founded during the pandemic. They are the leading convening organization for optimistic / progress oriented storytelling, and also produce a ton of excellent original content themselves. Their podcast “What Could Go Right” is my personal favorite. Granite Goodness is proud to be an official member of The Progress Network. The rest of their members are far more notable than myself, though I never hear Scott Galloway talk about being in TPN. I wish he did!

Their founder also writes an excellent substack . My favorite thing about Zachary is that in the beginning of every podcast episode, he rephrases the mission statement of TPN (“An idea movement that speaks to a better future in a world dominated by voices that suggest a worse one”) in a completely original way, off the top of his head. It’s wildly impressive.

Our World in Data (est. 2014)

This organization is less on the journalistic side of progress and more on the data side. In fact I would just say that they are the data side. Their website is like a modern library of Alexandria. You can imagine Aristotle weeping if he were able to see this information— accurate data about all the worlds biggest problems, neatly categorized and visualized, free to use for anyone, anywhere, all the time, everywhere, forever.

This website and org are the spiritual grandchild of Hans Rosling’s infamous TED talk, where for the first time in the internet era, a wide audience was optimistically educated about the improving state of the world (imagine how happy I was getting to emcee TEDx Portsmouth last year! One of the top TEDx events in the world!)

My favorite quote, which I often cite as how to reconcile an awareness of suffering with the desire to improve the world, comes from them.

The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better.

They also have a page devoted specifically to optimism.

HONORABLE MENTION

(est. 2024)

These guys are more tech focused, but tell amazing stories nonetheless. The name comes from Matt Ridley’s wonderful book, The Rational Optimist. Their platform has grown wildly fast, and they happen to also be incredibly nice.

(est. 2013)

A project of the Cato Institute, their newsletter Doomslayer is an excellent regular curation of progress stories around the globe. Their podcast and work mostly take a economics-centered point of view, and I find Marian Tupy wonderful to listen to on their podcast. Chelsea Follett, their managing editor, also runs the fantastic substack .

(est. 2022)

The personal substack of Hannah Ritchie, Deputy Editor at Our World in Data, where she breaks down almost every environmental issue imaginable in an entertaining and data-backed way. She is 33 years old and also the author of the incredible book Not the End of the World.

(est. 2017, becoming a non-profit in 2021)

This organization is devoted to studying and advancing the progress movement, in particular accelerating the careers of progress researchers. I view them as a kind of academic companion to the Progress Network (who, to their great credit, contains almost all of these organizations within their network). They run the world’s premier progress conference, just recently established in 2024. Funny story, I was almost hired to help organize this conference! The team there is great.

Their founder, Jason Crawford, is based in Boston. I hope to get him on the podcast sometime!

TRADITIONAL MEDIA + SOLUTIONS JOURNALISM

Here is a curation of more established media outlets and some of their component solutions journalism work I’ve come across:

Resolve to Solve from PBS (est. 2026)

Reasonably Optimistic from the Washington Post (est. 2025)

Future Perfect from Vox (est. 2018)

50 States, 50 Fixes from the New York Times (est. 2025)

The Solutionaries from Time Magazine (est. 2025)

An Optimists Guide to the Planet from Bloomberg (est. 2024)

How We Fix This from Spotify (est. 2024)

People Fixing the World from BBC (est. 2016)

There are probably tons more I haven’t even heard of.

OTHER GREAT RESOURCES WORTH SHARING

Reasons to be Cheerful

Blue Sky Podcast

The Goodness Exchange (run by my friend Lynda Ulrich!)

Positive News Magazine

Cleo Abram (a massively popular content creator who explicitly covers tech optimism)

Pessimists Archive

Good Good Good

(Earth Hope)

(Positive Sum)

Warp News

Institute for Progress

There is even a subreddit for optimistic data content, r/optimistsunite, which grew from 0 to more than 350,000 members in two years.

There are many more I could list here. Maybe I’ll edit this post sometime to also include books. But for anyone seeking out where to find more optimistic information and content about people making the world better, this list is a pretty good place to start!

Below here are my top good news stories from around the world lately, for Optimists Club members only!

ANDY’S TOP GLOBAL GOOD NEWS LATELY:

• Oil spills from tankers have fallen by more than 90% since the 1970’s

  • “In the 1970s, oil spills from tankers — container ships transporting oil — were common. Between 70 and 100 spills occurred per year. That’s one or two spills every week. This number has fallen by more than 90% since then.”

• Global terrorism deaths hit their lowest point since 2007

  • “Deaths from terrorism fell by 28 per cent to 5,582, and incidents decreased by 22 per cent to 2,944, marking the lowest figures since 2007.”

• Young people are using social media less

  • “A 2025 Deloitte consumer trends survey of more than 4,000 Brits found that nearly a quarter of all consumers had deleted a social media app in the previous 12 months, rising to nearly a third for Gen Zers. Meanwhile, social media use has steadily declined since time spent on the platforms peaked in 2022, according to an analysis of the online habits of 250,000 adults in more than 50 countries by the Financial Times and digital audience insights firm GWI.”

• Share of adults globally who think women in their country are treated with respect increased to 72% from 63% in 2022 (Gallup)

• Smoking rates in the United States near all time low

  • “The cigarette smoking rate among U.S. adults fell below 10% for the first time in recorded history in 2024.”

OPTIMIST FEATURE!

This month’s featured optimist (selected at random from club members) is…

Anna Paddock!

“I believe that the trajectory of the universe arcs towards justice. There's no denying that there are a lot of bad things in the world, and we should put energy into fixing those problems. However, we NEED to know what is going right in the world - what solutions humanity is creating - in order to have the desire and will to make the world a better place. Granite Goodness is my dose of hope, that reminds me that there are lots of people who care and are working hard to make this world a better place. Joining the Optimists Club is how I show my appreciation for these much needed stories of genuine progress.”

Anna works at the Chocorua Lake Conservancy here in Tamworth. Two weeks ago, we toured the Stonyfield yogurt factory together in Londonderry, NH thanks to the wonderful people at NH Businesses for Social Responsibility.

Thank you for being an optimist Anna!

That’s it for this edition of the Optimists Club Newsletter. New podcast episode and New England good news dropping shortly. See you soon!

-Andy

HAPPY SUNDAY EVERYONE!

So excited to bring you the very first OPTIMISTS CLUB newsletter.

First, I cannot thank each and every one of you enough. Many of you are friends of mine, colleagues, former coworkers or professors, or just great people— all of whom have gone out of their way to materially support Granite Goodness, or gifted that capacity to someone else special in your life. I hope to make you proud, and maybe even a little more optimistic.

Lots going on in Granite Goodness land but above all I hope to see you all at our next LIVE SHOW on Feb 20, at 3S Artspace in Portsmouth. Use code GRANITE for a discount!

Also save the date— there is going to be a meetup on Tues March 17 at Treeline Outfitters in collaboration with our friends at Give and Gather.

If you haven’t already, please fill out the Optimists Club intake info so I can show you off to the world and send you a print newsletter if you like. Reply to me here with any questions!

Now onto the news.

It’s rough out there. We all see it. The news is always dark by nature, but maybe it’s a bit extra dark lately. It even prompted me to write something this past week if you’re curious.

My vision for this newsletter is less a thorough recitation of global progress (done better by others), and more of an inside window on what personally is giving me the most hope and optimism lately. I read a lot of progress journalism, so I’ll share some of my favorite stories here, along with highlighting some of you great people.

This community is very wonderful and organic, if you have any ideas don’t hesitate to reach out. I am already scheming with some of you ; )

Since this is the very first edition of this newsletter, I thought I’d open by echoing my favorite mantra from the very smart people at Our World in Data, who publish world-class freely accessible research on all the biggest problems. It goes like this:

#1 The world is awful.

#2 The world is better than it used to be (in a lot of ways we can measure).

#3 The world can be better than it is now. Way better.

These three statements are true at the same time— they don’t contradict each other!

We’re constantly surrounded by examples of #1. It dominates our feeds and headlines. What we encounter far less often are stories of #2 and #3.

A core insight of solutions journalism is that when our attention is monopolized by #1, we unintentionally reinforce it.

Similarly, giving more space to #2 and #3 helps create more of #2 and #3.

In a nutshell, that’s what we’re trying to do here at Granite Goodness. So here is a nice dose of #2 and #3 from around the world.

OUR TOP GLOBAL PROGRESS STORIES THIS MONTH

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It has been QUITE a year here at Granite Goodness.

If you have never taken a look at our timeline page, it’s worth a peek.

Over the past year, Granite Goodness has grown in ways I could not have imagined.

In 2025, Granite Goodness:

Built big momentum

• Had our first ever live show, with 115 attendees!!!

• Co-hosted TEDx Portsmouth (largest TEDx event in all of New England), emceed the Bring Back the Trades 2025 Skills Expo at Gillette Stadium, and emceed the 2025 Manchester International Film Festival

• Shared 500+ stories of progress and problem solving across New England in climate, energy, sustainability, housing, infrastructure, economics, workforce development, science, technology, and the nonprofit sector

• Expanded coverage to all six New England states and joined the Progress Network

Grew our community

• Hosted two guest reunions, joined three panels, held six sustainability networking events, and launched three partnerships

• Tripled our podcast downloads and brought our solutions lens to 6 other podcasts

• Grew the newsletter community by more than 6x to over 3,000 subscribers across Substack and Linkedin

• Fostered an online community of 10,000+ social media followers (10x growth) engaging regularly with stories that counter cynicism and highlight real progress

Earned trust and recognition

• Interviewed half of New Hampshire’s congressional delegation, the Governor of NH, UNH’s President, and many others offering optimistic, expert perspectives on housing, opioids, healthcare costs, trades careers, state economics, local food systems, and other issues important to New England.

• Received three awards including NH Young Person of the Year, a UNH GOLD Award, and Catapult Seacoast’s Ten to Watch.

• Published a piece in NH Business Review and attracted press from The Union Leader and UNH Magazine

It has been a lot of work, and I have loved every moment. Granite Goodness is not something I clock into. I live and breathe it.

From the beginning, I have done this project almost entirely for free, purely out of a desire to manifest a more optimistic view of our corner of the world. Apart from a handful of sponsorships, that has remained true.

Looking ahead, Granite Goodness has reached a point where, thanks to all of you, I get to dream even bigger about the impact it can have.

A new way to support Granite Goodness

When I look at everything Granite Goodness has been able to do with very little money, it is clear how much possibility opens up with even a modest amount of support.

So, in that spirit, and in response to popular demand, effective today we are officially launching a new way to support Granite Goodness: Optimists Club!

Optimists Club supports Granite Goodness and helps sustain our optimistic, local, solutions-focused storytelling.

Membership

$5 per month or $50 annually

Annual memberships are discounted to $35 through the end of 2025

Members receive:

• Mailed print editions of Granite Goodness newsletters
  Members can opt in to receive physical copies by mail, or opt out at any time.

• An exclusive monthly members-only newsletter

  A paywalled edition featuring our personal favorite stories of progress and problem-solving from around the world. All other Granite Goodness content will always remain free.

• Discounted tickets to Granite Goodness LIVE shows and merchandise
  (We had our first live show on 11/20/25, merchandise coming in 2026)

• Recognition and features
  Members may opt into being publicly recognized on the Granite Goodness website and newsletter. Optimists Club members are randomly selected for newsletter features.

If you like Granite Goodness and want to support our work, including:

• Newsletters sharing stories of progress across New England

• Podcast interviews with leaders and optimists from across the region

• LIVE events highlighting local problem solvers

• Regular meetups (more coming in 2026)

• Social media storytelling and collaborations with journalists, nonprofits, universities, and innovators

You can also gift an annual membership to someone else in your life who you think could use a little optimism, currently discounted to $35 through the end of 2025.

We’re building something bigger

From the beginning, part of the mission of Granite Goodness has been to help build a better way to tell stories about the problems we face. To do this, we rely on excellent local journalists across New Hampshire and New England, and we believe a healthy local media ecosystem is essential to an informed sense of optimism.

Optimists Club is designed with that belief built in. 10% of all Optimists Club revenue will be donated to organizations that support local journalism in New Hampshire and New England, including groups like the Granite State News Collaborative.

THANK YOU ALL for being part of this community and for helping me believe that optimism isn’t naive. It’s pragmatic.

Hard, and worth it.

Granite and good.

-Andy