The New York Times: The Morning Newsletter
"The psychology of hope, New Year's festivities around the World, Zohran Mamdani is now mayor of New York City."
Views expressed in this World and US news update are those of the reporters and correspondents. Accessed on 01 January 2026, 1509 UTC.
Content and Source: "The New York Times: The Morning Newsletter."
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Russ Roberts (https://trendsingeopolitics.blogspot.com).
 January 1, 2026 |
Good morning. Welcome to 2026.
The Morning brings you bad news every day: wars, mass shootings, congressional gridlock, bedbugs in France. At the beginning of a new year, we’re doing something different. We’re going to talk about the psychology of hope.
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| A rainbow in the Faroe Islands. Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times |
Your hopes
 | I am the host of Believing. |
America has become a country of cynics. At least, that’s what studies show.
People don’t trust each other, the media or the government. Most Americans, about 80 percent, don’t feel confident their children’s lives will be better than theirs. About half the country thinks America’s best days are in the past.
“Cynicism is vastly on the rise,” said Jamil Zaki, the director of the Stanford Social Neuroscience Lab. It’s a dangerous trend — but Zaki and other experts say it’s reversible if people cultivate hope that another future is possible.
Hope, as a word, can be pat (does my barista really hope I have a good one?) and overly saccharine (think: the generic painted sign in an Airbnb). But it is also, experts tell me, an action verb.
While optimism is the belief that the future will be better, hope is the belief “that we have the power to make it so,” said Chan Hellman, the director of The Hope Research Center at the University of Oklahoma. It is “one of the strongest predictors of well-being,” he said. It helps improve the immune system and aids recovery from illness. More hopeful people may actually grow taller than less hopeful people.
To cultivate hope, people need three things, Zaki said: They first need to be able to envision a better future, either personally or collectively. Second, they need the willpower or motivation to move toward that future. And third, they must be able to chart “a path from where they are to where they want to be,” he added.
How to be more hopeful
There are a few ways, experts say.
People can set specific goals and then “begin brainstorming the pathways or road maps” to achieve them, ideally by writing them down, Hellman said. That can start small. “It is much better to set and focus on short-term goals rather than long-term, abstract goals,” he added.
Another tactic is to “replace cynicism with skepticism,” Zaki said. “Skepticism is not believing that everything will turn out great, but also not prejudging things as terrible, either.”
That can often mean speaking more positively about other people, as trust in others is an indicator of low levels of cynicism. People gossip three times as much about the selfish things others do than about the generous things they do, Zaki has found. To address that, he and his family practice “positive gossip.”
“Each evening we try to share one story of something positive that somebody else did that day,” he said “The research finds that when you know you’re going to have to share something, you pay a lot more attention to it.”
What you told us
Let’s try some positive gossip, of sorts, for 2026. I wanted to know how we could be “good and proactive and even somewhat desperate” patients, as George Saunders once said, in seeking a more generous outlook. So we asked you what gives you hope, and more than 600 of you replied. Many of you spoke positively about others. Here’s what you said:
Random acts of kindness
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Children
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| In Gjoa Haven, Canada. Renaud Philippe for The New York Times |
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History
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Sports
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Travel
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Other sources
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| In Mobile, Ala. Vincent Alban/The New York Times |
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I hope, in 2026, we can all be more like Tim.
Each week, I write about topics like this in Believing, a newsletter about how people find meaning in their lives now. You can subscribe to Believing here.
THE LATEST NEWS |
The New Year
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| A couple during the New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square. Vincent Alban/The New York Times |
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Venezuela
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Politics
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| Members of the Texas National Guard at a U.S. Army Reserve Training Center in Elwood, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, in October. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times |
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More International News
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OPINIONS |
Jeneen Interlandi writes about the damage Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has done as health secretary in less than a year.
London’s drinking culture, and the city itself, is changing. Its pubs show how the city has become irrationally expensive, Jimmy McIntosh argues.
The Times Sale starts now: Our best rate for readers of The Morning.
Save now with our best offer on unlimited news and analysis as part of the complete Times experience: $1/week for your first year.
MORNING READS |
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| Photo illustration by Ricardo Tomas |
The political right: Is the future of Trump’s MAGA movement anti-Israel?
Running NPR: The organization’s C.E.O. was already a right-wing target. Then the funding cuts started.
Confession: An inmate tried repeatedly to confess to killing a man at a Mississippi jail. He said no one wanted to listen.
Your pick: The most-clicked story in The Morning yesterday was about what Times reporters saw at a job fair for ICE.
TODAY’S NUMBER |
295
— The amount, in dollars, that some people paid to take a crystal from the New Year’s Eve ball in Times Square as a keepsake.
SPORTS |
College football: Miami upset last year’s champion, Ohio State, 24-14 in the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff. And Arch Manning led Texas to a 41-27 win over Michigan in the Citrus Bowl.
N.F.L.: New England Patriots defensive tackle Christian Barmore faces misdemeanor assault and battery charges against his former girlfriend. Another Patriots player, wide receiver Stefon Diggs, is separately facing a felony strangulation charge involving his private chef.
Olympics alum: The Mexican authorities seized motorcycles, Olympic medals and drugs in raids linked to Ryan Wedding, a former Canadian snowboarder who is wanted by the U.S. government.
RECIPE OF THE DAY |
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| David Malosh for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. |
Making fluffy, tender scrambled eggs for a crowd is easier than you might think. This recipe makes just a few tweaks to a common technique to accommodate two dozen eggs. Trade the skillet for a Dutch oven and add the eggs to a warm, not hot, pot. As you slowly scrape in long sweeps, the eggs will begin to clump. Once you see the bottom of the pot behind your wooden spoon, take the pot off the heat and add cold butter, which will drop the temperature to prevent overcooking. Flip the curds until the still-runny egg and melting butter form a creamy coating.
ROCK ON |
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| Geese performing on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” Randy Holmes/Disney, via Getty Images |
Is rock music dead? You’d have to go back to the heydays of grunge, nu-metal and pop-punk to hear guitars screeching on mainstream airwaves. Other genres have since stripped rock for parts: Country latched onto crowd-pleasing anthems, hip-hop borrowed drumbeats and riffs, and pop stars treated electric guitars as fashion statements.
But, far beyond the pop charts, rock has stubbornly stuck around. And its handmade imperfections are crucial at a time when A.I. threatens to strip the humanity from music, writes Jon Pareles, our chief pop music critic. He recommends a few bands that broke through in 2025, including Geese, Wednesday and Turnstile.
THE MORNING RECOMMENDS |
Try a new mascara color. See tips here.
Replace these household essentials.
Get a new duvet cover.
GAMES |
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Here is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangram was factotum.
And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections, Sports Connections and Strands.
Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow.
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com.
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