HeyJaredBlue Sky
Hosted by Bill Burke, founder of The Optimism Institute, this weekly podcast will feature inspiring leaders, authors, researchers, and big thinkers who are taking on some of our world's toughest challenges with an infectious sense of optimism.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 11
- Latest publication
- Sep 16, 2026
- Audience
- Checking…
- Earliest in this view
- Jul 8, 2026
Latest episodes
"Can We Talk?": Teaching High Schoolers the Art of Civil Dialogue (opens the original)
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Educators John Holdridge and Lowell Libby join Bill Burke to talk about the Can We ? Project, a Maine-based initiative launched in 2018 that teaches high school students the mindset and skills needed for constructive dialogue across political, social, and cultural divides. Through full-day retreats held in schools across Maine (and now New Hampshire), students learn to move past their first instinct to react and their second instinct to rationalize, and instead reach what one student memorably c
Return on Goodwill: Sam Demma on Why Doing Good Comes Back to You (opens the original)
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Sam Demma had his sights set on a professional soccer career from age five — training in Italy at 13, playing for one of Canada's top club teams by 17 — until three major knee injuries and a torn labrum ended that dream in his final year of high school. What came next is the subject of this conversation: how Demma rebuilt his sense of purpose, first through small volunteer garbage cleanups with a friend, then through public speaking, and eventually through writing. Just shy of his 27 th birthday
The Comedian's Mindset: Mike Goodwin on Laughter, Optimism, and Resilience, a Special Encore Presentation (opens the original)
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Comedian, speaker, and humor coach Mike Goodwin joins Bill Burke for this special summer encore presentation of a classic Blue Sky episode . Mike shares how a difficult, sometimes volatile childhood in Camden, South Carolina sparked his lifelong instinct to use humor to ease tension - a skill that carried him through four years in the U.S. Army, a career in higher education and college counseling, and eventually onto stages with America's Got Talent, Dry Bar Comedy, Lifetime, BET, and Amazon Pri
Melissa Connelly: Look for the Glimmers, a Special Encore Presentation (opens the original)
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In this Blue Sky conversation, host Bill Burke sits down with Melissa Conn e lly, CEO of OneGoal , a national organization working to ensure every young person can pursue education beyond high school. Melissa's path to this work started long before her career in education. Raised by a single mother on the south and southwest sides of Chicago, she missed more than 60 days of school in eighth grade and landed in her high school's truancy program, a labeling experience that nearly derailed her futu
Ted Johnson: "I'm the Product of Optimism" — Race, Democracy, and the Courage to Believe in America (opens the original)
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Ted Johnson's life reads like several careers stitched into one: raised in a mostly white Raleigh suburb while attending a Black church several times a week, a Hampton University graduate, a 20-year Navy officer who became a White House Fellow under President Obama and later a speechwriter for two chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Somewhere along the way, he became a writer — now a Washington Post columnist and author of two books, most recently If We Are Brave: Essays from Black Americana
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