Defiant Optimist (Choosing Hope Despite the Headlines)

From the creator of Under the Desk News, a blend of history, politics, and commentary exploring the tentpole issues of America’s past and present, and how we’ve solved them, showing readers that regardless of our current times there’s always hope for a better future.

During the pandemic, V Spehar crawled under their desk to give people a soft place to land in a hard news cycle. They broke down the day’s events in a digestible, empathetic, and humorous way. But the more they explored our present turmoil, the more questions arose about how we got here and how the hell we're gonna find our way out.

In Defiant Optimist, V is turning their signature empathy and wit to the biggest issues that have plagued America, from inception to present day. The issues we are facing today aren’t new. The internet age has warped and changed them, leading us to believe we’re up against a brand new beast. But the groundwork was laid long ago, and looking back might just be the key to moving forward. V is tackling everything: our culture of cruelty, the manosphere and tradwives, white supremacy and sexism, revisionist history, and so much more. They are drawing a bright red line through history, underlining the ways these problems have managed to rear their ugly heads again and again. And how we’ve combatted them.

Smart, funny, and optimistic in equal measure, Defiant Optimist is a roadmap that not only shows us that we’ve been here before, in different shapes and forms, but that we’ve always managed to find our way out, and how we can hopefully get somewhere so much better.