New Podcast Aims to Amp Up Positive Vibe

Some info on a new podcast, aimed at spreading a more positive message on the state of the UK.

This Blue Monday sees the launch of the 6 episode podcast series ‘Screw This… Let’s try something else’, created from an innovative collaboration between trusted media brand Immediate and cutting edge storytelling lab ANTIDOTE , with backing from Brian Eno. Hosts Maryam Pasha and Matt Golding take listeners on an entertaining and uplifting tour of communities in the UK who are doing things differently…

…From a group taking housing into their own hands in Grimsby, to an estate who’ve built a community-owned money-generating wind turbine in Bristol, via a neighbourhood in Birmingham designed for the future we actually face, these are the ordinary people across the country bridging divides to demonstrate practical, hopeful alternatives to some of our biggest challenges:

 Food

 Energy

 Housing

 Decision making

 …and Division.

Screw This…Let’s try something else taps into a growing zeitgeist: as confidence in traditional pathways to change wanes, more people are concluding that solutions lie closer to home – in our neighbourhoods, networks and local initiatives. The Reith Lectures call for a “Moral Revolution”, the Guardian’s Make Britain Great campaignchampioning community values, and Steve Coogan and Andy Burnham championing a community driven vision for the future of Manchester. Positive change doesn’t only come from the top – it’s already being built collectively from the ground up– and in 2026, the stage is set for this approach to go mainstream.

The podcast is based on a trailblazing storytelling approach, tested by ANTIDOTE in collaboration with the University of Bristol, designed to help audiences feel a stronger sense of agency over their own futures.

A “Hope” Survey will run alongside the podcast, created in collaboration with Climate Outreach, exploring how listening affects audiences’ sense of optimism and agency in the face of big challenges – from inequality and cost of living to the climate crisis.

And on the Antidote website listeners can use an AI postcode search tool to help them find 5 positive projects already happening within 5 miles of their front door – offering them a quick way to join this wave of collective change.

So, at a time when 73% of people in the UK feel that systems and institutions aren’t working as they should, and Brits are increasingly pessimistic about the state of the world, this podcast aims to turn our 2026 Blue Monday around, with stories that cut across the political divides to deliver a better future already being built all around us,

So come with us on a journey from despair to hope….

“We don’t take no for an answer anymore. So we just try and find a way around that.” Mark Pepper, Ambition Lawrence Weston, Bristol