There's science behind hope, and the City of Las Vegas wants you to learn it.

Plus... A local author is up for a prestigious award for the book he wrote about his time in an Egyptian prison.

That's this week on Nevada Week.

♪♪♪ Support for Nevada Week is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

Welcome to Nevada Week.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon.

Hopeful Cities started in 2020 in the city of Reno, and now the city of Las Vegas is implementing it.

The initiative is based on the belief that hope can be taught.

And its founder, Kathryn Goetzke, says research proves it's a lesson worth learning.

Okay, so we're going to talk about teaching hope.

But I first want you to take me through the hopelessness that you once experienced in your life and how it led to the development of Hopeful Cities.

(Kathryn Goetzke) So growing up, my dad had a lot of challenges and struggles.

But he was also super successful as a retail banker.

And when I was 18, he died by suicide.

And it was very traumatic for me.

I was super close to him as a freshman in college, and I struggled a lot.

I struggled with addiction, eating disorders, self harm, diagnosed with a number of things and had my own suicide attempt in my early 20s, which was actually shocking to me because, I knew how it felt when someone took their life.

It was devastating for me when I lost my dad.

And so I thought, how could someone do that to someone, and I realized suicide isn't something that you do to other people.

It's a real sense of what I've come to understand as hopelessness.

So both despair, feeling real despair and feeling helplessness, to do anything about that pain.

And so that really led me on my journey.

I developed my company about 20 years ago and started a nonprofit at that same time to first work on rebranding depression.

And started working on that about 10 years, got very engaged in a lot of global organizations--the World Bank, the World Health Organization, the United Nations--and was in a suicide prevention talk.

And they were talking about restricting access to means and 800 numbers as primary suicide prevention, and I knew that wouldn't save me.

I knew it wasn't going to save my dad.

And so doing literature reviews, hopelessness is the single consistent predictor of suicide.

And so I said, I better figure out what that is, and I better figure out how to get to hope.

And that's kind of what started me on that journey.

-How did you go about doing that?

-Well, you know, I thought, why don't I know what it is?

And I realized they were studying hope.

There were hope measures, hope scores.

-How did hope come on your radar-- -I thought-- - --as a priciple solution?

-I know.

I thought if hopelessness is your primary symptom of anxiety and depression and the single consistent predictor of suicide and also of violence-- -Is that connected to research?

-Oh, yeah.

Absolutely.

It's been studied.

It's been, yeah, very proven.

So this is all secondary research that I did on my own, because what I was finding wasn't working for me.

And so, again, they were measuring hope and they were studying the outcomes as it relates to having higher hope.

So the higher, the more hope you have on this, it's an eight-question validated scale for adults called the Adult Snyder Hope Scale.

It's been around for a very long time.

-And part of Hopeful Cities?

-And part of Hopeful Cities.

You can measure your hope on our website, hopefulcities.org.

But the higher in hope you are, the more likely you are to graduate university.

The better grades you get, the better you do in sports, even more so than your abilities.

They've done research on this.

They've published studies.

They're all-- They're all available on our site.

But they knew the outcomes as it related to hope, but they weren't teaching you how to become more hopeful.

So I'm like, well, we have to do that.

And so I started with 10 lessons for young kids.

Then we moved to 12.

And now we have a lot more programming.

But it was really based on the hypothesis that you could teach hope and you could increase hope.

And as you increased hope, anxiety and depressive symptoms decreased.

-Wow!

This was first implemented in Reno.

-Yes.

-Why Reno?

And when and how has it gone there?

-So we started a couple of years ago during COVID.

So they got some funding through the Cares Act funding.

Mayor Hillary Schieve, she's amazing.

She's a big mental health advocate.

She's done wonderful work in the city of Reno.

And so we got some initial funding, and she said to me, You have a program in for kids for hope and you talk about hope.

Why don't you do something for the city like they do for kindness?

And so I thought, okay.

And so it's taken a couple years for me to really figure out how to activate a city in a way that's cost effective for the city, that you can really have impact and provide the resources.

So we've come up with a strategy for how to do that.

When we started at Reno, we had an event.

We painted murals, SHINE Hope murals.

We started talking about the skills.

We did PSAs.

We did a Hope challenge.

And we did curriculums for a lot of the kids.

So we sent out print workbooks, print, the Deep Dive program, the overview to a lot of the kids throughout the county.

So, yeah, it was really exciting.

And now I'm excited because I have a model that I think we can use around the world, really, for how to activate hope.

-So is it city based?

Are there differences between the plans based on the city?

-It's based on the size of the city, so the population.

So we basically set up a landing page.

There's a public health campaign.

You know, when we talk about hope, we often think of hope as a wish, a very abstract amorphous concept, not something that's like science based and driven.

So that's what the public health campaign, like hope does not equal a wish.

If you hope for something in life, you've actually got to feel good about it, and you've got to take steps to get there.

So a lot of our work is around, you know, how do we imagine manage our emotional despair, which is one part of helplessness.

But then how do we get from helplessness to action?

So a lot of goal setting, overcoming obstacles to goals, if we need to re-goal.

You know, hopelessness occurs, and it becomes-- we have hopelessness all the time, actually, moments of hopelessness.

You get cut off in traffic, you might experience a moment of hopelessness.

But it's really, it's how you manage that that matters.

And it's when it becomes persistent that it's a major problem.

But we're losing kids to suicide because of things like failing grades, and they experience hopelessness about it.

Breaking up, they experience hopelessness about it.

So it's really how do we manage our despair in that moment and how do we get from helplessness back to action?

-The community philanthropist Gard Jameson, he is responsible for funding the implementation of this with a $25,000 gift to the mayor's fund for Las Vegas LIFE.

We spoke with him at City Hall where a breakfast was held to announce this initiative.

He is also a philosophy professor at UNLV.

-He's amazing.

-Yeah, and he called hope "crucial to a meaningful life."

So we're going to hear from him on why he chose your initiative in particular.

And then he is followed by Mayor Pro Tem Brian Knudsen on why he thought this would be a good fit for the city of Las Vegas.

Let's listen.

(Gard Jameson) Because right now, the science of hope is at a fairly novel stage, and there are not a lot of people teaching hope.

And so when I was introduced to Kathryn and saw her programs, I realized, here's something that crosses all the age gaps and it crosses all the gaps in our community.

(Brian Knudsen) Everything I see right now, people are struggling with mental health issues.

I can guarantee that everyone watching this right now has some level of mental health challenge or they're around somebody who has a mental health challenge.

I think it's an absolutely critical time to remind people that there are resources available, and there are people who care about you, who need you, who love you, and the city is right there arm-in-arm with our community members helping people to know that there's hope out there.

-Okay, so tell me what's in this, because this is what people can actually go and download and begin to learn and teach.

-Absolutely, yeah.

So there's a landing page on the website, the hopefulcities.org website, a Las Vegas landing page.

And it has things like Your Hope Story, so a template for how you write your own hope story.

There's an infographic that goes through the SHINE Hope framework with links out to articles, the science of each of the things underneath the framework.

So SHINE stands for Stress Skills, so how we identify and manage our stress response; Happiness Habits, so how to practice those things that cultivate positive hormones and chemicals in our bodies; Inspired Actions, so kind of different types of goals we set, how we overcome obstacles, visualizing all of these things that are key for hope; Nourishing Networks, so how we cultivate strong healthy networks in our lives; and Eliminating Challenges, which are the thinking patterns that get in the way of our ability to hope, things like rumination, internalizing failure, worrying about the future, all of these things.

We have programming for young kids.

So we have an Overview, which is three lessons; we have a Deep Dive, which is 16 lessons.

You can download it, and you can literally start teaching anyone.

If you can read, they're in English.

If you can read English-- we have police teaching them.

I mean, they're available.

You could just start bringing it into a school system, after-school program, place of worship.

We have a Parent's Guide, so how to start using hope language at home.

You know, our parents' number one concern right now is the mental health of their children, and the kids are struggling.

So we've created this kind of universal language that normalizes hopelessness and then normalizes practicing skills to become more hopeful.

And the last thing we have is a teen program.

So it's a peer-to-peer teaching model.

You know, I always said, when we do our teen program, like I would not have learned from my parents about hope, or a teacher, but I would have loved learning with other teens and working with other teens about it.

-The one concern I did have is if there are maybe parents out there who have children that are struggling with mental health issues and they say, You know what?

You just need this.

You don't need professional help.

-Yeah.

-You don't need medicine.

-Yes, we are not doctors.

Talk to a doctor.

And there is a list of resources on the Hopeful City's website that Las Vegas has provided of local resources, therapists, organizations.

But yes, talk to your local doctor about it.

-Kathryn Goetzke, thank you for joining Nevada Week.

-Thank you so much for having me.

It's been a pleasure.

-The City of Asylum program at UNLV is providing hope to writers persecuted in their home countries.

And one of them, Egyptian Author Ahmed Naji, is now a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Nevada Week spoke with him about the memoir that earned him that recognition, Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in an Egyptian Prison.

All right, so February of 2016, the Egyptian Government sentences you to two years in prison for violating public morality.

What was it that you did that the government thought violated public morality?

(Ahmed Naji) Well, until now, I don't know, really, to be honest with you.

What happened, the story is what happens in 2014, I published a novel called Using Life and a chapter of this novel was published in a magazine.

The official story is that someone reads this chapter.

And after he read it, he had his blood pressure raised and he kind of had a heart attack.

So he went to the police station and accusing me of harming him.

Now, what happened in Egypt legal system is that anyone has the right to accuse anyone of anything.

But it came to the Tunisian prosecutor to decide is it legal, legit, or not?

So in my case, they accused me of disturbing public morality and obscenity-- -Because someone read a passage from your book, and it gave him heart palpitations.

-Yeah, because prosecutor also reads a chapter and thought, Oh, this is obscenity.

-When you wrote the novel, though, were you aware at that time, This could send me to prison?

-No, not really.

This wasn't, this wasn't, this never came to my mind.

All over like Egypt, legal history, like, yeah, we have cases when writer were sent to the prison.

But mainly it will be for political reason, for blasphemy.

So this was kind of new and surprise.

And even my legal team and my lawyer say didn't expect like it to reach this level.

Like, I remember, well, we went to the court.

And we saw the worst scenario is that they will find me guilty and will fine me.

And I went to the court with some money on my booklet in case they fine me, so I will pay the fine and go.

But what happened was that we were all surprised by the two-years rules.

-Why do you think you got that stiff of a sentence?

-I think because this was in 2016, and Egypt was going into a very dramatic shift.

In Egypt in 2011, we had the revolution that ended up by taking out Hosni Mubarak.

We had kind of two years where we have like, kind of big space for freedom and political participation, and then we have a military group inserted.

And when the general and the military came to regime, they started to set the new rules.

And part of it was attacking freedom of speech.

-You had been a blogger that wrote against the government prior to this, but you wrote under a pseudonym.

Do you think they even knew that you were that person?

-No.

This happened like my blogger phase was like even was 2006 and 2007.

I was, I was a journalist also.

So I was publishing like, weekly.

I had a weekly political column, and articles are published in [indistinct].

And yeah, I expected like one day I would face problems.

I already like, during my career as a journalist for 15 years, I faced several legal challenge.

But I never expected the same will come through like fiction and novels, especially because like I was, what kind of literature I'm writing.

I'm writing science fiction.

My main themes is always about love and friendship.

So I was like, this was like a faraway way to do, they come from.

-Do you remember exactly what was in that excerpt that this man said gave him a heart attack?

-It was a full chapter, but it was all hilarious.

Like I remember when prosecutor was investigating the case, there was a session like my lawyer said, Oh, don't go to the prosecutor.

We will go.

-To defend you instead of in person?

-Yeah.

And in one sessions, prosecutor asked, the lawyer told him, You know, I could also accuse Ahmed of selling drugs.

And it was like, What are you talking about?

Because in this chapter, the narrator is saying that this chapter was written in the first-person narrator.

So it was like, Oh, I went to this, I did this.

So this chapter like the narrator was saying, Well, I rolled the joint, or I did blah, blah, blah.

So for him, for the prosecutor, it was like, Oh, it's Ahmed Naji who's like confirming that he did this.

-Because you wrote in first person.

-Yeah.

My lawyer was like, No, it's not like that.

He was like, Well, this is what's published in newspaper under his name.

So if he was lying, this is another charge.

-Wow!

-So the level, yeah, so the level of discussion in this issue sometimes when go into like a bizarre, bizarre area, that is like trying to follow like a logic.

It's, it's getting complicated and hard.

-How scary was this when you learned of your sentence?

-I started to laugh.

Like, I remember I had, like, a laughing history for a couple of hours when they told me.

-A laughing-- -Yeah.

Because it was shocking, and it was weird.

We weren't expecting it.

But then you adapt.

You adapt and you grow, also in Egypt, familiar with the story of prison and people sending, being sent to the prison because they express what he's saying or what, what they believe.

So you are aware that there is a percentage that you will go to this path.

But there was like shock in the beginning, and then you start to adapt.

- The New York Times wrote an article about your sentence, and it spurred outrage among human rights advocates across the world.

There were prominent artists and writers who signed a letter demanding your release, including Woody Allen.

At what point did you learn about that letter, and what did you think?

-So we were allowed to have a newspaper daily, okay, in our prison.

-In the prison?

-Yeah.

And suddenly one day, no one in the prison received the newspaper.

So the news, we were cut on that day.

And when we tried to ask and say, Guard, where is the newspaper, they didn't answer.

So it took me until the next week when my family visited me.

And then they told me, Oh, PEN America organized this campaign.

And they have this letter that was signed for by many people and many writers, and they gave you this prize.

And then I put the connection.

So the prison banned the newspaper from all the prisoners in my prison, because they didn't want the news to reach out to me.

Because again, the aim of suppression when a regime is banning a book or putting a writer in a prison, the aim of this is to isolate.

They isolate you from the society and to make you doubt what you are doing, doubt what you believe, to break you down, and to send the message to society that we have the upper hand, and we could, if you cross the line, we'll send you to the prison and no one will remember you.

But this kind of solidarity and act is like breaking suppression.

It's breaking suppression.

You reach out to the prisoner.

You send him a message that you are not alone, and there is other people who support you and believe you and what you have done worth something.

-Do you think that letter is why your sentence ended up being suspended?

You ended up spending ten months in prison, not two years.

-I think it's playing a role, of course.

But again, this will, like I received this letter and this campaign that was organized by PEN America, but at the same time, there was also campaigns from Egyptian writers and some Arabic writer.

So it was a collective effort, including also my lawyer, my wife, who was also my lawyer, who like work it on the ground to reach this result.

-And if the prison was, in fact, trying to intimidate you, they did not do a good job, because you get out and you write a book about your time in that prison.

Part of the description of your book is, quote, Through Naji's writing, the world of Egyptian prison comes into vivid focus with its cigarette-based economy, homemade chess sets, and well-groomed fixers.

"Well-groomed fixers," who are they?

What do they do?

-Well-groomed fixers, well, what was this part?

Like we are talking about like grooming hair?

-I don't know, and so this brings up an interesting point, because your book had to be translated to English from Arabic.

-Yeah.

-And there's probably some lost in translation.

I'm thinking of someone within the prison who is negotiating.

-Yeah, well-groomed fixer.

Yeah, I know.

So basically, because the system of prisons in Egypt is different than here.

Now we are becoming American because Egypt is receiving a lot of money from out of the state, and the government is using this to build the new prisons following the American manual.

So now they are changing the system of the prison.

-That's interesting because when you read about American funding to Egypt, it's for the purpose of buying weapons.

-Yeah, but again, they will.

Yeah, but it's-- there is no really accountability or supervision of anything.

But yeah, for this fixer, the system is like usually you will have other prisoners who are working inside the prison.

They are like a connection or a bridge between the prisoner and the administration.

So for example, it's like if you watch it, what's the name of some movies?

Shawshank?

Shawshank?

- Shawshank Redemption?

-Yeah.

So you remember, he was working.

He was doing the taxes for the prison.

Yeah, so you have the same system in Egypt, but it's bigger.

So for example, you know, as an administrator in the prison, you have a lot of paperwork to do.

So they would get just two prisoners and put them in his office, and they will work as an assistant to do the job for him.

So actually, you have a system where the prisoners themself are the ones who's running the prison under the administration.

-There are other questions that are asked within this book.

Some are funny, like, How do you build a clothes hanger?

But others are, How do you make sense of a senseless oppression?

You're put in prison for writing fiction.

Did you ever rationalize it?

Did you ever make sense of it?

-Yeah, of course, I start to question it.

I start to question why I'm doing this and what is the aim and was it worth it?

And you also start to question, well, after you get out of here--because at any prison, you are getting out in the end--what you are going to do.

And I already had a doubt about like, oh, everything.

You have to understand also that I didn't see myself as a writer at that point.

Like, yeah, I already published several books, but I was mainly working on as a journalist, working on the media industry in documentaries and making films.

So I had another career.

I was like on my way to become like an agent for bellydancers.

So my life was going-- -An agent for bellydancers?

-Yeah.

It's a long story, complicated.

So my life was was going into another path.

But suddenly you are in prison for a year, and you start to question everything.

And I remember very well, there is a night that-- so we had this inmate in our cell who is, he was very violent person.

And he was accused of stealing $400 million.

-"Vital" person or "violent" person?

-Two, violent and vital.

-And he was accused of stealing $400 million.

But he will say, Oh, they are just 200 million, and now they send me in prison.

So I'm not going to give them any money back.

And he, because he did all this scheme under his father name, so they first arrested his father and then they arrested him.

So basically, he was in the prison and his father who was like 81 years old also with us in our cell.

-They were together?

-Yeah.

And this guy was brutal.

Like he doesn't care about anything, very selfish.

-Not even his father?

-Yeah.

And then one day I woke up at night, about 2 a.m.

I go to the, to the restroom, and I found him in the middle of the night crying, crying hard.

And I was surprised like, Are you okay?

Why are you crying?

What is the problem?

And he was like, Oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

Have you read this book called In My Heart a Hebrew Girl, which is a very kind of a very romantic novel.

It's a romance and [indistinct] novel.

Not kind of literature that I love, but it's mainly like kind of literature also that's for teenagers mainly.

And I was like, No, I didn't read it.

And I don't plan to read it.

And he was like, Man, you have to read it.

Like I left the book on my bed because even when I look at the cover, I remember some sentence and I start to cry.

And I was surprised.

I was shocked.

I was like, you have this guy that I once saw him smoking his cigarette while his father is having a heart attack and everyone is rushing to help his father, and he was just smoking a cigarette.

And you have him crying at night in a prison cell because he was reading a book.

So I start to question like, what is this power that is hidden in literature and writing a book, and how come like a word or sentence written on a paper will reach the heart of such kind of person and squeeze it and push him to cry at night?

And this was like a turning point because you start to question, well, maybe that's why you are in the prison.

Maybe because there is, there is a secret, there is a power hidden inside written words that could reach people and flip them side upside, side outside.

-Thank you so much for joining Nevada Week.

-Thank you, Amber.

Thank you for having me.

-And thank you for watching.

For any of the resources discussed, please visit our website vegaspbs.org/nevadaweek.

And I'll see you next week on Nevada Week.

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