Hans Rosling

This book is about the world, and how to understand it. So why start with the circus? And why would I end a lecture by showing off in a sparkly top?

When I was a child my dream was to become a circus artist. My parents’ dream, though, was for me to get the good education they never had. So I ended up studying medicine.

Factfulness is … recognizing when we get negative news, and remembering that information about bad events is much more likely to reach us. When things are getting better we often don’t hear about them. This gives us a systematically too-negative impression of the world around us, which is very stressful.

To control the negativity instinct, expect bad news.

• Better and bad. Practice distinguishing between a level (e.g., bad) and a direction of change (e.g., better). Convince yourself that things can be both better and bad.

• Good news is not news. Good news is almost never reported. So news is almost always bad. When you see bad news, as