Defiant Optimist

From the creator of Under The Desk News comes a blend of history, politics, and commentary exploring the hot-button 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, digestible, 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 issues that have plagued America from inception to present day. What we are facing today isn’t new. The issues just look a little different in the glow of the internet age. V is tackling everything: our culture of cruelty, the manosphere and tradwives, white supremacy and sexism, our obsession with war, the cultlike vibe of America, and so much more. V is drawing a bright red line through history to show us that looking back might just be the way forward.

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