Most frightening and/or depressing story: Concerns about the food supply over the next year or so have seeped from alternative media into mainstream media stories. I consider this indicator at least as frightening as the content of the stories themselves. Honorable mention: tactical nuclear weapons (these would not help the food supply).
Most hopeful story: While there has been somewhat of a rollback in the number of competitive electoral democracies over the last 20 years, this is a minor blip when you look at the democratic revolution over the past 250 years.
Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: While exercise lowers dementia risk in general, exercising at or on the way to work does not seem to help as much. I speculated this might be due to some combination of stress, noise pollution, and air pollution, with the latter two being solvable problems. But although raw “fluid” intelligence seems to peak around age 20, “crystalized intelligence” which accounts for experience does not start to decline sharply until well after age 50, and possibly not until after age 70. Reading, physical activity, and “engagement with arts and culture” are all good for the aging brain.