With several dozen talks taking place at any one time, figuring out which session to attend at the American Physical Society’s Global Physics Summit is a challenge. On Wednesday, though, my choice was particularly stark. Should I depress myself by attending the session on “The Crisis in American Science”? Or restore my faith in humanity by finding out “How Early-Career Physicists Are Solving Society’s Greatest Challenges”? A quirk of scheduling – or an APS organizer with a dark sense of humour – meant that the two sessions were practically next door to each other in Denver’s Colorado Convention Center. So, after a bit of dithering, I decided to oscillate between the two, hoping to strike a balance between cheer and gloom. ### Reasons to be cheerful The first speaker in the early-career physicists session was Rosimar Rios-Berrios, a physicist-turned-atmospheric-scientist at the US National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR).…