Wondering where the "Good" News is? It's here!

Joe Luther  
Welcome to another episode of Friends in wonder, a place where we invite you to explore meaningful topics without judgment or limits, brought to you by two lifelong friends sharing their insights. I'm Joe Luthor. 

Vince Kern  
And I'm Vince Kern, 

Joe Luther  
and we've got great topics lined up for you each week. So be sure to subscribe, like and even share with your friends.

Vince Kern  
Welcome to another edition of friends in wonder. This week, we're going to take a break from some of the deeper dives into AI and some of the news that we've been talking about for the last couple of weeks, and focus on some lighter news that we've curated from the Good News Network and some other places. Good news is something that we've heard out in the field that everybody wants, and we think everybody agrees that there should be more of it, just like they agree that the Beatles were the greatest rock'n'roll of all time, right, Joe?

Joe Luther  
Well, I'm not sure everybody agrees the Beatles are the greatest band of all time. They were certainly a great one, that's for sure. But what's great about today's episode is we're just going to talk about something lighter, and not put people into a corner to decide on anything. We've got topics that range from karma with lottery winners, to whales, to our ancestors, and even what the good of AI can be in today's society. So I'm really excited. And I think our listeners are going to walk away with a great later feeling from today's episode.

Vince Kern  
Yeah, back in the r&d Lab, when we were out, going across Michigan, statewide for a whole summer, analyzing people's news consumption habits, that was definitely something that stood out. And we actually went back and built a prototype app where people could nominate children who were doing really cool things. And you know, some of them were lemonade stands or taking seniors to church and just things that got them involved in the community. And we just want to tap into that vibe, and share some curated content with you today.

Joe Luther  
Right. And it really resonates with me today that we're doing this, because I just actually came from a lunch with my aunt who's very healthy and very self sufficient. She lives in her own house. She's 81 years old. And she was a little down, though. And I asked her a little bit more. And she said, she just gets the point where she can't even turn the news on anymore, because she gets so depressed. And I pressed her a little bit more about it. And it was very nonspecific. But she said, I just need to turn it off. And then I thought, Well, isn't that interesting? So her solution is to withdraw. And I think that's why it's so important, Vince, that we can talk about what the good is that's going on in the world as well today, and, and we may as well do that its friends in wonder.

Vince Kern  
Yeah, I mean, there's an old adage that I always say is Facebook needs more cat photos, and we'll, we'll address that later on. But I think you've got an interesting story that falls into the Hmm, interesting ancestry type column.

Joe Luther  
Well, when you give me the opportunity to go out and pick some good news stories, you can pretty much be sure that I'm going to try to find something that has to do with ancient human history. And so that's the first one for today is that this year, scientists found they unearth the oldest evidence of stone tools being used by humans, which is like 3 million years ago. And before people have their eyes gloss over on this, I just think like, this is something really interesting to talk about. I know that evolution can sometimes be a divisive topic, because some people believe in creationism or some people believe in, you know, spaceships starting the human genus, but I just think that it's really fascinating to go back. And really consider what kind of evolutionary history what the story of evolutionary history is, in this is a talk about segwaying from last week, this is probably a classic Dunning Kruger type of thing to talk about, because even the scientists, who are specialists in this field, don't agree on what to make of all this evidence. But this is really interesting. There are ancestors that we have that are bipedal, and different skulls, but clearly our ancestors and they're using 3 million years ago, they're using these tools that are called although on stone kit tools and there's a picture of them on the internet, but basically they know that they're that they're tools that have been fashioned by by human like or human predecessors to eat meat. And this was 3 million years ago. And what they found so fascinating about this is it was 400,000 years older than what they thought was the first time that our ancestors ever used stone tools at that, you know, and you think, well, 4000 years, what's the difference between 2.6 million years ago or 3 million years ago? Honestly, doesn't that make you stop to wonder?

Vince Kern  
Yeah, the you said there was a kit? Does that mean like they ordered it from Amazon? To deliver? Yeah, of course. What was this kit? Oh, yeah, well,

Joe Luther  
no, the reason they call it a kit is because I guess it's the best way to classify the various kinds of stone tools, they had certain stones that they would use, and they would, they would flake them to make very sharp objects, they would break them in half to kind of make a mallet like object. And this was before meat was even cooked. So were this were these stone tools were found was around an area where rhinoceroses had been clearly butchered and eaten. And it was before fire was even created. So they're speculating that maybe they were using the stone tools to smash the meat and make a more tender, easily digested product, maybe like a tar tar or something like that. And there's a lot of evidence to show that that may be what they were doing with this. But again, 400,000 years different than the oldest tool that they had ever seen. You think about 400,000 years, Vince, the human experience that we know of as Homo sapiens is only a couple 100,000 years old in total. And here we have this difference in stone tools going back now, 3 million years ago, I I don't know I find it fascinating. I'm not sure if the rest of us find it that fascinating.

Vince Kern  
I think it's pretty fascinating from the perspective that as we move forward, we're just finding out more and more and being able to do things, you know, carbon dating has been around for a long time and other things have been around. But just the whole idea that we're still learning, we're still willing to learn, and we're still finding out more and more about our ancestors

Joe Luther  
right now fast, we're progressing. So we've gone, I guess, maybe that's the fascinating thing about 400,000 years of stone tools. Well, really, that's 3 million years ago, we only came into the metal age less than a million years ago. And so these tools that they were using, went on for a couple million years of just using the same thing. And then of course, you know, as we've already talked about in the AI discussion, how fast things are moving now and progressing with tools, and how slow things went for such a long time. I just find it fascinating. You know, and, and really, what's even more fascinating is the earth is 4.5 billion years old. And we've only had really the kind of life that we know it around for not very long, like, what do they say? It's it's been the last 1.5 billion years that we've had multi cell life. And so really, in the big picture of things, I just thought it was a fight. Fascinating story.

Vince Kern  
Fascinating indeed.

Joe Luther  
What about you, Vince?

Vince Kern  
Yeah, I'm gonna move to a little bit more current times. And there's a ripple effect of goodness. Is anybody ever said to you, Joe, Karma is a bitch.

Joe Luther  
Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard that karma can also be good.

Vince Kern  
Yeah. This is a story about karma. Having a really great ripple is getting. To me, it's a great story. It's fascinating me because it involves a few things that I love one, it involves hockey, two, it involves, they say Northern Ontario in the article, but it's actually in a city called Sioux Sainte Marie, which there's one in the UP upper peninsula of Michigan. And then right across the river, there's there's one in Canada, but it's actually Southern Ontario, not Northern Ontario. And in the article, they call it a state. So some editor, maybe would want to change that in this story. But that's just me. Once an editor always an editor, but this is a story about karma. And paybacks are good. So you remember in 2010, there was the earthquake in Haiti. Right? And yeah, yeah. And our local celebrity here, Mitch album, who worked at the free press, and now he's a broadcast and he's on ESPN. Did a lot of selling author, Best Selling Author. Yeah. He started some foundations and they he's been there ever since. And so there was a lot of need there. And up in Sioux Sainte Marie, there was a young gal named Juliet Lemoore. She was I want to say about Eight years old at the time, and her and her sister went to a hockey rink where they were having a fundraiser for the victims of the Haitian earthquake. The Canadian Red Cross had set up a table, and Juliet and her sister, sister Sophie, were determined to help. So they took their piggy bank down there, and they went to the table and they overturned it opened it up and out came $61.38. So they, they did a great thing, right? every last cent every last penny they had. So that was in about 2010. And so she was eight. So I'm not going to do the math. But at some point, recently, she stepped forward. And she told the story about how she had was going to get some ice cream. And she called her father or grandfather and said, I'm going to get some ice cream, and would you like some? And he said, Yeah, bring me some ice cream. And by the way, you just turned 18 Go buy a lotto ticket and test your luck. So she did. And she wound up winning $48 million in the ontario ca D lottery that day.

Joe Luther  
And do you have any idea what that translates to? And US dollars?

Vince Kern  
I don't know. But I think it's probably enough to keep friends in wonder and podcasts for a while.

Joe Luther  
Probably more than $61 She donated to the Haitians. But wow, that's amazing.

Vince Kern  
Yeah. The other thing is she said, she got to the corner store and she's in her car. And she said she didn't know how to do it. So she didn't she called her dad. And she said dad grip has said she wants me to buy a lottery ticket. How do I do it? He said, just go get a quick pick. So there you go. A lot of karma coming together, paying this woman back. And you know, we hear a lot of stories about people blowing their money. And it being the worst thing that can happen to them. But fortunately for her, her dad is a financial advisor. So hopefully, he steered her in a good way.

Joe Luther  
Well, that sounds like a feel good story. If I've ever heard one. And doing the math, I'd say she's just in her early 20s. So she's got the rest of her life ahead of her. And clearly, she has good intention. So I'm sure she'll do well with it.

Vince Kern  
Indeed. So what else you got Joe?

Joe Luther  
Well, um, yeah. And another one that I like to talk about is, is humans interacting with animals. And this story is a really interesting one. Maybe people have seen it, because I understand I'm not a big, you know, YouTuber. But I understand that these videos go viral. And a lot of people love to see videos of cats doing great things, or monkeys doing great things. Well, this was one that apparently went viral, but I only learned about recently and I just thought it was fascinating. It's a kayaker, who, I guess was kayaking in an area where a beluga whales were kind of moving through and he decided to go out and try to lower them close to him so that he could have interactions with them. And he just decided to start singing really, really loud. And, and they were, the video actually shows him doing it. They're almost like opera, tempo type singing, but with made up lyrics almost like you might seem to a child, but he's out there on the water and just bellowing out these songs. And sure enough, the beluga whales started coming up, and there were other kayakers to put the beluga whales came up to him and they were kind of nudging his boat a little bit and swimming up and down, following him as he continued to paddle away and sing some more. And it was a really cool experience. They show that on the video. And then apparently, I don't know if it was the same day. But he went and he got his scuba equipment, and went back out in the kayak. Same kind of singing that came around him. But this time he went in the water. And again, this is covered in the video, and he goes down and swims with these beluga whales. And they start singing back to him. He's singing I guess probably through his mask and making you know what kind of singing would sound like underwater. It was very muffled. But they started doing their chirps in there. And they're singing right back at him. We're kind of kind of swimming in and out of him. There were multiple ones doing it that it was just a really kind of a feel good fascinating. Both story and video.

Vince Kern  
singing to the whales.

Joe Luther  
Yeah. And what do you think that that

Vince Kern  
we can understand each other? Well, I

Joe Luther  
don't know this inner species. Wait, do you mean we as humans can understand each other?

Vince Kern  
No animals and humans?

Joe Luther  
Well, I think they're obviously this story. What I love about it is that they were obviously very fascinated and interested in going to the being that was making these sounds. And I'm sure that they could hear it, they could feel it. These beluga whales are very good at echolocation. So I'm sure they feel all sorts of waves coming through the water. And what was interesting is that this worked with a kayaker, right. So there were no other boat noises or wave runners or anything like that around. And they were just interested. And I think that really drives the point home to that, if you want to have experience with nature, do it in the most peaceful and quiet way possible. And the only thing I will tell you events is, after I saw the story and saw the video, it did kind of make me think about when I don't know if you know, but the Navy used to and I don't know if they still do, I think they don't anymore, but they used to use marine mammals for part of their operations. And they even used beluga whales, and there was a there was a famous beluga whale back in the 80s, early 90s. I think that was recorded in a way that they think was actually his attempt to try to talk to humans, it's pretty interesting. I think you can Google it and hear it if you want. But the kind of sad part about that story is after, after that audio tape went viral, a lot of people were very concerned about whether the whales should be used in the way they were being used, or whether dolphins should be used the way they do they tap they tape, you know, I don't know, they strap cameras and whatnot to them and send them off to find mines and that sort of thing. But anyhow, it was interesting that beluga whales have been recorded, talking to humans before

Vince Kern  
that is an interesting story. And you know, maybe we could put the show in the show notes. Maybe we could put some of the links to the audio and some of this in there. Because sometimes I think in the good news is it's always good news. But it's interesting when you see the videos and you get to you maybe you want to research a little bit more. So you know, that's the cool thing about these stories that we found is they also had other assets that you could look at,

Joe Luther  
right and I the only reason I bring in it's I know it's kind of a downer to talk about mammals being used in captivity for for Army purposes. I guess the only reason I I brought it out is because it shows you can do great things with other species without having to have human purposes just enter just do a

Vince Kern  
interview it naturally without the desire to control the environment or any of that other things. That's it is a great story. I really enjoyed it when you shared it with me and and it certainly has a lot of what did we say last week about more octopus tentacles millions and this guy? Yeah,

Joe Luther  
there's a lot of tentacles when it comes to talking with other species. And they say even if they're just mimicking us that it is a very, very sophisticated attempt at communication. And, and yeah, really when you start to talk about our brains versus the brains of whales, and consciousness, that's a whole different topic that maybe we can talk about in another episode.

Vince Kern  
Indeed. Well, moving on with the animal and more cats on Facebook theme. I belong to the cat owners anonymous. I've had my wife and I have had eight cats since we've been married. Most of their names end in a why. But one cat that we got that after we had many cats. We had three cats at a time for a long time. And, and one time we had two cats and a cat came to where my wife worked and she brought it home in a box and was about to go away for the weekend and said, you know, we're gonna give it away. No, we're not going to have three cats, but we'll deal with it on Monday. Okay, just take care of it for the weekend.

Joe Luther  
Oh, you were weekend foster parents. Yeah, that was I was

Vince Kern  
she was gone. And by the time she came back on Monday, that cat and I had bonded, and it it it was it was her cat too, but it followed me around and it was a cat not. I don't know how many of you are cat lovers, but this was a Maine Coon and it's a large domesticated cat breed, one of the oldest natural breeds in in North America, and it did indeed originate in the state of Maine. Maine, Kate, Maine coons are generally pretty big. My Maine Coon was a was a gray Maine Coon and we named him Shakespeare because Maine coons have this sort of a collar that looks like the old Shakespearean characters with ruffles, ruffles. Yeah. And he had one and and it was a beautiful cat. And you know what, speaking of talking to animals, I do believe this cat and I, whether it was verbal, or empathetic, empathetic, whatever we call and I'm gonna mispronounce this word if I keep trying to find it. telepathic, there you go. Thank you. I was way off base with that when So, getting back to the story that I felt I could news net work. There is a woman who lives in San Carlos, California. And this is one where a picture's worth 1000 years, but she has a Maine Coon that is 4.27 feet long, the average height of a nine year old. Her name is Natalie Bowman and she adopted this cat fin in 2017, when he was just three and a half months old. And it she keeps this cat. And you know, these cats are predominantly known for a dense coat of fur, which helps them survive in the winter. So it's a very hairy cat. And she takes his cat for a walk on a leash because it's so big.

Joe Luther  
With a saddle well, people walking

Vince Kern  
by, they see it and she says that first they think it's a dog. And then they they don't know exactly how to react to it. And but when people get closer, they say oh my god, it's a cat. And they and they love them. And when she has visitors to her home, she says they're often spooked by the enormous feline whenever he appears. She says I've had service people come around to fix things. And it's always fun to see men get shocked by my cat. They say it looks like a bobcat or a wild cat. Wow. Yeah, so this is a pretty big cat and we're gonna put a hopefully put the link up there. Now it's, it's a wonderful cat. It gets along with the other cat that she has. And she says that he loves cuddles and to be spooned. And sometimes, she brings him to the office when he's exhibiting separation anxiety. But it's not very good because he loves to talk her words. Speaking of talking animals, very loud, she loves to hit this cat loves to talk. Now this is all sounds great. But think about this. This cat eats three to four times a day. And she says she spends about $150 a month on his food. Oh, wow, that's that's that's a lot for a cat. But you know what? When you love a cat, or a dog or a fish or a bird, well fish and birds probably don't cost that much to feed every month. But when you love someone or something, you just do what you can for, right?

Joe Luther  
That's for sure events and leave it to you to if we're going to talk about feel good stories, you're gonna find girls breaking piggy banks, winning lotteries and cats. Well done, Vince, well done, Sheila and I,

Vince Kern  
I think are going to visit well the next time we go to visit her sister in San Diego, I might see if I can get a hold of this woman and go take a visit and see this cat for myself. And if so, I will post pictures.

Joe Luther  
Wow, that would be cool. Yeah. Well, I have one. I think this will be my last offering of the day. And it's kind of interesting because it segues from an episode we did a couple of weeks ago, where you and I were openly questioning the wisdom behind artificial intelligence. And here's a story coming out of the Boston area where I hear there's a lot of smart people. This is a Harvard and MIT joint project. And it's a it's a program where artificial intelligence is able to be used to predict lung cancer. And it's really interesting story. Because the finding announced in late January by a team of researchers at Harvard Mass General as part of a growing medical trend of using algorithms to predict everything from breast cancer and prostate cancer to the likelihood of tumors regrowing. This tool is called Sybil, named after the profit in ancient Greek literature. It's a deep learning model, meaning computers, parsing huge datasets and learning to categorize patterns. And Sybil was trained on six years of lung scans and patients in the United States, Taiwan and other countries. But what's interesting about this, Vince is that today, if you want to do pre screening for lung cancer, you either have to have access to very expensive medical technology, or there's these very light scans that are very inconclusive, especially if you want to get early detection. But what they've done with this AI now is because they've this this program is able to take in all this data and in synthesize it instantaneously and even learn from it. It's able to sort through things that are irrelevant like just regular run of the mill lung damage that caused nodules versus the style in the in the kind that had shown up on the on the nodules that ultimately turned cancerous so they just fed this this programmed so much data and taught it, how to learn from it. And I thought when I read it, it's very fascinating because apparently they tested it. And it is as good as some of the top radiologists at reading this data and actually can predict things fairly instantaneously. And so now what they're excited about is that this this program, when it becomes available across the world, will be able to give that kind of high tech technic technology and in access to medic medical treatment to anybody very quickly and very easily. So I thought, What a great story about how AI can be positive not just a matter of, you know, taking jobs away and and taking over spaceships and and killing the human race. They can do good things.

Vince Kern  
Well, isn't that heartening?

Joe Luther  
Well, you know, there's a lot of movies out there like matrix in 2001. That Terminator. Yeah, that don't show AI in its best light. But here's an example of where it can be used to help lift the human experience. I thought it was really fast. You know, it reminded me of Have you ever seen in the CI TV shows where they have a fingerprint? And? And how quickly the computer? Oh,

Vince Kern  
the facial recognition? Yeah. Yeah, just being that's it so

Joe Luther  
instantaneously. Well, that's this for lung cancer prediction, they say that it's still got a little bit of ways to go. But that it's really very encouraging information at this time. So I thought that was fun. That is

Vince Kern  
great. I love that, you know, science tends to get a bad rap sometimes, and sometimes justifiably so. And other times, you know, we spend so much time talking about what's in front of us, we don't embrace the good stuff. And I think that's a great example. And from a patient's perspective, can you imagine, you know, having that hanging over your head, and then taking three or four or five days, I mean, I that's not a long time, really. But it is for someone who's waiting for the results of a test of a possible life threatening disease. So that's a good one. I like it. And, you know, we'll keep looking for good examples of AI and give it its due recognition when it when it's there. But one good research story deserves another. And this one, I think will both agree whether or not we can agree that Beatles are the greatest rock and roll band ever. I think we all agree that we hope this one comes to fruition in a good way. If it's not clear to our listeners by now who are not in our state, you know that we spend a lot of time up in the northern climes of Michigan, and Joe, you do a little bit of hunting up there. And we spend just a lot of time out in the field because nature is such a beautiful place. And yet, there are mosquitoes out there that are known to take away small sized dogs and other Vironment that are, they're so big and so invasive at certain times of the year up there that it is just enormously difficult to go for a hike or go for a walk.

Joe Luther  
Right? They're so big that some have even suggested they could be called the state bird deed.

Vince Kern  
And that's probably the case in many other parts of the country. And many of our listeners who are out there have probably used the product dt. I know if you use DEET Joe to use that out. And yeah, I

Joe Luther  
mean, if I have to go in the woods, and I really want to keep them off me, I will, but I know when I'm doing it that I am subjecting myself to stuff that probably is not good for my metabolism.

Vince Kern  
Yeah, it's pretty good. I tried it once. And I was like, No, I can't deal with the smell and, and then I tried it another time and it just didn't seem to last. But what's happened here is these researchers in Italy, and they're led by a person named Francesca, Danny, you're kind of Italian. Can you how they would do say Francesca, Danny and Italian.

Joe Luther  
Exactly the way you said it because I'm really American. Okay, I do have some Italian blue. All right,

Vince Kern  
well, they're at the University of finance, finance. And they started with a group of terpenoids, the second largest family of plant metabolites. Now, I don't know what the heck that means. But I know that they're working with plant chemicals and other natural compounds. And as we know, a lot of those compounds think they have unique health benefits. And so this is

Joe Luther  
an all natural product. You said plant chemicals, but I think you probably meant plant oil. Yeah,

Vince Kern  
I did. Right. I guess that's kind of an oxymoron. Right? plant chemicals. oxymoronic.

There you go, well, that word you pronounced well, but DEET has a lot of sensitive skin sensitivity. It doesn't last long. And so getting back they developed this this compound or this this thing that was tested on Asian tiger mosquito, which is prevalent in United States and it spreads dog heartworm encephalitis and something called Dengue fever, which I'm not familiar with, doesn't sound good. No, it doesn't sound good. And then, you know, here's some scientifical words. converting these terpenoids into groups of cyclic acid tools and hydro. Isetta circles created a repellent that was as effective as DEET. But without the unpleasant odor and short span of protection. In fact, it lasted eight full hours, six more hours than deep based repellents. And they found that the cost to produce an insect repellent of this kind is as low as many household staples. I predict it won't be for long if it's successful,

Joe Luther  
but I wouldn't be standing in line right away if they have it. Yeah, so

Vince Kern  
apparently, they're working with some natural terpenoid, repellents, whatever the heck that is, and are coming up with some good stuff. So

Joe Luther  
I don't I don't want to slander any of the products out there. But Sonia and I went to Costa Rica a couple of years ago, and we took some natural oil based mosquito repellents with us, when we went into the deep jungle to go on a little bit of a tour. And I will tell you, we got hammered. And I remember saying, and we both said halfway through, if we ever go in a jungle, again, we are bringing DEET with us, I don't care what it tastes like in our mouth after we put it on our skin. We're bringing it with us. And this would be great. If this works. I hope it does.

Vince Kern  
If it works, and you know, hopefully it'll come out before the spring is getting to be closer to spring here in Michigan. And the usual tricks up there are coming up. And if it's not the mosquitoes that are taken away the small size dogs, it's the black flies, so maybe it'll work out, too. Well,

Joe Luther  
Vince, again, you game set match, you had some really good feel good stories there. I am very excited about that one.

Vince Kern  
Well, I appreciate that. Joe, yours were good, too. And getting back to the good news theory. One of the things that I wanted to mention when I talked about the research was a great friend and colleague of mine, who is very brilliant, his name is Dale Perry. He took all that information. And as we were synthesizing our brainstorm pictures and whatnot, the assets that we captured in the field, he submitted that every newspaper and media outlet should have what's called a good news desk. And he drew a picture of the good news desk as an artifact. And in fact, it is the thumbnail for this week's episode, if you get a chance to take a look at it, because it's really something to me, that says what a focus of disseminating the news should be. And this prototype app that we developed, you could you know, submit these things and it would be sponsored by an advertiser. And and you know, it could both potentially be a moneymaker a community builder. And of course, it fell on the chopping block because it didn't sell. It didn't didn't get enough clicks or whatever the story was at the time. But

Joe Luther  
I do love that drawing because a picture does paint 1000 words and the idea of every newsroom having a good news desk makes a lot of sense to me as well.

Vince Kern  
Yeah. So there you have it. A few good news stories. If you haven't checked out the good news network. Take a peek, because you can find some stuff there. And we'll be back next week with some deeper thoughts perhaps.

Joe Luther  
Hey, I ratings will probably go up. Yeah. Well,

Vince Kern  
the controversy sells and the good news, you know, huh?

Joe Luther  
Well, let's change that. Let's change that.

Vince Kern  
That's our new mission.

Joe Luther  
We did our part. That was fun. That's all right. Have a great

Vince Kern  
day, everybody.