Episode Description:
There’s a startup training dogs to detect cancer across seven types… and there’s over 90 percent accuracy across six hospitals.
This week Arielle and Karissa also cover a wildcat species science just got around to naming (local communities already had a name for it), bison reshaping a Mexican desert faster than anyone expected, and what Cambridge researchers found when they actually quantified how reading protects your brain.
Nominate a Local Changemaker (30 and under): https://us20.list-manage.com/survey?u=d2e7810fd2bcf24fb1144a7e2&id=6e0ab37520&e=28025b5010
If you have questions, comments, feedback, suggestions, or just want to say hi, send a message to: podcast@optimistdaily.com.
Want to be part of the Optimism Movement? Become an Emissary.
Subscribe to our FREE Daily/Weekly Newsletter and follow us on Instagram, X, and Blue Sky.
The Optimist Daily is a project of the World Business Academy.
Donate link: https://www.optimistdaily.com/donate-to-support-the-optimist-daily/?lsc=41ef528d
Theme and all original music by Marvin Lanes
Transcript:
Intro & Housekeeping
Karissa:
Hello everyone, I’m Karissa.
Arielle:
I’m Arielle.
Karissa:
And welcome back to The Optimist Daily’s weekly roundup.
Arielle:
Yes, it’s great to be back, as always. Um, is there anything fun, new, and exciting happening in your life, Karissa?
Karissa:
Hmm. It’s officially fall as of this week, so things are finally kind of back into routine. I don’t have as many weekend plans.
And last week, I mentioned wanting to take on some more sewing projects, and I’ve been doing that. I made a sunglasses case, so that’s new and exciting. Wow. But, what about you, Arielle?
Arielle:
Um… Oh, my dog is now, uh, scratching at the door. One second. Um, I don’t know if it’s fun or exciting, but it is new. I think my dog’s just getting a bit older.
Tinkerbell is not walking as quickly as before, and she sometimes has a limp, so- Oh … I’m gonna take her to the vet. I know. She’s turning nine next year, in January. So yeah, that’s just, it’s a part of life. But that’s been something new that I’ve been noticing.
Karissa:
Yeah, a new era for Tinkerbell. Oh, my cat is here.
Arielle:
Our pets are just, uh-
Karissa:
Y- yeah, trying to be guests on the podcast, of course, ’cause they’re just- Uh … so excited about all this positive news. Yeah. Uh- Oh, goodness … but before we go any further, we wanna remind you that all of these solutions are available in our free daily or weekly newsletter. So if you wanna sign up for that and get all of this positive news straight to your inbox, the link to do that is in the show notes.
Arielle:
If you prefer to get your news on socials, you can follow us @optimistdaily on basically everything except for X. There we are @OdeToOptimism. Uh, we love to hear from you. We love to read your comments, and if you engage with us, that is highly appreciated. But you can also reach us directly at podcast@optimistdaily.com.
There you can just shoot us an email if you have any comments, questions, or feedback.
Karissa:
We also wanna give a big shout-out to our Optimist Daily Emissaries, who are our financial supporters here and help us get all this positive solution news out to as many people as possible. If you wanna become an Emissary, the link to do that is also in the show notes.
And if you become an Emissary, you can have a shout-out right here on the podcast to anyone or anything that makes you optimistic. The link to do that should’ve been sent to you when you became an Emissary. We send out reminders every once in a while. But if you’re an Emissary and you need that link, let us know and we can send it over to you.
Arielle:
Another reason we would love to hear from you right now is that the nominations are still open for our annual Local Changemaker series. We do it every year in the run-up to Thanksgiving, and this year, we’re doing the whole series on Changemakers 30 and Under.
Karissa:
So please nominate some young person who’s making a positive impact in your community or a community that you know about.
It’s a great way to practice your gratitude.
Arielle:
And everyone who nominates gets entered to win an Optimist Daily mug, which is a great mug, as I said. Everyone i- in our team meeting saw me sipping my tea from it. So,
Karissa:
yeah. I can attest Arielle is usually using her Optimist Daily mug whenever we see her.
Arielle:
All right.
Well, with all of that said, I think we can jump into the solutions.
Memory & Self-Esteem
Karissa:
So the first solution we had to share this week is “How revisiting old memories can build real self-esteem”. There’s a psychologist whose new book is about self-worth, and her core argument is quite thought-provoking. The reason a lot of us feel bad about ourselves has less to do with what’s happening now and more to do with a handful of old memories that are still running in the background and shaping what we expect.
The even more interesting part is that you can go back and change them. There’s some neuroscience behind this, and it’s that every time you recall a memory, your brain actually reconstructs it, which means memories aren’t fixed and you have more say in what gets rebuilt than most people realize. So the exercise that this psychologist teaches is called reparenting.
You step back into a difficult memory as your present-day self and give your younger self what wasn’t there at the time. She walks through her own example in the article, and it’s really specific, but one of her lines on why low self-esteem is so hard to shake is, “All the beauties of life slip off of you.
You can experience great success and still feel like a failure. You can find great love and still feel unlovable.” So much to chew on here with that one.
Arielle:
And memory reconsolidation is a growing area of research, and it’s also being used in trauma therapy, which gives it some clinical grounding. Um, and if I can get, like, a little bit personal here, I don’t know if any listeners are familiar with EMDR.
It’s like this eye movement therapy that kind of, according to my therapist, kind of hacks the working memory system and helps reframe traumatic memories. I have a lot of friends who have done it, and I’ve also had my own experiences with it, and it’s just so powerful how, how you can actually change at least how you react to certain memories.
So yeah, really, really fascinating stuff.
Karissa:
Yeah. Go check out the article if you wanna know some more.
Dogs Sniffing Cancer
Karissa:
The next headline really stood out to me this week, and it was, “Can dogs sniff out cancer? new AI study shows promise.” So there’s this startup in India, and it’s called Dognosis, which is such a fun name. And it’s training dogs to help detect cancer.
But the wild part isn’t about the dogs, it’s how the dogs aren’t actually making the diagnosis at all. The AI is actually reading them. So we’ve written about on The Optimist Daily before about how dogs have been shown to be able to sniff out cancer and other diseases, and even ants are able to as well.
Mm-hmm. So I pulled that one out from the archive and shared it, um, with The Optimist Daily world this week as well. But this new development incorporates AI. So dogs will wear sensor helmets that track their breathing, brain activity, and movement as they sniff sealed breath samples. And the AI learns what a dog’s body does when it detects cancer odor compounds, then uses that to make the call if cancer is present or not.
So there was a study of 1,500 plus participants across six hospitals and found over 90% accuracy across seven cancer types with this technology. Um, that number comes from the company itself and hasn’t been independently verified yet, but still, that’s a pretty great statistic if true.
Arielle:
Yeah. I… Well, I love dogs.
Yes. So it’s great that they’re getting involved, and also non-invasive diagnostics are a huge area of interest right now- Mm-hmm … especially for health systems trying to catch cancer earlier without expensive or inaccessible infrastructure. So yeah, this is very, very promising. We actually had a reader reach out to us after going through this article, and Karissa, do you wanna read her email?
Karissa:
Yeah. So we had an email from our reader that said that she was visiting her neighbor, and the neighbor’s Pomeranian named Mocha kept trying to lick the front of her leg below her knee. So she scheduled an appointment with her dermatologist the next day and received a skin cancer diagnosis and had to have surgery.
So Dr. Mocha here was a hero. Mm-hmm. Big shout-out to Dr. Mocha. The Pomeranian doctor. Mm.
Arielle:
Uh, yeah, super cool to, to hear if any of our articles resonate with you in some personal way. Always feel free to send us an anecdote. We love it.
Bison Rewilding
Karissa:
Moving on to some more animal news, “Mexico’s desert ecosystem is healing months after bison reintroduction”.
I was thrilled to see this one because I just saw a bison for the first time when I took a trip- Oh, really? … out to Wyoming. Oh, yeah. And they, they blocked the road. There was a bison crossing, um, traffic jam. On the maps- Oh … it was red, and then we were like, “What’s going on?” And we looked ahead, and we’re like, “Oh, my gosh, there’s a herd of bison crossing the road.”
So not an uncommon sight out there, and it was just, oh, my gosh, it was amazing. I fell in love with bison and had to buy a pair of bison socks. But bison went extinct in this particular part of Mexico around 200 years ago, and last year, a group brought nearly 50 of them back to a desert reserve. And the part that’s hard to believe is how fast the ecosystem responded.
So the reserve director here calls bison landscape architects, and what they’re actually doing to the landscape is more interesting than it sounds. And the article breaks down exactly how. But to give you a little preview of how they’re, you know, shaping the landscape, there’s footage caught by hidden cameras, and it captured pumas, lynxes, and other animals returning to the area within months of the bison arriving.
And these are animals that hadn’t been spotted there in a really long time, so it’s wonderful news. Local birds have also been spotted pulling bison fur to build nests, but, uh- … I’m sure the bison don’t mind. They have a lot of tough fur. But yeah, the bison fur is becoming part of the habitat structure for local birds because they’re using it in their nests, so really fascinating how much bison can rewild the area by coming back to where they once were.
Arielle:
Mm-hmm. I guess they would be considered, like, a keystone species then. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Like, uh, like sharks, and, uh, I know we’ve written about other animals that, that are really, like, a cornerstone of the health of the rest of the ecosystem. But as you said, Karissa, the surprising part is just how speedy the response is.
It’s not like a rewilding project that you have to kind of wait for a decade to see results. Um- Mm-hmm … these results showed up in months. It just contributes to the growing scientific understanding that ecosystems don’t just need protection from harm. They need the right species present for it to function properly the way that it’s supposed to.
Karissa:
Absolutely. And I guess I should mention that this has been in the Chihuahuan Desert, and it’s actually one of the most biodiverse desert systems in the world, and it’s under a lot of pressure. So being able to conserve this area is a very good thing, of course.
Dryer Lint Uses
Karissa:
Moving on to a more lifestyle-oriented solution, we have “From fire starters to compost: what to do with dryer lint”.
So sometimes we like to throw in these lifestyle stories because we could all use some tips on housekeeping and whatnot. And when I saw this one, I knew about lint fire starters, but I didn’t know about the rest of the dryer lint uses. So I mean, we clean the lint trap because it’s a fire hazard, but the exact same quality makes it really good to use as a free fire starter you can keep on hand.
And for me as a camper, I really need to put that in practice more. I always forget that that’s a thing. But yeah, there’s seven other uses mentioned in this article as well, and they’re pretty good.
Arielle:
I like articles like this because the zero waste and creative reuse content is everywhere, but this is like an actually genuinely practical angle and it’s not aspirational.
There are real uses for something that you already have. Although personally I don’t have a dryer. I miss my dryer. But in the old house had one. Um, but yeah, if you do have one, then definitely check this one out.
Pomegranates & Gut Health
Karissa:
The final headline I have to share today is “Pomegranates and berries produce a gut metabolite that may improve IBD outcomes”.
Um, as someone who’s going through some tummy issues right now, this one was a good one for me to read. So hopefully this one will stand out to anyone who might be dealing with IBD or, or other tummy issues. There’s a protein in your gut that scientists thought was mostly bad news because it’s linked to inflammation, and it gets switched on by environmental toxins.
But it turns out that that same protein, when triggered by compounds from berries and pomegranates, does something completely different. And now researchers have shown it in human tissue, which is huge because it’s not just, uh, based on animal trials. This compound is called urolithin A. Your gut bacteria makes it when you eat pomegranates, berries, and walnuts.
You don’t consume it directly, but your microbiome produces it. And ooh, I love all three of those things, so I was happy to see that some of my favorite foods are, are causing this. Same cellular system that drives inflammatory damage in other contexts does something that looks like repair when this compound, urolithin A, is involved, and this article explains how it works a little bit more.
And like I mentioned, this was tested in actual human intestinal tissue from IBD patients and not just lab models, which makes the finding pretty significant.
Arielle: Y
eah, there’s something poetic about the fact that the same receptor causes harm when triggered by toxins and causes healing when triggered by berries.
Karissa:
Mm-hmm. Good news indeed.
Coral Reef Restoration
Arielle:
All right. It’s my turn to take it away with this solution titled “How Reefvive is rebuilding coral reefs from discarded oyster shells”. There’s a student project in Taiwan turning oyster shells and coral gravel, stuff that normally gets thrown away, into 3D-printed reef bases. And when they put the structures in the ocean, every single coral fragment they attached survived.
Most artificial reef structures are made from concrete, which is too smooth for coral to grip. Reefvive solved this by grinding up those waste materials that I mentioned earlier into a printable compound that produces the rough texture coral needs. The design was modeled on brain coral specifically, so- I’m, I’m sure some of the listeners have, like, an image in their, in their minds, but it’s like, yeah, the coral that kind of looks like a brain.
They studied the ridge patterns and worked from those, and when the structures went into the water, octopuses moved in, which apparently means the habitat feels real. So octopus approved. Um, there was 100% survival rate on the coral fragments in the open water trial, and the article gets into what a typical survival rate looks like and why that number is so important.
I think we all know that coral reefs are in crisis. There’s bleaching events that are accelerating, and restoration efforts need to scale pretty quickly. This is one approach that could actually get there.
Karissa:
We’ve had a lot of great solutions about, um, restoring coral reefs, and oyster shells as well. We had one pretty recently that, um, talked about this project in California that collects oyster shells from restaurants and puts them back into the ocean to make some reefs.
So pretty cool stuff that they’re able to do this. And a student-led conservation innovation again. We’re seeing how the youth are doing so many great things, which is why we’re focusing our Changemaker Series on younger innovators.
New Wildcat Species
Arielle:
The next solution is titled, “The tilcayo: new wildcat species discovered in Bolivia’s cloud forest”.
Scientists just named a new species of wild cat in Bolivia, the first new living cat species to be formally named in over a century. And here’s the thing, local communities already had a name for it, but now the science just finally caught up. So you need to see a photo of this, of this little cat. Mm-hmm.
This, um-
Karissa:
They’re pretty cute.
Arielle:
Yeah, the tilcayo, it’s tiny. It’s smaller than the average house cat, and it’s lighter, too, and it’s been living in Bolivia’s cloud forest a very long time. The reason it went unclassified for so long has to do with how these cats look and what it actually takes to tell species apart.
Basically, the research team examined two live individuals, and one of them is a 10-year-old male who spent years as a household pet with a local family, and now lives at a wildlife sanctuary. The research team found more than just the tilcayo. The article gets into what else the DNA analysis turned up, and it kind of changes the picture on a whole group of cats.
Karissa:
A household pet for one of them, too. I guess they’re- I know. … they’re pretty similar to the house cat. I wonder, um, you know, what they found by living with this cat, since it’s not exactly, uh, the same as a domestic house cat, so pretty wild.
Arielle:
No, no, and we really should not be keeping, like, real wild animals.
No.
Karissa:
But
Arielle:
it’s so cute, so I kinda get it. Yeah. But at the same time, no, don’t do that.
Karissa:
Yeah, exactly.
Arielle:
I thought that the, the fact that the local people already had a name for it was such an eyebrow-raiser for me. Yeah, the, the tilcayo predates the scientific paper by, I don’t know, who knows how many generations.
So it kind of tells us also whose knowledge gets counted- Mm … um, and whose knowledge is kind of, like, ignored or not recognized by, I don’t know, academia.
Karissa:
Yeah, I think that’s such a huge point, and there’s kind of this running theme in conservation about knowledge in general that were discovered by Western science long after local communities already knew about it.
Mm-hmm. So once again, a clear example, and, um, the formal recognition of the species has a lot of implications for conservation, uh, status, though, across the world.
Food Waste Recycling
Arielle:
The next article is titled “From 2.6% to 97%: how South Korea eliminated food waste and what NYC can learn”. South Korea went from recycling 2.6% of its food waste to nearly 97%, and the mechanism that made it work wasn’t the fancy bins.
It was the bill citizens had to pay. New York just launched the biggest food waste program in the US, and it can definitely learn from what South Korea did, and, you know, more states and regions can also learn from this. Korea has this RFID bin system, and it works by charging households by weight. So you tap a card, the bin logs what you threw in, and the cost shows up on your bill.
A resident in Seoul describes what that daily moment actually feels like in the article, and you can read all about it. New York City is currently at 9%, and it’s running a free composting system with zero financial accountability. And a researcher from Columbia dives into why this is a significant factor.
South Korea’s system didn’t happen overnight. The timeline of how they got from 2.6 to 97 is in the article, and it’s pretty instructive info for any other area that wants to accomplish the same thing.
Karissa:
Yeah, New York City can definitely take some notes. It’s very new in New York City, and the US is watching it as a test case for whether mandatory composting can work without the financial incentive structure that South Korea used.
So there’s a lot of, uh, different trials in general happening and seeing what can be most effective here.
Arielle:
Yeah, I mean, pay as you throw is a, a pretty well-established policy tool, at least here in Europe and also- Mm-hmm … in East Asia. Um, I get that it’s kind of annoying to have to pay for these types of things, but it- Yeah
is such a motivator, and if we wanna create real change, we have to have good incentives to, uh- Mm-hmm … keep our waste low.
Reading & Brain Health
Arielle:
The next solution is titled “How book clubs and bedtime stories protect and build healthier brains”. I think we all know that reading is good for us in that vague, you know, you should read more way.
But a new review out of Cambridge actually quantified it, and the dementia connection is way more concrete than I personally expected. And also, there’s a book club angle that, uh, that’s also fun and surprising. So the Cambridge review found reading for pleasure is associated with slower cognitive decline and meaningfully lower dementia risk.
And the benefits hold whether you’re eight or 80, and regardless of what or how you read. Book clubs were specifically called out for even greater cognitive benefits than solo reading for a reason that makes a lot of sense when you think about it, especially considering all of the, uh, articles we’ve published on, like, loneliness and how important social connection is for longevity.
Uh, with a book club, you kind of have that, not only the reading aspect, but you’re being social about it. Reading rates in young people have dropped significantly in the last decade. The numbers in the article are a bit alarming, and the researchers have thoughts on what actually works to get kids reading again.
And actually, I just wanna say one thing. Um, I was back in Canada this summer to visit my family, and I went to Costco, a mandatory stop on my North American tour. And growing up, I spent so much time in the book section. Well, I would get a book from the book section and then chill out in, like, the couch section at Costco, ’cause you know how they have those couches out.
Yeah,
Karissa:
the furniture set up.
Arielle:
So I’d pick a book and then wait for my mom to finish shopping. Mm-hmm. Um, and I would read, but when I got there this year, I was shocked. There was no book section at all, and- Yeah … there, there weren’t even, like, the small magazines. Yeah. I don’t know if it’s the same in the States.
Karissa:
Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say. I, I didn’t know if it was just a United States thing, but last year they made that announcement that they were taking out the book sections, which is really unfortunate. So I personally didn’t really like that move, um, and I think a lot of people were upset from that because, I mean, striking an interest in a book is a great thing, I think.
Arielle: And brain health as a public health concern is growing pretty quickly, um, especially when aging populations and rising dementia rates are, are happening. And books is just… Reading is one of the more accessible interventions on the table. So yeah, let’s get that book section back in Costco.
Ethiopia Tree Planting
Arielle:
the very last solution that we have on deck this week is titled “Ethiopia’s Green Legacy Initiative is turning citizens into foresters”.
Ethiopia claims to have planted 48 billion trees in seven years, and there are real questions about how many of those trees actually survived. But the person coordinating the UN’s deforestation monitoring there says even if half made it, the country is already winning on carbon, soil, and water. And then there’s a participant named Halima, who walks an hour to water her trees and has lost count of how many she’s planted.
So shout out to Halima, and also I’m sure there are other volunteers and citizens like her. The 48 billion number is extraordinary, and it’s contested. The article is honest about the survival rate uncertainty, and yeah, the, the UN coordinator’s response to that uncertainty is, is worth hearing or reading.
But what I liked in this article is that they described Halima Kedir’s, her relationship to the trees. She’s in the Oromia region, and she says that there’s this traditional Oromo concept of adoption, and she’s applying that to the trees that she’s planted, and that framing is, is really beautiful.
Karissa:
Yeah.
Arielle:
And there’s, there’s also, um, some debate around tree planting as a climate solution. Uh, critics say that the numbers are often inflated, and survival rates are ignored. This story engages that tension pretty honestly rather than just blindly cheerleading it. So definitely worth a read.
Wrap-up & Quote
Arielle:
Right. Well, those were all the solutions that we had this week.
It was wonderful to share them with you, Karissa. And as always, we end with a quote.
Karissa:
Mm-hmm. So the positive quote we have to share with you this week is, “Whatever good things we build end up building us,” and that’s from Jim Rohn.
Arielle:
Very motivating. Um, well, on that note, Karissa and I wish you all a very, very happy, restful weekend, and we will be back next week with more solutions.
Karissa:
All right. My cat’s just, like, crunching her food so loudly right now. Susie, please.
Arielle:
It’s okay. I just, like, ran to close the door because Tink just came in again, and- Okay … opened the door, so …
Karissa:
Oh my gosh.
Okay, I’m just gonna keep going, I guess.
