Episode Description:

Spring is in the air, and so is this week’s roundup of solutions, breakthroughs, and good news worth sharing.                                               

Arielle and Karissa are back together after last week’s Sambhali Trust guest interview, and they’ve got a full lineup: wildlife conservation wins, medical milestones, an environmental project decades in the making finally paying off, and some surprisingly simple advice about what you’re actually eating. Plus, a closing quote about cherry blossoms and hanging on to the good times

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Transcript:

Arielle 

Hello, Optimists, Arielle here. 

Karissa 

And I’m Karissa, and welcome back to the Optimist Daily’s Weekly Roundup. 

Arielle 

How are you doing this week, Karissa? It’s been a while. 

Karissa 

Yeah, it has been a while because last week we were fortunate enough to have a guest interview that you so gracefully led and told the great story of the people behind Sambhali Trust. 

Arielle 

Yeah, it was really such a pleasure to talk to everyone and I’m looking forward to the next interview. 

Karissa 

Super exciting to hear a lot of different voices here on the podcast. Since we last met, things have been fine with me besides those springtime allergies. I feel like we have kind of a spring roundup today, so that will be fun to dive into. 

Arielle 

But before we get into it, let’s just remind everyone to sign up for our daily newsletter. That way you can get all of these amazing solutions straight to your inbox. 

Karissa 

You can also follow us on socials where we post all of our solutions and more. You can follow us @OptimistDaily on everything except X where we are @OdeToOptimism. 

Arielle 

Also, everyone knows that we’ve revamped the podcast from the music to the format to having other voices on the pod. If you have any comments, questions, or feedback, then please feel free to e-mail us at podcast@optimistdaily.com. 

Karissa 

And we want to thank our Emissaries for financially supporting the Optimist Daily. And as we mentioned last time on the podcast, if you become an Emissary, you’ll be able to shout out some change makers in your life making a difference, whether that’s a helpful neighbor, just your mom, or your favorite charity. We want to recognize what you recognize in your community. So that will be coming soon. Keep an eye out for that. But in the meantime, if you’re not an Emissary and would like to become one, there’s information in the show notes about that. 

Arielle 

All right. So, shall we get into our solutions of the week? 

Karissa 

Yeah, I’m ready. 

Arielle 

Okay, so the first article is When to turn sprinklers on after winter and how to avoid costly damage to lawn and home. I don’t have a lawn, but if you do, you’re probably itching to turn your sprinklers back on now that it’s kind of warming up. But the advice in this article is to hold off just a little bit longer because apparently turning it on too early is one of the most common ways homeowners end up with cracked pipes, broken valves, and an unexpected repair bill. 

Karissa 

Yeah, this article did say that the general rule of thumb was to wait until nighttime temperatures consistently stay above 40 degrees Fahrenheit for at least 10 days straight because one warm afternoon or day is just not enough to justify turning on the sprinklers so soon. 

Arielle 

Yeah. And also, water conservation is an ongoing conversation. So, if you just delay it a little bit, we save a little bit more water. 

Karissa 

Yeah. 

Arielle 

Continuing on with a little bit of environmental news. Panama’s golden frogs return to the wild after 17-year battle with deadly fungus. 

Karissa 

Yay. 

Arielle 

This is an article about how Panama’s golden frog has been missing from the wild for 17 years after a deadly fungus wiped out the entire population, which sounds kind of like a… horror series. But this year they are back, and the story of how conservationists pulled it off is definitely worth checking out. 

Karissa 

I liked how in this article they mentioned that Panama’s golden frog is actually the national symbol associated with good fortune in Panama. So, this seems super symbolic. 

Arielle 

The next article is First baby born after womb transplant from deceased donor offers new hope. So, in December, just last year, a woman in London who was born without a uterus gave birth to a baby boy after receiving a womb transplant from a deceased donor. It’s a first for the UK and only the third time it’s happened anywhere in Europe. 

Karissa 

Yeah, this one was super cool because there are so many conversations about IVF, and obviously that is a developing field in itself, but there are not as many conversations around being born without a uterus, which is caused by conditions like MRKH syndrome, which can cause this uterine factor infertility. So, this one is super amazing to, you know, bring visibility to this issue and just offers a lot of hope for, you know, people who suffer from this. 

Arielle 

The woman who received the transplant, her name is Grace Bell, and she said, “There are no words to say thank you enough to my donor and her family” because, of course, her gain was also a whole other family’s loss. And it’s just, it’s amazing that we can give each other organs in the first place. And honestly, I never really thought of a uterus as like an organ that you give. You always think about like kidneys or livers or hearts even. But yeah, this is the first time that I had even thought about womb transplants. 

Karissa 

Yeah, exactly. 

Arielle 

The next article is Pink noise for sleep: what it is and whether it actually helps you rest. About half of all people use background sounds to help them sleep, whether that’s pink noise, white noise, rain sounds, whatever. But a new study found something that might surprise you. Pink noise could actually be interfering with the quality of your sleep, even if it feels like it’s helping. And honestly, I did not know what pink noise was before reading this article. I will let you guys find out by reading. One question I have for you, Karissa, is do you find it easier or harder to sleep with background sounds? Or are you like a silent sleeper? 

Karissa 

I am a silent sleeper. I cannot have any noise at all while sleeping unless I’m super tired. But on a general day, no, noise has to be off for me. What about you? 

Arielle 

I think sleeping is one of my talents. 

Karissa 

Well, that’s good. Good. It takes talent, I will say. 

Arielle 

I can sleep in almost any kind of situation as long as I’m tired. So, silence doesn’t bother me, but also noise doesn’t bother me. And I was actually in India recently, as you of course know, Karissa. And it is quite loud there. And I was sleeping early, and there were just like honking horns, and I thought, oh, maybe I’m going to have a hard time falling asleep. And then I woke up the next morning. (Laughter). 

All right, so the last article that I’m going to talk about before I hand it over to you, Karissa, is Where and when to catch peak cherry blossoms bloom across the US this spring. Cherry blossom season is almost here, and this year’s bloom schedule is worth knowing in advance. Peak bloom only lasts one to two weeks, and where you are in the country determines exactly when you need to show up. 

Karissa 

I don’t think I’m too close to any cherry blossoms where I am, but we just passed by almond blossom season, which is another factor of my allergies. But I mean, it’s a beautiful sight. It looks like there’s snow on the trees all over in this agricultural area I live in, but they have since kind of blown away, but it’s always a beautiful sight. And yeah, it’s only like two weeks long too. So, it’s always good to get out there and appreciate little things; appreciating nature will always make you feel better. 

Arielle 

All right, Karissa, what else did we have this week? 

Karissa 

All right, so another solution we had this week is China’s Great Green Wall turns Taklamakan Desert into a growing carbon sink. So, China planted 66 billion trees along the edges of one of the world’s largest deserts, and it’s actually working. New research shows that vegetation around the Taklamakan Desert is now absorbing more carbon than the desert emits, turning a once -expanded wasteland into a carbon sink. 

Arielle 

China’s really into their Great Walls. 

Karissa 

Yeah, exactly. They launched this great green wall not hundreds and thousands of years ago, but this great green wall was launched in 1978, and it makes it one of the longest -running ecological engineering projects on Earth. So that’s a pretty huge feat. 

Arielle 

66 billion trees sounds like I can’t even really imagine how many trees that is. 

Karissa 

66 billion trees is a huge number. It’s kind of impossible to visualize, but it’s taken decades of work. And it’s such a nice contrast to the doom-and-gloom news we’ve seen. hear every day about climate change or deforestation or areas being major carbon emitters. And the fact that this is successful and becoming a carbon sink really shows that large -scale land restoration is a real major piece of that puzzle. 

Arielle 

Yeah, definitely. And it kind of goes into all of the growing global interest in rewilding and land restoration as climate solutions beyond just cutting emissions. So yeah, really, really cool. 

Karissa 

We also had this week that a heart health study of 200,000 people finds that food quality matters more than low-carb or low-fat diets. A Harvard study that tracks nearly 200,000 people for 30 years just weighed in on, you know, this low-carb versus low-fat debate. And the answer is simpler than either camp wants to admit. It’s just that what you eat matters more than how you label your diet. So, eating holistically, eating, you know, real foods, is just super important. Eat quality foods, more vegetables, fruits, whole grains. You just really don’t have to pick a team here. You just need to eat real food.  

This week, we also had Cancer-fighting bacteria: how engineered microbes could eat tumors from the inside out. Researchers at the University of Waterloo are developing a cancer therapy where engineered bacteria sneak into solid tumors, colonize the oxygen-free core, and eat them from the inside out. What a concept. They’ve designed the bacteria to only unlock their full capabilities once they’re already inside the tumor. So, they won’t just be eating random stuff in the body. They know to go to that tumor and only eat inside the tumor. 

Arielle 

This is another one that’s kind of like a science fiction horror film. I guess for the tumor, not for us. This is a great victory for us. But bacteria that eat tumors from the inside out. That’s just such an image. And I actually grew up close to University of Waterloo. So, woo, woo, go Canadians. I’m having like a weird visceral reaction to thinking about bacteria eating tumors though. 

Karissa 

I know. It’s such a concept. So, if you want to find out more about that one, check it out on the Optimist Daily for all the technical details. Also, in the fight against cancer, A new drug is producing stunning results in men with advanced prostate cancer. Prostate cancer has actually been notoriously resistant to immunotherapy, which is the treatment approach that’s transformed outcomes for cancers like melanoma and lung cancer. Luckily, a new drug called VIR-5500 just produced results in a small trial, including one case for 14 cancerous liver lesions completely resolved. This drug is actually, and study is not yet peer reviewed, but lead researcher, Professor Johan De Bono says, we do need more data, but the results are stunning. And we believe that such treatments may in the long-term lead to cures.  

One more health advancement we had this week was A wireless eye implant is helping people with macular degeneration read again. And this one is good because, according to my 23andMe, testing results, I carry a variant to possibly get macular degeneration, but it is super common to get. It’s just what happens to our eyes when we get older and start to lose vision. And macular degeneration takes away central vision specifically, not all of it, and it makes it harder to read and recognize faces. But with this advancement, a clinical trial where a tiny wireless implant is implanted into the eye helped people with advanced macular degeneration read again. And 81% of patients saw real improvement within a year, and some even went from barely seeing to reading full pages in a book. 

Arielle 

I think advanced macular degeneration also runs in my family, and it would be so frustrating just to not have the middle of your vision. Like that’s where you’re trying to focus. 

Karissa 

I know. And there’s such a bigger conversation right now about what aging with independence actually looks like. So being able to restore the ability to read and have your whole vision back is really groundbreaking. 

Arielle 

Yeah, we had a lot of medical breakthroughs this week, which is wonderful news because we’re all about living not just longer, but healthier your lives. So not just the lifespan, but the health span. 

Karissa 

All right, well, that’s all the solutions we had to share on the Optimist Daily this week. But before we go, we’ll leave you with a positive quote that we shared this week in the newsletter, which once again, you can subscribe to for free if you want these solutions to your inbox. 

Arielle 

Yes, and the quote is, “Due to their short bloom time, Sakura blossoms are a metaphor for life itself, beautiful yet fleeting. You’ll realize when you’re as old as me to hang on to the good times because they won’t last forever.” And that is from author Shannon M. Mullen. 

Karissa 

Yeah, well, perfect for the cherry blossom season that is just around the corner. 

Arielle 

Thank you so much, Karissa, for being here with me. It’s been really good catching up with you and sharing the solutions, because it’s been a while since we have, and I’m used to doing it every single week. 

Karissa 

Yeah, exactly. I love sharing the solutions from the Optimist Daily this week, but I also love hearing the other voices, which once again, go check out the Sambhali Trust interview that was published last week if you haven’t already. It was perfect for International Women’s Day last week, which once again, happy belated International Women’s Day. 

Arielle 

And every day we should be appreciating the women in our lives! 

Karissa 

Absolutely, 100%. 

Arielle 

All right, well, on that note, I wish you a very happy weekend and all of our Optimists as well. 

Karissa 

And we’ll be back next week with more solutions.  

Both 

Bye!