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CNN 5 Good Things
How about a break — for your ears? At CNN, we know the news can be a lot to take in. So each week, 5 Good Things offers you a respite from the heavy headlines and intense news cycle. Treat yourself to something fun and uplifting every Saturday as we share the bright side of life from all over the globe.
An Ancient Wolf is Back: The Path to Save Another
CNN 5 Good Things
Apr 12, 2025
An NHL star makes history and for a good cause. Two tortoises become first-time parents in their late nineties. Scientists say they’ve revived the extinct dire wolf and used the same tech to help save a critically endangered one. Going offline is a requirement to join this social club. Plus, a frat reunites a woman with her dog 300 miles away.
Episode Transcript
Krista Bo
00:00:00
'Hey there, it's a good day to look at the bright side, isn't it? It's not every day you meet first-time parents who've been around since the Great Depression.
Laura Augustine
00:00:08
So this is a huge accomplishment to have her reproducing at such an old age for the first time. And now her genetics will live on.
Krista Bo
00:00:15
Plus, a lost dog, a frat house, and a reunion five years in the making. From CNN, I'm Krista Bo, and this is 5 Good Things.
Krista Bo
00:00:28
Washington Capitals star Alex Ovechkin has made history, and for a good cause.
Game Announcer
00:00:33
to Wilson, centered up. Ovechkin has it! He scores! He scores!
Krista Bo
00:00:38
'Last Sunday, Caps Radio 24/7 captured the moment he cemented his status as one of the greatest hockey players of all time. One of Alex's nicknames is "The Great Eight." That's his jersey number. And when he rocketed that puck into the net, he became the NHL's all-time leading scorer with 895 goals over a 20-season career.
Game Announcer
00:00:58
There is but one. Alexander the Great! the greatest to ever do it.
Alex Ovechkin
00:01:05
I'm really proud for myself, I'm really proud for my family, for all my teammates that helped me to reach that milestone. It's huge, it's unbelievable.
Krista Bo
00:01:15
The title had been held for over three decades by none other than NHL legend Wayne Gretzky. Two of Alex's biggest fans have also been cheering him on. For Stewi and Andy Corno, it's not just a historic achievement for their favorite team.
Krista Bo
00:01:29
Every single goal is tied to a cause that's dear to their hearts. Every time Alex scores, he'll donate an amount that matches his new goal total for the remainder of his career to the V Foundation.
Stewi Corno
00:01:40
Which all goes to pediatric cancer research. Everyone knows it's a lot of goals, so it's almost $1,000 each time he donates and the Capitals are matching that. So it's really exciting.
Krista Bo
00:01:50
Last month, Alex launched the Great Eight Chase to make an impact off the ice.
Alex Ovechkin
00:01:54
We as athletes, we're lucky to be recognized, we are lucky to play hockey or whatever, basketball, and we have that opportunity to help kids. They're smiling, they're bringing their energy to us, and we try to give them back.
Krista Bo
00:02:07
The Cornos have two children. Their eldest daughter, Cameron, is now five and has been battling cancer since she was an infant. Stewi says funding for pediatric cancer research is crucial for kids like Cameron.
Stewi Corno
00:02:19
It's giving us extra months with Cameron that we don't know if we would have had. The need for, obviously, a cure is so important, but the other thing that this research is doing is allowing these kids less toxic treatment options so that they can fight this awful disease with less potential side effects down the road.
Krista Bo
00:02:40
The V Foundation says the Great Eight Chase has raised at least $150,000 so far, and Alex and the Capitals have more games this season, which means more opportunities to score and raise more money. If you're interested in learning more about the initiative, check out V.org.
Krista Bo
00:02:57
'Slow and steady did win the race straight into parenthood. At 96 and 97-years-old, Western Santa Cruz Galapagos tortoises, Mommy and Abrazzo have just become first-time parents. They're two of the oldest residents at the Philadelphia Zoo.
Laura Augustine
00:03:14
So Mommy, the mom is around 285 pounds and Abrazzo the dad is 409 pounds. And the offspring are around 80 to 100 grams each right now. So they're about the size of a tennis ball.
Krista Bo
00:03:26
Laura Augustine is the director of herpetology at the zoo. She says these giant herbivores are essentially ecosystem engineers critical to the maintenance of their wild habitats. But they're also considered critically endangered.
Laura Augustine
00:03:39
So this is a huge accomplishment to have her reproducing at such an old age for the first time for this captive population. And now her genetics will live on.
Krista Bo
00:03:49
In November, Mommy laid 16 eggs, and so far, four of them have hatched, all female. But there could be more where that came from.
Laura Augustine
00:03:58
They have temperature sex determination which means the temperature that their eggs are incubated actually will control the sex of the offspring. So at this point we have three remaining eggs that will hopefully hatch that will be males from that clutch.
Krista Bo
00:04:10
The baby tortoises will make their public debut on April 23rd, exactly 93 years after Mommy arrived at the zoo.
Laura Augustine
00:04:18
I think the most romantic part of this story is that people have been seeing Mommy at the Philadelphia Zoo since 1932, and now they'll have the opportunity to see her offspring for a century.
Krista Bo
00:04:30
'So I don't know about you, but the concerts that I go to, I see more screens in the air than hands, if you know what I mean. It's like they wanna record every single second. And honestly, if you ask me, it's kind of a vibe killer. And I can say this because I went to a no-phone show with my husband and our friends three weeks ago, and let me tell you, I loved every second of it.
Krista Bo
00:04:52
'For the entire five-hour event, the vibes were so high. Everyone was locked into the music, dancing, smiling, socializing with each other. We even made some new friends, and I left the event thinking I would totally go to events like this more often. And then I heard about the Offline Club.
Ben Hounsell
00:05:12
We're pioneering a movement to help people swap screen time for real time. So no phones, no TV, to get away from tech for a few hours.
Krista Bo
00:05:20
'A group of friends in Amsterdam started it last year, and since then, the Offline Club has turned into a global movement, with branches hosting phone-free events for less than 15 euros in places like Paris, Milan, Barcelona, and more. Ben Hounsell is the city leader for the London chapter.
Ben Hounsell
00:05:37
'We'll have live music, live piano, and then people will pick up those forgotten hobbies - reading, journaling, writing. It's really mindful. Then for the second hour, we kind of open up the floor. A lot of our attendees come solo, so we allow them to connect with others and we're really trying to combat big city loneliness with this.
Krista Bo
00:05:54
Research from Data Report says the average person worldwide spends six hours and 38 minutes daily looking at a screen.
Ben Hounsell
00:06:03
'This is a big problem, leading to downstream effects, declining mental health, weaker real-world relationships and a lack of focus. The need for time and space offline is growing and we're helping people doing that.
Krista Bo
00:06:16
So who wants to start an offline club with me in the U.S.?
Jon Snow
00:06:23
Lord Stark, there are five pups, one for each of the Stark children. The dire wolf is a sigil of your house. You were meant to have them.
Krista Bo
00:06:32
Well, Lord Stark from the hit HBO show, "Game of Thrones" might have been on to something because apparently dire wolves are making a comeback.
Wolf Blitzer
00:06:40
Now to a story more than 12,000 years in the making or remaking. In a scene that could be described as "Jurassic Park" meets "Game of Thrones," scientists say they have brought a species of wolf back from extinction.
Krista Bo
00:06:54
'You heard Wolf Blitzer correctly. A Dallas-based biotech company called Colossal Biosciences says they've resurrected the dire wolf.
Ben Lamm
00:07:02
'We took a 13,000 year old tooth, a 73,000-year-old skull, used a combination of ancient DNA analysis, artificial intelligence, and synthetic biology and genetic engineering to bring back this iconic species that has been lost to time.
Krista Bo
00:07:19
'Ben Lamm is the co-founder and CEO. These aren't exact copies of the ancient dire wolves that roamed North America thousands of years ago, but they're pretty close.
[Wolf pups howling]
00:07:31
0wwww
Krista Bo
00:07:31
By using genes from their closest living relative, the gray wolf, they've created three pups. And maybe you can guess what their names are.
Ben Lamm
00:07:39
'The first are now six-months-old, that's Romulus and Remus.
Krista Bo
00:07:43
Now, in case you're like me and didn't watch "Game of Thrones," those are characters from the series. HBO, by the way, shares a parent company with CNN.
Ben Lamm
00:07:51
They're a little over 80 pounds. They're quite large. They are taller than wolves. They're longer than wolves, they're significantly stockier and thicker than wolves they have this Arctic white coat. They're truly, truly beautiful. So that's our two males. And then we birthed a female at the end of January and we named her Khaleesi.
Krista Bo
00:08:08
'These wild 80-pound hybrids now roam a 2,000-acre sanctuary, certified by the American Humane Society.
Ben Lamm
00:08:15
So they live a very, very great life. They currently play, they're starting to like funnily like track and hunt little leaves that are falling and stuff. So you're starting see emerging wolf behavior, which is pretty cool. And we'll probably expand the pack for with a couple more, just to the right level of pack dynamics that we were really hoping for.
Krista Bo
00:08:33
'Colossal Biosciences has a de-extinction wish list that includes other species, like the wooly mammoth and the dodo bird. But this work is already making a difference for living species that are endangered, with a new form of cloning that's less invasive for the animal.
Ben Lamm
00:08:46
because there's only 15 red wolves left in the wild. And while we meet three dire wolves, we actually cloned four red wolves, and we increased the genetic diversity of the pool by 25%. With this, we do a simple blood draw, so it's also much more humane for the animal, isolate those cells, and then you can clone from it. We now have a path to help save the most endangered wolf in the world.
Krista Bo
00:09:09
Some scientists question what role these dire wolves will play, or if we should be reviving extinct animals at all.
Ben Lamm
00:09:15
'We are in the middle of a biodiversity crisis. You know, we're gonna lose up to 50% of all biodiversity between now and 2050 if we don't do anything. So we need new tools and technologies to help save species. I fall into the category that it's better to have a de-extinction toolkit and not need it than need a deextinction tool kit and not have it.
Krista Bo
00:09:40
Up next, a Yorkie disappeared after a hurricane. A group of college students took him in. What happened next is pure joy.
Krista Bo
00:09:50
When Hurricane Laura hit the Gulf Coast in 2020, it was deadly and devastating. That's also when an adorable Yorkshire terrier named Kingston went missing from Lake Charles, Louisiana, one of the places hit hardest by the category four storm. That is until his owner got some good news last week.
Debbie LeFleur
00:10:08
Never, I never thought I would see him again.
Krista Bo
00:10:11
Debbie LaFleur got an email saying that her dog, Kingston, had finally turned up 300 miles away in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
Neil Richel
00:10:20
'I walked outside and there was just this Yorkie just sitting there in a red t-shirt.
Krista Bo
00:10:24
Neil Richel is the president of the Kappa Sig fraternity at the University of Southern Mississippi. And he said he and his frat brothers found the dog on the porch of the frat house. They named him Benji.
Neil Richel
00:10:35
Vice President when got his chip checked and that's when we found out that his name was actually Kingston not Benji and he had been missing for five years, which is kind of crazy.
Debbie LeFleur
00:10:43
Well, before I could call him, he called me. My heart just started pounding, and then I told my boss. I was like, I found Kingston. I found Kingston.
Krista Bo
00:10:52
Debbie and her son Jared then drove four hours from Lake Charles to Hattiesburg to pick up their beloved pup.
'Kingston - Debbie Reunion
00:11:00
Awwww
Neil Richel
00:11:01
As soon as she got out the car and he saw her. We've never seen Benji run like that. And he sprinted with his ears parked up, and it was awesome to see.
Krista Bo
00:11:13
Neil says Kingston is now an honorary member of Kappa Sig, and Debbie says she's so grateful to the Kappa Sig guys who took care of Kingston.
Debbie LeFleur
00:11:21
So happy to have my baby back.
Krista Bo
00:11:26
All right, that's all for now. Join us tomorrow for the next edition of One Thing. Host David Rind speaks with a scholar impacted by the public health research funding freeze at the National Institutes of Health.
Krista Bo
00:11:37
Five Good Things is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Eryn Mathewson and me, Krista Bo. Our senior producers are Felicia Patinkin and Faiz Jamil. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan Dzula is our technical director and Steve Lichteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio.
Krista Bo
00:11:54
We get support from Joey Salvia, Haley Thomas, Dan Bloom, Graelyn Brashear, Alex Manesseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Andrew Smith and Wendy Brundige. And especially thanks to you for listening.
Krista Bo
00:12:10
If you like the show, please consider giving us a good rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or sharing it with a friend. It helps us spread the good vibes. Take care, till next time.
