Scribble

Krista Bo

00:00:01

Hey there, if you wanna go back in time seven decades and 124 light years away in 15 minutes or less, then you're in the right place.

Eva Longoria

00:00:10

I was searching for fun and I found it. My God, if anybody in the world knows how to have fun, it's the Spaniards.

Krista Bo

00:00:16

A special guest joins the podcast today to talk about the things that make us all happy, food and family. Plus, we'll tell you about a female magician's ultimate vanishing act and an even better comeback. From CNN, I'm Krista Bo, and this is 5 Good Things.

'Voice-o-Graph from 1955

00:00:35

(Recording of a happy birthday message)

Krista Bo

00:00:35

'I Know that's kind of hard to hear, but that's because this one-minute birthday message was recorded 70 years ago, near the top of the Empire State Building. And this talking postcard was just returned to its sender after record collector Joel De'ath stumbled upon it in a dusty warehouse.

Joel De'ath

00:00:56

We have lots of voices from people in the 50s. We have royalty and we have these politicians. But here we had, just for a moment, a little slice of her life. It tells a little story and it survived.

Krista Bo

00:01:08

'This vinyl called a Voice-O-Graph was recorded in 1955 by Valerie Stannard, who now goes by MacBean when she was 20- years-old. She was visiting America for the first time from a small London suburb.

'Voice-o-Graph from 1955

00:01:20

I'm speaking from the top of the Empire State Building. It must be the tallest building in the world.

Krista Bo

00:01:27

And was excited to see the tallest building in the word at the time. Valerie meant to send it to her parents back home, but obviously it never got to them.

Joel De'ath

00:01:35

'For me, the most exciting thing was that it was still within the original envelope with the address and I noticed it was 70-years-old and I thought, well, I have to go Columbo and find out who these people were. It might be...

Krista Bo

00:01:47

'A little Facebook sleuthing and a post in a local group led Joel to Valerie's daughter, Zoe. At first, she thought it was spam, but then they got in touch, and just a few weeks ago, the talking postcard was reunited with the woman who recorded it. Valerie's 90 now and lives in Canada. She doesn't remember recording the voice-o-graph, but she does remember her first impression of Americans.

'Voice-o-Graph from 1955

00:02:08

Everybody in America has been wonderfully talented to us.

Valerie Stannard

00:02:11

I was really impressed with how friendly and kind everybody was. They were very welcoming. I felt more comfortable traveling alone in the new world than I ever felt traveling alone in England, the old world.

Krista Bo

00:02:27

'And if Valerie could send her younger self a voice-o-graph today...

Valerie Stannard

00:02:31

Valerie, I'm very grateful to you that you did what you did, when you did it, and how you did it. Congratulations.

Krista Bo

00:02:41

'Rats don't have the best reputation, but let me introduce you to the one that might change your opinion. An African giant-pouched rat named Ronin and his rat pack are making a name for rodents everywhere by saving innocent civilians from hidden explosives.

Dr. Cindy Fast

00:02:56

Ronin is our up and coming superstar who's just broke the Guinness Book of World Records for the most landmines found by a rat.

Krista Bo

00:03:06

'Dr. Cindy Fast is the head of training and research at the non-profit APOPO, which is currently training 289 of these rats to sniff out these deadly explosives left over in former conflict zones.

Dr. Cindy Fast

00:03:17

So Ronin has found 124 explosive remnants of war, and that includes 109 landmines and 15 unexploded ordinances. And Ronin had been working for a little over or almost five years now in Cambodia.

Krista Bo

00:03:35

Ronan's work has returned nearly 200,000 square meters of land back to local communities, free to farm, build, and thrive. APOP says there's an estimated 110 million landmines still buried in over 60 countries around the world. And they're notoriously difficult and obviously dangerous to detect. So that's where these rats come in. Dr. Fast says they're too light to trigger the mines and their sense of smell is wildly powerful.

Dr. Cindy Fast

00:04:01

Our research has shown that our rats are capable of detecting as small as one picogram of TNT. That's the same as being able to smell a half a drop of chlorine diluted in an area the size of 20 Olympic swimming pools.

Krista Bo

00:04:17

And landmine detection isn't all these rats can do.

Dr. Cindy Fast

00:04:20

So we have rats in training for search and rescue operations and for counteracting illegal wildlife trafficking.

Krista Bo

00:04:28

They're even sniffing out tuberculosis in places like Ethiopia and Tanzania, finding tens of thousands of cases missed by initial screenings at health clinics. Dr. Fast says Ronan is just getting started, and their work shows humans and animals can do amazing things when they team up.

Dr. Cindy Fast

00:04:43

It really does demonstrate what these small but mighty heroes can do.

Krista Bo

00:04:50

So I turned 30 this September, and with a big birthday or any huge life change can sometimes come with excitement and or uneasiness about this next phase of your life. If anyone listening is feeling the same, my new friend Eva Longoria just turned 50 and gave some really great advice about how to live your best life. You might know her from the show, "Desperate Housewives," or other movies and TV.

Eva Longoria

00:05:15

I'm really refusing to believe that my greatest success is behind me. And I wanted to celebrate it loud and proud because it's such a beautiful age, I really up until now my life has been about saying yes and like your life should be about saying yes to every opportunity, travel everywhere, take that trip by yourself, like do it all, say yes. And now that I'm 50, it's about saying no and not doing things that take away from my peace, from my family, from... my time, because time is all you have now, and I want to spend it with people I love. I want invest it in things that will create joy, but I don't want to waste it.

Krista Bo

00:05:55

I'm sure most of us can agree the things that can bring us joy are food and family. Bonus points if it's both. And Eva's doing just that, reconnecting with her roots and discovering the unique flavors of Spain with her new CNN series, "Searching for Spain." She's retraced the steps of her ancestor, Lorenzo Longoria, who left the country in 1603 to seek a new life in the Americas.

Eva Longoria (Searching for Spain)

00:06:18

Hola familia!

Eva's relative

00:06:22

Hola Eva!

Eva Longoria (Searching for Spain)

00:06:22

Hola! Como estas?

Krista Bo

00:06:24

'400 years later, the proud Mexican-American from Texas got to meet some of her long-lost relatives and eat in her family's house that's over 500 years old.

Eva Longoria

00:06:34

I was searching for fun and I found it. My god, if anybody in the world knows how to have fun, it's the Spaniards. They really love to live life. And I always say this, whenever you want to know about a culture, the easiest way in is the food. People think it's like jamon and sangria, you know, jamon in paella, and it's so much more. It is so diverse from the north to the south, all of the influences, the historic influences that have been through there that have left an impact on the food That's a different ambiance than Mexico was, than Italy was with Stanley Tucci. It's absolutely stunning, but also you feel the energy of each region we go into and you're like, I want to go there. I want be there. I want drink that. I want eat that.

Krista Bo

00:07:16

So I've been to Spain before for the first leg of my honeymoon.

Eva Longoria

00:07:20

Where?

Krista Bo

00:07:20

I went to Ibiza

Eva Longoria

00:07:22

Ok.

Krista Bo

00:07:22

So the island, you know, off of it. And that's where I fell in love with seafood. I wasn't a big seafood girl. Paella was like, and the ceviche, it was amazing. But as you were saying, Spain has so much more to offer. What were some of the most memorable moments meals that you had?

Eva Longoria

00:07:37

There were so many memorable meals. Obviously paella on any beach is a good idea.

Krista Bo

00:07:42

For sure.

Eva Longoria

00:07:43

But the fresh fish, I'm not a canned seafood person. Like, okay, tuna, yeah, I'll have like canned tuna, but like canned mussels, canned oysters, sardines. I'm like, nope, no, thank you. Never have eaten it in my life. Spain is like the capital of canned seafood because the seafood is so fresh. It is like as if it just came out of the ocean. And they put, they do all these different sauces. So you can have it in this sauce and this sauce. You eat it on a cracker and it's a meal. It's like a gourmet meal. Ibiza is a great entry point, but then go to Málaga and then go the Cordoba and then to Sevilla and then you go to the Galicia because you're gonna have the best meat in the world in Galicia too. It's insane. People should travel just to eat.

Krista Bo

00:08:26

Absolutely! So, what's another thing that Americans can learn from the Spaniards?

Eva Longoria

00:08:31

You know what really stuck to me is when you go to a restaurant, nobody's on their phones. People talk to each other. There's a thing called Hora de Vermouth, which is like a Vermouth Hour. It's almost like our happy hour.

Searching for Spain Guest

00:08:45

Family, friends, salty snacks, a couple of beverages, the whole thing starts coming together.

Eva Longoria (Searching for Spain)

00:08:52

This is like my kind of living.

Eva Longoria

00:08:56

But also if somebody goes, "hey, let's go have a drink," they mean right now. They mean like, come on, let's go. And you have to say yes, and you go and sit down, and you spend the afternoon in an impromptu, you know, meeting with a friend.

Eva Longoria (Searching for Spain)

00:09:09

I'm in heaven, I'm heaven. Okay, we should try this first, right?

Searching for Spain Guest

00:09:12

Salud. Salud!

Eva Longoria (Searching for Spain)

00:09:13

Oh, it has an olive inside. It's not as sweet as some I've tried. Oh.

Searching for Spain Guest

00:09:18

It's not. And the thing is, you could...

Eva Longoria

00:09:19

I just think like the way of living you're gonna look at the show and go You know what? I think we should slow down for meals. We should slowdown to their pace and enjoy the moment

Krista Bo

00:09:29

Check out Eva Longoria's new show, "Searching for Spain," premiering this Sunday, April 27th, at 9 pm Eastern on CNN. New episodes air every Sunday.

Krista Bo

00:09:42

'You might remember last November we told you about a magician who pulled off the ultimate trick, disguising herself as a man named Raymond to sneak into the all-male Magic Circle Society. This is a very prestigious club. King Charles is even a member. Anyway, they kicked her out of the group in the 90s when she revealed that she had deceived them, even though they had just voted to allow women. The group said last year that they wanted to right the wrong more than 30 years later and welcome her back in if they could find her. Well, good news, they did. BBC Radio 4 spoke to the Magic Circle Society's newest member, Sophie Lloyd, this week about how it all started.

Sophie Lloyd

00:10:21

My magician friend, the late Jenny Winstanley, she was really behind all this and with her tuition, I managed to do this character.

Krista Bo

00:10:30

The Magic Circle's chair, Laura London, was the one who spearheaded the campaign to find her. She told the BBC that they're not only welcoming Sophie back with open arms.

Laura London

00:10:39

We're also recognizing Jenny's contribution to magic as well, not only for what she had done to prove that women were as good as the guys, but also for what's she done for magic.

Krista Bo

00:10:50

Sophie told the radio station that she's beyond thrilled to return.

Sophie Lloyd

00:10:54

After all these years, things have changed so much. I mean, the welcoming was wonderful. This is for Jenny.

Krista Bo

00:11:02

Next, the discovery that has some scientists saying it's the most promising sign yet of life beyond our solar system.

Krista Bo

00:11:12

For years, scientists and people like me have wondered if life exists on other planets. Well, a new study shows we could be closing in on an answer. A team of scientists have detected what could be evidence of life on a distant planet outside our solar system. And the lead author of the study says this could be a big deal.

Nikku Madhusudan

00:11:32

We'll see if this is confirmed. This is going to be a major transformational moment in the history of science.

Krista Bo

00:11:37

'Nikku Madhusudan is a professor of astrophysics and exoplanetary science at the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University. Last week, he and a team of scientists published the study in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. They said they may have detected signs of biological activity on a planet called K2-18B, which is about 124 light-years away from Earth.

Krista Bo

00:12:00

'Nikku says it could be a habitable planet that's entirely covered by liquid water in a hydrogen-rich atmosphere. So what's the evidence of this? Chemical signatures of certain gasses within the planet's atmosphere. Basically, teeny tiny molecules found using an ultra-powerful space telescope.

Nikku Madhusudan

00:12:17

We are seeing hints of at least one of the two molecules, maybe even both, and both of these molecules are known to be uniquely produced by life here on Earth.

Krista Bo

00:12:28

'Nikku and his co-authors are cautious and acknowledge that more data is needed before they can claim direct evidence of life on another world.

Nikku Madhusudan

00:12:36

It is also possible that in a few years we'll realize that there is another chemical process that could explain this, and that would be a discovery of a new chemical process. So however you cut it, I think this is a win for science.

Krista Bo

00:12:51

'All right, that's all for now. Join us tomorrow for the next edition of One Thing. Host David Rind talks with CNN senior reporter Katie Bo-Lillis about how the sport of horse racing has changed ahead of the Kentucky Derby.

Krista Bo

00:13:04

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. We get support from Dan Bloom, Joey Salvia, Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Wendy Brundige, and thank you, as always, for listening. Take care, til next time.

CNN 5 Good Things