Good morning, everyone. I want to start today with our good news update. I believe it’s important to keep this Sunday tradition going—because there is so much good in the world, even when it feels hard to find.
I’ll have another major Epstein files update for you in a few hours. I’m just finishing it up now. For transparency, I spent a large part of the weekend reviewing thousands more documents.
I invite you to share one piece of good news from your own life this week in the comments so we can continue building this community together. For me, the past week has been long—but deeply rewarding. Our Epstein coverage has put the survivors and their stories first. We have reached tens of millions of people. We are through more than 100,000 documents. We are just getting started.
Here’s the good news:
- After a non-English-speaking man rushed into a New Jersey police station for help, officers Benjamin Haines and Gabriel Chiarelli used Google Translate and hand gestures to communicate with his partner in labor, calmly guiding her through breathing and pushing and successfully delivering a healthy baby in the backseat of a car before paramedics arrived.
- Doctors at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia successfully used a world-first, fully personalized CRISPR gene-editing therapy to correct a life-threatening metabolic disorder in a newborn, allowing the baby—once at risk of severe brain or liver damage—to stop medications, tolerate protein in his diet, and begin thriving, while opening the door to tailored treatments for other ultra-rare genetic diseases.
- When strong winds swept his family’s paddleboards far off the coast of Western Australia, a 13-year-old boy swam for nearly four hours through rough seas—first with a life jacket, then without it when he feared it was slowing him—reaching shore in time to alert rescuers, whose rapid response saved his mother and two siblings after they drifted about seven miles into the ocean.
- During protests in Minneapolis, Vietnamese restaurant owner Tracy Wong opened her closed shop, My Huong Kitchen, to dozens of protesters and journalists fleeing tear gas, offering water, food, warmth, and comfort—an instinctive act of compassion that went viral and drew widespread community support to her small business in the days that followed.
@samiesolina
Samie Solina on Instagram: "I am so thankful for Tracy, who she…
- Amid heightened ICE activity, protests, and struggling restaurants in Minneapolis, chef Andrew Zimmern stepped in to cook and serve meals at a pay-what-you-can soup kitchen, urging people to respond to fear and uncertainty with practical action—supporting local restaurants, feeding neighbors, and rebuilding community through simple acts of care and presence.
@chefaz
Andrew Zimmern on Instagram: "Some days remind you what really …
- Guinea worm disease has fallen to a historic low of just 10 human cases worldwide in 2025—a 33% drop from the previous year—reflecting a more than 99.99% reduction since the Carter Center launched eradication efforts in 1986 and bringing the world closer than ever to eliminating what would become only the second human disease eradicated in history.
- A 91-year-old Nebraska woman who hoped to sell an old stoneware crock from her back porch for about $300 was stunned when the family heirloom—unused and overlooked for decades—sold at auction for $32,000, turning an everyday object into a life-changing surprise.
- After teaching herself to row and training for three years, a 25-year-old woman from landlocked Nebraska became the first female to complete the 3,000-mile World’s Toughest Row solo, crossing the Atlantic in 46 days while enduring storms, exhaustion, and isolation—and raising funds to inspire young girls along the way.
- A woman rediscovered letters from a childhood pen pal she’d forgotten—only to realize decades later that the pen pal had become her OB/GYN and the doctor who delivered both her children, turning a long-lost elementary school correspondence into an extraordinary real-life full-circle connection.
- A century-long study using hair samples shows U.S. lead pollution has fallen by about 100× since the early 1900s—especially after leaded gasoline was phased out starting in the 1970s—with lead levels dropping from around 100 ppm mid-century to under 1 ppm by 2024, demonstrating how environmental regulations dramatically improved public health, particularly for children.
- During a stretch of single-digit winter temperatures in Kentucky, a farming family brought a newborn calf that was close to freezing into their home, where their young children cuddled her on the couch overnight—saving her life before she was healthy enough to return to her mother the next morning.
- Researchers using long-term camera traps in Brazil’s Iguaçu National Park recorded jaguars producing meow-like sounds for the first time, revealing a previously unknown form of communication likely used by females to locate cubs and showing that jaguar vocal behavior is more complex than scientists previously believed.
- NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has confirmed an unexpectedly bright galaxy, MoM-z14, that formed just 280 million years after the Big Bang, pushing observations closer to cosmic dawn and challenging existing theories about early galaxy formation, chemical enrichment, and the timeline of reionization.
- Billionaire collector and conservationist Tom Kaplan auctioned Rembrandt’s rare drawing Young Lion Resting for a record $18 million, directing all proceeds to his wild-cat conservation group Panthera to combat poaching, habitat loss, and human–lion conflict across Africa and beyond, using art patronage to fund long-term survival of the species depicted in the work.
- Restoring more than 200 oxbow ponds across Iowa to save the endangered Topeka shiner has revived the fish in 60% of sites while also improving water quality and bringing back hundreds of other species, showing how targeted conservation can deliver wide ecosystem benefits on private farmland.
- After years of decline caused by aggressive hedge cutting, the rare Brown Hairstreak butterfly has rebounded in Carmarthenshire, South Wales, with record egg counts—up by around 50% on protected land—after landowners reduced hedgerow trimming, allowed blackthorn to grow, and worked with conservation volunteers to restore suitable habitat.
- New research shows medieval Augustinian monks built religious authority through “green-thumb” miracles tied to agriculture and ecology—such as restoring infertile land, healing livestock, and improving harvests—highlighting how their close relationship with nature gave them spiritual power and practical importance in rural Italy long overlooked by historians.
- A U.S. district judge has overturned a federal stop-work order for the fifth time, allowing major offshore wind projects—including Sunrise Wind—to resume construction, protecting billions in investment and paving the way for enough clean, cost-stable electricity to power about 2.5 million East Coast homes and businesses.
- Using bio-molecular archaeology and modern perfumery, researchers recreated 3,500-year-old scents—based on chemical residues from ancient Egyptian mummification materials—to let museum visitors literally smell history, deepening understanding of ritual, trade, and daily life through scented cards and diffusion stations in museums in Germany and Denmark.
- The centuries-old English pub game knurr-and-spell, nearly extinct since the 1970s, is being revived in South Yorkshire as enthusiast Boz Davison relaxes old equipment rules, brings former champions back into play, and organizes new matches—rekindling a quirky local sporting tradition once thought defunct.
- Scientists found that spores of the hardy moss Physcomitrella patens survived nine months exposed to the vacuum, radiation, and temperature extremes outside the International Space Station and still germinated at high rates, suggesting moss could one day help support ecosystems and life-support systems during long-term space exploration.
See you soon.
— Aaron
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