Around the World without Flying, Butterfly Rebound, and Underwater Living

0:03 Calaroga Shark Media. Hello Johnny Mack with five good news stories. Nice job out of Thorpe Peterson. He's a Danish traveler who has finished a trip around the world. He spent nearly ten years visiting every country in the world, and he did it without flying. In twenty thirteen, Thor read an article about somebody who had visited all the countries of the world, and Thor realized he could do the same thing, but without flying. His rules no flying, no visiting home, and spending at least twenty four hours in every country. He hoped that he could live on about twenty dollars a day and finish his trip in about four years. First part of the trip was pretty easy, although he had to quit his job and leave his parents and girlfriend behind.

0:46 He traveled across Europe and North America. In those places, his biggest challenge was not spending too much money. Then it got harder. You know, there's oceans and stuff. He had to take boats. Sometimes it was hard to find a boat. Sometimes he was on a boat for days. He traveled by taxi, bus, train, even walked. He traveled in cargo containers and in the backs of trucks with fifty other people. Wow. Sometimes he paid for a place to stay. Sometimes people invited him into their homes. Other times he slept outside. He was once held a gunpoint and thought he might be killed. He also got malaria, but he's optimistic. He said, you might have to try one thousand closed doors, but there's always an open door somewhere. Never ever give up. His girlfriend, special Woman, she visited him several times. On one trip, he asked her to marry him, but because of the pandemic, he got stuck in Hong Kong for two years. Wow. They got married online and his wife was able to join him for part of the time. He says he's looking forward to some quiet time to think about his trip. A ten year old was inspired by one man's kindness crusade and vowed to complete ten acts of kindness to celebrate his tenth birthday. Max was a grandmaz watching TV and Max said, we were watching the news he was on. In the background, I saw Brian's story. What's Brian's story was a story about a Bay Area person named Brian who his mission was to complete thirty acts of kindness to celebrate his thirtieth birthday. And Max said, I thought it was so cool and I wanted to do it too. Since Max was about to be ten, he didn't go with thirty. He went with ten makes sense. His first act, he made hundreds of ham and cheese sandwiches to be delivered to a San Francisco homeless shelter and who helped the Max Brian nice job everybody staying in the Bay

2:22 Area. Andy Wang goes by the moniker ping weather he's traveled across the Bay Area cleaning up illegal dumping sites. He then uploads time lapse videos of before and after photos. He says, it's like an art seeing the before and afters what's underneath the trash. Basically, I'm just trying to show people that actions have consequences, good and bad. Consequences bad if we do nothing and this is what we end up with. Good if we take the time to think about what we did and not illegally dump. He says, I prefer doing it by myself. It just gives me time to be by myself. As I pick up the trash, I think about life. I think for me, it's a time to decompress. I've seen people post what they've been doing for their neighborhoods and just feels really nice to know that I've inspired people. Good news. If you're a monarch butterfly, you guys are doing a lot better. The last couple of years, we heard that the numbers had dropped. In the winter of twenty twenty, researchers counted less than two thousand monarch butterflies. Over the past two years, the numbers have grown to nearly three hundred thousand. That said, it's still about ninety percent below the historic norms seen in the nineteen eighties, when they were an estimated one to fifteen million monarch butterflies. I've never counted butterflies, but one million and fifteen million seem like very different numbers. Guys. Back then, they would cluster on trees and numbers so great that their combined weight would sometimes break tree branches.

3:37 Emma Pelton oversees some of the counting and says people get excited about these year to year variations. Compared to twenty twenty, it definitely looks better, But when we zoom out look at the numbers three decades ago, we'd see there's a long way to go. If you want to be a butterfly counter you typically work in a pair. You do your work in the early morning, just after sunrise, when it's too cold for the monarchs to fly. They usually just on the tree branch and you can count them pre easily. They wait for the temperatures to warm above sixty degrees. Then the butterflies take off and search for water and nectar. Emma reminds us. Without insects and plants, we don't have a planet. Congratulations to doctor deep Sea. He's Joseph to Turi and he just spent one hundred days living in a small room underwater.

4:19 He beat the world record. The old record was seventy three days. The hotel is twenty two feet under the ocean's surface in a protected are in Key Largo. Doctor deep Sea wanted to learn how the pressure would affect the human body over time. In the undersea room, he was living with pressure that's about sixty six percent greater than the pressure on the surface. He believes that high pressure could help people live longer and stay healthier as they get older. He exercised in the morning. He kept teaching his college classes, and he had online chats with over fifty five hundred students from fifteen different countries. During his time under sea, he became half an inch shorter. He also said he was able to sleep much better, and when he got back to the surface, he was happy to see the sun again. That's your five good news stories for to day. If you enjoy the program, tell a friend about it. They might enjoy it too, and you have a great day.