The man with the lifetime airline pass

0:03 Kalaroga Shark Media man, I made out on this deal. Back in nineteen ninety, he purchased a lifetime companion pass with United Airlines. We're twenty three million miles later. Now, Hi, I'm Johnny Mack with five good news stories. He said, what's crazy as he points out, what are the odds that someone took a picture of my very first United flight? He is dubbed the world's most traveled air passenger. He's taken more than twelve thousand flights, He's visited more than one hundred counties. I hope he's in group one, he said. I bought the pass for business reasons because I was going back and forth to Australia. So round trip was twenty five thousand dollars a person for first class. The two people's fifty grand. So understand, I've been there to Australia four hundred times, so I've gotten my money's worth.

0:53 So back then, the lifetime companion pass, which they no longer offer, cost him five hundred ten thousand dollars that's in today's dollar is one point two million. It allows him and another person to fly first class around the world whenever he wants. He said, Now listen to this. He said, I was scared to death to fly. You know, sometimes people get prepared to fly. Well, sometimes I get real prepared. I mean I got nervous, especially when you're delayed with engine problems. That's all I need to hear. Oh, there are other perks. He avoids, baggage fees and skips lines. But the best perk, he says, I can be in the air and we're delayed and I'm gonna miss my flight, and I sit back and relax because when I get on the ground, they've already figured everything out. They have the boarding pass for X flight. They literally will take me in a cart or even actually a Mercedes or Jaguar or whatever it is these days, and we'll go on the tarmac and drive me to my next plane. Nice. He's met celebrities on his flights, like members of Aerosmith and comedian Bill Murray. He somehow convinced Bill Murray to leave his brother a voicemail. When Tom got to ten million miles, United named two of their planes after him. I wonder why too, not just one will live airstop fl lying, he says, not until he reaches twenty five million miles.

2:04 But until then, he's going to sit back and relax and seat one B. You probably knew this, but reading is good for you. Lenna Wimmer is a post doctoral researcher at Germany's Maximilian University, and she explained that she and her colleagues did a study about fiction's effect on thinking. She tells SI Post. Over the last decade, scholars from several disciplines have claimed far reaching benefits but also potential disadvantages of reading fiction for cognition in the real world. I wanted to get an objective, quantitative overview of the relevant empirical evidence in order to decide whether any of these assumptions is supported by empirical studies. They studied eleven thousand participants and found that reading fiction at a small but statistically significant positive effects on subjects cognition. People that read more fiction seem to better empathize with others and understand the way they thought. So they did another study thirty thousand participants that one found positive correlation between reading fiction and cognitive abilities, especially when it came to verbal skills, reasoning, abstract thinking, and problem solving.

3:06 Wimer threw down the gault said people read a lot of fiction and better cognitive skills than people who read little or no fiction. All right, good news. Kamada Ranch got a land easement. The local executive director of Land Conservacy says it's an incredible landscape filled with rolling hills, green grass, oak, woodlands and really important wildlife habitat. The land's going to remain privately owned by the family, but it will also be open to nature tourists from the public, and most importantly, the land is now protected against any future development. Emily Morrison grew up on the ranch and said it's almost like a sibling because you look after it. We're borrowing it from our grandchildren. We believe we're just a link in the chain. Co owner Felicia says southern California used to look like this. There's no guarantee it'll stay like this unless we protect it. Congratulations to Pusatoni Phil and wife Phyllis. They are the proud parents of Sonny and Shadow. Son a female groundhog, Shadow a male Pocksatani phill.

4:02 In case you haven't figured it out, a groundhog, probably the most famous groundhog from Pokxatoni, Pennsylvania, where you know every year he does the groundhog thing Shadows. You've seen the movie. You know how groundhogs work. I will move on. Dan McGinley, who's the vice president of the Pucksatoni Groundhog Club, made it clear these are not his replacements. They're not the heir apparent. Sonny and Shadow will not be part of the ceremony. It still fills job. There's still only one Puckxatoni Phil. I'm not so sure about the the I believe the role of Pucksatoni Phil may or may not be performed by different groundhogs over the years and decades. You know what I'm saying.

4:44 McGinley read from a scroll. Today, the first family of groundhogs has grown. Pucksatoni Phil and wife Phyllis have two kits of their own. If that comes up in trivia, apparently a kit is a young groundhog. Keep that in the back of your brain for a pub Trivia babies were discovered in March by a club member who was feeding fruit and vegetables to Phil and Phillis, and they were like, Hey, what's this all right? I know this show is called five Good News Stories, but technically I think this one is bad news. Let me just tell you. A Canadian city was attempting to break the Guinness World Record for largest gathering of people dressed as dinosaurs, right, I mean, what could go wrong here? Well? The tourism organization for a town of Drumheller, Alberta said in a Facebook post that the cities downtown attracted more than three thousand people in dinosaur costumes, but they couldn't obtain an exact measurement of the participants. Photos and videos from the attempt suggests there may have been almost double the number of three thousand, but an accurate count couldn't be obtained because officials were unprepared for such a massive turnout. Carrie, who is the marketing manager for Travel Dumbheller, says we weren't entirely prepared for that many people to come. Guinness said there were people that they had witnessed leaving the area if they'd beenrisbanded, so they weren't following what the volunteers had told them by staying in the space. They had to be all together in the area for one solid minute. Therefore, the attempt was disqualified.

6:11 They did not break the record, which is two hundred and fifty two people. The town is hoping to make Jurassic Jamboree an annual event, and next time they go for the record, they'll be better prepared. They say, we're gonna have other processes in place to really help, and we're gonna prepare for at least double the number of people. And those are your five good news stories for today. If you would like this program commercial free, check out the show notes. There's a link there. It says Caloroga dot Supportingcast dot FM. What you do is you click on that, it'll open up this page and there you sign up for four ninety nine a month. You'll get this show commercial free, and a bunch of other shows on the network, including at Daily Comedy News, which I host seven days a week. You'll get that one commercial free as well, and you can check out all the other shows. So give that a Lookkalaroga dot supportingcast dot FM, and you have an awesome day.