July 27, 2025

Why did a stranger pay a dad's breakfast bill?

Why did a stranger pay a dad's breakfast bill?

The episode features a touching act of kindness where a stranger pays for a father's family breakfast; a woman uncovering a creepy hidden book under her floorboards; Caltech's development of a new class of matter with potential applications in robotics and biomedicine; NASA's significant findings from asteroid Benu, revealing organic compounds crucial for life; and an innovative project where scientists use knitted hats on cats to study feline brain activity related to pain.

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Caalaroga Shock Media. Hey there, I'm Johnny mag with five

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good news stories. In Texas, a man was left in

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tears after a stranger paid for his family's breakfast and

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wrote a message on the receipt. Yeah. Dad's out with

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his wife and three kids. There a Mimi's cafe. They

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were getting ready to pay. The waitress said the eighty

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five dollars bill had already been settled. She handed him

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their re seat. It was a handwritten note on the

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bill which said thank you for being a great dad.

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He flipped the receipt over. It read from a dad

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to dad, thank you for being the dad they need

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you to be. Regardless of who's watching, we need more

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men like you. Thank you for letting us all see

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your love for them all. It was signed from a

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retired Army medic. Dad said, I couldn't control my tears.

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There was nobody watching. From my reaction, the person was

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already gone. It was just pure kindness. The dad, who

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had been wearing his hospital scrubs, had been playing a

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simple dot game with the kids at the table. I've

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no idea somebody was watching, Dad said, I see some

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of the most terrible things in the world. At work.

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But this reminded me that complete strangers can do miraculous,

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beautiful things when you least expected. It was just eighty

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five dollars to them, but to me it was so

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much more. These random acts of kindness are so powerful.

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There minus that despite all the bad in the world,

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there's so much good too. Boy, that is awesome. I

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love that story. A woman made a creepy discovery. She

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looked under the floorboards of her fifty year old house.

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That doesn't sound like a good idea. Amelia uploaded a

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video to TikTok detailing her eerie discovery. She said, I

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noticed there was nothing holding this floorboard down, so when

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you walk on it, it rattles a lot. Her curiosity

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led her to pry up the board to see if

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she could fix it. Instead, she found a hidden object

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in the debris. One of the items and Edward the

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seventh nineteen oh four penny. Then she found a gold

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colored book. It was filthy, she wondered, how long do

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you think it's been there. It's definitely a book, but

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they're not actual pages. They're really thick. I found other

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things like old nails and old paper. I'm tempted to

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look and see if I can find anything else. I'm

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left with so many questions, like why was this hidden

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there in the first place. She did a follow up

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video because this is TikTok and this was going viral

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and it's kind of fun. She said, it seemed like

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a normal book at the start, filled with old portraits,

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but things took a creepy turn as I went further

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into the book. She was shocked she found an old

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photo of her house, followed by images of empty rooms

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with a dark shadow present in each one. She said,

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I can't help but think what else is buried under

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the floorboards. When TikTok user said, what if by opening

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the book you've released what was being held in the photos,

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another person said it's a vintage postage book. I have

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one with some incredible dates and pictures. That's fun. I

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love doing the show, all right. Nice job by the

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California Technical Institute. They have developed a new class of matter. Yeah,

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you can't just do that on any old Tuesday, A

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new class of matter. The materials are called I'm gonna

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get this wrong, poly atinated architectural materials. No, I think

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I got that right. PAMs PAMs when they're compressed, they

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act like hard crystalline lattice, work like a solid, but

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when they're subjected to sheer force or lateral force, they

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behave like a Newtonian liquid, or more specifically, like a

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grain of rice or a grain of sand, reorganizing their

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structure to accommodate the motion. Guiara is the lab director

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and said, we all have a clear distinction of mind

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when we think of solid materials. In granule matter with PAMs,

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the individual particles are linked as they are in crystalline structures.

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And yet because these particles are free to move relative

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to one another, they flow, they slide on top of

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each other, and they change their relative positions more like

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grains of sand. What do you do with all this?

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The scientists like the potential it could be for soft robotics,

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biomedical tech, and protective gear. All right, we'll keep an

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eye on that. Meanwhile, NASA scientists back in twenty eighteen

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sent a mission to the near Earth asteroid Benu to

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collect pristine samples. It turns out there have never been

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more ingredients for life identified in a single extraterrestrial material

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of any kind. Benu carried all five DNA and RNA

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nucleobases and a ton of amino acids. The sample showed

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fourteen of the twenty amino acids contained in life on Earth,

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including all nine of the essential amino acids, blended in

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quote interesting ways. Benu's parent asteroids seems to have been

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home to pockets of liquid water. Benu was also found

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to be rich in nitrogen and ammonia bearing compounds, and

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the new findings indicate that water evaporated and left behind

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brines that resemble salty crusts of dry lake beds on Earth.

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What does it mean. It's unclear right now, but it's

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pretty cool. Boy. The scientists are out of this episode.

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Cats are wearing hats for scids. Scientists are trying to

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use brain scans to understand pain and arthritic felines and

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how to help the cats. Scientists wanted to create a

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non invasive method to study cat brains. In previous studies,

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the cats would shake the hat off and chew the wires.

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The answer was to incorporate sensors into comfy, crocheted beanies.

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Professor Castell said, we have the idea of little knitted

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hats that would keep the electrodes in place. They're working

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to see if different stimulations would liken people help modulate

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the cat brain activity. The report concludes this opens new

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avenues for investigating chronic pain mechanisms and developing novel therapeutic strategies.

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And those are your five good news stories today. Little

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science see no Guinness records, no lost pets, no message

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in a bottle trying to mix it up for you.

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If you enjoy the program, please tell a friend about it.

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They might like it too. If you would like the

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program without interruption, no commercials, no fee drops, none of

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that stuff, go to caliroga dot com slash plus link

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