Hey there! Here's your weekly dose of feel good stories. You'll hear about a powerlifters journey to gain unimaginable strength at an age when most lose it.
Some young boys came in when I was training and they got up and they left. They said, 'ain't no way, I'm going to compete with a grandma.'
Plus, a special kind of robot that will help explore and protect ocean ecosystems without damaging them. From CNN, I'm Krista Bo. And this is Five Good Things.
A lot of high schools have marching bands and orchestras, but very few of them have a Mariachi band program. Well, it turns out that it's an art that's growing nationwide. That's Bryan Station High School's mariachi Escudo in Lexington, Kentucky, led by Director Genaro Rascon.
Well, Mariachi education has been growing in the United States for close to 30 years. In states like California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, it's huge. And Kentucky doesn't have anything like that. Our program is the absolute first of its kind. We're currently in our second year of the program.
Mariachi Escudo is more than just music. It's a bridge connecting students to their culture.
Students that weren't traditionally inclined to be in a band program are now suddenly interested in being in band. Their parents know this music. They grew up hearing it on the radio. So it's a little something more close to home that they can relate to.
The band had its first public performance at the Viva Mexico Festival in Lexington, Kentucky on Sunday. Genaro said it was a huge success.
I could see from the support that we were getting. The community really embraced us in a wonderful way.
He hopes this program will inspire a new generation.
'Mariachi music deserves to be on the same stages as Bach and Beethoven. It's multi-disciplinary and it has a deep and beautiful history.
Some young boys came in when I was training and they got up and they left. They said, 'aint no way, I'm going to compete with a grandma.'
'That's Nora Langdon. She's considered one of the best senior powerlifters in the world, at 81-years-old. Nora's journey into powerlifting began later in life. In her 60s, she found herself losing strength and stamina.
I never played sports. I've always been a realtor and going up and down the stairs, it was tiring. My strength was going down to nothing. So I said, 'I need strength because I'm not going to go out like that.'
She met her trainer, Art Little, at a birthday party 16 years ago.
I did not think she was going to be in powerlifting. I thought she was just going to come get some exercise and lose some weight. The first time she couldn't squat.
I was taken from the top of my head to the soles of my feet and I decided I'm not going back. And I hurt a little voice. I guess it was spiritual. And the voice said, 'go back.'
Without exercising, research shows muscle starts disappearing as early as our 30s, and by the time your Nora's age, half your muscle mass could be gone if you don't work at it.
'It's like anything else. You buy a brand new Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, let it sit for 30 years, it's going to fall apart. Same thing with the body.
Nora made a name for herself at her first state competition in 2006, squatting 190 pounds and dead lifting 250 pounds.
She set all the national records and world records for age weight class in her first meet.
'Nowadays, she posts videos on Instagram of her squatting almost 100 pounds more and dead, lifting up to 285 pounds. The 81-year-old says she won't stop any time soon.
I love what I do, so I don't say you should quit, but I never quit. You've heard it all your life. When you retire, sit down, do nothing, watch TV. That's the worst thing you could do. Keep that body movin until the Lord call you home.
Tecumseh and Elisia Manuel had dreamed of starting a family. When it finally happened, they felt their prayers had been answered four times over.
'When I tell people I was abundantly blessed, within six months, I became a mom to four children that were all under the age of two- years-old.
'Elisia and her husband became licensed foster parents in 2012. They're part of the Gila River Indian community in Arizona, a state where Native American children are not only overrepresented in the foster care system, they also outnumber eligible foster parents. It was Elisia's own experience as a foster parent and adoptive mother that led her to start her nonprofit, Three Precious Miracles. It's a volunteer run organization that supports vulnerable Native American youth and their families. And helps them stay in touch with their heritage - work that's earned her the title of a 2024 CNN Hero.
I started out just providing basic resources, clothes and shoes and diapers. I would tell my family like, don't throw away your stuff. There's people that need it.
But she didn't stop there. Caregivers have reached out to her for advice on keeping a strong connection between Native American foster kids and their cultural roots.
They want kids to come and actually feel like their sense of identity and culture is right there.
So Elisia started a project where elders make quilts for children in foster care depicting their tribal affiliation. She's organized powwows that feature songs, drumming and dancing. And her nonprofit also offers bead working classes, educational workshops and parenting classes.
When we can incorporate our culture and have that sense of identity, your world changes.
If you'd like to get involved or learn more about her story, check out cnn.com/heroes. The link is also in our show notes.
There is still so much about the ocean we don't know. So some engineering students in Zurich are trying to help scientists learn more by building a very special kind of robot, a fish robot.
The main goal of using this this kind of robot, we want to build a reliable tool for biologists that will let them analyze our environments in the least harmful way.
'Dennis Baumann is a master's student and a member of SURF e-DNA. This group has spent two years building this soft robotic fish. The latest model is called Eve.
With Eve, specifically, we are able to identify the species and how healthy the population is; maybe prevent species from being endangered or dying out. We can see what measures have to be taken to protect the ecosystem and to possibly rehabilitate it as well.
'Equipped with a camera, sonar technology and a silicon tail that swings side-to-side, eve swims around on her own so the robot isn't remote controlled. Dennis says even other robotic fish are minimally invasive to the ecosystem and provide a new way to study the world's oceans and its inhabitants.
Up next, how astronauts can float while they vote.
'NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams were supposed to be back from the International Space Station by now. However, NASA deemed it was too unsafe for them to ride Boeing's Starliner spacecraft back home. But the change of plans isn't stopping them from voting in the 2024 presidential election - from over 200 miles above Earth.
You know, it's a very important duty that we have as citizens and looking forward to being able to vote from space, which is pretty cool.
Butch said he requested his ballot last Friday.
And they should get it to us in a couple of weeks. And absolutely yes. It's a very important role that we all play as citizens is to be included in those elections. And NASA makes it very easy for us to do that.
Suni and Butch, like most U.S. astronauts, live near NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas. And thanks to an expansion of the state election code in 1997, it now includes Texas voters, quote, who will be on a space flight during the early voting period and Election Day. So, yep, astronauts can vote while they float.
How does it work? An encrypted ballot is emailed to them. They vote and then the ballots are beamed back to Earth the same way most data is transmitted between the space station and mission control. And then it gets processed like any other ballot. Butch and Suni's votes will touch down on Earth months before they do, since they're supposed to return home on Space X's Crew Dragon in February 2025. If you need help sorting out how to vote, we've got something at CNN called the CNN Voter Handbook. Head to cnn.com/vote to learn everything you need to know about voting in your state.
All right. That's all for now. Join us tomorrow for the next edition of One Thing. Host David Rind speaks to CNN's David Culver, who traveled to El Salvador to figure out how a country once known for violence is now convincing some citizens who fled to come back.
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 Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio. We get support from Joey Salvia, Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrust, Nichole Pesaru and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Katie Hinman. And thank you for listening. Take care. Till next time.
