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We bring you 5 stories that will get you up to speed and on with your day. Updates at 6am, 9am, 12pm, 3pm and 6pm Eastern, every weekday.

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5 Good Things: A First For Kentucky, a High School Mariachi Band
CNN 5 Things
Sep 21, 2024

Students at a Kentucky high school that wouldn’t have been interested in band before now play in the state’s first mariachi band. Nora Langdon is considered one of the best senior powerlifters in the world and wants to inspire others to keep exercising. An Arizona woman is named a?CNN Hero?for supporting Native American foster youth and families. A team of student engineers in Zurich have developed a robotic fish that can help scientists study ocean ecosystems in a new way. Plus, how astronauts can?vote?in space.?

Episode Transcript
Krista Bo
00:00:00
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.
Nora Langdon
00:00:11
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.'
Krista Bo
00:00:20
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.
Krista Bo
00:00:35
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.
Genaro Rascon
00:00:59
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.
Krista Bo
00:01:17
Mariachi Escudo is more than just music. It's a bridge connecting students to their culture.
Genaro Rascon
00:01:24
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.
Krista Bo
00:01:42
The band had its first public performance at the Viva Mexico Festival in Lexington, Kentucky on Sunday. Genaro said it was a huge success.
Genaro Rascon
00:01:55
I could see from the support that we were getting. The community really embraced us in a wonderful way.
Krista Bo
00:02:04
He hopes this program will inspire a new generation.
Genaro Rascon
00:02:07
'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.
Nora Langdon
00:02:22
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.'
Krista Bo
00:02:31
'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.
Nora Langdon
00:02:48
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.'
Krista Bo
00:03:04
She met her trainer, Art Little, at a birthday party 16 years ago.
Art Little
00:03:08
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.
Nora Langdon
00:03:15
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.'
Krista Bo
00:03:28
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.
Art Little
00:03:38
'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.
Krista Bo
00:03:45
Nora made a name for herself at her first state competition in 2006, squatting 190 pounds and dead lifting 250 pounds.
Art Little
00:03:55
She set all the national records and world records for age weight class in her first meet.
Krista Bo
00:04:00
'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.
Nora Langdon
00:04:11
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.
Krista Bo
00:04:35
Tecumseh and Elisia Manuel had dreamed of starting a family. When it finally happened, they felt their prayers had been answered four times over.
Elisia Manuel
00:04:44
'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.
Krista Bo
00:04:52
'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.
Elisia Manuel
00:05:28
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.
Krista Bo
00:05:36
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.
Elisia Manuel
00:05:45
They want kids to come and actually feel like their sense of identity and culture is right there.
Krista Bo
00:05:50
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.
Elisia Manuel
00:06:09
When we can incorporate our culture and have that sense of identity, your world changes.
Krista Bo
00:06:15
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.
Krista Bo
00:06:30
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.
Dennis Baumann
00:06:45
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.
Krista Bo
00:06:56
'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.
Dennis Baumann
00:07:09
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.
Krista Bo
00:07:28
'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.
Krista Bo
00:07:54
Up next, how astronauts can float while they vote.
00:08:03
'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.
Suni Williams
00:08:23
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.
Krista Bo
00:08:31
Butch said he requested his ballot last Friday.
Butch Wilmore
00:08:34
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.
Krista Bo
00:08:44
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.
Krista Bo
00:09:03
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.
Krista Bo
00:09:43
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.
Krista Bo
00:09:59
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.