Good Morning. It’s Thursday, May 7th.
We’re opening up the Good News Brief to everyone today, so all you Spice Cabinet members, be extra sweet in the comments and show new folks how much fun we have around here — especially on Good News day.
Get your tissues. Here is your news brief for today.
Babies Are Hearing Their Mamas for the First Time
Did you hear about this? The FDA approved a gene therapy that cures a rare form of genetic deafness, and what that means is there are now a lot of videos out there of babies hearing their mothers’ voices for the first time, dancing to music for the first time, just lighting up. I have linked one for your convenience. You need to hack a cry today, this is your invitation.
This is not a workaround. This is not a hearing aid or a cochlear implant. They went in and they fixed it. I’m not actually tearing up but I do have goosebumps all the way down my legs right now. It’s incredible. I could watch these videos all day.
It’s still rare — the condition affects about 50 babies a year in the U.S. — and the company is essentially saying come on in, we’ll fix it for any baby who needs it. We’re not scaling beyond this particular mutation yet, but we now know it’s possible.
An Oslo Man, His Brother, and a Cure for HIV
There’s a 63-year-old man in Oslo who has effectively been cured of HIV after a stem cell transplant from his brother — who happened to carry a rare genetic mutation that makes him naturally resistant to the virus. Four years out, no functioning HIV DNA in his body. He’s the latest in a small group — about ten people worldwide — who have reached long-term remission this way.
I almost pulled this story because I feel like I have shared a lot of HIV breakthroughs over the last few months — they cured it, they prevented transmission, they functionally cured another patient. But that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? A growing number of people are functionally cured. This particular case is not scalable — you can’t just go around doing high-risk stem cell transplants — but every one of these cases teaches scientists something about how to get closer.
We are getting close, friends. We are getting close.
The Sperm Whales Are Out There Chatting
Researchers at Project CETI have figured out that sperm whales have an alphabet — and not just an alphabet. They have vowel-like sounds that follow patterns structurally similar to human speech, including parallels to languages like Mandarin where pitch shifts change meaning. They are out there talking to each other in a way that closely resembles how we talk to each other.
Are there whale podcasts? How can I listen? My gut instinct — and you know, with seven or eight dollars, my gut instinct will get you a cup of coffee — is that we are going to get to a place very soon where our understanding of animal consciousness, animal communication, and the relationship between the two is going to look very different than it does now.
The sperm whales are out there chatting. What’s next?
Six in Ten of Us Are Treating Each Other Kindly
Okay, I needed this one. I will admit — I have been very angry this week. I am admitting that about myself. I have been frustrated and angry with my fellow human beings, so I needed this data set: six in ten Americans say they see people treating others with kindness and respect often or very often. Sixty-five percent say they personally experienced an act of kindness from someone in their community in the past week. A majority say they would be comfortable initiating a kind act toward a stranger.
It’s nice to hear a kind story or to act kindly or receive kindness — but I don’t know, putting numbers around it helps me. Anecdotally I have not been feeling great about humanity this week. Hearing that the majority of people are experiencing kindness once a week makes me feel better. It feels more structural, if that’s the right word.
That is your Good News Brief for today. This usually lives behind the paywall as a Thursday exclusive for our paid Substack community, alongside the news brief Monday through Wednesday and the comments section full of lovely people. If you want all of that in your inbox, become a member. And if you are already a member — this whole thing exists because of you, and we love you so much.
Hope everybody has the best weekend available to you. I will see you back here Monday with another news brief. Until then, keep it nuanced, y’all.
