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5 Good Things: A Lunar New Year Ritual That Gets Messy (In a Good Way)
CNN 5 Things
Feb 1, 2025
A 21-year-old piano tuner brought music and joy back to a busy airport. We’ll tell you how researchers are working to protect bees from pesticide poisoning. Tossing food in the air is a Lunar New Year tradition these chefs won’t miss. Scientists are studying a 1.2-million-year-old piece of ice to learn about climate change. Six months ago, a preschool teacher gave part of her liver to a 5-year-old boy – we check in on them both.
Episode Transcript
Krista Bo
00:00:00
Hey there. It's a good day to look at the bright side, isn't it? Learn about a lunar New Year tradition that gets pretty messy, but in a good way. Plus,
Carissa Fisher
00:00:09
I had that missing piece, and I was like, well I'm not going to keep it from him, right?
Krista Bo
00:00:14
A heartwarming update on how a preschool teacher saved her former student's life. From CNN. I'm Krista Bo, and this is Five Good Things.
Krista Bo
00:00:30
'Airports are full of noise, announcements, rolling suitcases, hurried conversations. But at Chicago O'Hare International Airport, there was one sound missing - music. For years, a lonely rundown baby grand piano sat by Gate C-17, collecting dust, until the piano doctor showed up. His name is Josiah Jackson. He's a 21-year-old professional piano tuner with a massive YouTube following where he restores forgotten and broken pianos. And three years ago, when he was just starting his piano tuning business, he came across that lonely old piano at O'Hare that needed some serious TLC.
Josiah Jackson
00:01:13
So I played a little bit, but it was in really bad condition. The keys were sticking, it was pretty far out of tune. It just wasn't very fun to play.
Krista Bo
00:01:22
That's when he made himself a promise.
Josiah Jackson
00:01:24
I thought one day I'm going to come back here; I'm gonna tune it for free.
Krista Bo
00:01:27
'So last summer, he scheduled an eight-hour layover at O'Hare on purpose - with a game plan. First, he made sure the airport was cool with him doing the repair. And second, he mailed his tools a week in advance since they wouldn't make it through security.
Josiah Jackson
00:01:41
'Most of the repairs that I do for pianos are, you know, three or four hours at most. Like, that's a pretty in-depth job. But this one, I realized, my goodness, this thing is in terrible condition.
Krista Bo
00:01:51
'There was dust. There were cracks. And worst of all -
Josiah Jackson
00:01:55
Somebody had spilled alcoholic drinks all inside of the keys because it was next to a bar. So I had to take all the keys out, clean each one of them individually, and then put it back.
Krista Bo
00:02:06
It took hours of cleaning, adjusting and tuning. And with his departure flight looming, it was easily the most intense piano repair job Josiah had ever done.
Josiah Jackson
00:02:16
I think I had like five minutes left to get to my flight before it was boarding. So I have never run through an airport before, but that was the first time I had to do that.
Krista Bo
00:02:25
But first he had to celebrate a job well done by playing the song that first inspired him to take piano seriously as a kid. He played a song from "Pirates of the Caribbean." It was a full circle moment for him. After giving the O'Hare piano a new life, all documented on his YouTube channel, Josiah The Piano Doctor has received tons of comments and appreciation from people for making their trips sound a little sweeter.
Josiah Jackson
00:02:52
I think public pianos, any instrument, live music, anything related to that. It really brings people off of their screens and brings in like a community aspect to something where it may not have been there in the first place.
Krista Bo
00:03:13
Did you know that pollinators like bees are responsible for one out of every three bites of food you eat? Unfortunately, the pesticides we spray on our crops have contributed to the decline of the bee population, which in turn threatens our food supply. Well, the science world has been busy like the bees, and some new research to protect them looks promising.
Krista Bo
00:03:36
While getting her Ph.D. at Cornell University, Julia Caserto developed a sort of pesticide antidote for bees. Her work found that feeding bees synthesized hydrogel microparticles temporarily shields them from harmful toxins while it's in their system.
Julia Caserto
00:03:51
So think of them as tiny little jellos, and they're able to capture and absorb the pesticide. And they travel through the digestive track and then it's just excreted.
Krista Bo
00:04:03
And the tiny jellos is work.
Julia Caserto
00:04:05
So we did see a 30% improvement in survival compared to bees that didn't receive the treatment. We also saw a 44% increase in locomotor activity, meaning they can move around more.
Krista Bo
00:04:19
Meanwhile, at Penn State University, Margarita Lopez Uribe and her team of scientists are gluing tiny QR codes to thousands of bees backs to track their movements.
Margarita Lopez Uribe
00:04:29
I think this technology really allows us to understand honeybee behavior in a way that we were not able before.
Krista Bo
00:04:39
They found that bees actually live longer than we previously thought.
Margarita Lopez Uribe
00:04:43
We started this study assuming that they, you know, on average would live about four weeks. And we are finding that bees are foraging six and up to like eight weeks.
Krista Bo
00:04:52
And most of their journeys only last a few minutes, suggesting that a majority of them rarely venture far from their hives. This means that targeted pesticide free zones within a few miles of a bee colony could make a huge difference for bee survival.
Krista Bo
00:05:07
'Happy Lunar New Year everyone! Or as Aaron Khor from Malaysia puts it -
Aaron Khor
00:05:12
So normally we say, gong hei fat choi!
Krista Bo
00:05:17
The Cantonese phrase, gong hei fat choi, means wishing you happiness and prosperity. And this past Wednesday, he and millions of people around the world exchanged that greeting to celebrate 2025 as the year of the wood snake.
Krista Bo
00:05:30
The holiday lasts about 15 days and most commonly takes place in Asian communities around the world, from San Francisco to Singapore. New Year festivities vary from region to region, but most center around good luck. Whether it's eating auspicious food like noodles and oranges, or engaging in good luck activities like lighting firecrackers or wearing red clothing. Or the prosperity toss.
Aaron Khor
00:05:55
There's many names to it. We call it yeshung. This normally is a dish to sort of celebrate togetherness and having a meal together. And is to also symbolize a good fortune, a good a year ahead and a good health ahead as well.
Krista Bo
00:06:11
'Aaron is the co-founder and head chef at Fifty Tales, a Malaysian-Chinese restaurant in Malaysia. The prosperity toss is a special salad with ingredients like raw fish, carrots, radishes and cucumbers, all thinly sliced to represent longevity. Once the salad is ready to eat, everyone gathers around holding extra long chopsticks. And then they mix the ingredients and shout wishes for the new year.
Aaron Khor
00:06:37
So the saying isthe higher you go, the more prosperous you are. And you will toss the yeshung saying a lot of wishes, "Huat ah" or "Heng Ong Huat" meaning like, you know, just more wealth, more abundance, more happiness.
Krista Bo
00:06:51
Paul Liu is the restaurant manager of the Michelin guide recommended Keng Eng Kee Seafood in southern Singapore. He says the key to a good toss? Well, depends on who you ask. Older generations like a gentle toss. Nothing too vigorous. But he says younger people tend to let things get a little wild.
Paul Liu
00:07:10
Carrots flying around. Ingredients flying around the table. It's like a fun game. So there's two version. But both I think is signify a lot of laughter, a lot of of happiness.
Krista Bo
00:07:24
It's unclear whether the prosperity toss originated in Malaysia or Singapore, but Paul and Aaron agree that no matter how it started, the goal of the tradition is undeniable.
Paul Liu
00:07:34
The main reason why we have this is is about human connection.
Krista Bo
00:07:42
Earlier this month, scientists announced they retrieved a more than 9000 foot long ice core in Antarctica to study our ancient climate.
Dr. Carlo Barbante
00:07:52
We do that to reconstruct the climate of the past because an ice core is like a time machine.
Krista Bo
00:07:58
'Dr. Carlo Barbante fromItaly led Beyond EPICA, a team of researchers from ten countries that collected the 1.2 million-year-old core.
Dr. Carlo Barbante
00:08:08
Which is really extraordinary because the longest ice core record that has been drilled so far was covering about 800,000 years.
Krista Bo
00:08:15
With this newly drilled ice core, they have even more data to work with to try to figure out why our climate changed hundreds of thousands of years ago when ice ages became longer and more intense and nearly caused the extinction of our ancient human ancestors.
Dr. Carlo Barbante
00:08:31
So if you want to reveal what is behind that, we have to find the solution in an ice core because it holds a lot of information regarding the interlinking between changes in greenhouse gases and the temperature in the past.
Krista Bo
00:08:45
'So pieces of the core have been sliced and carefully transported in special boxes, kept at -50 degrees to labs around the world, so it doesn't melt and can be studied further.
Dr. Carlo Barbante
00:08:56
There is a lot of our past in our future, and so we need to know the processes and mechanisms of how climate change worked in the past to better understand what is happening today and what will happen in the future.
Krista Bo
00:09:13
'Coming up, we have some good news to report on a heartwarming story we told you about eight months ago. But before we go, we want to hear from you. Valentine's Day is right around the corner. Do you have anything special planned all in the name of love? Call us and let us know. The number is (404) 981-2293. We'll be right back.
Ezra Toczek
00:09:38
So Ms. Carissa had to share my liver.
Krista Bo
00:09:42
'It's been almost eight months since we told you about five-year-old Ezra Toczek, who received a life changing gift thanks to his former preschool teacher, Carissa Fisher.
Recording of Ezra's family getting good news
00:09:53
She's a perfect match. Are you serious? Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Krista Bo
00:09:59
Last May, Carissa surprised the Toczek family with the news that she was a perfect match to donate part of her liver to Ezra, who suffered from progressive liver disease.
Carissa Fisher
00:10:09
I had that missing piece, and I was like, well, I'm not going to keep it from him, right?
Krista Bo
00:10:14
The transplant took place in August at NYU Langone Health in New York City.
Ezra Toczek
00:10:19
I feel a little bit yucky.
Krista Bo
00:10:21
Ezra had its ups and downs in the hospital, but almost three months since going back home, he's already got big plans. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Ezra Toczek
00:10:31
It's still a dragon.
Krista Bo
00:10:32
A dragon now, whoa!
Krista Bo
00:10:34
Ezra's mom, Karen says she's thrilled that life is mostly back to normal.
Karen Toczek
00:10:39
Seeing him now, he's just so resilient. He's active. He's happy, you know, And he's he's doing all the things that he should be doing at his age. I mean, physically, he has just about no restrictions.
Krista Bo
00:10:51
Carissa said doctors took about 30% of her liver to give to Ezra, which will grow as he grows. And her liver will grow back, too.
Carissa Fisher
00:10:59
They said at the three month mark, it was back up to 85%. And then they said by the six month mark, it should be pretty close to 100%.
Krista Bo
00:11:09
That's next week, by the way. Karen and Carissa hope this experience inspires more people to become living donors.
Carissa Fisher
00:11:16
I know there's a lot of people on that transplant list and it only takes one person to change someone's life.
Karen Toczek
00:11:23
They really do make it as easy as possible for a donor.
Krista Bo
00:11:31
All right, that's all for now. Join us tomorrow for the next edition of One Thing, all about the deadly plane crash in Washington, D.C., and where aviation safety goes from here.
Krista Bo
00:11:41
Five Good Things is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Eryn Mathewson, Alex Rodway, 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 Andrest, Nichole Pesaru and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Wendy Brundige and Katie Hinman. And thank you for listening.
Krista Bo
00:12:13
If you liked the show, please consider giving it a good rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. It helps us spread the good vibes. Take care. Till next time.