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CNN 5 Good Things
How about a break — for your ears? At CNN, we know the news can be a lot to take in. So each week, 5 Good Things offers you a respite from the heavy headlines and intense news cycle. Treat yourself to something fun and uplifting every Saturday as we share the bright side of life from all over the globe.
This State Made Child Care Free
CNN 5 Good Things
Dec 13, 2025
New Mexico is now the first in the nation to offer a key financial lifeline for parents. In DC, a Metro bus driver made a powerful impression on a young rider. A group of nuns in Wisconsin and a Native tribe worked together in a way that hasn’t been done before in the US. A dog who was missing for five years is now home for the holidays. Plus, this new league held its first draft – meet some of the powerhouse players.
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Host/Producer: Krista Bo Polanco
Producer: Eryn Mathewson
Showrunner: Faiz Jamil
Senior Producer: Felicia Patinkin
Editorial Support: Chelsea Bailey, Jo Parker, Elliott Proctor
Episode Transcript
Krista Bo Polanco
00:00:00
Hey there, I hope you're having a good day so far. I'm Krista Bo Polanco and this is CNN Five Good Things.
Araia Breedlove
00:00:06
Now we're seeing for the first time in US history where it's not just an acknowledgement, but we have actions behind those words.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:00:16
We'll tell you why leaders from a native tribe in Wisconsin called what happened next a powerful step toward healing. Then hear how a dog who was missing for five years found its way home, and how a friendship a curious fifth grader made with his bus driver comes full circle. Plus,
Mo'ne Davis
00:00:31
It's a little crazy honestly, just because growing up it's not something that I thought would happen.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:00:37
A brand new chapter in America's favorite pastime awaits. We gotta take a quick break, but when we come back, a bold experiment in childcare just launched, and thousands of families are already feeling the savings.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:00:54
As childcare costs soar and affordability becomes a national flashpoint, one state has taken a leap no other has. New Mexico has made childcare free for most families.
Charlie Wisoff
00:01:05
I don't know why this didn't exist before. It's nice that it exists now. It feels like one of those things like, Oh, like government's actually like working
Heather Applewhite
00:01:12
I'm just like, oh my gosh, like what luck? Like I won the childcare lottery.
Dana Britton
00:01:17
I think this was a this was a good choice. Investing in our kids is a good choice.
Amy Suman
00:01:22
I have not met a single person who was like, I would really love to pay an arm and a leg for child care. I don't like this idea at all. Everybody needs it.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:01:31
And first time parent Emily Wildau says the program is a financial stress relief.
Emily Wildau
00:01:35
It was about eighteen hundred dollars for one month. The fact that childcare was literally like doubling my mortgage payment is kind of wild.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:01:45
'Emily and her husband have an 11-month-old named Logan, and they live in Albuquerque. She works for a nonprofit that helped the state design the program, but says she wasn't involved. She says the program will help her family save about $21,000 a year.
Emily Wildau
00:02:02
We're really fortunate. We're in that group of people that are now in the expanded group that are able to access this. We would have been able to make it work, but it would have been difficult. It would have meant, you know, when my husband's car broke down, that that would have been really hard for us to figure out how to pay for both things. It it just takes a lot of stress away from us of knowing we're gonna be able to have our son in childcare where he makes friends and is learning and is safe and is cared for.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:02:31
Previously only families, who made below the federal poverty line were eligible. But on November 1st, the program expanded access to families at all income levels. Since then, the state's Early Childhood Education and Care Department says nearly 6,000 families have registered.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:02:45
As the country watches New Mexico's progress, some worry about the state's ability to staff and fund the program long term. So far, it's paid for largely through oil and gas taxes. But nationally, parents are signaling they would want the help too.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:02:58
A survey from Brigham Young University and Deseret News released last month found that large majorities of parents with kids under 12 support some kind of child care assistance, no matter their politics or income. So many see New Mexico as a promising test case for how to ease the financial burden on families. To learn more about how it all works, our producer Eryn Mathewson has a deep dive on CNN.com. The link is in our show notes.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:03:24
Over a decade ago, Washington, D.C. Metro bus driver Joy Kenley had no idea one of her favorite riders would grow up to become her colleague.
Sam Mencimer
00:03:34
When I was in fifth grade, I rode the 54 bus to school every morning and Joy was my bus driver every morning. From very young age, I just I was very excited about all everything transit related.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:03:46
Sam Mencimer wanted to know everything. What do the buttons do? How many routes are there? Where do the busses sleep at night?
Joy Kenley
00:03:52
This bright, bright eyed kid at the bus stop and I knew he had questions and I had to answer. Just as well as I was making his day, he was making mine.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:04:01
'Their morning routine turned into a two-year friendship. And in 2014, Joy surprised Sam and his family with the ultimate field trip, a tour of the Metro Bus Depot, where the busses park at night. He thought it was the coolest thing ever. But as Sam got older, he eventually started taking the DC Metrorail and lost touch with Joy. But his love of public transit never faded. In college, he interned with the agency, and when he graduated this fall, he took a job as a signals engineer, which led the 21-year-old to ask one more question: Does Joy still work there?
Joy Kenley
00:04:31
And I'm like, wait a minute, looks familiar, but I didn't want to be wrong. But I was excited to see him and now here he is in a metro uniform. I was very proud that I can have an impact on a kid's life. I mean, just us every day. I'm just doing my job, answering his questions. So I'm very proud of Sam. And he can make an impact on someone else.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:04:55
In La Crosse, Wisconsin, a group of Catholic nuns did something that's never been done before.
Sister Sue Ernster (ceremony recording)
00:04:59
It is now the time to return this land to her original caretakers.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:05:06
'They returned a piece of land to the Native American tribe it originally belonged to. Since the 1960s, the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration owned the Marywood Spirituality Center, a two-acre property on Trout Lake.
Sister Sue Ernster
00:05:20
It became really evident that we needed to address our compliciteness to eradicating a culture, the indigenous culture, and that now that we know differently, we need to act differently and respond differently.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:05:38
'Sister Sue Ernster is the order's president. She's talking about the abuse of government and church-run boarding schools for Native American children. For over a 150 year period, they were separated from their families and forced to assimilate into White society.
Sister Sue Ernster
00:05:52
It's part of our repairing our complicity in the trauma that has occurred.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:05:59
So in 2024, the sisters reached out directly to the Lac du Flambeau band of Lake Superior Chippewa. The lakefront property was appraised at $2.6 million. The sisters, however, only offered it for $30,000, the price they originally paid in 1966. The tribe's PR director, Araia Breedlove, said they couldn't believe it.
Araia Breedlove
00:06:19
I think that was the most surprising part of the land transfer is them approaching us and saying, hey, we feel that you are the most appropriate group of people to take care of this land and we want to give it back.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:06:33
After months of long, tough conversations, the tribe officially received the land on Halloween and marked the moment with ceremonies.
Araia Breedlove
00:06:43
There was just so much pride in the air on both sides. It like they knew what we were doing was the right thing to do.
Sister Sue Ernster
00:06:52
We really did. Yeah, begin to fully embrace this as a relationship and not a transaction.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:07:01
Araia said the tribe hopes to restore cultural traditions on the land and use the cabins to help solve a housing shortage.
Araia Breedlove
00:07:09
Now we're seeing for the first time in US history where it's not just an acknowledgement, but we have actions behind those words. What we hope to see out of this is a chain reaction is that we're not just the first and only, but we're the first of many.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:07:29
A dog who had been missing for five years was finally reunited with his family in Sacramento County, California. CNN affiliates KMAX and KVOR report Choco's owner Patricia got a call she wasn't expecting. The dog had been found over 2,000 thousand miles from home near Detroit, Michigan.
Patricia
00:07:45
Extremely shocked. I call the number. She's like, yes, he's in Lincoln. You're you're talking about Lincoln, California, right? No, Lincoln, Michigan.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:07:55
The group helping Paws and Claws facilitated the reunion.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:08:01
'One volunteer even gave up her own air miles to get Choco home - just in time for the holidays.
Patricia
00:08:07
Microchip your dogs. A story like mine can be your story next.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:08:12
Coming up, meet some of the players making history in a sport that's making a comeback after more than eight decades.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:08:20
A new era of baseball is stepping up to the plate next summer as women will have a league of their own again.
Justine Siegel
00:08:26
Yeah, it's the first Women's Professional Baseball League in over 80 years and we can honor the all Americans who played before us and and now we'll carry their legacy forward.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:08:37
Last month, the Women's Pro Baseball League hosted its inaugural draft, where 120 athletes were selected to play on four teams in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, and New York.
WPBL Draft Announcer
00:08:47
San Francisco selects Kelsey Whitmore!
Krista Bo Polanco
00:08:53
'Pitcher Kelsey Whitmore from San Diego was the first overall pick. The 27-year-old told CBS it's a moment she's been dreaming about since she was a little girl.
Kelsey Whitmore
00:09:01
The dream was playing the big leagues. Get as far as I could, play as long as I could. In every professional league I played in, I've always been the only girl on my team or the only girl in my league. Really I I felt my whole life I was kinda having to create my own path. Now the world finally gets to see us.
WPBL Draft Announcer
00:09:16
Los Angeles selects Mo'ne Davis!
Krista Bo Polanco
00:09:21
Former Little League superstar Mo'ne Davis from Philadelphia will play for Los Angeles as a center fielder. In 2014, she was a phenom on the pitchers mound when she became the first girl to throw a shutout in the Little League World Series.
Mo'ne Davis
00:09:34
It's a little crazy honestly, just because growing up it's not something that I thought would happen. It wasn't something that, you know, was possible to be a woman professional baseball player. But, you know, it does feel like a new era 'cause I've waited so long, I've stayed patient and now I get to play baseball as a job which is really cool.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:09:52
'WPBL co-founder Justine Siegel told CNN this is a full circle moment for the sports trailblazers from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. The athletes who inspired the 1992 film and 2022 TV show, "A League of Their Own."
Justine Siegel
00:10:05
They're 90 some years old and they get to see a pro league before they pass away and and that's what they wanted. They wanted the legacy to continue.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:10:12
The league's debut will be next August at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois.
Justine Siegel
00:10:17
And for the girls now they know that if they work really hard and keep going, even if someone tells them girls don't play baseball, they can point towards the WPBL and say, hey, that's gonna be me one day.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:10:34
Alright, that's all for now. If you want to keep the good vibes going, make sure that you subscribe to the CNN Five Good Things newsletter. They drop new editions every Saturday, too. And join us tomorrow for the next edition of CNN One Thing wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like the show, please consider giving us a good rating or review or sending it to a loved one. Thanks so much for listening. Take care. Till next time.
