podcast
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.
The Farm Animals That Can Fight Crime, No Prob-llama
CNN 5 Good Things
Feb 21, 2026
An act of kindness led to a friendship between a Nigerian immigrant and a 92-year-old veteran. Police in rural England caught their suspect, thanks to a herd of llamas. This 77-year-old museum curator learned a new language to reach young art lovers. We’ll break down some of the greatness you might have missed this week from Milano Cortina Games. Plus, could this fun winter sport make an Olympic comeback?
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Host/Producer: Krista Bo Polanco
Producer: Eryn Mathewson
Showrunner: Faiz Jamil
Senior Producer: Felicia Patinkin
Editorial Support: Liberty Smith
Episode Transcript
Krista Bo Polanco
00:00:00
Hey, hey, hope you're having a good day. And if not, I've got five stories to try to cheer you up. I'm Krista Bo Polanco, and this is CNN Five Good Things.
Sydni Myers
00:00:09
'I think it's breaking brains in exactly the right way to see Allison, a 77-year-old curator, delivering terminally online slang with monk-level seriousness that's kind of unreal.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:00:21
'This museum wants to reach young art lovers and it's working. Over in England, police had backup they didn't even call for, so catching the suspect was no prob-llama. We'll tell you why.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:00:31
And I gotta say, I've been crying happy tears all week watching the Winter Olympics, so I'll break down some of the greatness he might've missed. Plus, could this fun and furry winter sport make its Olympic comeback? I think there was a sign this week. All these stories and more after a quick break, but on the other side.
David Heavens
00:00:49
So whenever you come to my page, I hope it inspires you to love one another and be kind to each other.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:00:56
I'll tell you about an unlikely friendship that's tugging at the heartstrings of hundreds of thousands of people.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:01:05
'An act of kindness sparked an unlikely friendship between a Nigerian immigrant and a 92-year-old Navy veteran. So David Heavens moved to the U.S. More than a decade ago with one goal, to take care of his grandmother back home.
David Heavens
00:01:18
I decided that I was going to treat everyone the way that I would treat my grandmother, especially the elderly, because I've always had a soft spot for them. You know, an elderly woman raised me and I feel like I have dedicated my life to helping them in return.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:01:35
He moved to Los Angeles in 2018, the same year that his grandmother passed away. Then in 2023, he fell on some hard times. He was living out of his car.
David Heavens
00:01:44
I couldn't find anything positive that was going on in my life, so I decided to create one. I decided that I was going to be helpful to other people since I couldn't be as helpful to myself.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:01:58
He posted on a neighborhood app volunteering two hours of his time to help seniors. And that's how he met Frank.
Frank
00:02:04
I was lucky to find him and lucky to find that he wanted to be a caregiver, which he does extremely well. He is the most uplifting person I have ever known in my 92 years.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:02:17
David says Frank and his partner Pippa initially hired him to be a dog walker. But when Frank needed more support, he stepped in and has been by his side for more than two years. Now they see each other nearly every day.
David Heavens
00:02:28
We go to restaurants and have breakfast. We explore places. If we're feeling adventurous, we'll decide if we wanna dress up and surprise Pippa. Honestly, we're just trying to make the most out of life, basically.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:02:45
Last November, David started sharing their friendship online, and his following since has grown to over 680,000 between Instagram and TikTok. Even though Frank is three times his age, David says their friendship feels like a full circle moment.
David Heavens
00:02:59
You know, Frank marched for civil rights, even before I was born. And because of people like him, I am able to be my authentic self. And I feel like he is now being rewarded for what he did in his youth.
Frank
00:03:17
It would have been hard for me to anticipate that friendship. I think that it's a blueprint for people who are up in age to say to them, I can still have fun.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:03:35
Police in rural England got some unexpected backup recently. In the countryside of Derbyshire, The Washington Post reports a man suspected of stealing tobacco from a woman tried to make a run for it. So he cut across some open farmland to try to escape. But standing between him and freedom was Heidi Price's herd of llamas.
Heidi Price
00:03:53
Once they realized that he was something that shouldn't be in the field, they started releasing this warning cry. Which is hilarious. It sounds like old men laughing. That's the only way you can describe it. So there are eight llamas around him just laughing at him. This poor guy was petrified, in literally to the point of tears.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:04:17
'Heidi told ITV News the suspected thief couldn't have picked a worse time to avoid llama drama, because after dusk, llamas can get pretty agitated. The Fluffy field patrol made a circle around the guy until police were able to get there and arrest him. Police say he was charged with theft and has been released on bail. Heidi says she's so proud of her crime-fighting llamas, which the police called heroes.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:04:41
'For almost five decades, she's been a Renaissance sculpture curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Now, this 77-year-old scholar is translating her work for a younger audience.
Alison Luchs
00:04:54
'Chat, peep this bussin' clay dish from the 16th century, made in the workshop of an Italian rizzler named Orazio Pompei. Money-maxing sigmas would pull out Majolica plates like this at dinner parties just to flex their aura points. Look how bro glazed it...
Krista Bo Polanco
00:05:10
That's Alison Luchs, the museum's deputy head of sculpture, describing 16th century art using Gen Z slang.
Alison Luchs
00:05:16
I was a little surprised to be asked to do this. I definitely don't speak Gen Z slang in real life. And I thought, you know, who's gonna watch that? But then I felt, well, it won't do any harm. So I thought there'd be a few likes and a few cringes and then it would fade away. And that's not what happened.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:05:34
That video from December got millions of views, the most in the gallery's history. The idea came from social media manager Sydni Myers, after what she describes as a very Gen Z brainstorming session. But she says the goal wasn't just to go viral.
Sydni Myers
00:05:49
When you think of the National Gallery of Art, you might think that it's a place that's intimidating or formal or sophisticated, but social media, we have an important role of kind of flipping that expectation. So allowing anyone to understand art history and connect to it, even if they don't have a PhD.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:06:08
And the response proves it's resonating. Commenters wrote things like, "this is the only way I'll listen to guided tours," and "I'm coming just to meet her." They've posted two more videos with Alison, and the newest one dropped earlier this week.
Alison Luchs
00:06:22
'Chat, the baddies are beefing in this bronze sculpture from the year 1610. The girlies are locked in for this wrestling match. That eye contact! High-key Heated Rivalry coded. The aura farming alpha....
Sydni Myers
00:06:33
It's just been really delightful to see Allison showing people that fun doesn't age. She's not pandering to people, she's not cosplaying Gen Z, she's just speaking their language in a really fun way and just genuinely sharing the things that she loves about art history.
Alison Luchs
00:06:49
And I like to think that it's both getting people interested in the art and sometimes helping them through a rough patch because it's fun and distracting. It takes you away from your world for a minute and opens up a new world to you, I hope.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:07:04
'I don't know about you, but I just can't get enough of the Winter Olympics. I'm so sad that it's ending soon. So here are some of the good things you might have missed this week from the Milano-Cortina Games. All the sound you'll hear, by the way, is from the IOC. This month, six American women are doing double duty as moms and Olympians, proving that motherhood doesn't mean the end of gold medal dreams.
Elana Meyers Taylor
00:07:26
Oh, I don't think I'm gonna process this for a while.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:07:29
'As bobsled teammates and mothers Elana Myers Taylor and Kaillie Humphreys both made the podium this week, with Alana winning her first gold and Kaillie clinching the bronze. At 41-years-old, that makes Elana the oldest American to ever medal at the Winter Olympics and tied for the most medals won by an American woman at the winter games. And she did it all while balancing being a mom of two young boys who are deaf.
Elana Meyers Taylor
00:07:51
I hope they were able to take it all in, that visual memory. Right now I don't think they can process it and know what it means, but one day I think they'll understand and appreciate it.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:08:01
'Women's hockey captain Kendall Coyne-Scofield is also one of the American Olympic mamas, and Team USA clinched the gold on Thursday, winning against Canada in the rivalry series, 2-1, in a thrilling game that came down to the wire. Fresh off her marriage proposal to US speed skater Brittney Bowe, Hillary Knight scored with just over two minutes to spare to tie it up and bring it to overtime. That makes her the US women's leading goal and point scorer in Olympic Games history. Megan Keller had the game-winning goal four minutes into overtime.
Megan Keller
00:08:31
It's been an honor to represent this country with the group of girls that we have. We're really a family. Makes it all the more special to go into this battle and come out Olympic champions with them.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:08:42
'There's so, so, so many more moments, so check out cnn.com for the very latest, but I couldn't move on to the next story without talking about figure skater, Alysa Liu's epic gold medal winning comeback. The 20-year-old was a skating prodigy who retired after the last winter games and wanted to live the life she felt she was missing. The inner joy she found while she was away from the sport became her superpower on the ice, becoming the first US women's Olympic figure skating champ in 24 years.
Alysa Liu
00:09:10
I hope that with all this attention, I can at least raise awareness about mental health and sports and mental health in general and I think my story is pretty cool and so I hope that inspires some people as well. That's all I want in my life is human connection and damn now I'm connecting with a hella ton of people.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:09:32
And if you thought the biggest surprises of these games were on the podium, think again. Hear about a surprise Olympic debut that might be an omen to bring back what used to be a Winter Olympic sport. Stick around.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:09:48
'The late-entry Olympian that stole the show on the slopes earlier this week was fast and furr-ious. During Wednesday's women's cross-country team sprint, a local dog joined two of the skiers for the final stretch. And yes, he did cross the finish line, but didn't get a medal. NPR reports the two-year-old pup is a Czechoslovakian wolf dog named Nazgul. And honestly, Nazgul might have been born about a century too late, because once upon a time, dogs weren't crashing Olympic races. They were a small part of the Winter Games.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:10:19
Sled dog racing debuted as a demonstration sport at the 1932 Winter Games in Lake Placid. But the sport is still alive and barking 94 years later. Just ask Blair Braverman from California.
Blair Braverman
00:10:32
It's so fun. It's like, like imagine the speed and excitement and fresh air of skiing or even just sledding down a hill. But then you're with like between six and 14 dogs who are all really excited and happy and you're with your best friends the whole time.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:10:48
'The American long-distance sled dog racer grew up with dogs and loved reading books about sled dogs, which inspired her to become a musher.
Blair Braverman
00:10:57
When I was 18, I moved to the Norwegian Arctic to become a dog sledder, having never seen sled dogs before in my life. That was 19 years ago, so I've been working with them ever since.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:11:09
'After Blair learned the ropes there, she moved to Alaska and formed her team of dogs. They specialize in middle and long-distance races that range from 100 to 1,000 miles long and can take up to two weeks to complete. That's why Blair says teamwork makes the dream work here.
Blair Braverman
00:11:23
'Most of my sled dogs have saved my life at some point or gotten me out of a situation that could be life-threatening. When I go out in the wilderness, there isn't, like I don't have phone reception. I could be out there for days, sometimes longer. If anything happens, the dogs and I are going to need to handle that together. So it comes down to knowing each other's skills. Like I know one dog is really good at finding the trail after a storm and I know another dog can get shy if there's you know, something foreign or weird on the trail, but she's less shy if she's with her best friend. And so I'm sort of working with all these personalities. I sort of just have to move obstacles out of the way so they can do what they love.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:12:04
So would sled dog racing make a return to the games?
Blair Braverman
00:12:07
Maybe they could send off the teams during the opening ceremonies and then at the end see who emerges. But I think that sprint mushing would be a great fit for the Olympics. You know, five, 10, 20 miles as fast as they can and it would be so fun to watch and train and observe.
Krista Bo Polanco
00:12:26
All right, that's all for now. Thank you so, so much for listening. And if you like what you heard, please give us a good rating or review on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen or share it with a friend. And join us tomorrow for the next edition of CNN One Thing, as always. Take care, till next time.
