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.
Alaska Man vs. 700-pound Boulder
CNN 5 Good Things
Jun 7, 2025
We tell you how a hiker in Alaska survived a 700-pound boulder falling on his back. This café in a war-torn country serves cuteness with its coffee. Clownfish are learning how to survive climate change, one centimeter at a time. The horses in this program are helping men struggling with addiction to get back on their feet. Plus, how a Little Mermaid-loving toddler healed as a baby with help from under the sea
Episode Transcript
Krista Bo
00:00:00
Hey there, let's jump right into the good stuff. At a farm in Kentucky, racehorses are helping people fight addiction.
Nick Brawner
00:00:07
I love just being around this animal and I realized that without sobriety, I wouldn't have this opportunity.
Krista Bo
00:00:15
Plus, two stories for you that are kind of like "The Little Mermaid" meets "Finding Nemo," with real fish, real healing, and real resilience. From CNN, I'm Krista Bo, and this is 5 Good Things.
Krista Bo
00:00:32
'An Alaska man says he's lucky to be alive after a 700-pound boulder fell on him over Memorial Day weekend. Kell Morris and his wife Joanna Roop were exploring a rocky, isolated trail in Seward, Alaska, which is about 120 miles south of Anchorage. Things took a turn when the rocks Kell was standing, on came loose.
Kell Morris
00:00:52
As it went down and then it's a blur. I don't know what happened. I was stumbling. I landed up face down in the river and then I felt the rock hit me in the back and pinned me down.
Krista Bo
00:01:03
Fortunately, the rocks around him bore the brunt of the boulder's weight, but Kell's leg got trapped and he was in a lot of pain. He and Joanna, who's a police officer, tried to shift the rock off of him for about 30 minutes with no luck.
Kell Morris
00:01:16
She took both our cell phones and told me, don't go anywhere, I'll be right back.
911 Emergency Call/Joanna Roop
00:01:22
Seward 911, what is the address of the emergency? It's Officer Roop. Send a helicopter to the top of Godwin Creek. Kell is stuck in the river under a big boulder. I need a helicopter and I need it now.
Krista Bo
00:01:40
It wasn't long before Seward firefighter Jason Harrington heard about the call. He and his team weren't able to reach Joanna and Kel in ATVs. So a volunteer firefighter from a neighboring town also heard the 911 dispatch call and offered to fly them to Kell's location in a helicopter.
Jason Harrington
00:01:57
They were actually able to get us within about a hundred yards of where the patient was trapped under the boulder.
Krista Bo
00:02:03
'By the time Jason reached Kell, he had already been stuck in ice-cold water for over an hour, and the creek water was rising. Kell was becoming hyperthermic and started going in and out of consciousness. Joanna had to keep lifting his head up to prevent him from drowning.
Kell Morris
00:02:18
I kind of wanted to go to sleep, you know, let me just take a nap if y'all do your job and wake me up when it's over. I really didn't think we're gonna make it.
Krista Bo
00:02:28
Jason and six other people ended up using airbags that are typically used in car accident rescues to shift the boulder off Kell and prevent other rocks from falling on him. At that point, Kell had been in the water for three hours.
Kell Morris
00:02:40
It was an instant relief in the pain in the back of my leg, but the shivering wasn't going away, I was still very cold.
Krista Bo
00:02:48
Kell was flown to an ambulance and then taken to a hospital, where he was told he had some kidney and nerve damage that's likely to heal over time.
Jason Harrington
00:02:56
Everybody is still pretty shocked that he made it out of that with no major injuries or anything. We're all just glad he's doing good.
Krista Bo
00:03:04
Now, Kell's back at work and planning his next hike with Joanna. He's especially grateful to all the volunteers who helped with the rescue.
Kell Morris
00:03:11
The vast majority of everybody involved are volunteers. They volunteer their time to do the type of rescues, to go to the aid of other people. They do a lot of training and that's all on their own time. And that's very special. I would just like to acknowledge all those people everywhere in the world who volunteer to help others.
Christian Countzler
00:03:34
We want guys here that want to change their life. We push our guys to be successful, not just sober.
Krista Bo
00:03:40
For years, Christian Countzler struggled with addiction to drugs and alcohol, but he believes working with horses helped him get back on his feet. And now he helps other men in Lexington, Kentucky do the same.
Krista Bo
00:03:52
'He's the CEO and co-founder of Stable Recovery, a nonprofit that provides housing and employment opportunities to men in recovery for addiction. Lexington has been particularly hit hard by the opioid crisis. It also bills itself as the horse capital of the world. So a major part of the program centers around the equine industry.
Christian Countzler
00:04:10
So we're trying to help you find your passion. And if it's horses, then we have some incredible opportunities we can offer you to build a career, which is a huge factor in someone staying sober.
Krista Bo
00:04:24
'Christian and his co-founder, Frank Taylor, launched Stable Recovery in 2022. Since then, Christian says about 300 men have entered the program, with more than 100 graduating from the School of Horsemanship, which teaches horse training and grooming techniques on top of general life skills.
Christian Countzler
00:04:40
So we wake up at 5 a.m., at 6 a.m., we have an AA meeting. At 7a.m., you go out to whatever barn you're assigned to, at 4p.m. You get off.
Krista Bo
00:04:48
Christian recommends that participants stay for at least a year, but they can stay for as long as they need, as long they are committed to completing chores, attending meetings, and working towards a lifestyle where they don't need Stable Recovery anymore.
Christian Countzler
00:05:00
We have at any given time 700 to 800 horses, and Frank calls it 700 free therapists on the farm every single day. And he's not lying about that. I cannot stress enough the impact that the horse has on these folks' lives. It's just incredible, the relationship between man and horse.
Krista Bo
00:05:19
Nick Brawner has been in the Stable Recovery Program for six months. It's the second time he's been there. The first time, he says he wasn't ready to stick with it. He says, this time it's different.
Nick Brawner
00:05:29
I love just being around this animal, and I realized that without sobriety, I wouldn't have this opportunity. You know, just a year ago, waking up with no purpose, not knowing what I'm going to do in life, you know, I get up at 3:45 today, grateful and just ready to be around these animals.
Krista Bo
00:05:49
When he graduates, Nick says he wants to work with racehorses for a living. And Stable Recovery plans to expand the program to offer more job opportunities and open a program for women in July.
Krista Bo
00:05:59
Christian says they unfortunately see a lot of people fail to make it through the program, but he feels like there's no better place to get back on the saddle.
Christian Countzler
00:06:07
When we succeed, we see a dad reunited with his son, and we see someone you know, successful at their job. You can't put a price tag on that. We are a brotherhood and soon to be a sisterhood. And these guys and gals are supported every step of the way.
Krystal and Eliana DeVos
00:06:29
Who is that? Ariel. Ariel, yes. Is she a mermaid? Are you a little mermaid too?
Krista Bo
00:06:38
'Three-year-old Eliana DeVos from Texas doesn't have to pretend to be a mermaid like Ariel, if you ask me. That's because something from under the sea helped her recover from a deep wound on her neck.
Krystal DeVos
00:06:50
It looks like a normal scar that you and I would get. You would have no way of knowing that they used fish scan to help expedite that healing process.
Krista Bo
00:06:59
Eliana's mom, Krystal, says her daughter was born four months early at just 23 weeks gestation, weighing only one pound. She spent 131 days in the NICU, and during her stay, a devastating infection opened a deep wound on her neck. Dr. Vanessa Dimas treated Eliana at Driscoll Children's Hospital in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Dr. Vanessa Dimas
00:07:19
The wound was very extensive and she was pretty sick. So I did not feel like it was safe to do a surgical procedure on her.
Krista Bo
00:07:28
So Eliana's care team tried something unconventional. First, they used medical honey to clean the wound. And then they took a mixture of the honey and fish skin from Wild North Atlantic cod to cover it.
Dr. Vanessa Dimas
00:07:43
It's microscopically so close to human skin that it helps the wound start to heal. It gives a scaffold.
Krista Bo
00:07:50
It gave Eliana's body a platform to grow healthy tissue again, and in 10 days, her wound had healed with barely a scar.
Dr. Vanessa Dimas
00:07:57
Once it basically does its job helping the wound heal, then it sort of just melts away.
Krista Bo
00:08:05
'Fish skin and other animal-based treatments have helped adults heal before. But Eliana's caretakers appear to be the first to try this method in a baby so small. Look at this stuff. Isn't it neat? Can you tell I like the little mermaid too?
Krista Bo
00:08:20
'All right, now let's check in on the stars of another Disney classic. You know clownfish as the cute, colorful stars of "Finding Nemo." But in the real world, they're doing something pretty wild to survive climate change. They're shape-shifting on purpose.
Melissa Versteeg
00:08:35
My name is Melissa Versteeg and I am a PhD student at Newcastle University in the UK. I study anemone fish to try and find out how they handle environmental stress to understand what future proof coral reef fish need to look like.
Krista Bo
00:08:50
Back in 2023, Melissa and her colleagues measured the length of 134 clownfish in Papua New Guinea every month for five months during a marine heat wave. They also monitored the water temperature every four to six days during that time.
Melissa Versteeg
00:09:04
'It was four degrees Celsius above the long-term average, and we were having readings well over 32 degrees, sometimes even higher than that, so really soupy water to be working and living in. We know that warmer waters are troubling because every individual has a thermal limit, but also warmer waters come with potentially reduced food availability, reduced oxygen availability, and so these really fundamental things that they need to survive become constrained.
Krista Bo
00:09:34
They discovered that 100 of the fish got shorter and that their shrinking increased their chances of surviving the heat stress by up to 78%. Those results shocked Melissa.
Melissa Versteeg
00:09:46
And so it was the first time that we've actually seen this in coral reef fish, which you wouldn't expect because being bigger is better for egg production, better for your social status, et cetera.
Krista Bo
00:09:55
Now clownfish aren't migratory, and they already regulate their size to keep the peace in their anemone homes, which offer them protection from predators. Too much growing or shrinking, though, can mess with that balance and cause conflict. So when extreme heat swept the reef, Melissa found the clownfish couples actually worked together to try not to cause any beef.
Melissa Versteeg
00:10:19
We see that there's this incredible social dynamic there where if within a breeding partner, one of them shrinks, the other one follows suit so that they maintain that size boundary that's really important for these guys.
Krista Bo
00:10:32
And after that heat passes, some of them grow right back.
Melissa Versteeg
00:10:36
It's a beautiful example of the resilience that a marine fish can have and that nature is just genius in trying to find ways to survive and for populations to persist.
Krista Bo
00:10:51
'Up next, the place that helps some Ukrainians find some much-needed comfort from the ongoing war with some very cute company. But before we go, we wanna hear from you. Father's Day is next weekend, and we wanna know what's the best piece of advice you've gotten from your dad.
Krista Bo
00:11:07
'We wanna hear the wisdom or dad jokes or all of the above that stuck with you, whether it's big or small, funny or touching. Call us at 404-981-2293 and leave us a message with your name, your story, and how we can reach you. Your voicemail may be featured in an upcoming episode of the podcast. We'll be right back.
Krista Bo
00:11:34
'In the capital city of war-torn Ukraine, there's a cafe where the main attraction isn't coffee. It's cuddly piglets. Yulia Davydenko opened the space with her husband, Dennis, in Kyiv after returning to Ukraine from France.
Yulia Davydenko
00:11:52
We wanted to create something positive, a project to counter all the bad news everyone has plenty of. We decided that these creatures, piglets, mini pigs, would work.
Krista Bo
00:12:04
One customer, Lina Yanopola, fled the bombardment in Kharkiv. She says the piglets help her find peace, even if it's just for a moment.
Lina Yanopola
00:12:15
I didn't expect to be able to relax here. It's very difficult to relax in general. Because when I relax, I start to cry, and I do not want this to happen. So I just enjoy the moment. Now I'm here, now I'm with them, I touch them, they give me joy.
Krista Bo
00:12:31
Iryna Kustova is a mother of three, and she's grateful she can take her children somewhere to make some good memories.
Iryna Kustova
00:12:39
For children, it's quite difficult psychologically to constantly deal with the fact that there is war. They have to see something good. Something good should reach them. Some seeds of good.
Krista Bo
00:12:58
All right, that's all for now. Join us tomorrow for the next edition of One Thing. CNN's Kyung Lah joins the show to discuss her investigation into how federal cuts are impacting a group that backed President Donald Trump, coal miners.
Krista Bo
00:13:11
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, Faiz Jamil, and Dan Bloom. Matt Dempsey is our production manager, Dan Dzula is our technical director, and Steve Lichteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio.
Krista Bo
00:13:29
We get support from Joey Salvia, Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, Lisa Namerow, and Matt Martinez. Special thanks to Wendy Brundige, Jacqueline Howard, and Lacey Russell. And thank you especially for listening. Take care, till next time.
