Best News
Luke and Elena discuss a turtle on a Hot Wheel, "Hero Rats" with tiny backpacks, and endangered bees now classified as fish.
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[Intro] Best news!
Luke Burbank Hey there, welcome to the Best News podcast from Live Wire brought to you by Alaska Airlines. This is the show where we talk about what is good in the news. I'm Luke Burbank, right over there, my friend Elena Passarello. Elena, welcome back. We took a holiday week off, but here we are with week 21 of the best news podcast.
Elena Passarello 21! We can yes vote. What can we do? We can drink. We can drink.
Luke Burbank Yes finally! One thing that's been missing on this podcast has been a little adult beveraging. I'll tell you what. Taking a week off is really - has the mailbag bursting.
Elena Passarello Oh, yeah? [Laughs]
Luke Burbank Email us. You could email us at Best News at Live Wire Radio dot org. If you've got some kind of news you'd like to share with us or other feedback on the show. First up, Ken said, "I thought Luke and Elena would enjoy the videos on this Facebook page of Sergio The Hot Wheels Driving Turtle".
Elena Passarello Hmm, yes.
Luke Burbank Did you know about Sergio?
Elena Passarello I learned about him today.
Luke Burbank Me too.
Elena Passarello I finally made it to my way on the algorithm. And what I mean. What- what a world. What a wonderful world.
Luke Burbank I was unaware that there is a turtle named Sergio who likes to ride on a like a like a Hot Wheels car or a matchbox car, like, you know, kind of like, you know, and then he can go really fast because he's not actually using his legs. He's riding on the actual Hot Wheels car. Phil in Mechanicsburg, P.A., said, "Hey, Elena. I'm glad you're a Savannah Bananas fan. This was the best news from a while ago talking about this baseball team down in Savannah that just does all kinds of wacky stuff right during the game just to keep it interesting and get fans out. Phil was pointing out that one of the best parts of their game is that if a fan catches a foul ball, the batter is out.
Elena Passarello What?!
Luke Burbank That is - [Laughs] That's going to be a while before that makes its way to the major league level. But I love that so much.
Elena Passarello I can't wait til that happens at a Phillies game like-
Luke Burbank Oh my god, there would be, I mean, an absolute riot. I love that. But this is what Phil really wants to find out. He says, "I'm writing to clear up a mystery of the space time continuum".
Elena Passarello Oh, great.
Luke Burbank "I listened to your best news of the week on Wednesday. That's when this podcast comes out. But then two days later, you're back with more best news of the week during the radio show. So what is the deal? Hour weeks, not seven days in Oregon. That's allowing you to have news of the week every two and five days. Surely this can't be. Is some of your best news really not the best, but only exceptionally good? How are we to know which news is best in the given week? The Wednesday or the Friday? Is one the best news of the week and the other the bestest news of the week? This is tearing my brain apart."
Elena Passarello I feel like best does not have to be singular. Right. So the best American Essays is a book that comes out and there's like ten essays in it. So that's what it is where we're we're spreading the best news of the week out among the two episodes. Either that or Oregon has two weeks for every one week. I like that theory, too.
Luke Burbank Phil, don't question it. Just go with the flow. Just enjoy.
Elena Passarello I love it.
Luke Burbank Enjoy this spectacular broadcasting we're doing on various platforms. And don't worry your little head about which is the bestest of the news.
Elena Passarello And thanks for listening to us out there in Mechanicsburg.
Luke Burbank Absolutely and like so carefully that he's tracking these things. Tom is checking in from my old hometown of Port Townsend, Washington, where he says "congrats on the new cat. Having missed hearing the cat's name, I thought you might need one. And I have one to offer, which you might find both appropriate and novel, which came to me too late for use by the brothers Magliozzi", I believe he's referring to Click and Clack On Car Talk. This is Tom's suggestion for a name for my cat. I'm writing to offer the name Pounce de Leon.
Elena Passarello [Laughs]
Luke Burbank All monetary gains flowing from its use shall be designated for the cat's direct benefit. Good. I can finally pay for that treadmill that I had to buy for this cat. But the cat is name Bubbles, by the way. But maybe Ponce de Leon can be the-
Elena Passarello Well in the south-
Luke Burbank Middle name.
Elena Passarello We call it Pounce de Leon, because that's that the Ponce. Ponce de Leon is the main artery running through Atlanta. And then we do not fall on, Ponce de Leon. No, we call it Ponce de Leon. So it'd be Pounce de Leon
Luke Burbank I actually that is a more fun name for Bubbles. Maybe that'll be. Yeah. Ponce de Leon. So thank you to everyone who wrote in again. Best News at Live Wire Radio dot org if you want to communicate with us.
Luke Burbank All right. Let's get into what's good out there in the wider world. Elena, what's the best news you saw this week?
Elena Passarello Rat News. [Sings Batman Theme] Rat News! Yeah!
Luke Burbank Now, now. I'll never hear the Batman song again without hearing Rat News.
Elena Passarello I love Rat News. The best rat news I ever heard was about the rat boat of 2013, which is a really great story that maybe, maybe some of our mailbag people, maybe they can look it up or something. But I wrote a song for that one, too, called The Rat Boat to the tune of the Love Boat. And I'd be happy to sing if we're going to do another podcast, I'd sing you. It has many verses.
Luke Burbank I'm seeing the producers are saying rap when comfy. That usually means we're ready to.
Elena Passarello Sing "Elena's Fire". This is new rat news. This is the contemporary rat news. There's a scientist and animal researcher named Dr. Donna King. She's from Glasgow, Scotland, Glasgow. But right now she's based in Tanzania and she's working for a group called Hero Rats Inc. And they're finding different ways to incorporate rats, which are very, very trainable animals. They're smart, they're sociable, they're food driven. So they're actually really great to use in different activities. And these rats are being trained to rescue people.
Luke Burbank What?
Elena Passarello Yep. You know, how there's, you know, sometimes in disasters like an earthquake, when a building collapses, it can take days to get to people or to even find them. I'm sure it's hard to hear them to know where they are. There's a bunch of stuff. One of the reasons that rats are around is that they are very, very good at manipulating lots of different spaces. They can live anywhere. They can squeeze through anything.
Luke Burbank As we know, right? There's- I don't know if this is true or not, but there's always the thing when you're a kid like a mouse or a rat can get through like a hole the size of a quarter or a dime or something.
Elena Passarello They have really flexible spines and a lot of loose skin. So they're really good at the- cats are like that too, but but rats for sure. And so Dr. Donna Keane and her team have taken advantage of that. And they're training these rats to go into rubble like piles of rubble from a building that's been demolished and find people. They'll have little microphones attached to these rat backpacks and they'll listen for when people are calling and they'll have a tracking device attached to them. Sometimes they even have video cameras attached to them, but and then they're also trained to come back. They hear a beep and they know to come back and get a treat. And it's only taking like two weeks to train these rats, to perform these rescue missions. And they're already being sent to Turkey, which is a pretty earthquake prone place to be ready and at the waiting should there be any need for them. There's future plans- right now there are like 170 rats total who are part of the Hero Rats project and they're being trained to do things like detect landmines because rats are so light and agile, they don't set off landmines. And to sniff out diseases like tuberculosis.
Luke Burbank Huh?
Elena Passarello Oh I am on this team because I believe that. I mean, I don't want, like a like a disease ridden rat to crawl across my foot while I'm sleeping or anything. But, like, I think rats are amazing. I think they're so cool and interesting. Pizza Rat is my best friend.
Luke Burbank That was the rat in the New York subway system. Right? That was like dragging pizza up the stairs or down the stairs or something.
Elena Passarello Yeah. And it turned out it was a hoax, but who cares? Because that means-.
Luke Burbank That was a hoax?!
Elena Passarello Yeah, but it was a great. That rat was a great actor. Best actor, 20 whatever, 2012.
Luke Burbank I- that's the worst news I've heard all week. This is the first that I'm learning. Pizza rat was like that was a set up somebody- did they feed, like did they basically got the rat and then they got the pizza and they put them together?
Elena Passarello Well, it was a trained rat because like I said, you could train a rat to do anything. So you can train a rat to be a viral video sensation. You could probably train a rat to do my job. Don't get any ideas.
Luke Burbank That's incredible. I wonder if this is going to be the beginning of a bit of a sort of a PR campaign for rats, because of course they have a pretty bad reputation. I remember when I was living in Washington, D.C., seeing people talk about rats in New York and other places for my money. DC So this is not a political joke legitimately. Like they just have some really, really, really large rats.
Elena Passarello Yeah.
Luke Burbank It didn't help that I had a rat living in my apartment in D.C. too, which was terrifying. I'd be watching TV in the corner my eyes, and they would just dart across the kitchen floor. He lived, it was a rental, he lived somewhere like under the stairs, but he would go to the refrigerator for food and back. And there was like a Tom and Jerry cartoon or something.
Elena Passarello Our assistant editor, Troy Hester, is blowing up the chad of the zoom right now. I do believe he is familiar with the DC area as well.
Luke Burbank Thank you,Trey, for supporting me in this. That's I mean, there's some there's some big back there. But like, you're right. I mean, they're just animals and they are, you know, have a lot of different. Things they can do that would probably surprise us. So, I mean, could we see a day where rats have a totally different sort of reputation?
Elena Passarello I'm there, a different rat- ratputation?
Luke Burbank Oh, golly.
Elena Passarello I'm they're already, team rat. Team rat forever. Let's go. The rat boat.
Luke Burbank I knew you were going to work that in somewhere. I've got an animal related best news story as well. And it's about a decision by California's third District Court of Appeal, which ruled recently that the California Endangered Species Act can protect bees.
Elena Passarello Oh, thank goodness.
Luke Burbank It's going to list bees now under the same protected status or in the category of fishes. The game code from the California Endangered Species Act under section 45 lists wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate amphibian or part spawn or ovum of any of these animals as legally protected. But a particular court said that doesn't include bees. And so this group from Stanford University and also a group called the Xerxes Society for Invertebrate Conservation brought a lawsuit, essentially, and they were able to get bees now listed more or less under the category of fish. So they are protected.
Elena Passarello These are fish now.
Luke Burbank I mean, sort of for the purposes of protecting them and and promoting environmental policies that will not further damage the bee population. As you know, bee populations are down.
Elena Passarello Way down.
Luke Burbank Bees are totally essential for pollinating all kinds of different things. I did a TV story a while ago about bees up in northern Washington state that are under threat from what are called murder hornets.
Elena Passarello Oh, yeah.
Luke Burbank Ah. I mean, that name is a little misleading. They're just a very big hornet that came over from Japan, but they are pretty fearsome and they can take down an entire hive of bees, you know, in a matter of hours. So bees are under a lot of threat. And anything we can do to sort of protect them is obviously good. So this is being seen as a big win for the environment and for bees. It's a big win for me, Elena, because I finally know what the Xerces society does. Okay, first of all, that is spelled x, e, r c e s. That's how you spell Xerces. Okay. And this is like three blocks from my apartment. It's behind a pizza place here in Portland. There is a place I go called Pizza Schmitza. And when you park in the Pizza Schmitza parking lot-
Elena Passarello Who named that? Did I name that?
Luke Burbank It's a chain, actually. There is a small- right, that does sound like something you'd that you come up with. There is a small sign in the parking lot behind the Pizza Schmitza that just says the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Research. And so I see this sign and I feel like it's the beginning of a Charlie Kaufman film. Like it's strong. Like Being John Malkovich, seventh and a half floor or whatever.
Elena Passarello Yeah. There's a sign of a building, like a office building in my town called Pajaggle. And I've always been afraid to Google what what that actually is.
Luke Burbank I'm not kidding. I have been looking at this Xerces thing for ever since I started living in Portland. I see this sign, I go, "What in the heck do they do behind this Pizza Schmizza?"
Elena Passarello They're saving each bees, schmeeze!
Luke Burbank They're saving the bees and monarch butterflies and just other invertebrate. It's the headquarters for this national movement to protect invertebrates.
Elena Passarello I wonder if Pizza Schmizza is, like, their their sponsor, like they feed them when they're up all night trying to save the bees.
Luke Burbank I would love that. Those are my two. Other than Live Wire, those are my two favorite Portland businesses now. The Pizza Schmizza and the Xerces Center for the Invertebrate Invertebrate Preservation. So anyway, that's the best news that I heard this week. All right. A little preview of what we're doing on the radio show this week. We are talking to food writer Cecily Wong about her book Gastro Obscura, which features fascinating food stories from all over the world, including speaking of Bees, this psychedelic honey that was once used as a weapon. And also why maybe you shouldn't offer champagne as like a sort of energy drink to people running in and marathon in London in 1908. Hmm. That happened and drunkenness ensued. Then we are going to talk to Andrew Bird, the Grammy Award nominee, the musician, now the actor, the all around talented person. He is someone who describes himself in this interview we're going to hear as painfully shy. But of course, he's also a public figure. So how do you kind of reconcile that stuff? He's also going to play a song for us, which I'm really excited for everyone to hear. His new album is called Inside Problems, and the version of the song you're going to hear is only going to be on Live Wire because it was just him and his violin and it turned out really, really well. So please do check your feed on Friday for the podcast version of Live Wire or listen on a public radio station near you over the weekend when the show drops there this new. All right. That is going to do it for this week's best news podcast. Thank you to our team. Who makes the show possible? Laura Hadden is our executive producer, a producer and editors. Melanie Sevcenko our assistant editor and chief rat wrangler Trey Hester out there in D.C.. Also, special thanks to our intern Jonas Meyers, who finds our best news stories. Molly Pettit is our technical director and mixer. Our theme is composed by A. Walker Spring. And of course, thanks to all of you, our listeners again, shoot us an email Best News at Live Wire Radio dot org. And thank you again for listening. We'll be back very soon with another episode of the show. In the meantime, head on out there and just have the absolute best week.
