“How are you?” Finding Good News in the Time of Covid-19

A brief monologue of stories that might have escaped your attention. These are some of the bits of good news, stories of kindness and generosity and community support, the sort of stories we could all stand to hear a little more.

What new good stories should we include in our next episode?

Links discussed today:

Cinema Worker Solidarity Fund

Parkview Health community masks

Messages in windows for kids

Bauer Hockey making face shields

Lebron James Family Foundation taco Tuesdays

Taking food to students

Visiting mom in a bucket truck

Matthew Stafford and Drew Brees deliver big

NYU med students going to work early

Valuable t-shirts in Indianapolis

Student teacher tic-tac-toe through the window

Upcycling medical supplies in Florida

Jimmy Carter Center: Use your money elsewhere

Man serenades his parents

New machines sterilize surgical masks

That really touching one at the end

The Best Story I’ve Heard Today with PBS Newshour special correspondent Tania Rashid

More than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Burma’s Rakhine State since last August, hoping to escape a widespread campaign of ethnic cleansing. The atrocities committed by Burmese security forces, including mass killings, sexual violence, and arson are repeatedly denied by military and civilian officials, but human rights watch groups say this is the world's fastest growing humanitarian crises. Many of those people have found themselves in Bangladesh, and are now living among the largest refugee camps in the world. 

We're joined today by Tania Rashid, who is a special news correspondent for PBS, who has filed a series of stories on the crisis. 

You can find her work here:

How a Rohingya mother escaped her village’s terrors in Myanmar

Before they agree to go home, the Rohingya have some demands

Why this 13-year-old Rohingya refugee faces intense pressure to marry

Follow the show on Twitter, @BestStoryShow. And when you're done with this one, check out more episodes. You can also subscribe on Google Play or Stitcher. 

The Best Story I’ve Heard Today with Daniela Molina

Daniela Molina is an Indiana University Media School student, and an aspiring investigative journalist who has already interned at WTVJ in Miami, where she was named an Emma Bowen Foundation Fellow, and at WTIU, Bloomington. She's previously served as the interim editor-in-chief of The Reporter, which is the campus paper for Miami Dade College. 

And today she's brought us the story of Legend Solar, a solar panel company out west that has left customers feeling like they are part of a Ponzi scheme. it's a big story, there's a lot to it, and you'll want to check it out.

Follow the show on Twitter, @BestStoryShow. And when you're done with this one, check out more episodes. You can also subscribe on Google Play or Stitcher.

The Best Story I’ve Heard Today with Kenny Smith

This is a monologue that takes us to the American southwest, where hope and despair can mingle. But hope can overcome. Today's story is from Searchlight New Mexico, which is telling us about a small non-profit that is out to break a cycle in a challenging, demanding, part of the world. 

Read the original here.

Find them on Twitter at @SearchlightNM. And check out some of the graduation pictures. It's a feel-good kind of scroll. 

Follow the show on Twitter, @BestStoryShow, too. And when you're done with this one, check out more episodes. You can also subscribe on Google Play or Stitcher. 

The Best Story I’ve Heard Today with Ken Booth

If you want to remember the moment a bit better, you might need to put the camera down and the phone back in your pocket. That's the suggestion from a recent study, which Vox has picked up on: What smartphone photography is doing to our memories.

Ken Booth, co-founder of one of the web's best photo archives, shorpy.com and an old-school newsman, tells us about this story, and the importance of staying in the moment, rather than in a viewfinder or a touchscreen.

You can see more of Booth's work at vintagraph.com and some of his own photos and book reviews on his personal site. Previously, he's joined us to talk about the craft beer industry's boom and the nature of conspiracy theories. 

Follow the show on Twitter, @BestStoryShow. And when you're done with this one, check out more episodes. You can also subscribe on Google Play or Stitcher. 

The Best Story I’ve Heard Today with sports writer Zach Osterman

On this historic anniversary we're going back in time to discuss a column written 50 years ago, upon the news of the assasination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was shot in Memphis, but this piece by Mike Royko was published in Chicago the next day. It has become something of a famous column, and, as Indianapolis Star writer Zac Osterman tells us today, it still works, it still resonates, and it is still viable.

At the beginning of the show you'll hear from Robert Kennedy, who was campaigning in Indianapolis on April 4, 1968 and delivered the news that King was killed and offered a short, powerful speech that is often credited with help calm that city. 

Incidentally, today, the Kennedy-King Park where RFK spoke those many years ago, has just this week been named a national commemorative site. What's old is never really old, and this is the best story I've heard today. 

Follow the show on Twitter, too, @BestStoryShow. And when you're done with this one, check out more episodes. You can also subscribe on Google Play or Stitcher. 

The Best Story I’ve Heard Today, with news editor Dominick Jean

"The Troubles" in the United Kingdom are a thing of the past. But the Good Friday Agreement, a 1998 signed understanding that impacted the relationships and institutions between Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, is right now in a precarious position because of Brexit. Indiana Daily Student news editor Dominick Jean tells us this land border situation and the many cultural and commercial aspects of the arrangment were largely overlooked when it came time to determine the UK's EU fate. Now, they're trying to address the many issues at play.

We don't solve the problems here, but we do discuss some of the high points brought up in these stories from America Magazine and The New Yorker, which Jean, who just returned from a trip to Ireland, recommends in full. 

Check out more of Jean's work right here.

Previously on the program he's told us about a new papal advisory panel, the coming Day Zero in South Africa's historic drought and gerrymandered congressional districts.

Hear more episodes, too. You can also subscribe on Google Play or Stitcher, and be sure to follow us on Twitter, as well, @BestStoryShow.

The Best Story I’ve Heard Today with sports media scholar Dr. Lauren Smith

Maybe you noticed that the NCAA women's basketball tournament came down to a last-second shot this weekend. Maybe you noticed the WNIT wrapped up with two scrappy teams who made great late-season runs. Maybe you noticed those highly entertaining storylines and the games that went with them. Likely as not, these and plenty of other compelling women's sporting events have escaped your notice. Outside of the Olympics, Indiana University's  Dr. Lauren Smith tells us, that's a sadly common refrain. We talked about why, how to fix it and just exactly what UConn basketball has ruined. (Nothing, as it turns out.)

Here's the article that gets our conversation rolling today.

Smith is also a writer on 110percentblog and she is a regular contributor here. She's joined us to talk about what's going on at Michigan State post-Larry Nassar and about Olympic athletes donating their brains to CTE research and about the world's oldest message in a bottle.

Check out more episodes. You can also subscribe on Google Play or Stitcher. Be sure to follow us on Twitter, as well, @BestStoryShow.

The Best Story I’ve Heard Today with USA Today Network’s Justin Thurman

You've probably heard about Mike Hughes, the guy who supposedly put himself in a rocket of his own creation and launched himself into the sky. But you haven't heard the whole story. You might know he believes the earth is flat. But you haven't heard what else he doesn't believe in. Our man Justin Thurman returns for another Fun Friday to share more of what "Mad" Mike Hughes doesn't believe in, and his future plans. 

Also, we average a culturally, or at least topically, relevant name drop every 40 seconds in this episode. 

With your feet firmly on the ground, and your necks craned to the sky, give this episode a listen, and have a great weekend. 

Follow the show on Twitter, too, @BestStoryShow. And when you're done with this one, check out more episodes. You can also subscribe on Google Play or Stitcher. 

The Best Story I’ve Heard Today with University of Texas journalism professor Robert Quigley

We might now be very close to looking at a shift in transportation, says journalism professor and deep innovation thinker Robert Quigley. And, he says, it is coming on us fast. Some people might think about buggy whip makers, though perhaps the better analogy is one pointed out in The Atlantic's story, perhaps the coming autonomous car fleets will be more like Craigslist and classified ads.

Alphabet is about to pick up a lot of self-driving Jaguars and you might be riding in one as soon as 2020. Change might be coming upon us fast. 

Quiqley returns to the program to talk about how the model might work, what that could mean for city infrastructure and we start thinking about the possibilities of unintended consequences. We could do an entire show on that. Maybe we should. 

Previously on this show, Robert Quigley has shared with us an interesting Washington Post profile on HUD boss Ben Carson. Be sure to check out more of his work at UT Media Innovation. 

Follow the show on Twitter, too, @BestStoryShow. And when you're done with this one, check out more episodes. You can also subscribe on Google Play or Stitcher.