In the 1950s, there was a major crisis in the auto industry. Engines had become more powerful, drivers were reaching higher speeds, and vehicular deaths skyrocketed. What made the crisis worse was drivers didn’t trust lap belts anymore since they seemed to cause more issues in accidents, so drivers were beginning to get comfortable not using restraints. Volvo stepped up and solved the problem with a revolutionary new seatbelt design, but they had an uphill battle with user adoption. So, they made a decision that stunned the business world.

Welcome to My Good Three Podcast: Good Stories For A Better Week

As children we all heard stories about true happiness. It usually involved some sort of perfect situation where someone suddenly found happiness. Then we get older and realize that it doesn’t really work that way. Happiness isn’t something that you stumble into, but rather, it’s something more elusive and obscure that you try to aim your life toward. In this episode, we learn about Dr. Laurie Santos, professor of psychology at Yale University, and her incredible work around the science of happiness.

Welcome to My Good Three Podcast: Good Stories For A Better Week

The Appalachian Trail, otherwise known as the A.T., is an incredible trail system the stretches 2,200 miles along the Appalachian mountains in the Eastern United States. While many residents of the 14 states that the trail connects have hiked at least a portion of the trail system, many people only know about the A.T. from what they hear in the news when something goes terribly wrong. What many people don’t realize is how many incredible things happen along the A.T. that can renew your faith in humanity.

In fact, these incredible things are referred to by the hikers as Trail Magic. In today’s episode I share three stories that will illustrate just how special it can be to spend time hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Welcome to My Good Three Podcast: Good Stories For A Better Week

There’s no shortage of heroic stories from World War II. However, there’s one story many people don’t know. It was finally cleared to be released to the public by the Polish Archives in the 1990s, and it uniquely captures the courage, sacrifice, and selflessness of the Allied effort. Disguised as a Jewish man, underground Polish Army officer Witold Pilecki was intentionally captured in order to get inside the Nazi’s new operation inside an old Army barracks in Poland. His mission was to gather intelligence on what was happening inside the barracks and to help the Jewish prisoners build a support network. What he didn’t know then was this old Army barracks would soon become one of the deadliest concentration camps in Europe, a camp known as Auschwitz.

This is a story that will remind us all how lucky were are to have our freedom, and all because of the heroism of people like Witold Pilecki.

Welcome to My Good Three Podcast: Good Stories For A Better Week

It seems as though every six months we hear about a new material that is biodegradable and will eliminate our dependency on petroleum-based plastics forever. So far, we’ve been let down consistently. However, a new development out of Japan is very promising. It’s based on a combination of two low-cost ionic monomers that, once formed, only takes a few hours to break down in seawater. And this is just the beginning.

Listen in to learn what’s coming from Japan’s Riken Center For Emergent Matter Design, and hold on to hope that this is the solution we’ve been waiting for.

Welcome to My Good Three Podcast: Good Stories For A Better Week

There are few things more frustrating than paying a lot of money for a commercial flight in order to get somewhere by a specific time, only to find out the flight is delayed. And then, delayed again. Very quickly tempers can flare, and passengers can start taking their frustrations out on one another and the flight crew. Luckily for an airline full of passengers in Atlanta a few weeks ago, there was someone onboard the Delta Airlines flight who knew exactly how to turn the mood around with a few tunes from the instrument case above his head. Not only did it turn people’s moods around, but it put just about everyone in the holiday spirit.

Meet Wayne Hoey, leader and saxophonist for The Wayne Hoey Big Band.

Welcome to My Good Three Podcast: Good Stories For A Better Week

Things have changed since the 1980s when many business deals were done on a handshake and a promise. Jon Huntsman Sr. was a man who was comfortable with deals on a handshake. Big deals. This is a story about a deal, one that was worth millions, that was made without lawyers, only his word…but when the circumstances changed before the deal was put in writing, Jon Huntsman Sr’s word, and the handshake he made, was put to the test. What will shock you is how he handled this situation, and what it did to his future.

Welcome to My Good Three Podcast: Good Stories For A Better Week

It’s easy to get the sense that our environment is changing, the species we rely on are disappearing, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Well, this story is a reminder that with some research and understanding, there are simple things we can do to counteract what’s happening. Meet the seabirds of Rathlin Island, a small island off Northern Ireland, a key sanctuary to their survival. The decline of once ever-present puffins and razorbills has been rapid, and now researchers have found out why: ferrets and rats that hitched a ride by boat. How they solved the problem epitomizes the hope we should have for our planet. And, for dog lovers, this story will give you one more reason to believe that dogs are the greatest animals on earth.

Welcome to My Good Three Podcast: Good Stories For A Better Week

When a small coffee shop, Coffee Milano Cafe, in Middleboro, Massachussetts decided to offer free coffee to anyone, as long as they entered the shop and danced for 5 seconds, they thought they had a fun promotion that might get some new customers and a little buzz. When the TikTok video of people dancing went viral, they suddenly had millions of fans around the world, and just as importantly, they had spread a lot of joy.

Welcome to My Good Three Podcast: Good Stories For A Better Week

There is something about loving to hate a villain. However, it’s not as simple as disliking someone not like us, there’s something else going on, and it says more about those doing the hating than it does the villain. In this Monday’s episode we take a look at an historical sports villain, Paulo Di Cario, who challenged his haters at a critical time, and made everyone take a moment to pause.

Welcome to My Good Three Podcast: Good Stories For A Better Week

When many of us were young, science fiction movies and stories were often centered around the future, when machines would take over the earth and humans would be enslaved for eternity. It’s not as big of a fear as it once was, but the fear of the term Artificial Intelligence is still alive and well. And rightly so. But, there are some incredible things happening in A.I.

In this Episode I outline three startup companies: Check-Eye, CarbonBright, and Memory Lane Games, which are developing ideas to help make the world a better place, all using...gasp…Artificial Intelligence.

Welcome to My Good Three Podcast: Good Stories For A Better Week

How many of us think about donating blood or becoming a live donor but we fail to follow through? Life gets busy, of course. Good thing there are people who do follow through, because this story is a poignant reminder that there are people in desperate need. And, in this story, it’s someone who has a great deal to lose. Listen to this five-minute story about a woman who almost lost her husband, and turned it into an opportunity to save a newborn.

Welcome to My Good Three Podcast: Good Stories For A Better Week

There are very few people who will do just about anything for other people. When it comes to celebrities, it’s even more rare. There was one, however, who never walked past someone who needed help. He connected with anyone who was struggling and did anything he could to make them suffer less. Many of us were lucky to watch his standup and movies, but for those who got to know him, they were witness to true kindness and empathy…this is a story about the late, great comedian and actor, Robin Williams.

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Do you think much about aging? Further yet, do you think about yourself as an older person? What do you envision, both physically and cognitively? A new study tells us that how we perceive aging, as well as how we perceive our own cognition as we age, actually matters. The findings will have you thinking a bit differently about how you judge yourself and your mental capacity, because perception is reality, much more than we originally thought.

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It’s easy to start to feel sorry for yourself when things aren’t going your way. Sometimes the best way to snap out of it, is to take a look at someone else pushing through adversity larger than yours, and thriving. This Wednesday’s episode is about the perspective I gained from learning about Collettey’s Cookies, and the grit and determination of the woman behind the brand. Not only is she thriving, but she’s also lifting up other people as she bakes.

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What would you do if you trained your entire life to achieve a goal, and then in the moment you were about to reach your goal, someone unfairly ruined it? What would you do? This is an incredible story of someone who pushed back against the emotion of the moment, and gracefully accepted that he was good enough…even though what he achieved wasn’t what it could have been.

This is the story of Vanderlei De Lima and his quest for gold at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

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Normally math mistakes are a bad thing, and they result in terrible news…planes crash, bridges collapse, and backyard warriors measure and cut one too few fence posts. This is a case of a mathematics error that turns out to be fantastic news, a mistake found by environmental scientists at Cornell University. What they found will lead much more accurate forecasts of the warming of our planet…and it turns out, it’s better news than we could have imagined.

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After Amy Schmitt of Woodhaven, Michigan, rushed her son Jacob to the hospital for a medical emergency, she learned that they would need to stay in the hospital for several days, including for one of their favorite days of the year, Halloween. She had the wherewithal to find time to rush home to place a sign in front of the house saying they were at the hospital and there was no candy, so kids wouldn’t be disappointed when nobody answered the door during trick or treating. What happened next should challenge any negative narratives you may have about kids these days.

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I had planned to honor veterans today with a story or two about heroic veterans, but I changed my mind. It’s impossible to celebrate Veteran’s Day without mentioning the immense challenge we face in dealing with veteran suicides. I did hesitate talking about it, since there are some studies saying that we may be making it worse by consistently talking about the issue, but I have to think not talking about is worse. To call what is happening among post-9/11 warfighters a mental health crisis isn’t quite capturing the severity of the issue; what we’re dealing with is a full-blown epidemic.

In this episode I briefly share the statistics, and compel listeners to do more than just donate to a veterans cause this Veteran’s Day.

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Hello Fridays. Where have you been all my life?

The invention of the Blackberry years ago marked a shift for workers worldwide. With our office suddenly fitting in our pockets thanks to technology, work began coming along with us wherever we went - and it’s only gotten worse. But there is hope on the horizon for anyone who feels like they can’t get away from the job. Thanks to Four-Day Week Global, and the Four-Day Week Campaign, we are closer than ever before to the tipping point in the quest to have employers across the globe adjust the work schedule to a four-day workweek.

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