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Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Saturday, the twenty first of December.
I'm Zara, I'm Sam.
We have officially made it to the end of the working year. And what better way to celebrate twenty twenty four than to go through some of the best good news stories that this year.
Had to offer. I love a good the year that was like, it's always made me very emotional. Yeah, I remember actually in the kind of when everyone watched TV linear TV days, there were these two hour specials that would be on all the commercial networks taking you through the year, and we're doing it in ten minutes. Well, there wasn't always that much good news in them, and we're just going to focus on the good bits. Yes, so exactly. This is the perfect endorphin boost for your
Saturday morning, Zara. When you look back at twenty twenty four, it was your good news story of the year.
I think that I can't make a decision on this. Actually, okay, I think I have two favorite good news stories the year. So the verse is obviously the Olympics, because I am a sports fan and naturally I pick an Olympic story.
Okay, yeah, take me through that one, okay.
So first favorite good news story of the year is the fact that Ossie women dominated the Olympics and the Para Olympics. And I just think that, you know, we lead into Olympic season with such anticipation and so many predictions about what might happen, and yet nobody predicted how well the Oussie women would go in Paris. And you know, it started very early in the Olympic campaign when Grace Brown set the tone she won gold on Day one, and then from there the women were just flying. We
went on to win. We as if I'm a part of that, Queen the women. This is the mentality we're introducing here at TDA. When Australia wins, we all win.
Sure, Okay.
So then the other Ossie women went on to win thirteen of Australia's eighteen gold medals in Paris, and thirty two of the fifty three medals overall across all the individual and team sports.
And absolutely swimming had absolutely nothing to do with it.
No, it had a lot to do with that.
You know.
Of course, we had the Ossie women in the pool ari tit, miss Kaylee McEwen and Emma McKeon, who has since gone on to announce her retirement. But it wasn't just in the pool, you know, there were of course the Fox sisters who dominated in their whitewater events. I don't know what else to call that.
The canoe Slalam and the canoe Cross.
And then an unexpected highlight for me was actually the BMX racing where Sayas the Kakibara won in the most emotional fashions.
So she's a BMX writer who was competing throughout her whole life with her older brother who was also a BMX rider. He then had quite a catastrophic injury while racing and isn't able to race again, and she kind of did it for both of them, which is pretty beautiful.
And it was just beautiful. And again I don't even think it needs to be said, these are the moments where humanity is at its best, where we all rally behind someone. It's been it's been a dark year for many people, and yet you know, to feel galvanized by the spirit of Australian sportsmanship and the best our country has to offer.
Really it takes a lot to get an Australian up at two am to watch that thing. But we were all awake for it and I know an amazing couple of weeks.
Well that was the good news story. The bad news story of your year was when your wife turned off your alarm.
One of Australia's biggest news podcasts, Oh my gosh, we share the responsibility of the alarm. The fact that she switched it off is a shared a beautiful part of our marriage.
It is. Look, we'll go back to the good news for a moment run back. We also had more good news the Paralympics, where the country's collective heart was captured by none other than Alexa Leary.
And we've spoken.
We did a whole podcast about Alexi Lear. That's how obsessed we were. But if you didn't catch that one. Alexa or Alexi as she's known, was a triathlete who had the world at her feet. In July twenty twenty one, though, when she was training, her front wheel clipped the bike ahead of her and it caused an accident that saw Alexa land on her head. It resulted in major brain damage,
blood clots, several broken bones. She spent a week on life support and when she woke up, she pretty much had to learn how to do everything again from scratch. She had to completely learn to walk and talk again. A huge recovery lay ahead for one Alexi Leary, but she can't be stopped. She didn't let that stand in her way, and this Paralympics she managed to not just compete, but to win gold.
She in fact won two golds and just amazing. It was in both an individual but also in team relay where she was the anchor of that reala team and really brought the team home. I just want to focus on the timeline here. July twenty twenty one was the catastrophic injury. June July twenty twenty four, she was winning gold in Paris.
It just, you know, I think the word resilience gets thrown around a lot, and sometimes I think we overuse these kind of buzzwords. There is nobody more fitting for a description of being resilient than Alexilari. She's just unbelievable and again just demonstrates what hard work, perseverance and putting everything in can get you.
And not bad in front of a microphone either.
She's hilarious. She is so funny and like really ozzy humor. She's unbelievable and so together. The Aussie women that guided us through the Olympics and Paralympics were my favorite good news story of the year.
Well, you told us it was tired. Actually yeah, he told us at the beginning there was a tie. So we're going to put Paris in one bucket. What is the other story? Yeah, so the other story.
I don't know why this story has stuck with me so much, but my other favorite good news story this year is about Richard Scoalia. So, Richard Scolia is our joint Australian of the Year. Him and his colleague and friend, Professor Georgina Long were named Australian of the Year back in January, and that was because they have pioneered this crazy, incredible melanoma research that has saved and will continue to
save countless lives around the world. And so Richard, along with Georgina, has dedicated his life to cancer research and treatment. But eighteen months ago his world was turned upside down. He was diagnosed with an incredibly aggressive form of brain cancer and he was told that he had you know,
no more than twelve months to live. And so the reason that this is my good news story is that since that time, Richard has been working with Georgina to treat his cancer with the same breakthrough approach that they have used in the field of melanoma. And just be really clear here, they are using a very novel approach for one cancer and have since taken the learnings to
treat another cancer. It's never been done before. And the great news is that Richard has confirmed that there is no recurrence of his cancer and it's now over eighteen months since he was first diagnosed. We sat down with
Richard earlier this year. Emmera, our editor, spoke to him and there are just very few people, I'd say, who have more humility, more perspective and more warmth than someone like Richard, who's dedicated his life to others and is now you know, he's taken such a risk in treating his cancer this way. He had to forego what the traditional treatment plan would look like in order to potentially save thousands more lives, and you know, it just gave me the woman fuzzies and I just think it's worked.
He's doing really well, and I just wanted to play you a clip from what he said. His perspective on this whole thing has been.
Earlier this year, you shared the milestone news that you'd been cancer free for a year. What do those milestone periods mean to you personally? What was that moment like after twelve months to hear that news.
I guess just fills me with joy that I'm still around and able to enjoy my life. We're going to have a jat like we can today, I guess, you know, I wasn't really expecting that. And the other thing that's really really changed is that I don't know how long I'm going to be here for, but it makes me feel like I still want to contribute to society as I have for decades, but also to enjoy each one of those days, especially with my family and kids have been incredibly supportive of going down this.
Path, all right, Sam, So that's me jointly allocating my favorite good news story of the year.
Both very well deserving they are what is yours? I am going to bring you the people's good news story of the year. So this was the good news story that has stuck with me, but also it seems to be stuck with a lot of people because it is the highest ranking good news story TDA reported on Instagram this year, so I think it reached almost a million people this week.
Love that you're diving into the analytics here. I love only meant to be a vibe.
I love seeing what the people well resonated with the people. And this one was back in February, and it was a one billion US dollar donation to a Bronx medical school, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and the donation is to cover tuition for all students going forward. And there's this incredible moment whether students find out that their college tuition is being paid for the donor. Her name is Ruth Godisman. She is a former professor at the college
and she studied learning disabilities. She ran literacy programs for medical students from disadvantage and low socio economic communities around the Bronx. And now at ninety three, she's saying, my legacy is to ensure that whoever wants to study medicine and can do so for free. Unbelievable, It was absolutely incredible.
It was one of the biggest philanthropic gifts in recorded history, definitely the biggest in medicine, and it's going to make a huge difference for students whose college degrees can cost around two hundred thousand US dollars. It's a massive, massive impact and I just feel like it's one of those amazing uses of money. And we're in a world and
a new cycle. I mean, we have a new richest company in the world now in the video and the AI wave where there's a lot of wealth and there's a lot of people doing really interesting things with their wealth. And this has set a gold standard and that story has stuck with me for the whole year. And a special runner up for me is the baby white rhino
born out of Victoria's Werribee Open Range Zoo. The white rhino is really really endangered all around the world and it was incredible to have such a gorgeous little guy born in Australia. And by gorgeous little guy, I mean a sixty kilo grand baby. So the gorgeous photos we also put them up on our Instagram.
I think that it's been the year of people falling in love with animals on TikTok. We've had Mooding, We've had Pesto the penguin, We've had the white rhino whose name you didn't say.
We had the forty year old penguin from San Francisco Zoo Exactly. We've loved San Francisco Zoo. San Francisco. I've had a breakout a year for their animals.
But you know what, all in all, there have been good news stories. There has been a lot of brightness in amongst the darkness, and I think that that is an extremely good note to end the year on and to take us into twenty twenty five, remembering to always look on the bright side and to seek light in the news cycle wherever you can.
Okay, Zara, We're done here for the good news for twenty twenty four. But it's the twenty first of December, and that means that one song needs to take us out. Paul Kelly's How to Make Gravy made this date pretty iconic. Enjoy and we'll be back with more good news in the new year. Bye, hell Day, it's Joe here. I hope you keep them well.
It's the twenty first of December.
Now they're ringing the last bill.
I get good behavior.
I'll be out here by Delia.
Want to kiss my kids on Christmas Day?
Please don't let them crack. My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Banjelung Chalcolton woman from Gadighl Country.
The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigel people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Straight and Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.