A 12-year-old just delivered 30,000 diapers to a food bank

Happy Thursday and welcome to October. I can't believe how fast this year is flying. Here are some stories to make us slow down and remember what matters. Starting with Sloan, who was 7 when she noticed an empty shelf at a Phoenix food bank while volunteering with her mom. She asked what was supposed to go there. Diapers, they said. Always the first to run out. She went home and started a drive. Five years later she just delivered 30,000.

We also have sea turtles nesting on the California coast for the first time ever, a Lincolnshire golf course already drawing rare seabirds before it even officially opened as a wetland reserve, and Chris Evans getting two inseparable dogs adopted within hours of posting a video.

Dive in.

—Stephanie S

When Sloan was volunteering at Nourish Phoenix with her mom at age 7, she noticed a bare section of shelving and asked what was supposed to go there. Diapers, the staff told her. They were always among the most requested items and always the first to run out.

Sloan went home and started a drive. That was five years ago. This year, for her 5th annual Diaper Drive, she set a target of 22,500, and the Huggies, Pampers, and Blueys kept pouring in until there was hardly room to walk through her house.

By the time the drive closed, 12-year-old Sloan had collected 30,000 diapers, which she delivered to Nourish Phoenix in a UHaul truck, leaving the food bank employees a little speechless. "If we have the ability to give someone something that they might not have or need, it's really important to do that," she told ABC 15.

Sloan has her own website, sloansdiaperdrive.org, where donations are open year-round. Her mother called her "just so special," with "such a big heart." See how she organizes the drive each year, and find out how you can support it.

Olive ridley sea turtles have large breeding colonies in Costa Rica, Mexico, and Nicaragua, but have never been recorded nesting anywhere on North America's West Coast. That changed this September, when two turtles came ashore on Southern California beaches days apart, in broad daylight, and each dug a nest, deposited a clutch of eggs, and returned to the sea. They left behind nothing but a small trail in the sand and a couple of speechless lifeguards.

The first turtle came ashore at Seal Beach. Three days later, another appeared at Huntington Beach, eight miles north. Lindsey Peavey Reeves, a senior scientist with the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation who has spent 20 years studying olive ridleys, told the LA Times she expected to see subtropical species off Southern California during El Niños, but added: "I wasn't expecting to see olive ridley sea turtles nesting in Orange County." NOAA and Fish and Wildlife Service personnel quickly arrived to erect protective mesh nets around the delicate nests.

Then came hurricanes Polo and Odalys. Extreme high tide combined with the back-to-back storms would have destroyed the nests entirely, so wildlife officials from both agencies rushed to carry out the first turtle egg rescue in California history, packing 204 eggs into polystyrene coolers and driving them to the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach. Whether the eggs will prove viable isn't yet known, but researchers say the turtles' arrival is a vote of confidence in the animals' adaptability. See what scientists believe drove these turtles to California for the first time, and what happens next.

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Golf courses cover 2.24 million acres in the United States alone, an area larger than Delaware, and have long been criticized as water-hungry, pesticide-heavy biodiversity dead zones. A growing number are quietly becoming something else entirely. Along England's Lincolnshire coast, the National Trust bought a fairway in 2020, pulled it up, and dug out a new wetland ecosystem stretching across the equivalent of 45 football fields. No pesticides. No public water. Ever again.

The reserve, called Sandilands, began drawing birds before it was even officially open. Avocets and oystercatchers nested and bred successfully. Little ringed plover chicks were recorded on site for a second consecutive year. Plovers, terns, and lapwings arrived too. "Many of the species we'll see at Sandilands are endangered or rare and depend on places like this to rest, feed, and breed," said area ranger Katie Scott. "Even before the project was officially complete, nature had begun to return."

Stateside, Colorado's CommonGround Golf Course is taking a gentler approach in partnership with the Denver Botanic Gardens, replacing non-native foliage with native wildflowers and swapping potable water for recycled wastewater. The result: 40 species of birds recorded on the course in a single day. Find out just how much acreage across America could be transformed if more golf courses followed suit.

Greg and Carley had been at the Animal Rescue League of Boston long enough for the staff to notice something important: the short-haired chihuahua and the shaggy golden retriever could not bear to be apart. They were a bonded pair, which meant whoever took one had to take both. Chris Evans, a longtime dog lover who shares his home with a boxer-mix named Dodger and a 10-month-old daughter, heard about them through The Dodo's "Dream Date" series, in which Hollywood stars spend time with shelter dogs who need homes.

Evans played games with Carley, answered questions about whether they might be a good triple match, and made his pitch to the camera. Greg, for his part, wasn't particularly interested in the games. "They're a bonded pair, which means they have to be adopted together," Evans said. "A couple of sweethearts, and I hope someone out there gives them their forever home."

Someone did. A couple adopted Greg and Carley shortly after the video went up and immediately started an Instagram account to document their new life together. The account is @lifewithgregandcallie. See what Evans shared about his own animals, and watch the full Dream Date video.

🦛 Kenya: When Kenya Wildlife Service rescuers arrived at Oloiden Resort in Naivasha, they found a days-old hippo pressed against his dead mother's body, nudging her and calling out in soft, desperate cries. They named him Bumpy. Now five months old at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust's Kaluku sanctuary, he sleeps most soundly when cuddled and follows his keepers everywhere he goes.

⚖️ USA: A small group of formerly incarcerated women formed the Lioness Justice Impacted Women's Alliance in 2022 to fight dangerous conditions inside Texas prisons. This week, they won a landmark federal lawsuit ordering the state to air-condition all Texas prisons by 2029, with a judge ruling that extreme heat violates the Eighth Amendment's protection against cruel and unusual punishment. Nearly 90,000 people were living without AC.

🐆 USA: There are fewer than 100 wild ocelots left in the United States, but trail cameras are now catching them using wildlife crossings in South Texas, alongside 25 other species including mountain lions, alligators, and Texas indigo snakes. The Texas Department of Transportation has now built 32 animal crossings across the state.

🏡 Ghana: YouTuber MrBeast spent $10 million building a complete village in Ghana named Abna Dakwa, including houses, a school, toilet facilities, a marketplace, a community farm, and a well, as part of his nonprofit's broader goal to eradicate child labor in the country and bring clean water to millions.

🐱 Bolivia: Scientists confirmed that a small spotted cat found in Bolivia's Yungas cloud forest is an entirely new species called Leopardus tilcayo, the first new cat species described in more than 100 years. Weighing just 3 pounds and named for what local communities already called it, one individual lives at a wildlife sanctuary after a local family kept it as a pet.

On October 1, 1971, Walt Disney World Resort opened near Orlando, Florida, covering 39 square miles of what the company had quietly called "The Florida Project." Walt Disney himself had developed the concept in the 1960s, but died before construction began. His older brother Roy came out of retirement to make sure the dream was realized, and insisted the complex be renamed from Disney World to Walt Disney World so that people would always know whose vision it was.

What began as a single theme park, the Magic Kingdom, has since grown to four parks, two water parks, 27 themed resort hotels, and a camping resort, drawing more than 58 million visitors a year. It is protected by FAA-prohibited airspace, a designation otherwise reserved for military bases, the White House, and Camp David. Fifty-five years on, it remains the most visited vacation resort on Earth.

Other notable October 1 events:

1962: Johnny Carson hosted his first Tonight Show 64 years ago today, with guests Rudy Vallée, Tony Bennett, Mel Brooks, and Joan Crawford in the seats.

1961: Roger Maris hit his 61st home run of the season for the New York Yankees, 65 years ago today, breaking Babe Ruth's record of 60 that had stood since 1927.

1964: Japan's Shinkansen bullet trains launched the world's first high-speed rail service, 62 years ago today.

Happy 91st birthday to Julie Andrews, who won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her film debut in Mary Poppins, and whose role as Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music remains the 6th highest-grossing film of all time adjusted for inflation

— Mahatma Gandhi

Every day brings amazing advances and uplifting moments that remind us just how wonderful the world can be. Here are five reasons why today is the best time ever to be alive:

🧫 Brain Cells That Can Learn: Scientists are growing tiny clusters of human brain cells that can learn to play simple video games and solve problems, sometimes faster than AI systems designed for the same tasks. It's the earliest glimpse of what organic computing could look like — and it's raising profound new questions about the nature of intelligence itself.

🌊 Underwater Kites Generating Power: Engineers have developed underwater kites that harness tidal energy by sweeping back and forth in a figure-eight pattern through ocean currents, generating far more electricity per device than stationary turbines. No visual impact. No interference with marine life. Just clean energy from the pull of the moon.

🌱 Mangroves Making a Comeback at Scale: Scientists have developed floating nursery platforms that grow mangrove seedlings offshore and anchor them automatically as they mature, allowing coastal restoration at a speed and scale that hand-planting could never match. Mangroves store carbon, protect coastlines, and shelter marine nurseries all at once.

🔬 A Blood Test That Finds Dozens of Cancers: A new generation of liquid biopsy tests can detect more than 50 types of cancer from a single vial of blood, identifying fragments of tumor DNA circulating in the bloodstream years before symptoms appear. Some multi-cancer early detection panels are already approved for clinical use.

🏙️ Roads That Fight Heat: Cities are painting streets and parking lots with reflective coatings that reduce surface temperatures by up to 10 degrees Fahrenheit, measurably cutting the urban heat island effect and reducing heat-related illness in dense neighborhoods. The coolest cities of the future may literally be cooler.

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