The art made by people with PTSD that's quietly healing a neighborhood

Happy Memorial Day. Today is one of those days that asks us to pause, and I think that's worth honoring at the top of this newsletter before we get into the good news.

To everyone who has lost someone in service to this country, or who carries that weight quietly every day, this newsletter is for you too. We see you.

Today's lead story is about a community art project in East London that was built by people carrying their own kinds of invisible weight, veterans, trauma survivors, people in recovery. What they made together out of broken tiles is something I think will stay with you.

We've also got an owl who needed new feathers before he could go home, a common asthma medication that researchers think may be quietly fighting cancer, and a California deputy who went from routine call to delivering a baby in a parking lot in about sixty seconds flat.

Here's your good news.

👉 P.S. Good News Break goes out every single weekday. For $5 a month you can join the readers who start every morning with stories like these, including exclusive paid content you won't find in this issue.

—Stephanie S

Happy Memorial Day. Today is one of those days that asks us to pause, and I think that's worth honoring at the top of this newsletter before we get into the good news.

To everyone who has lost someone in service to this country, or who carries that weight quietly every day, this newsletter is for you too. We see you.

Today's lead story is about a community art project in East London that was built by people carrying their own kinds of invisible weight, veterans, trauma survivors, people in recovery. What they made together out of broken tiles is something I think will stay with you.

We've also got an owl who needed new feathers before he could go home, a common asthma medication that researchers think may be quietly fighting cancer, and a California deputy who went from routine call to delivering a baby in a parking lot in about sixty seconds flat.

Here's your good news.

—Stephanie S

In the parks and alleyways of East London's Hackney borough, tucked into walls and pavements and concrete benches, there is one of the most quietly extraordinary collections of public art in Britain. Roman-style mosaics, dog portraits, vibrant floral patterns, every piece made by volunteers living with PTSD, depression, or addiction, sitting together around tables of broken tile and glass, pressing fragments into mortar one careful piece at a time.

The project was started 15 years ago by Tessa Hunkin, an architect turned artist, after a chance encounter with a mental health recovery group. She realized that the slow, focused work of building a mosaic offered something rare: a genuine holiday from your own head. The concentration required interrupts negative thought patterns and builds confidence in a way that, as Tessa puts it, is never time wasted because you can always see where your time has gone.

"Eventually we had children running around, recovering addicts, people with serious mental health problems, and local residents all sitting together making mosaics," she said. "They finished much more quickly than I was anticipating and we have never stopped since."

The project has since grown to serve healthcare workers burned out from COVID-19 and patients at a local health center. On a day when the country pauses to honor those who carry invisible weight, this feels like the right story. See the photos and find out where to visit them.

In October, a good Samaritan found a young great horned owl encased in concrete inside a mixer in St. George, Utah, and called Best Friends Animal Society 80 miles away. After carefully removing the concrete, the team at their Wild Friends wildlife refuge discovered the damage ran deeper than they hoped. Several primary feathers in the owl's right wing were too damaged to fly silently, and silent flight isn't optional for a great horned owl. It's how they hunt. It's how they survive.

The team waited for the owl's spring molt to naturally replace the damaged feathers. When that didn't happen as expected, they took a training course in a procedure called imping, which uses donor feathers and adhesive to replace raptor feathers. A great horned owl of similar size had passed away at a wildlife rescue in northern Utah, and the donated feathers were a match.

On May 1st, four staff members performed the 90-minute procedure under anesthesia, replacing 11 feathers in the right wing. Within weeks, the owl was flying silently to the highest perch in the aviary. Staff measured the decibels of his wingbeat. He passed. The aviary roof slowly opened, and he flew straight up and out into the wild. Watch the release video. It's a good one.

Researchers at Northwestern University have discovered that montelukast, the FDA-approved asthma and allergy medication sold under the brand name Singulair, may also help fight some of the most aggressive and treatment-resistant cancers, including triple-negative breast cancer, melanoma, and ovarian cancer.

At the center of the discovery is a molecule called CysLTR1, which cancers exploit to trick the immune system into helping tumors grow by recruiting a type of white blood cell that suppresses immune response. Montelukast blocks that molecule. When researchers blocked it, either genetically or with the drug, tumor growth slowed and the immune system recovered its ability to fight. What makes the finding especially exciting is that rather than simply removing the harmful cells, the drug reprogrammed them into cells that support the immune attack on the tumor.

Because montelukast is already FDA-approved and has been prescribed for decades, it could move into cancer clinical trials far faster than a new drug. Senior author Professor Bin Zhang called it a potential breakthrough for aggressive cancers where new options are urgently needed. Read the full findings and what the next steps look like.

Deputy Foster Tracy of the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department was dispatched to a report of suspicious activity near a business in Rancho Cordova, California. A woman was sitting between two bushes. Routine enough. Then she told him she was having a baby. "Excuse me?" Tracy remembers saying. "You're having a baby?"

She had been asking for help for hours. The baby's head was already out. Tracy called for backup and got down on his knees. When his partner arrived moments later, they both saw the problem immediately: the umbilical cord was wrapped around the baby's neck. Tracy thought the baby might not make it. He and his partner kept working.

Both mother and baby were taken to the hospital healthy. The shop owners whose call had inadvertently summoned Tracy were stunned. The mom was grateful. Tracy's chief praised him publicly. As for Tracy himself, he described the whole thing as one of those calls you go to expecting nothing, and it goes zero to a hundred really fast. On a day we honor the people who show up, this one felt right to include. Watch the CBS News report and see the photo of the healthy baby.

🏛️ France: After nearly a decade of promises, French lawmakers passed a landmark law allowing the government to return thousands of artworks looted from African nations and other former colonies by decree, with requests already pending from Mali, Algeria, and Benin.

🍽️ UK: In a landmark expansion of child welfare, the British government confirmed all children in Universal Credit households will qualify for free school meals from September 2026, removing the earnings threshold and extending the benefit to over half a million additional children in poverty.

⚡ Global: The BloombergNEF New Energy Outlook 2026 found that battery storage is set to jump 17-fold by 2035 as clean energy costs hit historic lows, making it increasingly viable to store solar and wind power around the clock regardless of weather.

🏺 UK: Britain's largest Iron Age hoard has gone on public display for the first time at the Great North Museum in Newcastle, revealing a 2,000-year-old collection that includes the earliest known evidence of a four-horse chariot in British history.

🦠 Australia: The WHO officially validated Australia's elimination of trachoma, the world's leading infectious cause of preventable blindness, making it the first high-income country and 30th nation overall to achieve this milestone after decades of targeted work with Indigenous communities.

On this day 48 years ago, a film about a farm boy from a desert planet, a princess held hostage, and a ragtag band of rebels fighting an evil empire opened in just 32 theaters across the United States. Nobody expected much. The studio had little faith in it. George Lucas was so convinced it would fail that rather than attend the premiere, he went on vacation to Hawaii with his friend Steven Spielberg. By the end of opening weekend, people were lined up around the block.

Star Wars became the highest-grossing film in history at the time, earning over $775 million worldwide. It was nominated for 11 Academy Awards and won 7, including Best Original Score for John Williams, whose theme is now one of the most recognized pieces of music ever written. Alec Guinness, who almost turned down the role of Obi-Wan Kenobi, was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. The franchise went on to generate over $10 billion in film revenue and redefined what a movie could be as a cultural phenomenon, a business, and an experience. It also launched the era of the summer blockbuster and changed how studios thought about film merchandising forever.

What Lucas created in that galaxy far, far away turns out to have been right here all along.

Other notable May 25 events:

1935: In one of the greatest athletic performances in history, Jesse Owens set three world records and tied a fourth in a single 45-minute span at the Big Ten Championships in Ann Arbor, a feat so extraordinary it went unmatched for a quarter century.

1961: President John F. Kennedy announced before a joint session of Congress his goal to put a man on the Moon before the end of the decade, a vision achieved eight years later on July 20, 1969.

1986: Approximately 5.5 million Americans joined hands across the country in Hands Across America, raising around $15 million for hunger and homelessness relief over Memorial Day weekend.

2012: The SpaceX Dragon capsule became the first privately owned spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station, opening a new era of commercial space exploration.

— Franklin D. Roosevelt

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:

🧬 Turning Off Disease: Scientists can now use epigenetic editing to switch specific genes on or off without changing the underlying DNA sequence, opening a new frontier in treating conditions from cancer to mental illness that goes far beyond what was possible even five years ago.

🌊 Oceans Recovering: Marine protected areas with strict enforcement are seeing fish populations, coral reefs, and ocean biodiversity recover at rates that surprised even the scientists studying them, with some areas resembling pre-industrial ocean conditions within a decade.

🤝 Fewer Wars Than Ever: Despite what the headlines suggest, the long-term trend in organized armed conflict deaths per capita has been falling for decades, with today's world being statistically less violent than any previous century in recorded human history.

🌱 Feeding Cities Differently: Urban farms and vertical growing systems are now supplying fresh produce to major cities worldwide that previously had none, with some facilities producing the equivalent of hundreds of acres of farmland in a single building using less than 5% of the water.

🧠 Understanding Grief: Scientists now understand that grief rewires the brain in measurable ways, and that the process of healing is not about forgetting but about integration, giving millions of people experiencing loss a framework that validates what they feel and shows the way through it.

Spread a little good news, and good things come back your way.

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