The town Santa Claus lost 40 pounds so he could donate a kidney to a stranger

Happy Friday. Today's lead story is about Dave Bell, a man who has dressed up as Santa Claus for his community in Powhatan, Virginia for years. He decided to donate a kidney to a stranger. The catch: he had to lose 40 pounds first to qualify. He did it anyway.

We also have the story of how local conservationists tripled the protected seascapes along 300 miles of Turkey's Mediterranean coastline, the lab team that cracked the chemical pathway behind wolfsbane's medicinal potential after 2,000 years of traditional use, and Japan's new fireworks shells that dissolve completely in water.

—Stephanie S

Dave Bell has been Powhatan, Virginia's Santa Claus for years. Every holiday season he lights up children's faces, brings the spirit of Christmas to the community, and does the whole thing with the kind of genuine warmth that makes kids believe. This July, he delivered a different kind of gift.

Bell decided to donate a kidney to an anonymous recipient — someone he has never met and will never know. The only obstacle was medical eligibility. The qualifying requirements meant he needed to lose 40 pounds before surgeons could clear him. He lost the weight, checked in to Henrico Doctors' Hospital, had the surgery, and wore his Santa hat on the hospital bed during recovery.

"I have two of these things, and I only need one," Bell said. "There's somebody who has none and they need one." His transplant surgeon, Dr. Amanda Bailey of the Virginia Transplant Center, put it simply: "Stories like Dave's make organ donation feel real and personal. They show that donation is possible and that one person can make an enormous difference in someone else's life."

Dave now has to get back into Santa shape before December. He has some work to do. But somewhere, someone is seeing clearly because he decided to try. Read the full story.

In 2012, Turkish conservationist Zafer Kızılkaya secured the establishment of Turkey's first community-managed marine protected area in Gökova Bay on the country's southwestern coast. It was a hard-won milestone. Sharks were returning. Fish catches were rising for law-abiding fishermen who had suffered for years while illegal operators took what they wanted. The question became whether it could be replicated.

In 2019, the Endangered Landscapes and Seascapes Program, a nonprofit born out of a Cambridge University conservation initiative and funded by the Arcadia Fund UK, gave Kızılkaya's team $3 million to try. Their goal: connect and expand six individual marine protected areas spanning 310 miles of coastline between Gökova Bay and Cape Gelidonya, creating an ecological corridor where fish, sharks, and monk seals could move without running into fishing pressure the moment they left a protected zone. They also trained local residents to serve as marine rangers, people who knew exactly where illegal fishermen operated and were willing to act on that knowledge. Illegal fishing fell 80%.

By 2020, protected seascapes in Turkish territorial waters had tripled. Sandbar sharks have returned year-round. More than 30 Mediterranean monk seals, an Endangered species, now call the area home. Fishermen who once resented the no-fishing zones have become their strongest advocates, because catches in the unprotected waters around them have been rising ever since. "There are now amazing projects all over the Mediterranean and all over the world," Kızılkaya said. "That gives me hope." Read the full story.

Is payday still a few days away, but the bills aren't waiting? We've all been there. That's why there's Klover — a cash advance of up to $750* from your upcoming paycheck, with no credit check and no late fees. Ever.

Cash in 3 Easy Steps

No credit check. No late fees. No catch — just a little breathing room until payday.

Get Started Now

^{*Not all users will qualify. Advances range from $25–$750; average advance is $170. Express transfer fees may apply.}

Wolfsbane and larkspur are among the most famously toxic plants on Earth. Wolfsbane has been linked to historic poisonings going back to antiquity, possibly including the deaths of Socrates, Alexander the Great, and Cleopatra's sister. And yet both plants have been used in traditional medicine worldwide for millennia, with practitioners employing them to treat pain, malaria, cancer, and agricultural pests. The paradox has always been the same: these plants clearly do something, but nobody understood the chemistry well enough to harness it safely at scale.

A collaboration between Michigan State University and the Czech Academy of Sciences has now cracked a key part of that puzzle. By tracking thousands of genes across wolfsbane and larkspur, the team identified six enzymes responsible for creating a compound called atisinium, a member of the diterpenoid alkaloid family, the intersection of the two oldest and largest classes of plant chemicals on the planet. Understanding that pathway is the essential first step toward engineering organisms that can produce these compounds in large, controlled quantities. The team used tobacco plants as biological factories, inserting the relevant genetic codes and confirming the enzymes worked as predicted.

"Plants are the best chemists around, upgrading their arsenal of natural compounds over millions of years to help them survive," said Björn Hamberger, endowed professor at MSU's Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. "In an ideal scenario, this could eventually help create new drugs inspired by these natural products." Published in Molecular Plant. Read the full story.

Every major fireworks show leaves a mess. After the finale, the ground, the water, and the surrounding environment are littered with spent plastic and cardboard casings that take years to break down. In Japan, where many of the country's most celebrated fireworks festivals take place over rivers, lakes, and the sea, that debris falls directly into the water. It has bothered pyrotechnicians for years.

Hiroyuki Kakinoki, president of Kakinoki Fireworks Industry Co., had been trying to solve this problem since 2018, when he first started R&D on more environmentally friendly shells. His early experiments with resins failed repeatedly, and he eventually abandoned the effort. Then he met Ryukoku University professor Takahiko Nakaoki at a conference, and the two realized they could solve the problem together using a water-soluble resin already approved for use in agricultural seeds and soil improvers. The resulting shell becomes soft and sloughy like hot caramel when it hits water, vanishing into the ecosystem through a material already proven harmless. The new design also uses about half as much paper packaging as conventional shells.

"Of the 20,000 fireworks we plan to produce this year, I want 10,000 to be eco-friendly ones," Kakinoki told the Mainichi Shimbun. A man who loves things that go boom found a professor who understood how things dissolve. Sometimes that's all an invention needs. Read the full story.

🧴 Singapore: Singapore is rolling out over 100 refill stations for home and laundry cleaners at a 30% discount, letting residents refill their own bottles rather than buy new plastic ones, in one of the largest urban refill programs launched anywhere in the world.

🌌 USA: Astronomers using NASA's Swift telescope have discovered the first dormant supermassive black hole found far from any galactic core, 30,000 light-years from the center of its host galaxy, exposed only when it shredded a passing star and briefly blazed into view.

👶 New Zealand: A landmark randomized trial of nearly 4,000 babies has confirmed that acetaminophen and ibuprofen are equally safe during the first year of life, with neither medicine linked to eczema, bronchiolitis, or serious side effects, resolving a long-standing question for parents worldwide.

🧠 USA: Researchers at UC San Francisco have found that a sleeping brain that appears older than its actual age is a reliable early warning sign of dementia, with every 10-year gap in brain age raising dementia risk by nearly 40%, detectable years before any memory symptoms appear. Published in JAMA Network Open.

☀️ China: Scientists have built a hollow nanoreactor that mimics living cells to produce hydrogen peroxide efficiently from sunlight, creating recyclable photocatalysts stable under natural light, with applications in medicine, agriculture, and clean water treatment. Published in JACS.

Alice Coachman grew up in Albany, Georgia, running barefoot along dirt roads near her home because she had no proper track shoes and no formal training. She didn't need them. By the time she reached the Tuskegee Institute, she was dominating the Amateur Athletics high jump championship, winning ten national titles in a row, along with national titles in the 50-meter and 100-meter dashes. She was ready for the Olympics in 1940. The Games were canceled for the war. She was ready again in 1944. Canceled again.

In 1948, at the London Games, she finally got her chance. She won the high jump with a leap of 5 feet 6 and one-eighth inches, breaking the previous world record by nearly three inches and becoming the first Black woman in history to win an Olympic gold medal. A sportswriter who had watched her for years wrote afterward: "We would probably be talking about her as the No. 1 female athlete of all time." Upon returning home she met President Harry Truman, met former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, was celebrated with parades, and was honored at a party thrown by Count Basie. In 1952, she became the first Black woman to win a commercial endorsement deal when Coca-Cola signed her and featured her prominently on billboards alongside 1936 Olympic winner Jesse Owens.

Other notable August 7 events:

1782: George Washington established the Purple Heart medal, 244 years ago today, originally called the Badge of Military Merit, making it the first American military decoration awarded to enlisted soldiers and one of the oldest military honors still presented today.

1974: Philippe Petit walked a high wire strung between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, 52 years ago today, 1,368 feet above the streets of New York, completing eight crossings without a safety net while the city below him stopped and stared.

1982: Boston Red Sox outfielder Jim Rice sprinted from the dugout to scoop up a four-year-old boy struck by a screaming foul ball at Fenway Park, 44 years ago today, rushing him to the clubhouse for immediate medical care before he was taken to the hospital, where he fully recovered with only a light scar.

1971: The Bee Gees reached number one on the US singles chart for the first time, 55 years ago today, with "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart," written by Barry and Robin Gibb the afternoon they reunited after a period of estrangement. It was Grammy-nominated for Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Group.

— Louisa May Alcott

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:

🧬 A More Precise Kind of Gene Editing: Prime editing, a refined version of CRISPR, can rewrite specific sequences in DNA without making dangerous double-strand breaks or needing a DNA template, dramatically expanding the number of inherited diseases that could eventually be corrected at the genetic level.

🧠 Thinking Your Way to Movement: Implanted electrode arrays that record the brain's own firing patterns are allowing people with paralysis to control robotic arms, type on computers, and communicate at speeds approaching natural speech, entirely through thought, without moving a single muscle.

🌍 Clean Hydrogen at Industrial Scale: Electrolyzers powered by renewable electricity are now splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen at industrial scale, producing green hydrogen that can replace fossil fuels in the production of steel, in shipping, and across heavy industry where electrification alone won't reach.

🌱 Farming That Pulls Carbon From the Air: Regenerative agriculture practices, including cover cropping, no-till farming, and composting, are measurably increasing soil organic carbon across millions of acres, sequestering CO2 while simultaneously improving crop yields and making farms more resilient to drought.

🔭 A Telescope the Size of Earth: Linking radio telescopes across multiple continents into virtual arrays the diameter of the planet is enabling astronomers to photograph supermassive black holes, map the structure of distant galaxies, and detect phenomena completely invisible to any optical instrument.

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

When you share your unique link, you’re not just passing along uplifting stories; you’re earning a few surprises from us, too. Brighten someone’s day, grow the circle, and enjoy some goodies while you’re at it. You’re currently at {{rp_num_referrals}} referrals.

Click the button below, then copy and paste the link to share.

If that button doesn’t work, you can copy and share your referral link with your friends: {{rp_refer_url}}

Manage your referrals here