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Heroes

The shocking footage these filmmakers captured reveals why the Earth is in serious trouble.

It's fast-paced, action-packed, and visually stunning. It's better than "The Avengers!" (Or so I say.) In any case, this is not your average save-the-whales video.

Louie Psihoyos isn't your average filmmaker.

He's best known for his 2009 documentary "The Cove," which took home an Oscar for its investigation into dolphin hunting practices in Japan.


Whale and dolphin meat on sale in Tokyo. Image by Stefan Powell/Wikimedia Commons.

Even if you haven't heard of the film, you still may have heard about its infamous, gut-wrenching scene depicting a brutal dolphin massacre in the waters of Taiji, Wakayama.

How did Psihoyos get so close to the action without tipping off the fishermen?

"The first time I saw a slaughter, I was hiding across the cove, hanging from a rope on a cliff in full camouflage and face paint," he told The Humane Society of the United States.

So, yeah. Not your average filmmaker.

Now, six years later, he's back with a new film. And he has his sights set on an even bigger target than the dolphin-meat industry.

He's taking on the world's next mass extinction.

Science says there have been five big mass extinction events, or periods when abnormally large numbers of species die out simultaneously. Psihoyos and many others say we're on the verge of the sixth.

When he decided to explore the issue through film, though, he wanted it to be something everyone would want to watch — not just environmentalists. So he and his team, as they've done before, went undercover.

Using technology straight out of a James Bond movie, Psihoyos and his crew conducted covert operations to take us inside the back rooms of the endangered animal trade, to the front lines of carbon dioxide emissions, and underwater to witness the destruction of the world's oceans — giving us an unprecedented look at how humanity is driving entire species to extinction.

And, more importantly, what we can do about it.

While the film hasn't seen a wide release yet, early word says the effect is powerful.

Ecowatch is calling "Racing Extinction" a "must-see documentary." And it's not hard to see why. It's got everything.

High-tech gadgetry.

Stunning images of nature's beauty.

High-octane explosions.

And a message meant to inspire the next generation to change the world.

Trust me, if you care about the fate of the world at all, you aren't going to want to miss "Racing Extinction." And if you're just in it for the spy missions and the daring getaways, that's cool too.

To find out when the film is coming to your town, check the film's official website.

And here's the trailer to get your blood pumping!

P.S. If you think nothing can ever be better than "The Avengers" (and that is a great movie, BTW), you can still feel OK about thinking this is awesome (and important) too.

A pitbull stares at the window, looking for the mailman.


Dogs are naturally driven by a sense of purpose and a need for belonging, which are all part of their instinctual pack behavior. When a dog has a job to do, it taps into its needs for structure, purpose, and the feeling of contributing to its pack, which in a domestic setting translates to its human family.

But let’s be honest: In a traditional domestic setting, dogs have fewer chores they can do as they would on a farm or as part of a rescue unit. A doggy mom in Vancouver Island, Canada had fun with her dog’s purposeful uselessness by sharing the 5 “chores” her pitbull-Lab mix does around the house.

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Representative Image from Canva

Let's not curse any more children with bad names, shall we?

Some parents have no trouble giving their children perfectly unique, very meaningful names that won’t go on to ruin their adulthood. But others…well…they get an A for effort, but might want to consider hiring a baby name professional.

Things of course get even more complicated when one parent becomes attached to a name that they’re partner finds completely off-putting. It almost always leads to a squabble, because the more one parent is against the name, the more the other parent will go to bat for it.

This seemed to be the case for one soon-to-be mom on the Reddit AITA forum recently. Apparently, she was second-guessing her vehement reaction to her husband’s, ahem, avant garde baby name for their daughter, which she called “the worst name ever.”

But honestly, when you hear this name, I think you’ll agree she was totally in the right.

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An English doctor named Edward Jenner took incredible risks to try to rid his world of smallpox. Because of his efforts and the efforts of scientists like him, the only thing between deadly diseases like the ones below and extinction are people who refuse to vaccinate their kids. Don't be that parent.

Unfortunately, because of the misinformation from the anti-vaccination movement, some of these diseases have trended up in a really bad way over the past several years.

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A beautiful cruise ship crossing the seas.

Going on a cruise can be an incredible getaway from the stresses of life on the mainland. However, that doesn’t mean there isn’t an element of danger when living on a ship 200-plus feet high, traveling up to 35 miles per hour and subject to the whims of the sea.

An average of about 19 people go overboard every year, and only around 28% survive. Cruise ship lawyer Spencer Aronfeld explained the phenomenon in a viral TikTok video, in which he also revealed the secret code the crew uses when tragedy happens.

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Joy

Kudos to the heroes who had 90 seconds to save lives in the Key Bridge collapse

The loss of 6 lives is tragic, but the dispatch recording shows it could have been so much worse.

Representative image by Gustavo Fring/Pexels

The workers who responded to the Dali's mayday call saved lives with their quick response.

As more details of the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore emerge, it's becoming more apparent how much worse this catastrophe could have been.

Just minutes before 1:30am on March 26, shortly after leaving port in Baltimore Harbor, a cargo ship named Dali lost power and control of its steering, sending it careening into a structural pillar on Key Bridge. The crew of the Dali issued a mayday call at 1:26am to alert authorities of the power failure, giving responders crucial moments to prepare for a potential collision. Just 90 seconds later, the ship hit a pylon, triggering a total collapse of the 1.6-mile bridge into the Patapsco River.

Dispatch audio of those moments shows the calm professionalism and quick actions that limited the loss of life in an unexpected situation where every second counted.

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Joy

Yale's pep band had to miss the NCAA tournament. University of Idaho said, 'We got you.'

In an act of true sportsmanship, the Vandal band learned Yale's fight song, wore their gear and cheered them on.

Courtesy of University of Idaho

The Idaho Vandals answered the call when Yale needed a pep band.

Yale University and the University of Idaho could not be more different. Ivy League vs. state school. East Coast vs. Pacific Northwest. City vs. farm town. But in the first two rounds of the NCAA basketball tournament, extenuating circumstances brought them together as one, with the Bulldogs and the Vandals becoming the "Vandogs" for a weekend.

When Yale made it to the March Madness tournament, members of the school's pep band had already committed to other travel plans during spring break. They couldn't gather enough members to make the trek across the country to Spokane, Washington, so the Yale Bulldogs were left without their fight song unless other arrangements could be made.

When University of Idaho athletic band director Spencer Martin got wind of the need less than a week before Yale's game against Auburn, he sent out a message to his band members asking if anyone would be interested in stepping in. The response was a wave of immediate yeses, so Martin got to work arranging instruments and the students dedicated themselves to learning Yale's fight song and other traditional Yale pep songs.

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