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Border collies are replanting forests one zoomie at a time
Regrowing cartilage with goo, a neuroscientist’s weird trick for falling asleep fast, and dogs with seed backpacks. Happy Friday.
Greg Sullivan
October 02, 2026 • Est. Reading Time: 4 minutes
“The last refuge of the insomniac is a sense of superiority to the sleeping world.”
― Leonard Cohen
Today in The Daily GOOD, Mark Wales introduces the knee goo, a Northwestern creation that acts less like a bandage and more like a tiny construction crew. Then a Stanford neuroscientist shares a sleep hack that sounds strange and works, and dog walkers in England accidentally become a rewilding operation. It’s pet pic Friday, too.
Research
A Northwestern team is testing a material that acts less like a patch and more like a tiny construction crew.
Look, we know goo isn’t the most technical term. But read this story and tell us you’ve got a better word for what these scientists are putting in damaged knees.
Cartilage is one of those body parts with a deeply annoying policy: once adult tissue is badly damaged, it doesn’t repair itself. As Mark Wales reports, Northwestern researchers created a squishy bioactive, well… goo, from protein fragments and modified hyaluronic acid that integrates with surrounding tissue and gives cells somewhere to get to work. The stuff is less “bandage” and more microscopic scaffolding.
Before anyone ceremonially tosses their knee brace into the trash, this has only been tested in sheep. But regenerative medicine keeps finding increasingly strange ways to convince the body to rebuild what it usually can’t. This particular goo could have much bigger ambitions than fixing a sheep’s bum knee.
This postcard-worthy image of Excelsior Pass in the North Cascades, Washington State, was sent in by GOOD reader Heather Anderson, who backpacked here last weekend. “Perfect last-season outing before the weather sets in.” It looks like it, Heather. Wow!
Do you have a GOOD picture to share?
Send us your best images, and we may feature them as the image of the day. Be sure to tell us a bit about your pic.
In comics, what do you call a string of symbols like “@#$%!” standing in for a swear word?Charlie Brown would never. Lucy, on the other hand... |
Yesterday's Results
In yesterday's issue, we shared a happiness expert's case for friendships that are gloriously, wonderfully useless.
And we asked: What is the highest form of friendship? In a photo finish, 34.4% of you chose sitting together doing absolutely nothing.
Sitting together doing absolutely nothing (34.4%) 🏆
A two-hour meal that becomes four (25.8%)
A spontaneous road trip (6.1%)
Brutally honest advice when you need it (33.7%)
Doing nothing took more votes, but the comments were all about brutal honesty. GOOD reader Jo Sullivan (no relation… I think…) said, “I could never see someone I care about being taken advantage of. I could have just let it continue, or be brutally honest and fill him in, on what I see.”
Health | Courtesy of Upworthy
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Neuroscientist Andrew Huberman shares ‘really weird’ trick to fall asleep in five minutes | ||
Sleep is essential to maintaining good health. | ||
By Tod Perry | ||
There is nothing worse than lying in your bed, with your mind racing, and you can’t fall asleep. The longer you lie in bed, the more anxious you get about falling asleep, which makes it even harder to catch some ZZZs. You’ve tried clearing your mind, but can’t. You’ve tried counting sheep but reached 100. What do you do now? | ||
On a recent Real Time with Bill Maher, neuroscientist Andrew Huberman made an off-the-cuff remark about a sleep hack that he swears by, and it’s based on brain research. Huberman is a Stanford University neuroscientist and tenured professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology. He’s also the host of the popular podcast Huberman Lab, which focuses on health and science. | ||
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Environment
A wildfire-recovery trick from Chile is now loose in English nature reserves.
When a wildfire tears through a forest, replanting it is slow, sweaty, human work. Unless you outsource it to a dog. In Chile, two sisters strapped tiny seed-filled backpacks onto their border collies, cut a small hole in each pack, and let the dogs do what dogs do best: run, jump, and sprint into every nook a human planter could never reach. The seeds scattered behind them. The forest came back.
The idea has since jumped continents. As Erik Barnes reports, a nature reserve in East Sussex started handing seed packs to ordinary dog walkers, turning the daily afternoon stroll into a low-key rewilding operation. The project manager had a very good reason for recruiting golden retrievers instead of, say, bison.
And here's the part that should make you feel better about the muddy paw prints on your floor: the whole technique is borrowed from something wild animals have been doing for ages. There's even a no-backpack version for your own yard that requires nothing more than a tea strainer and a willing pup, though one safety check matters before you let your dog loose on the marigolds.
Who’s a GOOD boy/girl?
Image of the Day has its own lane, but the pet pics keep arriving, and I am not made of stone. So every Friday, I’ll share one reader-submitted photo of a favorite pet. Want yours featured? Send it along.
GOOD reader Elizabeth Sanders sent this inverted delight: her pup, Raven, mid-backroll and loving it.
On October 2, 1950, a little four-panel comic called Peanuts appeared in just seven American newspapers. Its 27-year-old creator, Charles Schulz, was paid $90 for his first month of strips, and he did not even like the name. Schulz had called his earlier comic Li’l Folks, but after a naming conflict his syndicate rechristened it Peanuts, a title he would complain about for decades. The name apparently did not hurt. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus and the gang eventually appeared in 2,600 newspapers across 75 countries and 21 languages. Good grief, indeed.
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We’re always on the lookout for uplifting, enlightening, and engaging content to share with readers like you. If you have something you think should be featured in the Daily GOOD, let me know!
💬 From the group text…
Owl bet you could use this as the intro to a banging club jam!
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Until next week, stay cool out there; it’s looking to be a brutal one in this neck of the woods.