Good People

Flea can melt stadiums, sitting with jazz legends almost broke him

Even Hall of Fame legends are not immune to that voice in your head.

You would think selling out stadiums for decades might quiet the voice that says you are not good enough. But as Michael Peter Balzary, better known as Flea, recently admitted in a viral conversation, success does not always work that way.

Flea has long worshipped jazz giants like Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie. So when he finally found himself playing his latest album for a room full of jazz musicians, the confidence he built on arena stages evaporated. As Mark Wales reports, the moment cracked open insecurities that no amount of rock stardom had prepared him for.

What he says happened next is unexpectedly relatable and quietly profound. Click through to see the emotional confession.

Good People

In the age of quiet quitting, one woman stayed at the same job for 61 years

Everyone is job-hugging. Glenda took it to a Guinness-certified extreme.

It’s not uncommon to hear about a Guinness World Record and think, really… who cares how many watermelons you can smash with your head in a minute. But then there’s Glenda Akin, who set a record that feels almost fake. To take her record, I’d have to change careers and then work until I was 102.

As Erik Barnes reports, Glenda started working as a teacher at Westmoreland High School in Tennessee in a world still looking forward to the day humans might walk on the moon. Today, she’s retired but still active, and the library where she served for over six decades bears a plaque recognizing her unmatched contributions to the kids of her community. That’s GOOD work, Glenda.

Life Hacks

Why getting more work done sometimes just means sitting near another human

Two heads are better than one, even when the other one is just… there.

That boost of productivity you get when you take the laptop to the coffee shop doesn’t come from the caffeine. As Erik Barnes reports, it's the other people that boost your brain.

Psychologists call it “body doubling,” and it turns out simply having another human nearby, even one doing something totally unrelated, can make it dramatically easier to focus. No collaboration required. No accountability speeches. Just presence.

It may sound like return-to-office propaganda, but the twist is you don’t need an office at all. The research and the surprisingly simple ways to try it at home are worth a look.

And what did we learn?

To end 2025, we asked which of today’s big new things will be next year’s “oh, I vaguely remember that” moments. Sorry, Labubu lovers, more than a third of GOOD readers think you’re into this generation’s Beanie Babies.

• The AI apocalypse. Still “about to happen.” Still not happening. (23.2%)

• Expensive stuffed animals hanging from bags. What was that about? (36.2%)

• Remember the new Avatar movie hype? No? Yeah... (21.7%)

• Back in late 2025, they really had us believing the cars were gonna drive themselves. (14.5%)

On January 5, 1933, construction began on one of America’s most iconic bits of infrastructure. The Golden Gate Bridge, so named for the Golden Gate Strait that it crosses, started not as a ceremonial ground-breaking (that would come seven weeks later) but as a real boots-and-machines-on-the-ground construction kickoff. The bridge was meant to provide access to Marin, supplanting most ferry traffic that had previously been required to cross. Ironically, in 1970, ferry service was reinstated to help relieve congestion on the bridge.

After 93 years, the Golden Gate is nowhere near the end of its service. Rigorous and constant maintenance promises to keep the iconic span operating for centuries to come.

How does it all work? The truly engineering-minded among you with 85 minutes to spare can watch this captivating video on the construction methods that reshaped the San Francisco harbor.

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