--:-- Shamita Basu: Good morning. It's Thursday, December 23rd. I'm Shamita Basu. And I'm Duarte Giraldino. This is Apple News Today, and it is our final show of the year. We'll be taking a short break for the holidays.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Yeah, so for our last hurrah of 2021, we are going to continue a tradition that we started last year by looking back at some of the stories that made us laugh, made us smile, just brought us some joy. These are our favorite good news stories of 2021.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Let's kick off the show with some remarkable people who broke barriers in 2021. This was a big year for space travel. A lot of the focus was on billionaires buying their way up there. But one woman, Wally Funk, broke the mold. At 82 years old, she became the oldest person to travel to space.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Go, Jeff, go. Mark, go. Wally, go, Oliver. You are going to space. Now, Funk wasn't just some space tourist. She'd been a pioneering woman in aerospace for decades.
--:-- Shamita Basu: The Atlantic has the story of her career. Ever since she was a child, she'd been dreaming of going to space. And when she was a teenager, she got her pilot's license. She was hoping that would give her an edge on becoming an astronaut.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: In the 1960s, Wally Funk was in a training program where she passed all of the physical and psychological tests that men in the astronaut program had to go through. But NASA at the time was not open to women in space. It would be another two decades before Sally Ride finally blasted off.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Funk kept working in aviation, and she never gave up her dream. Then finally, this year, in July, it came true. She joined Jeff Bezos' crew on a commercial rocket. We had a great time. It was wonderful. I want to go again, fast.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: We also saw breakthroughs in sports this year. This good news comes from the NFL where two women set milestones on fields full of men. Every game every season is just to be the best official I can be on the field.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Sarah Thomas became the first woman to officiate a Super Bowl. Getting picked for the big game is the highest honor for an NFL official. Sports Illustrated looks at her career.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Back in 2015, Thomas became the first woman in NFL history to be named a permanent official, and she transformed the role. The league changed the name of the position from head linesman to down judge. It was a way to recognize Thomas, but also to encourage more women to step into the field. And they have.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Maya Chaka also made history this year, becoming the first Black woman to officiate an NFL game. She told The Today Show how it felt to get the call after all the years working her way up.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: He goes, welcome to the National Football League. And I just went nuts. I asked him, hey, are you punking me? You gotta be kidding me. Just because I've been at it for so long and I just never thought the day would come.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I just enjoyed working. Okay, so this next story is about one small action snowballing into a giant collective movement. Maybe it's hard to tell what you're hearing there, but that is the sound of hundreds of little kids riding their bikes to school in the streets of Barcelona.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: It all started with just a handful of families. They were worried about their kids biking on busy streets. They wanted safety in numbers, so they coordinated to ride in a group. And over time, more and more families joined in until it was this massive wave.
--:-- Shamita Basu: It was part practicality, part protest for better bike lanes. Parents want to see more done to make streets safer, right? And until that happens, their kids will keep taking over the roads when it comes time for school.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You know, I used to be a transportation reporter. And one of the reasons I love this story is because to me, it's about a community coming together to solve a problem. And it didn't take some big reinventing the wheel kind of solution. It was just neighbors helping neighbors.
--:-- Shamita Basu: I mean what could be sweeter. These pictures of all these kids riding together to school. It really is adorable. And you can see the pictures for yourself in the NPR story. If you're in the Apple News app, just tap that notification we send you midway through the show.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Of course, we can't look back at this year and not talk about the Olympics. That in and of itself deserves a lot of recognition. These athletes who trained for years had their dreams put on pause after the 2020 Olympics got moved to 2021.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But they did go on this year, and they were filled with so many amazing moments. And that's what the Olympics is all about, right? Athletes from all over the world competing for those medals, but also pushing each other to incredible new heights.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Which is the perfect segue to this great moment in the men's high jump. You remember those two athletes who were tied for first place? One was from Qatar, the other was from Italy. The officials told the men they could do a jump off to determine who would get first and who would get second.
--:-- Shamita Basu: But instead, the men said, could we just each get a gold? Could we just share it? They've agreed to share the gold medal, and they will both taste gold in Tokyo.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: The announcer described this as an insane night in the stadium. Just such a surprise. An amazing show of sportsmanship. I mean, talk about Olympic spirit.
--:-- Shamita Basu: There's this one teenager who's been in the headlines multiple times this year. And for very different, very impressive reasons. Her name is Ayila Avantgarde. And here she is winning the Scripps National Spelling Bee back in July.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Maria. N-U-R-R-A-Y-A. That is correct. So not only did she become the first African-American to win the spelling bee, she also holds multiple Guinness World Records for her basketball skills. And she's only 14 years old.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Recently, Sports Illustrated named her Sports Kid of the Year. And here's what she told them. I feel like winning scripts has put me on a platform where I can now just be a person for people to look at and see. If she can do it, she's just a normal girl. I'm a normal girl too. I can do it.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: You can help but cheer for this kid. She obviously has a bright big future ahead of her. And she's hoping to either work for NASA or become a coach in the NBA. How many kids can realistically say that?
--:-- Shamita Basu: Finally, how can we wrap up our favorite stories from 2021 and not talk about the internet? Because this year, the internet really delivered. From sea shanty TikTok to all those memes about the big boat stuck in the Suez Canal, social media got especially weird with all of us cooped up at home.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: But my favorite moment, hands down, was Cat Lawyer. You know what I'm talking about. Can you hear me, Judge? I can hear you. I think it's a filter. Okay, let's back it up for people who are not as into the cat lawyer as you are, Shamita.
--:-- Shamita Basu: This viral video came out back in February when we were all so Zoom fatigued. So this lawyer from Texas jumps on a Zoom for a court appearance, except there was a filter on his screen, a filter that made him appear like a cartoonish cat with these big old goofy eyes.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: And this guy couldn't figure out how to turn it off. I'm prepared to go forward with it. I'm here live. I'm not a cat. I'm not a cat.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Instantly iconic line. It is just, it's so absurd. It's so dumb. It's just easy to love and funny.
--:-- Duarte Giraldino: Jason Gay in the Wall Street Journal described it this way, which I thought was really perfect. Cat Lawyer was a magical bit of viral theater and comic relief. But it was also a perfect rendering of pandemic life. Increasingly virtual, often at home, forever in danger of complication from technology, noisy children, real life cats or other disasters.
--:-- Shamita Basu: Oh, gotta love that story. To see even more good news stories from 2021, check out the full Apple News Collection. We'll link to it on our show notes page. Have a happy and healthy end to the year. We'll talk with you again in 2022.
