Good News and Lookbacks on 2024

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There's more to imagine when you listen. Good morning. I'm Jane Pauley and this is Sunday Morning. We'll be ringing in the new year a few days from now, once again launching into efforts to keep those pesky resolutions we'll all be making. But before turning the page on 2024, we devote part of this morning to looking back at the year gone by, including our annual tribute to some of those we leave behind. As always, Lee Cowan helps us say hail and farewell. People will come, Ray. We lost so many voices that still ring in our ears this year.

You're insecure. From those who sang. Get a load of honey bun tonight. To those who could make us laugh.

Hello? We say a final goodbye to all those whose gifts, big and small, made us a bit better. Later, on Sunday morning. When historians assess the year 2024, they'll no doubt concentrate on the many headline dominating conflicts, war and politics and the like. But as David Pogue reminds us, there was plenty of good news to go around. You may be surprised at how much good news the year 2024 brought us, if you know where to look. Between 2023 and 2024, and that's the largest decline in overdose deaths ever recorded in history. Our contribution will mean someone somewhere will go home from the hospital that wouldn't otherwise, and that's, that's an unbelievable feeling.

It's all good news, ahead on Sunday morning. Nikki Glaser has made a name for herself thanks to some of the most devastating and funny celebrity roasts of recent times, a skill that will no doubt come in handy when she hosts next week's Golden Globe Awards. She'll be talking with our Luke Burbank. I get why you have kids. I don't get it. I'm just trying to be nice.

I really don't get it. Nikki Glaser is the real deal. I don't want to be fake. I think in the beginning you kind of do have to fake it because you don't know who you are as a performer and you're trying to give people what they want and then you just become exhausted by it all and then you can just kind of relax and let go.

The comedian is at the top of her game. Coming up on Sunday morning, Zen and the art of Nikki Glaser. Something different to start off the new year, a Japanese treat known as mochi. Connor Knighton explains why it's become synonymous with ringing in the new. We'll also take time to assess some of the year's unfinished business with reports on the Middle East, the war in Ukraine, and the incoming administration in Washington. Plus, thoughts on our pension for New Year's resolutions from Faith Salley and more on this final Sunday morning of the year 2024. We'll be back after this. Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down.

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That's up to 50 percent off at masterclass.com slash wondering. It would be easy and certainly understandable to focus on the many troubling events that have gone on in the world this past year. But you've heard plenty about all of that.

There's also been no shortage of reasons for hope, as David Pogue makes clear. Good morning. Well, you may remember 2024 as a year of bad news.

For example, what am I doing? Why would I remind you? But there was also great news this year that you might have missed. We begin today with murder hornets. These giant bugs arrived in Washington state four years ago from Asia. They can wipe out entire hives of honeybees and even kill people if they were to spread. That would be bad news.

So authorities set up traps, tip lines and tiny tracking devices. And by December 18, entomologist Sven Speicher announced, now we can officially say that eradication has been achieved and it's a significant victory. Humanity won nightmare zero. But zero is only one good number. 20,000 is another. 20,000 Americans who didn't die of drug overdoses compared to last year's total. A 17 percent decline. The really great news is that we've seen a historic decline in overdose deaths in the past year. The largest decline in overdose deaths ever recorded in history. Magdalena Cerda is a professor of epidemiology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.

So, Dr. Cerda, the key question is, why did this happen? We have a lot of hypotheses. One of them is that there's been a really concerted investment in access to naloxone, which is a drug that can be used to reverse overdoses. Also, what we've seen is a shift from people injecting drugs to people smoking drugs. There's also been a decline in people just using drugs, like fentanyl, among adolescents and young adults. And within epidemiology circles, is this a big deal? Absolutely. Of course, there's still more than 90,000 people who've died of an overdose death in the past year, and that's unacceptably high. Thank you, Dr. Cerda.

Yeah, of course. Remember New York's LaGuardia Airport, the one with the low ceilings, the narrow corridors, and not enough gates for today's big planes? It was dim and dingy. It was hailed as the worst airport in the United States. Remember what Vice President Biden said?

I must be in some third world country. So in 2015, they started building a whole new airport in stages over and around the old one, and then demolished the original without ever shutting down the airport. Airport critic David Pogue has the verdict. Well, one thing's for sure.