Robin Roberts: My sister saved my life

Sally-Ann Roberts has worked for a New Orleans television station for forty years, twenty-six of them as co-anchor of its morning show. She will be retiring next month. Why is this story making national news?

Because her sister is Good Morning America‘s Robin Roberts. And because, as Robin explained, “the only reason I’m here living, is she was my bone marrow donor.” When Robin was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder in 2012, her sister’s sacrifice saved her life.

In other words, Robin Roberts is alive because her healthy sister made Robin’s problem her problem.

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof reports that every day, the number of people in the world living in extreme poverty goes down by 217,000. Every day, 325,000 more people gain access to electricity; 300,000 more gain access to clean drinking water. In another fifteen years, illiteracy and extreme poverty will mostly be gone.

Since 1990, the lives of more than 100 million children have been saved by vaccinations, breastfeeding promotion, diarrhea treatment, and other simple steps. These remarkable advances were facilitated by people who did not have the problem they set out to solve.

In other news, a sophomore basketball player at the University of Texas is generating headlines today, not for what he has done on the court but for what he must now do off it. Andrew Jones has been diagnosed with leukemia and has begun treatment.

His jersey now occupies a spot on the Texas bench. A halftime video offered tributes from nearly every UT team. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and West Virginia coach Bob Huggins have voiced their encouragement.

None of them has Andrew Jones’s disease, but he has their support.

The trust revolution

Who Can You Trust? is an illuminating new book by Oxford scholar Rachel Botsman. Her research documents the breakdown of institutional trust in our culture.

Recent years have seen an inequality of accountability as corporate leaders have failed their…