Goodable

Chris Farley, a comedic legend, shone in roles like Matt Foley on "Saturday Night Live" and Tommy Callahan, Jr. in "Tommy Boy." His untimely death at 33 in 1997 marked the end of a bright career. In 1995, as Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich rose to prominence within the Republican Party, Farley famously impersonated him during a House Republican Conference Meeting, celebrating the GOP's first 100 days in control of Congress, creating an unforgettable moment of comedy.

<p>Chris Farley, a comedic legend, shone in roles like Matt Foley on "Saturday Night Live" and Tommy Callahan, Jr. in "Tommy Boy." His untimely death at 33 in 1997 marked the end of a bright career. In 1995, as Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich rose to prominence within the Republican Party, Farley famously impersonated him during a House Republican Conference Meeting, celebrating the GOP's first 100 days in control of Congress, creating an unforgettable moment of comedy.<br></p>

Watch: SNL's Chris Farley's Hilarious Newt Gingrich Impersonation

People

At 58, Tom Cillo didn’t just return to college — he strapped on a helmet and joined the football team.

Cillo, a freshman defensive lineman at Division III Lycoming College in Pennsylvania, is now one of the oldest players in college football history. And he’s doing it with a full course load, a battered body, and three adult kids cheering him on.

“My heart felt like I could still physically pull this off,” he told PEOPLE.

He wasn’t always so sure. Cillo admits he’d thought about playing football for years but never believed he could actually do it. He tried to join his high school team once as a teenager but quit within two days. He worked construction, spent 33 years with the city of Williamsport, and later took a job at his former high school as an equipment manager and custodian. That’s where things started to shift.

“I absolutely loved working with the student athletes,” he said. He even began training some of them in the mornings before school, just because he cared. “I don’t want a penny,” he told parents who offered to pay. “I want to see the programs excel and improve.”

Eventually, the idea of going back to school and finally playing the sport he loved grew stronger. “I’ve always held myself back,” he said. “This fear of failure, or of ‘What if I’m not good enough?’”

But something changed.

“I thought, for once in my life, I’m going to write the script,” he said. “I’m not going to let somebody else write the script for me.”

He pitched the idea to a friend he trained with, who was immediately on board. “Tom, if you think you can do this, do it man,” the friend told him. “You won’t know unless you give it a shot.”

So he did. Cillo enrolled as a criminal justice major and started training. Unlike most freshmen, he came in with decades of life experience — and a body that needed a little more recovery time. “I stayed in shape throughout the years,” he said. “This isn’t something where I was spending day after day on a sofa.”

Still, training camp was brutal. “I’m so sore, I’m always sore now,” he said, laughing. “This is college football, and it’s tough, and it’s hard, and it’s physical, and it’s challenging.” There were moments when he thought about quitting. “I was ready to say, ‘You know what, I can’t do this, it’s too hard.’”

But a text from a friend helped him stay the course. It said just two words: Be unbreakable.

“I tucked that word into my memory, and had to reference it a few times,” he said.

Cillo’s story has taken off far beyond the field. His age-defying pursuit of a college football dream has led to a partnership with Aspercreme — a necessity, he jokes — and sparked a wave of support from around the world.

“I have had messages from Bosnia, Germany, Spain, England, Australia, Mexico, all over the United States,” he said. “Honestly, it’s overwhelming.” The messages have come from people of all ages — from preteens to people in their 80s — who say his story inspired them. “I bet you I’ve seen the word inspiration literally thousands of times,” he said. “There’s times I’ll sit in my car and reflect on things, and I get emotional about it.”

The classroom has been its own challenge. Cillo says a drug and alcohol problem in his teens and early 20s disrupted his academics. “One of the things I wanted to prove to myself was could I take the classroom serious,” he said. “After 41 years, that was probably the most intimidating part.”

So far, so good. He’s currently holding three Bs and an A — and is proud of it.

Cillo’s three children — Ryan, 21, Nicole, 28, and stepson Shawn, 32 — are older than most of his teammates, but they’ve backed him all the way. His teammates, too, have shown support, even as the novelty of playing alongside someone three decades older hasn’t entirely worn off.

“They’ve been great,” Cillo said. “They just treat me like one of the guys.”

As for what’s next, he’s not making predictions. For now, it’s about showing up, staying unbreakable, and living the dream he once talked himself out of. “There were people that thought, well, he’ll never make it out of training camp, he’ll never survive the season,” he said.

He did. And if the soreness is any indication, he’s still going.

How This 58-Year-Old Just Achieved His College Football Dream and Inspired Worldwide

It wasn’t a dramatic reveal or a sweeping gesture. Just a short, quiet video of a man walking into a Hair Cuttery on a military base. But for Ashleigh Vaillancourt Seegar, it changed everything.

Twenty-five years after her father died at age 27, Seegar received a Facebook message that made time collapse in on itself. A distant cousin had been digitizing old home videos and stumbled on three clips of her dad — footage no one in her immediate family had ever seen.

“It was actually my father's birthday,” she told PEOPLE, describing the surreal moment she opened the message. “This time, for some reason, they picked me.”

The relative, who is around the same age James Vaillancourt would have been today, had reached out before on her dad’s birthday. But never with anything like this.

James died in 2000, leaving behind three young children. Ashleigh was six. Her younger brothers were even smaller, too young to remember him at all. In her memories, he existed in fragments — a funny, social, goofy young military dad who seemed larger than life and yet somehow faded with time.

“I thought I had seen every photo and video that existed of him,” she said. “It never occurred to me that something new could show up.”

One of the clips shows James, off-duty and full of energy, walking into a Norfolk military base salon. It’s casual, almost mundane. But to Seegar, it was astonishing. She instantly recognized the location. Then came the voice, the movement, the laugh. And the realization: “It was interesting seeing his personality, right?”

In the video, her father jokes, smiles, performs a little for the camera — something that felt instantly familiar. “It just reminded me of my brothers and me,” she said. “Our personalities, just being silly and joking with friends and putting a show on for the camera.”

She shared the clips with her mother, grandmother, and siblings, each watching it privately, in their own time. “We all just kind of watched it on our own,” she said. The reactions came quickly — and were all strikingly similar. “It's so weird hearing his voice or his laugh,” they told each other. What stuck with them most was how much her brothers resemble their dad — in ways they never noticed before.

The footage hit her hard. She cried as soon as she pressed play. Then came a wave of deeper reflection — especially now that she's a parent herself.

“My daughter is the same age now that I was when he died,” she said. The clip forced her to see the loss not just through a child’s eyes, but through the lens of a parent. “How all the dominoes have fallen throughout the years,” she said.

She thought of her mother, left to raise three kids on her own. She thought of the silence that had grown around her father’s memory over time — how rarely the family talked about him, how few people were left who had truly known him. Her grandmother finds it too painful, she said, and without siblings or close friends of his in the picture, “We don't really have much contact with anyone who knew him.”

That made the footage all the more powerful. “I think it did also heal something in me,” she said. A part of her grief she hadn’t even realized was still there.

She posted one of the clips to TikTok with the caption: “when someone who knew your dad randomly sends you a video of him you've never seen 25 years after his death.” It resonated widely.

In the post, she explained that her father died just a month after his 27th birthday. Now, she and her brothers have all outlived him.

What moved her most was the ordinariness of the moment. “Here we are, 25 years later… and here he lives in this video,” she said.

The experience has shifted how she thinks about memory, loss, and what endures. She’s started taking more videos of herself and her husband — not for Instagram, but so her daughters will one day have more than just fragments.

“Even though we die, a piece of us, I guess, still carries on,” she said. The video felt like a “little piece of his soul,” something she didn’t expect to find so late in her life — but now can’t imagine not having.

And that, she says, is what makes a quiet clip of a young man walking toward a haircut so powerful. It’s a moment that now belongs not just to her, but to the next generation — and to anyone who needs a reminder that even the smallest memories can last forever.

Video of Late Father Uncovered, Bringing New Memories to Daughter

ABC News

In Rio de Janeiro’s Flamengo Park, a rare and fleeting event is unfolding: the towering talipot palms, introduced more than half a century ago by famed landscape architect Roberto Burle Marx, are flowering for the first — and last — time in their lives.

The palms, native to southern India and Sri Lanka, live for decades — anywhere from 40 to 80 years — and bloom only once before dying. Now, after more than 60 years in the park’s soil, they’re sending up massive central stalks covered with millions of creamy-white flowers, drawing crowds of curious onlookers.

“I probably won’t see them flower,” said Vinicius Vanni, a 42-year-old civil engineer visiting the park. “But they’ll be there for future generations.” He’s hoping to collect seedlings from the flowering trees to plant elsewhere.

The talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifera) is among the largest and longest-living palms in the world. When it finally blooms, it releases a giant floral plume that can tower above its 30-meter-tall (98-foot) trunk, showcasing a dramatic display of up to 25 million blossoms.

If pollinated, the flowers produce fruits that can grow into new palms — but only once. After blooming, the tree dies, having spent all its stored energy in the final act of reproduction.

The blooming palms can also be seen in Rio’s Botanical Garden, where they were planted at the same time. Because the trees share the same origin, climate exposure, and photoperiod (length of daylight), they are flowering in near-perfect synchronicity.

“This palm species gives us a reflection on temporality, because it has roughly the same lifespan as a human being,” said Aline Saavedra, a biologist at Rio de Janeiro State University. “Marx also wanted to convey a poetic perspective.”

Marx, known for fusing modernist architecture with Brazil’s natural landscapes, brought the talipot palms to Rio in the 1960s as part of his vision for creating living, evolving art. His work in Flamengo Park, which overlooks Guanabara Bay and the iconic Sugarloaf Mountain, remains one of his most celebrated public spaces.

Though the talipot is not native to Brazil, Saavedra explained that it is not considered invasive because of its slow growth and regulated planting. Brazil’s environmental laws restrict the importation of non-native species, but these palms were introduced decades ago under different regulations.

The current bloom — a once-in-a-lifetime event for each individual tree — is a reminder of nature’s rhythm and resilience. And for many visitors, it's also a spark of wonder.

“The interest this phenomenon has generated is positive,” said Saavedra. “It could encourage a sense of belonging, and of preserving rather than destroying the environment.”

Decades-Old Palm Trees In Rio De Janeiro Bloom For First And Only Time

Americans donated an estimated $4 billion to nonprofits on GivingTuesday 2025, a significant jump from the $3.6 billion given in 2024, according to figures released by the GivingTuesday nonprofit. It marks a year-over-year increase of more than 11%, or 8.1% when adjusted for inflation.

The spike in generosity didn’t stop at financial contributions. This year’s GivingTuesday, which fell on December 2, also saw 11.1 million Americans volunteer their time, up from 9.2 million in 2024.

“Generosity is a really powerful way to feel connected,” said Woodrow Rosenbaum, GivingTuesday’s chief data officer. “When people see need, they want to do something about it — and GivingTuesday gives them a moment to do that in celebration rather than crisis.”

GivingTuesday began in 2012 as a social media initiative from New York’s 92nd Street Y. Since then, it has grown into a global philanthropic movement and independent nonprofit. The organization estimates giving and volunteer rates through data collected from platforms, payment processors, and nonprofit software providers.

While large corporate and foundation gifts are excluded from GivingTuesday’s total, this year’s numbers still reflect a groundswell in individual giving — which is the focus of the initiative. One high-profile donation, a $6.25 billion pledge from Michael and Susan Dell, was not counted in the GivingTuesday tally. That gift is earmarked for launching new federal “Trump accounts,” a children’s investment program backed by the U.S. Treasury and passed as part of the summer’s tax and spending legislation.

The Dell donation — aimed at providing $250 to 25 million children under age 10 — was hailed by President Donald Trump at a White House event on Tuesday as “one of the most generous acts in the history of our country.”

Rosenbaum said many Americans are also turning to non-monetary ways of giving, such as helping neighbors or participating in mutual aid efforts. “Volunteering is a way you can increase your impact without it costing you money,” he said.

The surge in giving offers a hopeful signal as nonprofits enter the final month of the year, traditionally the most important for fundraising.

“We’re in a moment of abundance,” Rosenbaum added. “People are ready and willing to help — and that’s something nonprofit and community groups should feel encouraged by.”

Americans Gave $4 Billion on GivingTuesday 2025, Marking a Surge in Generosity

GoodGoodGood

When Andrew Cowell moved to Colorado in 1995 to teach languages at the University of Colorado Boulder, he brought with him more than just academic credentials. He had already studied Hawaiian and felt a personal responsibility to learn about the Indigenous language of his new home — Arapaho.

At the time, the Northern Arapaho people still had hundreds of fluent speakers. Today, fewer than 100 remain — all over the age of 70.

“The Arapaho people in Wyoming and Colorado believe their language can still survive,” Cowell writes. “And so do I.”

For decades, Cowell has been documenting the Arapaho language and building what may now be its most extensive digital archive: over 100,000 sentences of natural speech, all transcribed, translated, and analyzed. From this, he’s helped build an online dictionary with 25,000 entries and an online learning platform. These aren’t just data dumps — they’re the backbone of a new curriculum, built for a language at risk of disappearing.

From documentation to revitalization

Like many Native American languages, Arapaho has been declining for generations. Boarding schools once suppressed it, and later, economic pressures nudged families toward English. Many parents stopped speaking Arapaho at home, convinced that English would give their children a better future.

But now, the tide is slowly turning. Communities across North America are working to reclaim their ancestral languages, with some — like Mohawk, Cherokee, and Blackfoot — seeing notable gains. Arapaho learners are part of that wave.

Cowell’s database has proven vital not just for preservation, but for teaching. “Adult learners can watch the videos along with the Arapaho transcriptions, English translations, or both,” he says. But for younger students, natural conversation is too complex without structured learning. That’s where graded curricula come in.

Arapaho, like many Indigenous languages, builds long words by stacking multiple bits of meaning — prefixes, suffixes, and base words. One word can pack in what would take an entire sentence in English. For example: niibeetwonwoteekoohunoo means “I want to go and drive to town.”

Cowell’s system breaks those complex words down into manageable chunks, creating a progressive, 44-stage learning path. Using data from the massive database, he and his team identified the most frequent words, stems, prefixes, and suffixes — and tailored vocabulary lists and grammar goals for each grade level.

That structure is now being piloted at Wyoming Indian Elementary School, where dual-language classrooms are introducing a new generation of students to Arapaho — not just as heritage, but as a living language.

Why AI can’t do it alone

While Cowell uses technology extensively, he’s quick to point out its limits. Large language models like those behind AI systems rely on billions of words for training — far more than exist for any Native language. Beyond that, many Indigenous communities are cautious about how their data and cultural knowledge are used, especially by outside institutions or algorithms.

“Only Native people can save their languages,” Cowell says. “By choosing to learn and speak them.”

Still, the tools he’s helped create are powerful — not because they replace the human side of language learning, but because they support it. His years of in-person learning with fluent speakers helped him see where learners struggle, and how to adapt the curriculum.

He also emphasizes that trust and relationships matter. “Success in helping revitalize Native languages depends on researchers building long-term relationships with Native peoples and, ideally, speaking Native languages,” he writes.

After decades of work, the effort to save Arapaho is gaining momentum. The tools exist. The curriculum is in motion. And the hope is simple: that children will once again grow up hearing and speaking a language that came close to vanishing — and might still find its way back.

Arapaho Isn’t Gone Yet: How a Professor Is Using Tech to Help Save This Indigenous Language

For 35 years, American zoologist Laurie Marker has been quietly building a frozen insurance policy for cheetahs — a sperm bank deep in Namibia that she hopes the world never has to use.

Inside liquid nitrogen tanks at the Cheetah Conservation Fund near Otjiwarongo, specimens from around 400 cheetahs are stored at ultralow temperatures. Marker calls it a “frozen zoo” — a genetic archive for a species hurtling toward an uncertain future.

“You don’t do anything with it until it’s needed,” Marker told the Associated Press. “And we never want to get to that point.”

But that point may not be far off.

Less than 7,000 cheetahs remain in the wild, scattered across roughly 33 fragmented populations — most of them with fewer than 100 individuals. That makes cheetahs about as rare as the critically endangered black rhino. Over the last 50 years, cheetahs have lost 90% of their historic range and 80% of their population.

The threats are familiar: habitat loss, human-wildlife conflict, and illegal wildlife trafficking. But for cheetahs, another issue looms — a dangerously shallow gene pool.

Born to run, struggling to breed

Cheetahs can hit 112 km/h (70 mph) in short bursts, but they’re far less efficient when it comes to reproduction. Around 70–80% of male cheetah sperm is considered abnormal, and low genetic diversity further complicates breeding.

Scientists believe cheetahs barely survived the last ice age, around 10,000 to 12,000 years ago, which may have permanently reduced their genetic variety.

“We will try to bank every animal we possibly can,” Marker said. “Every cheetah is actually a unique mix of a very small number of genes.”

Samples are collected opportunistically — often from injured or captured cheetahs brought in by farmers, who frequently see the animals as threats to livestock. The team also collects from dead cheetahs when possible.

Namibian law currently forbids artificial breeding of wild animals in captivity, so Marker's lab isn’t using the samples yet. But the goal is clear: to give conservationists one more option, should the wild population collapse.

A growing conservation tool

Wildlife sperm banks aren’t new. They’ve been established for elephants, rhinos, birds, antelope, and other big cats. But few species illustrate their importance more starkly than the northern white rhino.

With just two females left, the species is functionally extinct. The only chance of revival lies in frozen sperm and experimental embryo transfers into southern white rhino surrogates. So far, the attempts have failed, but the work continues.

Elsewhere, there have been success stories. The black-footed ferret — once down to a single wild population in Wyoming — was brought back from the brink using reproductive technologies.

Marker knows that the 1,800 cheetahs in zoos could serve as a fallback if the wild population crashes. But cheetahs don’t breed well in captivity. That’s where the sperm bank could come in.

Hope in a tank

Cheetah sperm, stored in the lab’s nitrogen tanks, may one day be used to fertilize eggs and implant embryos in surrogates — assuming the legal and logistical frameworks evolve.

“Without it, we’re not going to have much of a chance,” Marker said.

As conservationists mark World Cheetah Day, the numbers are grim, but Marker remains committed. The frozen zoo is quiet, invisible to the public, but it’s a monument to decades of foresight — and a bet that science might still be able to outpace extinction.

How a Cheetah Sperm Bank Could Save the World's Fastest Land Animal

BBC News

A pair of 13-week-old rottweiler puppies named after two of Britain’s most infamous criminals could soon be helping to catch real ones.

Devon and Cornwall Police have begun training the pups — named Ronnie and Reggie, after the Kray twins — as potential general purpose police dogs. If successful, they’ll be among the first rottweilers used in this role by a UK force.

The force’s canine development officer, Paul Glennon, said the pups were part of an effort to diversify the breeds used in policing, particularly as health issues continue to affect traditional working dogs like German shepherds.

“I’ve done a lot of research on this particular breed... I’m quite excited that they’re going to be very successful for us,” Glennon said.

While German shepherds remain the go-to breed, Glennon said the force is increasingly trialling other types of working dogs to supplement the ranks.

“The problem we have is that the German shepherds aren’t the sort of healthiest breeds going,” he explained. “We can’t get enough of them that have got the health and the working qualities we’re looking for.”

Devon and Cornwall Police have already found success with giant schnauzers, two of which are now serving in Plymouth. That success encouraged Glennon to give rottweilers a try.

The choice of names — a nod to the notorious Kray twins, who ran an organised crime ring in London’s East End in the 1950s and ’60s — was deliberate.

“We wanted to pick a name that was going to join them together and people would take notice of them,” Glennon said. “Unlike the originals, these guys hopefully are going to be dealing with bad guys and bringing them to book.”

Ronnie and Reggie are now beginning their 14-month puppy walking phase, where they’ll learn basic obedience and socialisation skills with volunteers. After that, they'll enter a three-month training course with police handlers. If they pass, they’ll be expected to work until around the age of eight.

Ronnie, in particular, is already showing promise. “He’s got fantastic tracking abilities,” Glennon said.

The force currently has 35 general-purpose police dogs, along with various specialist canines trained in areas like drugs, explosives, and firearms detection.

As for Reggie, puppy walkers Mireille and Scott Squires say he’s “a little naughty but also very cute” — which, for now, is exactly what you’d expect from a future crime-fighter in training.

These Rottweiler Pups Named After Criminals Could Soon Be Helping Catch Real Ones

Percy the penguin is back where he belongs — outside a restaurant in Stevenage — after a brief and bizarre disappearance that ended with a police rescue and a £5,000 reward.

The 5-foot tall penguin decoration was taken from outside the Prezzo restaurant on Saturday night. CCTV footage captured two men carrying the hefty ornament into a van before driving away.

Staff were stunned and saddened by the theft, but just a few days later, Percy was spotted in an unlikely place: someone’s garden. After the restaurant offered a £5,000 gift card reward, a member of the public came forward on Tuesday to report the sighting.

Hertfordshire Police retrieved the stolen penguin and returned him safely.

“It’s not necessarily fighting crime, so we’re thankful to them,” said Naddy Onions, marketing director at Prezzo. “They had to put Percy in a van and two officers had to carry him to the door.”

Restaurant staff are “over the moon” about Percy’s return. “Percy is back where he belongs,” Onions said. “We’re hoping the good people of Stevenage will leave him alone. Staff are keeping a much closer eye on him.”

She added that the £5,000 gift card would be given to the person who helped locate the missing bird. “I think somebody just wanted a brilliant Christmas decoration,” she said. “The families of Stevenage will be thrilled he’s back.”

Percy the Penguin Returns Home After Garden Sighting and Police Retrieval

Archie Hemsley wasn’t expecting to win. In fact, he says he’s “not all that keen on winning.” But the 101-year-old Royal Navy veteran recently beat out about 30 competitors — all over the age of 80 — to take home The Eley Trophy at Luffenham Heath Golf Club in Rutland.

“I was very surprised,” he said.

The competition, played over nine shortened holes, was won on the strength of Hemsley’s short game. “I was putting very well,” he said modestly. It’s a rare trophy for him. “I've won very few golf competitions before,” he added.

Hemsley served as a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm during World War II, flying missions over the North Atlantic to protect Allied convoys from submarine attacks. He completed 100 landings on aircraft carriers — 40 of them at night — an experience he described with characteristic understatement.

“I know that because I had a log book and it was recorded in it,” he said. “I don't know anyone with more [landings].”

He still receives medals from the Russian government for his role in the Arctic convoys, which delivered crucial supplies to the Red Army during the war. One such medal arrived just this April, “on the instruction of the President of the Russian Federation.” Hemsley shrugged it off. “It’s publicity for the Russians,” he said.

These days, his routine is less about military precision and more about time spent outdoors. He returned to golf after recovering from prostate surgery two years ago and now plays several times a week alongside his daughter Clare.

“It’s lovely seeing the birds and the bees, and exercise,” he said. “If you don’t exercise, you die, I think.”

Michael Farr, the club’s head professional, called Hemsley a “remarkable man.”

“At the age of 101, to still have that drive to get better is really impressive,” Farr said. “I think we all look at him going out [on the course] and think, ‘I’d like to be like Mr Hemsley when I grow up.’”

Asked about the secret to his longevity, Hemsley pointed to his active lifestyle — and one small supplement. “I could manage without [golf], but it would hasten the end I think,” he said. “And Omega 3.”

101-Year-Old War Veteran Wins Golf Tournament, Says Exercise Is Key to Long Life

Euro News

It takes most humans nearly a year to take their first steps. For HMND 01 Alpha, it took just two days.

Developed by UK-based robotics startup Humanoid, Alpha is a bipedal humanoid robot designed to take on real-world tasks — everything from lifting industrial parts to helping out at home. In just 48 hours after assembly, the robot was already walking stably on two feet, a milestone that often takes weeks or months to reach in robotics.

That kind of rapid development isn’t just impressive — it could be a preview of how humanoid robots might soon be deployed to fill gaps in labor forces, care work, and physically demanding jobs.

“HMND 01 is designed to address real-world challenges across industrial and home environments,” said Artem Sokolov, founder and CEO of Humanoid.

A crash course in walking — in the cloud

Key to Alpha’s fast learning curve is virtual reinforcement training. Using Nvidia’s Isaac Sim and Isaac Lab, the team condensed the equivalent of 19 months of physical locomotion practice into just two days of intensive simulation.

By the time Alpha touched the ground, it had already processed millions of seconds’ worth of walking experience in virtual environments. That learning, transferred into its real-world body, allowed it to stand, walk, and rebalance after being pushed — all immediately after its assembly.

From design to functioning prototype, the entire development process took just five months — a fraction of the industry average of 18 to 24 months.

A robot built for work — and home

Alpha stands 179 cm tall and can carry up to 15 kg. It’s designed with versatility in mind: modular hands can be swapped out depending on the task — from basic grippers to fully articulated five-fingered hands. It’s equipped with cameras, microphones, and depth sensors to perceive and react to its surroundings.

It can squat, sidestep, hop, run, walk curved paths, and coordinate with other robots. It also has the balance and autonomy to recover if nudged or bumped.

In factories, it could fill in for roles that are becoming increasingly hard to hire for. “With manufacturing sectors facing labour shortages of up to 27 percent, leaving significant gaps in production… robots can provide meaningful support,” Sokolov said.

At home, the robot could assist people with limited mobility, help manage physical tasks, or offer support with daily routines — everything from lifting objects to basic coordination.

And thanks to its modular structure, Alpha can be upgraded easily. The company says it could be as simple as changing a limb or swapping its exterior “clothes.”

The bigger picture

While still in the prototype phase, Alpha is part of a growing push to make humanoid robots not just possible, but practical. In sectors where human labor is shrinking or strained — manufacturing, elder care, logistics — the potential uses are wide-ranging.

What sets Alpha apart is not just its physical capabilities, but the speed at which it got there. In a field where building a reliable walking robot can take years, doing it in five months, with just 48 hours of training, is a leap forward.

For now, Alpha’s next steps will likely involve further testing and real-world pilots. But Humanoid’s message is clear: the future of work — and caregiving — could look a lot more robotic, and it might be arriving sooner than expected.

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