Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: Record pig kidney transplant brings hope

Episode Date: September 4, 2026

A man in the US has survived for a record nine months with a kidney from a genetically modified pig, bringing hope to transplant patients across the world. 66-year-old Tim Andrews went on to receive a human donor kidney and is doing well. We hear from Dr Leonardo Riella who led the team. Plus, the rare flightless parrot that's been brought back from the brink of extinction. The kakapo are the world's heaviest parrot. Also in this edition, meet Ari Miller, the DJ making music with strangers on the streets of New York. The new display showing the world famous Bayeux Tapestry as it's never been seen before and the composer turning the world's underground trains into melodies. Our weekly collection of inspiring, uplifting and happy news from around the world.Picture: Patient Tim Andrews (centre) with Dr Tatsuo Kawai (left) and Dr Leonardo Riella (right). Credit: Kate Flock/Massachusetts General Hospital.Presenter: Holly Gibbs. Music composed by Iona Hampson

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ad-free with an Amazon music subscription. This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Holly Gibbs and in this edition, the new hope for people waiting for organ transplants. The biggest issue that we have currently in transplantation is the organ shortage. It's a crisis. The majority of our patients do not have access to organs in a timely manner. We hear about the man who lived with a pig's kidney for a record nine months.

Also on this podcast, It's so unusual, a giant flightless night parrot, found only in New Zealand. It looks endearing, of course. It's got such unusual biology. The rare bird brought back from the brink of extinction. You can get really, really close to the tapestry, quite unlike you could in Bayer in a way. So I think people are just going to be overwhelmed by the detail and the fact that it brings that period of, you know, the 11th century to life. The new display showing the world-famous Bayer Tapestry as it's never been seen before. Plus, the DJ making music with three.

strangers on the streets of New York and... I've done London. I've almost got Tokyo done. I've never got Paris almost done. I've already done New York. The composer, turning the world's underground trains into melodies. We start with a medical breakthrough that could offer new hope to people around the world waiting for organ transplants. Every year, tens of thousands die because there simply aren't enough human donor organs available. But now, a man in the US has survived for a record nine months with a kidney from a genetically modified pig. Speaking before the transplant,

66-year-old Tim Andrews explained how much it meant to him. Hope, because I'm in a room with a bunch of people that are having the same problem, depressed, tired, three-quarters of them are in wheelchairs because they've been so exhausted. I'm like, this is hope. Hope is the big. biggest thing, you know, the chance to be free from the machine and live your life. Mr. Andrews went on to receive a human donor kidney and is doing well. Dr. Leonardo Riella from Harvard Medical School led the team. He told my colleague Gary O'Donohue why this breakthrough was so significant.

We passed through a major milestone for two reasons. I think, number one, we had a pig kidney working and performing all the expected kidney functions for more than nine months, allowing our patient to be off dialysis. And second, we were able to transition this patient from a pig kidney to a human kidney, which was something that scientists and physicians have some concerns that by doing a pig kidney first, we may prevent patients from having the option of human transplantation in the future. So those are two very important milestones that were able to pass. And this is no ordinary pig kidney. You had to sort of do some genetic modifications to the pigs themselves to begin with, correct?

Correct. These are very unique pigs. They are cloned and they have genetic edits to improve the compatibility between the pig kidney and humans. Now this is a kind of bridge technique as I understand it while you wait for a human kidney to be available, a donor kidney. What problems did you encounter after you've implanted this kidney? Because it did eventually fail, didn't it? Yes. The immune system of humans do recognize certain things in the pig that's slightly different than a traditional human transplant. So I think they're learning, you know, in terms of trying to understand what are some of the differences between a human and a pig kidney and how the immune system recognizes that. And second,

and how can we tweak, how can we change slightly our anti-rejection meds in order to be able to control that in the long term? So I think we're sort of getting in the right direction. And we have another patient who just passed the nine-month mark with the pig kidney. So these are very exciting finding so far. And for those who don't know, give us an idea of what this means in terms of the patient's quality of life while they're waiting for a donor kidney. So the biggest issue that we have currently in transplantation is the organ shortage. It's a crisis because we know that with patients with kidney failure, the best treatment option for the majority of patients is to get a transplant. And unfortunately, the majority of our patients do not have access to organs in a timely manner. So they have to remain on dialysis. And dialysis is an incredible technology and innovation that keeps patients.

alive, but unfortunately, it is a treatment that cannot reproduce the function of a true kidney. So you go to a dialysis center, you filter your blood three times a week for three or four hours. And the consequences of that is that many of these patients that stay in dialysis, they started developing cardiovascular disease and worse outcomes. And unfortunately, many die or even become too sick to become a kidney transplant while they're waiting for their promised kidney. Do you now feel that this is something that can be scaled? This is something that will be suitable for a lot of patients in this position.

This is what we hope in the long term, that we are able to provide xenotransmentation as an alternative treatment for these patients with kidney failure. Our ambition is that with a pig kidney, we may be able to do additional genetic edits to potentially create an invisible organ once transplanted. And this would overcome the second biggest challenge in transportation is that patients require to take anti-rejection meds for the rest of their lives in order to prevent rejection. But now imagine that by doing these edits and creating these organs

that could be invisible to the immune system, these patients will not require to take anti-rejection mats in the long term. So this would be really game-changer. That was Dr. Leonardo Riella. To New Zealand next, and a rare flightless parrot that's been brought back from the brink of extinction. The male intersperses the booming with chinging. The chinging call is thought to help females attracted by the booming pinpoint the male's

location. The male alternates between booming and chinging all night, every night for three months. That's David Attenborough describing the meeting call of the carcoupal. They are the world's heaviest parrot. weighing up to four kilograms and they have green feathers, fluffy faces, large beaks and owl-like eyes. By the early 1970s, there were fears they'd been wiped out. But now hopes are rising after a successful breeding season increased the population by 90 birds. Alison Balance is the host of a podcast called The Carcapol Files.

She spoke to my colleague Regini Vardianathan. This is really exciting and really significant news. we were down to 51 Karkapur in 1995. And here we are 30 years later and we've just had a breeding season where nearly twice that many chicks were hatched and made it right through to the magic 150 days when they're independent and can be added to the population. And we're just at a point where the Karkapur population

has the capacity to start increasing significantly. What's changed to lead to this good news? Well, 1995 marked the beginning of the Karkapur recovery program that's run by the New Zealand Department of Conservation. One of the things you need to understand about Karkapur is they do things very slowly. So they don't breed every year. They only breed every two to four years. Their breeding is triggered by the mass or mast fruiting of some of our native trees here,

particularly poutarps called Remymu. The fruit ripens in late summer just in time for these Karkapur mums, who are solo mums, to raise their chicks. and that took 16 years from 1995 to make 90 carcapur chicks. And now we're at a point we've got lots of young birds, particularly young female birds in the population. And we can make 90 carcaboo chicks in a single breeding season, which is just incredible.

In years past, these very cute birds were hunted for their meat and their beautiful feathers as well, weren't they? They were. So you have to remember that humans only arrived in New Zealand about 750 years ago, Polynesians first and later Europeans. Early Māori ate. Kakapo, they used the feathers to make beautiful feather cloaks.

Then there was a lot of forest clearance, so Kakapo need native forest to live in. And the worst thing that happened was we introduced a lot of mammals to New Zealand. So New Zealand had no native mammals. And for Kakapo, particular, stotes and rats have been a real problem. And so hand in hand with trying to rescue the birds, there's been a move in New Zealand to make. Offshore islands in particular, predator-free, to create some safe houses for this amazing species.

Why do you love this bird so much? It's so unusual, a giant flightless night parrot found only in New Zealand. It looks endearing, of course. It's got such unusual biology. But I'm also really impressed by the team of very committed people who have turned the species around using all sorts of very innovative methods. And it's a conservation program that was very intensive to start with. So hand-rearing became very important.

There's been a lot of effort to try and increase fertility through techniques such as artificial insemination. And more recently, they've been using very smart, innovative technology, which allow them these days to monitor Karkapur remotely from a distance. And so what's happened as numbers have slowly increased over the last 30 years to the point where some of these more intensive management techniques, They can step back from that. That was Alison Balance. A man in New York is making music with strangers he meets on the streets. Ari Miller walks around with a recording studio strapped to his back. He broadcasts his streetside shows live on social media,

where he's become quite the sensation. Ari has been speaking to the BBC's Usman Azad. I had been just producing, just making beats for fun in my room. And when COVID started, I had a mastableness. of gear in the hopes of doing live shows. So instead of doing that, I started doing live streams. And at a certain point, I was sort of like, this is getting a little bit boring for me. And I'm also not getting to enjoy the city that I'm paying rent to. So I sort of concocted this mobile rig to essentially take the studio setup I had in my bedroom

outside and be able to navigate the city. You guys getting on? Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. We were just at a session. Then I was like, he's here. We got to go. You play the sex and then you sing. What do you think the best vibe would be?

Just rocking music. Exactly, exactly. Whatever? I don't think initially the whole idea was to just have them be the performers. Initially, I was trying to just have them participate in any way, like just make a sound and I would incorporate it into the beat or give me a suggestion for what I would make and then I would keep walking. Because when I first went outside, a lot of people would look at me confused and not really understand what was happening. I sort of had to do like two years of this before it really got going. What are you feeling, bro?

What's the vibe today? What if it was like a rock group, but like a hip-hop drums? Do you ever get surprised by the talent that you meet in, potentially in people that at first glance, if you walk past them on the streets of New York, that you may not think that they actually have any musical talent whatsoever? I almost expect everybody to have musical talent in New York City. When I walk around, it's just, it's limitless. The most exciting part of what I do is when it's not just me having a moment with a stranger,

but it's multiple strangers coming together through the music and connecting. I'm going to give you all my love. What you do on the streets of New York is shows that there is an abundance of talents. There's an abundance of skill out there for someone to, you know, for a record label, anyone to pluck people off the streets. They just have to look for it. Would you agree with that? Yeah, I would say so. I see a lot of comments on my videos about, you know, why don't record labels let us hear

this type of music? And there are certainly, you know, gatekeepers in the music industry and beyond. And honestly, my main takeaway is, this is my personal takeaway is like, I think to myself, wow, I really need to put in a little more effort to seek out music on my own instead of going to, you know, pre-decided playlist to decide what I'm going to listen to. I don't know. There's never been more music in the world than there is now, but it's certainly hard to find it. And I guess sometimes, you know, even just walking around outside, you come across it.

That was mobile DJ Ari Miller. Coming up on the happy pod, how flies can help us understand human behavior. We're sort of trying to understand, you know, the anatomy of thought in some sense. how is it that, you know, the amazing stuff between our ears lets us do all the remarkable behaviours that we can do. Your sales order says one thing. Your inventory says another.

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ad-free with an Amazon music subscription. You're listening to The Happy Pod. A medieval tapestry that tells the story of one of the most important battles in European history is going on display to the public in a new way. The 70-meter-long Bayer Tapestry illustrates the event. The event leading to the Norman conquest of England, including the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Originally embroidered in England, it was kept for centuries in France, but has now been loaned to the British Museum here in London.

These school children were amongst the first to see it. I thought that it was really impressive because one scene can take so long to sew, and they've done this by hand, not by sewing machines. and it's so cool all the effort and patience they put into this. I thought that it was really cool and shocking how the people have managed to so detailly. It's shown how all the armour is and how the shields are all perfectly shaped and the arrows. I actually thought it would be having bits missing burnt blood, but it doesn't.

I really like how the whole tapestry shows the beginning of the Battle of the Pacings and what led up to it. And I really like how detailed it is. It just shows more of it. My colleague Nick Robinson spoke to Michael Lewis, the curator of the new exhibition. Fantastic moment that the tapestry is finally now in the UK. In 2013, I joined the Bayer Tapestry Scientific Committee

where we are looking at advising Bayer Museum and how to redisplay the tapestry there. And it's very clear that actually they needed a new museum. to do this effectively and therefore the tapestry was going to have to be moved. Redisplay, crucial word, because it was on the wall and it was in a kind of U-shape, wasn't it? And here it is flat, 70 metres long in this enormous gallery. Yeah, that's right. It's a use shape in Bayer and now it's flat. That's a requirement of the French state, but it does allow us... A requirement, forgive me, because it might be damaged

if it's... Yeah, so it was kind of fairly clear in Bayer, really, that the tapestry was potentially being damaged because of the curve at the end and because it was hanging direct. a bit like a curtain really. So it was a directive from the French state that here for this exhibition, it's going to be flat. But that does allow us for the first time to show the tapestry in a continuous length, which hasn't been the case for many years.

In fact, probably since the 1700s when it was sort of rolled out for people to see. So, yeah, it's a significant thing that we can do that. And also, because of the display case that we've got, you can get really, really close to the tapestry, quite unlike you could in Bayer in a way. Have you got a favourite moment place on the tapestry? Yeah, my favourite scene is the moment where Edward the Confessor dies

because he's shown touching hands with Harold. And we know from a record of the time that it might have been the time when he basically was promised by Edward that he could look after the kingdom. And he obviously over-interpreted that and said, yeah, I'm going to be king next. So there must be some people. You meet them for a coffee, you meet them for a pie. you meet them for a pint.

30 years studying the Bayer tapestry, get alive, Michael. Why is it worth our study? What is it that you hope the country will get, and so many of us will get the chance to see it that you've obviously relished,

you've loved it over these decades? Yeah, I mean, obviously 1066 is a moment in our history, a pivotal moment in our history, and the Bayer tapestry is the first narrative of that event. And so I think most people

when they see the tapestry, they're going to be amazed by both its lengths, but the preservation of that object. When you look at things from the 11th century, particularly textiles, they're very, very fragmentary. And the tapestry is not that. So I think people are just going to be overwhelmed by the detail

and the fact that it brings that period of the 11th century to life. Michael Lewis. Flies are usually seen as an annoying pest, but it seems they could help us better understand. how the human mind works. Scientists from the US and the UK have, for the first time, mapped the entire brain of both male and female flies. They say their findings could lead to a better understanding of how our genes influence our behaviour. Dr Gregory Jefferis is one of the lead authors of the study. We're sort of trying to understand, you know, the anatomy

of thought in some sense. How is it that, you know, the amazing stuff between our ears lets us do all the remarkable behaviors that we can do. You know, player sonata have this, you know, social exchange. And it turns out that in microcosm, the humble fruit fly can actually do a lot of really quite complex behaviors. And there we can actually start to reconstruct the entire brain wiring that lets that animal actually do those behaviors. And then we're linking that to genes that control differences in behavior, something we've known about for many years. And those behaviours include a range of behaviours in this case

that are shown by one sex rather than the other. So, for example, male flies are much more aggressive towards other male flies when they're females around. The motivation for our work is really this business of trying to understand how brains process information, how they take all of our sensory information and then turn it into decisions to memories and behaviour. And although it's very fun to think about sex differences in behaviour,

it's really that motivation of trying to understand how behaviours are actually encoded in our genes. You know, a little bit like a chip has a particular wiring diagram. We now know that brains, certainly these fly brains, have particular wiring diagrams. In terms of human behaviour, what we're thinking about is we can find something about the logic of how genes specify different behaviours. That was Dr Gregory Jefferis. We end here in the UK, where a composer has looked to London's underground transport for inspiration.

Take a listen to this. That is the sound of the comings and goings of the Tube Network. Matthew Wilcoq created the music using real-time train data. Every time a train pulls into a station, it generates a note, meaning the music's rhythm is the rhythm of the tube. He's been speaking to my colleague James Kumar-Assami about how he's. got the idea. I hate the sound of the motorway and I hate the sound of the ring road. That depressing connotations I guess. But I was walking there and I had my noise cancelling headphones on and

I wasn't listening to anything for some reason. I don't know why. I was in a weird space and I got to the road and I could just feel the cars coming underneath me. And I stopped for a bit and was watching and then someone started laying cones out in one of the lanes and the pattern and the rhythm of the cars changed and it made it almost like a polyrhythm, something strange happened. And I was like, oh, that's kind of interesting. What will that feel like musically? So I took some test footage, went home and made the first what I call a motorway cycle, whereas I put this pink line over the footage and as soon as a car passes the line, it creates a note. And then within that system, I create rules. So one of the most popular ones, which is this one.

We're looking at drone footage that I shot around a year ago. And yeah, so you can see there's what, two, four, six, eight lanes and I assign a note basically or a row. rule of notes to each lane and then I let the composition kind of write itself. What's interesting for me about it, I didn't expect it to happen. I originally made these to go in a gallery and to be music. Then I posted them online and they kind of took off. But what was really fascinating is what people took from it. They started to really think about who is this person creating these serendipitous chords

with other people, like where they all go in. These notes represent this person's whole life, which is kind of interesting. in. Okay, so plenty of cars, lots of footage, but then you move on to the tube. Yeah, so this is where this piece came from. I'm looking at a screen and I'm seeing in real time the movement of trains across the network.

Just explain how you have taken that and made it into music. So every time a train arrives at a station, right, it gives me a timestamp. And if you capture that time, all the time stamps of all the trains or say five minutes you have a lot of rhythmic data points once I've got that data then I assign a note to each line the whole system is kind of built around e flat major pentatonic with a D flat and an E in there just to give it a little bit of flavor basically you started off with motorways yes you've gone onto the onto the underground

trains planes where is yeah where do you go next? So I've done London. I've almost got Tokyo done and I've got Paris almost done. I've already done New York. How do you describe this music? I'm not very good with genres, but it's in the ambient genre and I guess it'd be minimal, classical or I guess you could prepend it with it's generative, but it's some kind of ambient classical related. But generative's interesting. term because, I mean, people obviously associate it now with generative AI, and this is all

real and this is you controlling it. I guess there's a difference between generative and generated. I guess that's the difference. That people have been doing generative music almost forever. In one way, just randomly plus in notes on the piano was generative, but rolling a dice as well. But there's a long history of all those

mid, early 20th century guys were doing this in a sense with different forms of technology. What genre do you think? it is. Its own genre. No, I don't. If you just heard the music on Spotify or wherever else. Yeah, let's call it underground music.

No, come. Matthew Wilcock. That's all from the Happy Pod for now. If you have a story you think we should cover, we'd love to hear from you. As ever, the address is global podcast at BBC.co.uk. This edition was mixed and produced by Rachel. Bulkley. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Holly Gibbs. Until next time, goodbye. Get more with BBC Podcasts, wherever you listen. Be the first to listen to your favorite shows,

like Evil Genius, Good, Bad Billionaire, and You're Dead to Me, with a subscription to BBC Podcasts premium on Apple Podcasts. You can also enjoy a range of our podcasts ad-free with an Amazon music subscription.