Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: The million dollar prize winners saving the planet

Episode Date: November 9, 2024

We hear about innovative environmental projects awarded millions of dollars in this year's Earthshot prizes. Also: the twins cleaning streets for free; detecting tumours with graphene; and a remarkable Himalayan rescue.Presenter: Andrew Peach. Music composed by Iona Hampson.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Remarkable personal stories from around the world. Oh, never forget that day. I didn't know the effect it was going to have on my life. Lives less ordinary from the BBC World Service. There was a few surprises. Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts. If it starts like this.

We did it. We won. I still can't believe it. And also has this. When I saw it, I smiled because I knew this transformation was going to be good. It must be the happy pod from the BBC World Service. This is Andrew Peach and among the uplifting news stories we've got for you this week, service. This is Andrew Peach and among the uplifting news stories we've got for you this week, saving antelopes from extinction in Kazakhstan.

Scientists who've found a new way to spot brain tumours. I feel of course positive. I feel a little bit lucky that it worked. A survival story from the Himalayas. We started to look on the rock and see where there would be ice that would potentially be melting in the sun so that we could somehow put our water bottles underneath and drips

and try and essentially just get a few mouthfuls of water just to keep us a little bit hydrated. And treadmills for bats. The one that we got wasn't made for vampire bats but they are little champion runners. Let's start in South Africa where the winners of this year's Earthshot Prize were announced by Prince William. Good evening and hello to everyone joining us live across Africa. Sani Bonani. This award recognises initiatives designed to combat environmental challenges.

There are five winners. They get around $1.2 million each to help expand their projects, as our correspondent, Daniela Relf, told me from Cape Town. The focus this year has been on young people and their contribution to beating and tackling environmental challenges. So there has been definitely an energy about bringing the prize to Africa and looking for the solutions here in some of the younger people working in their communities around South Africa. But it is a global prize, it is a prize that rewards environmental innovation globally. Let's talk about some of the winners as a list of amazing-looking projects here.

The one that caught my eye was the antelope, the antelopes in Kazakhstan. Yes, I have to say that was one of my favourites too. It's an extraordinary tale and I was speaking to Vera Voronova who is the woman behind that particular project in Kazakhstan. It's about the Sager Antelope which was basically on the verge of extinction in Kazakhstan because there just were no habitats for it to live in and so Vera and her team tried to recreate the habitats for this antelope and tried to give it a home effectively over a period of time. We do have solutions that exist and can be applied to different countries, to the globally, to the regionally,

to really tackle the climate crisis we have, natural loss we have. It's like we hear from every corner that nature is under the threat. But there are examples, and the example from Kazakhstan is the good one. Whatever we give a space for nature and the conditions that really show a great ability to be recovered. And this is example with the Saiga antelope, it's a good example to prove this concept. And what they managed to do was stop the move towards extinction happening, which is incredibly rare with big animals. It's almost unheard of that once you are on the path towards extinction,

reversing it is incredibly difficult. But she has achieved that with this extraordinary story of saving the Sager Antelope, and it is now thriving in Kazakhstan. She was telling me that they are now working on wild horses and reintroducing wild horses back into Kazakhstan. So she had a whole list of animals that she wants to sort of bring back from the verge of extinction. So it's a really, really impressive project and she was one of the EarthShot winners in the category that was about protecting and restoring nature. Quite a few of these stories, Daniela, are from Africa. There's one about waste management. Tell me about that. It was interesting, Andrew, actually, at the EarthShot Prize ceremony because I was

sitting backstage. Whenever there was an African nominee or an African finalist and two African winners as there were, there was an absolute eruption by all the staff at the ceremony, those working there for the African winners. GAIO, which is that stands for the Green Africa Youth Organisation, is a project that is based in Ghana. It is focused on the work of young people. It's a youth-orientated project. And it is about a waste management system, but it's actually targeted at the waste pickers, the people that pick up the litter, and to try and give them more support,

because what they are doing, by doing that more effectively and more quickly, they will reduce air pollution. And I spoke to Desmond Aluguna, who is the co-founder of Gaio, about his big million-pound win as a winner of one of the Earth Shop prizes. We did it.

We won. I still can't believe it. How's it feel? Excited, delighted. My brain is frozen. And what happens for the winners next, Daniele? They're being given a big watch of cash. What do they spend that

on and what happens as far as these ideas are concerned going forward? For the next year, they get the full package of attention from Earthshot. So there's the money, they have financial advice on how they should use it. They are given support from organisations, businesses and experts who can really help them scale up their business. And that is a really important thing about EarthJet. Some of these businesses and projects will stay quite small and not for profit, but they will be improved and made bigger and more effective. Others could potentially become multi-million pound businesses. And I imagine you and I do this for a living. I imagine meeting some of these people makes

you go, wow, how did you come up with that? What an amazing thing. I have to be honest, what it makes you feel is a little bit like you've under achieved in life because it has been really inspirational to meet so many amazing people with these great ideas and many who are just looking for support and people to help them so they can make them bigger, make them better and spread the word about what they're trying to do. They all ultimately though have one goal, which is to bigger, make them better, and spread the word about what they're trying to do. They all ultimately, though, have one goal, which is to make the world a better, cleaner, and more sustainable place.

And it has been, I have to say, a real privilege to meet so many of them this week in South Africa. Daniela Relf with me from Cape Town. Here in London, two brothers are also helping to make the world a cleaner place. 23-year-olds James and John McEndeula have been busy cleaning public spaces that no one else seems to want to and videos of their projects are taking social media by storm. Harry Bly reports. I'm James, I'm

John and yes we clean this. When I saw it I smiled because I knew this transformation was going to be good. Whether it's decluttering an overgrown garden, cleaning road signs, or scrubbing grime off public bins. So like for this one, we're applying a little, the degreaser to see if we can get some of the grease off to lift this, but I don't think we'll be able to lift most of it just because people have burnt cigarettes.

So I think that will be the difficult part about the bin. Identical twins James and John Macanduola have made it their mission to keep London clean, free of charge. And they've taken on some mammoth projects too. Like cleaning the entire London underground. Today we're going to be cleaning the tubes. Where sometimes they invite passengers to help. Does anyone want to help us clean? You see, no! Really? Does anyone want to help us clean today?

Anyone want to help us clean the drain? We've already got one person today. With varying levels of success. I will help you clean. You help? Yes. Yes, what's your name? I'm Fraser.

The boys say they fell in love with cleaning at the age of 11, when their mum would encourage them to help clean the entire house every Saturday morning. But at just 15, James and John were made homeless. We went from place to place, then we then settled down, finished GCSEs because that happened when we were doing our GCSEs. Then we then did that, went to sixth form, went to uni, graduated and started a company. And alongside their cleaning business, they started posting videos of their cleaning jobs, which to date have amassed them more than 200,000 followers across TikTok, Instagram and Facebook.

Only until people started saying it that we realised that we were giving back to them. Initially that never crossed our minds. We love you boys! Thank you so much! For their next cleaning projects, the twins have big ambitions. The next place we're trying to clean is either a Formula One or it's an airplane. And if you have a story about how people have made a difference where you live, we'd love to hear it.

Email globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. Graphene is 200 times stronger than steel. Now an international team of scientists have found a new way for it to help us. Graphene is being used to help detect cancerous cells in the brain. A chip the size of a postage stamp can differentiate between cancer cells and healthy cells. Costas Costarilos is a professor of nanomedicine at the University of Manchester. The particular technology that we are developing in the clinic or clinical use at the moment is based on two aspects of graphene.

The first aspect has to do with the fact that it's the thinnest material. Therefore, it allows us to design, fabricate at the micro nano scale, which means hundreds of thousands of times smaller than human hair. And at the same time, the discovery that graphene is a seamless material in terms of allowing electrons to move across its planar axis. What does that mean if it sounds too scientific? It means that it's extremely sensitive in picking up signals from neurons. Neurons are giving us very subtle signals. Neurons are the fundamental cells in our brains and they are the cells that are really participating in the primary function of our brains.

Therefore, understanding and picking up, collecting, recording and understanding signals as minute as possible and as widely distributed as possible from those neuron cells will allow us to understand much better a variety of diseases. And obviously there are lots of different brain conditions. Strokes would perhaps be the most common, but there are others too. Does this technology potentially help with those conditions? Correct. Not in the same exact manner, of course, but what the combination and the commonality if you wish between the diseases is using these devices and this technology is around the fact that

we can precisely monitor neuronal tissue. We can precisely record and read the way in which neurons behave in the context of different pathologies. How does the graphene do it? How does the graphene distinguish between healthy neurons and cancer cells? The combination of thinness and miniaturization of the contacts allows us to collect many different contacts from many different neurons with the devices because they're so small. When you describe now the short and long term implications of what you found, how does that feel? I feel of course positive. I feel a little bit lucky that it worked because you remember

this is a 10 year old project, now 12 year old project. When we set out, I remember us having long conversations trying to identify one or two medical applications. We didn't have the resource to explore widely. So we knew from the beginning that whatever we try to do, it better have as much potential not only to be transformational, but also have scientific and credible hypothesis, but by which graphene will reveal itself as an advantageous material. So the fact that it actually is giving us more and more evidence that it is indeed advantageous and it is pushing the envelope and it's really pushing the current state of the art is very fulfilling.

It's true that when you're developing an advanced novel material, you need to look at it from a timeframe of decades, particularly when it comes to clinical translation because of the complexity of the application. We managed to at least get graphene in the clinic as a first in human trial within 10 years. For me that's the biggest accomplishment to be honest. Meanwhile in Canada researchers

have found an unusual way to study vampire bats by getting them to run on tiny treadmills. The team at the University of Toronto wanted to find out how the animals use the blood they eat to create energy. They say their results could help show how humans could adapt to high protein diets. Ken Welch is an associate professor of zoology. We got ourselves a tiny little treadmill and found out that these bats are actually willing little participants. Once we got them trained, they were great little runners. There's a big industry out there, relatively big, for biomedical researchers that are studying mice and rats.

And they want to study exercise in these animals. So there are these tiny little treadmills. And the one that we got wasn't made for vampire bats, but vampire bats are about the same size as a lab rat. And we gave it a shot and yeah, you can see the videos. They are little champion runners galloping along. Ken Welch from the University of Toronto. And coming up in the happy pods. Our time on this planet is finite. Don't waste your time worrying about stuff that isn't that important.

Focus on your family, the people in your life. That thing that you've always planned to do one day, why not do it today? A new battle for an Olympic champion. My talent as an athlete is swimming long halls over the curvature of the earth. Lifeless Ordinary is the podcast with astonishing personal stories from across the globe. My past is very bad and I survived it. You have to tell the story. Expect the unexpected. All of a sudden the car exploded.

Life's less ordinary from the BBC World Service. Here's a thing that happened to me. Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts. When two experienced climbers lost half of their equipment in a rock fall high in the Himalayas, their disappointment at not being able to achieve their goal soon gave way to fears they might not survive. Michelle Vorjak from the US and Faye Manners, who is originally from the UK, had hoped to become the first to reach the summit of Chakuhamba III.

After two nights sheltering on a tiny ledge without a tent, food or water, it became clear that rescue helicopters couldn't see them. But as they began a dangerous attempt to abseil down the rock face, they spotted a group of climbers from Faye's base in the French Alps. She spoke to my colleague Paul Henley. On the end of the rope was our haul bag full of all of our safety equipment and climbing equipment that we would need to be able to retreat from the mountain that we were on. So I was pretty horrified. No food, no water and that's crucial because everything was

frozen and you didn't have a stove to melt ice. What did you do? Well, to get water, we waited till the next day and we started to look on the rock and see where there would be ice that would potentially be melting in the sun so that we could somehow put our water bottles underneath some drips and try and essentially just get a few mouthfuls of water just to keep us a little bit hydrated. You had one sleeping bag is that right? Between two of you I mean? We did but actually it was a double sleeping bag so luckily we could both fit in it quite comfortably. Did you stay warm enough? I was close to hypothermia. Michelle was warmer than me, mainly because the bag that we dropped, it had all of my warm clothes in it, whereas the other bag that we had had some of Michelle's

warmer clothes in it. So it was Michelle's job to try and keep me warm. What stage did you know that your emergency call had worked? A helicopter came at one point, didn't it? Yes, well, on the first day the helicopter couldn't come because there was extreme fog and we knew that there'd be no visibility for the helicopters to fly. But actually the next morning we did see two helicopters fly around searching for us but unfortunately they couldn't see us. So tell us about the point when rescue did come. So when rescue came, it was actually on the third day. So we'd already been waiting quite

a while and at this point we were extremely worried for our health and we kind of lost hope that the rescue was going to be able to find us. But on the third day, as we were retreating ourselves and abseiling down the mountain. Luckily we actually had three climbers, three French climbers, that had been alerted and were in the nearby mountains and had decided to take it upon themselves to try and come to our rescue. And at that point was when I really felt the relief that we might be okay, that there was someone else out there that was able to help us.

How did you react? I started crying and Michelle had said that she's never seen me cry before. I think it was just, I'd been stressed for so long and trying to be really practical about how we can survive. That when they finally got there and I realized that there was someone else that was going to help us and there might be a chance that we can survive. It just, it was almost like I was allowed to be emotional.

So I, yeah, started crying. I was really happy. The climber Faye Manners. To Madagascar next and more stories of people helping to protect their local environment and their own livelihoods. The second largest island nation in the world lies off the coast of southern Africa and nearly 90% of its plants and animal species can't be found anywhere else in the world but much of their habitat is being destroyed. Cira Thierry has been to meet some of those finding ways to help. Most farmers don't know how to keep the soil fertile, so they burn whatever is left of the forest to plant on the fresh land.

This is Tanya. She created an organization that's trying to fight this problem by teaching farmers how to grow food and trees at the same time, addressing two of Madagascar's biggest problems at once, deforestation and food insecurity. Together we're visiting a hillside just north of the capital Antananarivo, where she and the farmers are running an experiment, turning this dead patch of land into a special kind of forest that will help feed plenty of families in this area. So for example this here is an avocado tree and around it they've grown vegetables.

One of the farmers is dropping a large pile of dry weeds and leaves into the holes. Like this the water will be stored there. Then we plant fruit trees in the hole and vegetables around it. We also plant lemongrass to stabilize it and other crops to nourish the fruit tree. The key here is to ensure the water doesn't just flow away. Tania and her husband trained over 60 farmers across the region who now use these methods. In classrooms and in the field, the farmers learn all they need to know to become more resilient, growing enough food and even generating a small income without destroying the forest.

The World Wildlife Fund estimates that more than 140 million US dollars is lost every year in the southwest Indian Ocean to illegal shrimp and tuna harvesting. And there's one ethnic group in particular, the Vesu, whose survival really depends on the ocean's health. They're a tribe of nomadic fishermen, but now more and more are forced to set up their lives on a remote group of islands because that's the only place where they can still find fish. This is the biggest of a total of nine remote islands. A simple sand bank in the midst of the ocean. I'm here to visit Amilson and his father Gervais. When we first arrived here generations ago, the nature here was really healthy. There were seagrass beds and coral reefs.

But now so many people are fishing here that our natural world is suffering. Gervais is the chief of this village. Normally, the Vezos take everything they can from the sea until almost nothing is left. But now some of them are using their exceptional diving skills not to fish, but to protect the ocean by monitoring fish stocks and convincing their communities to adopt more sustainable methods. If the coral ecosystem degrades, the fish living there will flee, and that's a really scary thought. Amir Zah and the other divers were trained by Blue Ventures, a marine conservation organization.

They now work almost autonomously, diving one week a month and leading regular meetings with their community to discuss how to react with new local policies. Some are not yet on board, but most accept that we need more conservation. It's better to start early so that my children can witness my efforts and carry on my work so that we can preserve our culture for future generations. That report from Sira Thierry and you can hear more about those projects on People Fixing the World wherever you get your BBC podcasts. As one of the most successful Olympians in the world, who's been inspiring people with

his sporting achievements for many years, now Sir Chris Hoy is determined to help those facing a far greater challenge, incurable cancer. The cyclist has revealed he's been diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer, which will eventually prove terminal. has revealed he's been diagnosed with stage 4 prostate cancer which will eventually prove terminal but says he wants to use his profile to show people in his position can still find joy and hope. His decision to go public has already led to a surge of people getting tested for the disease and Sir Chris has been talking to my colleague Sally Nugent. It was the biggest shock of my life. I remember the feeling of just absolute horror and shock.

And this is therefore, you know, this is a terminal illness and it's about how do we manage this rather than how do we cure it. I'll never forget the words, you know, it's incurable but it's manageable. I don't think we necessarily give ourselves enough credit for what we're able to deal with and as humans we can we can tolerate a lot of difficulty and stress and it puts into perspective riding bikes you know for a living you'd sort of realize that was just a bit of fun really you know if you've got family history of it like I have if you're over the age of 45 go and ask your doctor. I am sure you have been inundated with messages what messages are you getting?

So many messages and it's so many people. It really is wonderful and I guess it's during these really testing times. That's when you find out the real people that are there to support you and stand up and be counted. We've had so many messages of support and of what can we do practically. We want to help out, we're going to be doing a charity ride next year called the Tour de Four. I want to hopefully to be as many people who have stage four cancers of all sorts that might want to come and get involved with the ride or be there at the event at the end and I think it's going to be a celebration and it's to try and change the perspective of stage four cancers and make people realize do you at the event at the end and I think it's going to be a celebration and it's to try and change

the perspective of stage 4 cancers and make people realise, do you know what, this is what stage 4 cancer is right now. Many people can still have very full and happy lives and healthy lives dealing with it. If somebody is watching this right now who has just had a horrendous diagnosis like me to look and think, well, blame me, I didn't think you could look like that or still be living a full life a year on from getting that diagnosis. I'm not the only one, you know, and I'm not saying everybody's in the same boat, but there's hope out there. You must recognise on some level that your years of training and practice and getting a hold of your emotions must now be helping you in some way. Do you think so?

Definitely, definitely. The stakes are much higher now. It felt like life and death in the moment when you're battling it out for an Olympic gold medal, but the stakes have changed dramatically and it is life and death, but I guess the principle principle is the same it's about focusing on what you have control over and not worrying about the stuff that you can't control. People talk about battles with cancer for me the biggest battle is between your ears it's the mental struggle. You have terminal illness, terminal cancer, you just have this image in your head of what it's what it's going to be like and everybody's different and not everybody is given the time that I've been given, you know, and that's why I feel lucky.

You know, we genuinely feel lucky, as crazy as that might sound, because we've got the time. No matter what challenges you're facing, you can get through them, you can get through them and it doesn't mean that there's going to be a happy ending. I'm not delusional, I know what the end result will be, but that's not changed. You know, we all, nobody lives forever. Our time on this planet is finite. Don't waste your time worrying about stuff that isn't that important. Focus on the things that are important. Focus on your family, the people in your life. That thing that you've always planned to do one day, why not do it today? Sir Chris Hoy with Sally Nugent. We end with a welcome sound from Paris.

The bells of Notre Dame Cathedral ringing out together for the first time since the devastating fire of 2019. The 850-year-old building, widely thought of as one of the finest examples of French Gothic architecture, will reopen to the public next month after years of restoration work to repair the damage. And that's it from us for now. Before we go though, one last thing. We'd love to give you the chance to introduce the HappyPod. All we need is a voice note telling us a bit

about you, where you are and why you listen. Then just end with the words, you're listening to the HappyPod from the BBC World Service. The address, globalpodcastatbbc.co.uk and you might hear yourself next week. This edition was mixed by Callum McLean, the producers were Holly Gibbs and Rachel Barkley, the editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach, thanks for listening journalist from Accra, Ghana. I'll be looking at the battle to save endangered languages in Africa. These are languages that have not received documentation. These are languages that are not even taught in schools.

That's tongue and talk, keeping languages alive in Africa. Listen now by searching for the documentary wherever you get your BBC podcasts.