Hope Is A Verb - NewsFix - Education Boom. Land Back. Cleaner Air.

Episode Date: March 22, 2026

This week's headlines include – Nigeria’s record investment in basic education; Indigenous-led land restoration across the United States; cities cutting air pollution by up to 45%; rhinos returning to the DRC; and a breakthrough stem cell treatment offering new hope for Parkinson’s.NewsFix has moved to its own feed! You can check it out here or search 'NewsFix' on your favourite podcast app. Make sure you look out for the new artwork - we've had a pretty big glow-up! If you need a bit more time, don't worry, we’ll keep popping up here for a couple more weeks .This podcast is brought to you by ⁠Fix The News⁠. Hosted by Anthony Badolato, ⁠Hear That!⁠ If you want to get in touch with the team, email [e-mail]

Welcome to NewsFix, your weekly antidote to doom scrolling, brought to you by Fix the News. I'm Anthony Badolato. Now, before we get into the headlines, I've got some exciting news of my own. NewsFix is getting its own home on the interwebs. Since launching just five months ago, this little show has had an incredible response, and thanks to you, it's now ready to move to its very own feed. I'd love for you to come along for the ride, so hang around until the end of this episode, and I'll walk you through what happens next.

Now, don't worry, this main feed isn't going anywhere. Hope is still very much a verve, and Gus and Amy will be back in your headphones in just a couple of weeks. All right, let's get into what's going right in the world this week. Nigeria's big bet on basic education. That's alliteration. America returns millions of acres to indigenous stewardship. Cities slash air pollution by up to 45%. Rhinos are back, baby, and a stem cell treatment signaling new hope for Parkinson's.

Now, if you've been following us for a while, you'll know how much we love a good education story, and this one's a cracker. Nigeria has just unlocked $552 million for basic education. the biggest investment of its kind in the country's history. It's part of a program called Hope EDU, and the scale is pretty extraordinary. We're talking 13,000 new classrooms, better learning conditions for more than 29 million children,

support for half a million teachers, and a plan to bring more than 1.5 million out-of-school children back into the classroom. Queer kids cheering. This good news hasn't come out of nowhere. Since 2022, Nigeria's education spending has increased more than fourfold as part of a long-term push to build a knowledge-driven economy. And as I've said before, and I'll say it again, if you want to change the future, the classroom is where it starts. Moving on to the Conservation Conversation.

Funny how similar those two words are. There's plenty of good news for the planet this week. Of all the news you've heard about the United States, here's something you might have missed. In Oklahoma, one of the country's most contaminated mining sites is being brought back to life. For decades, the land was buried under toxic waste from lead and zinc mining. Now it's been cleared, restored, and the soil is healthy again. Sites like this are part of the government's Superfund program, designed to clean up the most hazardous land in the country.

But here's the twist. This cleanup wasn't led by a federal agency. It was led by the Kauauau Nation, a community of around 6,000 people. The first and only tribal nation in the US to carry out a superfund cleanup themselves. And this is part of a much bigger story. Across the western United States, the land-back movement is gaining momentum, returning land to indigenous communities. California has pledged to bring 7.5 million acres,

about 7% of its land under tribal stewardship. Not because it's a nice thing to do, but because it works, improving biodiversity, strengthening wildfire resilience and restoring ecosystems for the long term. In other news, rhinos are back in the DRC's Garamba National Park for the first time in 20 years. After decades of poaching wiped them out, southern white rhinos have now been reintroduced

And it's bigger than just wildlife, the park supports 500 full-time jobs, alongside growing solar and local services. Now, let's round things out with two quick environmental winds, one for the ocean and one for the air. Along Africa's east coast, a wave of locally led seagrass restoration is underway, from Kenya to Madagascar under the Great Blue Wall Initiative. It might not sound like much, but seagrassizabeth,

covers just 0.1% of the ocean floor and stores nearly 18% of its carbon. Meanwhile, cities are clearing the air. 19 cities including London, Beijing and San Francisco have cut pollution by up to 45% in just over a decade. It's proof that progress is happening above and below the surface. And finally, a promising breakthrough for Parkinson's. In Japan, a new stem cell treatment has been cleared for manufacturing, one that replaces the brain cells lost to the disease. Now, early results are encouraging.

In a small trial, more than half of patients showed signs of improvement, with no major side effects. It's still early days and the approval is provisional, but if it holds, this could open the door to a whole new way of treating Parkinson's. That's it from me this week. Don't forget to check out the full edition at fixthenews.com. And make sure you find me in the new NewsFix feed. These kids grow up so fast.

The link to the new feed can be found in the show notes. And you'll find that this episode is already there. But if it slips your mind, all good. I'll keep popping up here for the next couple of weeks. Until next time, remember, it's not all bad.