Global News Podcast: The Happy Pod: Bill Gates: Looking on the bright side

Hello, this is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service with reports and analysis

from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported

by advertising. From global current affairs to art, science and culture, the documentary

from the BBC World Service tells the world's stories. Search for the documentary wherever

you get your BBC podcasts. This is Andrew Peach in London with the HappyPod, including fast runners,

giant pumpkins, fat bears and a man who thinks just like we do, Bill Gates. The human condition

over the last 700 years has improved a lot and so that kind of progress that's going to continue.

So strap in for half an hour of positive news. Hi, I'm Travis in California and you're listening to

the HappyPod. Hello, I'm Cristina from Barcelona and this is HappyPod. Hi, everyone. My name is

Janela Bracho from the beautiful islands of Antigua, Barbuda and Redonda and you're listening to the HappyPod.

On the way, women win big at the Nobel Prize Awards. I was in a class when I heard the news.

I was getting lots of congratulation messages and I was really, really proud that my mom had won

the Nobel Prize. A Caribbean island brought back to life. The redonda of yesterday was one that was

dying. Scientists in Spain on a new way of testing for breast cancer. Perhaps this could help your

future wife or your future child. So we love to work in this kind of project. And world records all

over the place. This record's been held overseas I will say for 10 years. So to get it back in the

States is super huge. All on the way in the HappyPod. First, it's challenging to stay positive about

many things going on in the world, particularly the climate crisis. But the tech giant and billionaire

Bill Gates has been telling us about how he stays optimistic in the face of the tough predictions.

Greg Jackson went to meet him for a BBC podcast called The Climate Question.

He is surprisingly optimistic, right? I think a lot of people when they hear the word climate

change, they think of all the doom and gloom and the sometimes quite negative outlook

of where we're heading. And what's even more surprising is that he's been on the ground

in Africa for decades with the Foundation, working on healthcare. But that's also meant that he's

seen the very real effects of climate change firsthand for those people. And that's been

a real motivator for him. You know, when I go to Africa and I see the tough conditions there,

and I definitely heard from farmers that the climate is getting worse for them. And you can

just look at their malnourished children and see how unjust that is. So that definitely makes me

angry. It makes me think, okay, can we fix this? Fortunately, you know, humans are very innovative.

And that makes you feel positive. Yes, I think the human condition over the last 700 years has

improved a lot. We start the century with over 10 million children dying under the age of five every

year. Now we have that below 5 million. And so that kind of progress, where it's better now

than it was back in the year 2000, that's going to continue.

And he sees this sort of progress in health as analogous to what's happening in the world

of climate tech and climate solutions. Now, I was going to say Bill Gates is a guy who's

revolutionized the world's technology. So you'd think if he were looking to anything for solutions,

it would be to tech. What's he excited about in that sphere?

I mean, a whole range of things that you wouldn't necessarily think of technology. So for instance,

drought resistant seeds, he's helping to develop, particularly ones that work well in Africa,

where they're really feeling the effects of climate change. But also things like green

cement, you may not realize, but cement contributes something like 8% of the world's planet warming

gases. So it's a huge contributor. So he's helping to develop greener versions that would

slash those emissions down. And then there's the more what you might think of as sort of

typical interventions like artificial intelligence that helps warn people if climate

fueled extreme weather is approaching. I'm putting billions into climate to try and speed up the

progress. It is a lot, but I do see that people are coming together and committing to this. And so

we won't go anywhere near those really big temperature increases.

Greg, we can hear your full conversation with Bill Gates on a podcast called

The Climate Question, which listeners can find on BBC Sounds and wherever else they get their

BBC podcasts from. But not many of us get to meet Bill Gates. What's he like? What was your

encounter with him like? Yeah, he's a very reserved character. But as soon as you get him talking

about things he feels that are important, he becomes really animated, this really passionate

person. And I was surprised that he even let me take a selfie with him at the very end of the

interview. I wasn't sure I was going to get one, but he's a nice guy. And thanks to my BBC colleague

Greya Jackson. It's been a record year for women winning the Nobel Prizes in economics. It was

the first time a woman had won the honor solo. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to

award Sweden's Riksbank's Prize in economic sciences in memory of Alfred Nobel 2023 to

Professor Claudia Goldin, Harvard University, USA for having advanced our understanding of women's

labor market outcomes. Claudia Goldin is a professor at Harvard University. She spent her

career studying the gender pay gap and how it's changed over time. I am delighted that an area

that includes the history of women, what women do, what they have done, what they do in various

countries, and also the area of gender that both of these are being recognized because they are

done and many of the people who do them don't feel that they're completely recognized.

Professor Goldin has also published studies on the impact of contraception on women's careers

and why women now make up the majority of undergraduates. Ingrid Werner is a member of the

Nobel Prize committee and said Goldin's work had helped to emphasize the importance of the

female labor force. I think it's important to re-emphasize that understanding women's participation

in the labor force and her earnings potential is incredibly important for the society because

if women are in some way hindered from participating or participate in unequal terms, we lose out

in terms of skills, labor supply, and resources that could promote growth and prosperity. So

it is super important. The achievement followed on from the jailed Iranian activist Nagesh

Muhammadi becoming the first Muslim woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She won the award

for campaigning against the oppression of women in Iran where she's currently serving a 10-year

prison sentence. Her daughter Kiara told us how proud she was when she heard the news.

I was in my secondary school in a class when I heard the news. At first I was getting lots of

congratulation messages. I didn't know why. Then I remembered that my dad talked about it

and I was really really proud that my mom had won the Nobel Prize. I didn't tell everyone,

I just told friends and I told them just as we were going to go outside to eat

and they were even happier than I was and they were really proud for my mom and for me. The

Nobel Prize is for all the Iranians and especially for the women activists and I hope things are

going to change in Iran now for the better. Now to the first of our world records there was big

excitement in our house about Kelvin Kiptum smashing the marathon record. My 17 year old son is a

long-distance runner. He is gripped by the battle with fellow Kenyan Elliot Kiptchogi to be the

greatest of all time in the marathon. The biggest surprise wasn't so much that Kiptum managed it,

more that he managed it in Chicago, which isn't known as one of the world's fastest marathon

courses. Jacob Evans has more.

12 months ago he'd never run a marathon before, but now 23 year old Kelvin Kiptum is the new

world record holder. He dominated last week's Chicago marathon, finishing the race in an

astonishing time of 2 hours and 35 seconds. This beat the previous record set by fellow Kenyan

Elliot Kiptchogi by more than 30 seconds and after the race he spoke about his achievement.

I feel so happy. I was well prepared. I knew I was coming for a course record, but unfortunately

a world record. Yeah, I'm very so much happy. In the men's marathon running under two hours

is an elusive feat. It's been done once before, four years ago by Kiptchogi, but that race didn't

count as he had runners setting the pace in front of him. So could Kiptum be the first

to break that barrier too? Ed Caesar wrote a book called Two Hours, The Quest for the Impossible,

all about the world's best long distance runners and he found Kiptum's run very impressive.

It's a pretty astonishing feat of athleticism. I have been privileged to watch a lot of very,

very fast marathons in the last few years and he smashed the world record. It's worth thinking

about at home how fast it is. Most treadmills at local gyms don't go as fast as he ran. It is

really unimaginable for most people just how quickly this guy is going and when you see him

finishing the race, he's finishing at a sprint, you know, the knees are pumping, you know, he looks

like he's flying. I mean, it's just incredible. Kiptum grew up in Cepcorio, a village in Kenya's

Rift Valley and trained without a coach until he was an adult and it's that pace Ed mentions,

which is truly mind boggling. Imagine this, you run five kilometres in 14 minutes and 17 seconds

and then repeat that eight and a half times. Calvin Kiptum's ascendancy in the sport has

been incredible and he may only just be getting started. Now to an incredible eco restoration

story. Redonda, a tiny Caribbean island that's part of Antigua and Barbuda, has been transformed

from a desolate rock to a thriving wildlife haven. And in just a few years, Janela Bradshaw is the

Redonda ecosystem reserve coordinator. She told Jackie the first step to restore Redonda's biodiversity

was to get rid of the black rats and feral goats. I like to call it the superhero restoration team

and they came together with both local government agencies and it also entailed members of the

international bodies. It required a lot of innovation. It required a lot of partnership.

One of the main themes of Redonda is the power of partnership. When you have a group of people

coming together saying, hey, we want to restore Redonda, it shows that we can almost achieve

anything once we're together. So we had a team over there camping on Redonda for two months. So

there's nothing on Redonda, there's no source of water, there's no Wi-Fi, there's no light, literally

with just rats and goats. Then every day they would administer bait to ensure that we could

remove them from the island. And the goats, they got the A-class treatment. The goats had to be

airlifted out of Redonda via helicopter. But the goats, they were very smart. It took a long

time for the team to capture them. They knew what was going on. The goats were like, no,

you're not going to get me. So they kind of had to lure the young in and you know, the mother would

come and then the father would be like, but why is my entire family over there? And then the father

would come and that's the method that we had to use. When you started telling the story of laying

the bait for the rats, it sounded a lot like we were starting a horror movie. I'm very glad there

was a happy ending for the goats because we all quite like goats on the happy pod. So which sorts

of creatures came back to Redonda? So we have our Redonda ground dragon. So this is a beautiful

black lizard. I love them because they're so friendly. And you would think that if you're

living on the island and you have never interacted with people, you would kind of like stay away.

You'd be more cautious. But no, they are the opposite. They would come up to you. One of them

even stole my earring. Don't ask me how it achieved that, but it stole my earring. And all I saw it

was just running away with this little pearl in its mouth. And I was just so astonished. I was

lost for words. Also, let's talk about the birds because Redonda is known for all its birds. Cool

fact. There were so many birds on Redonda in the past that people said that you couldn't walk on the

island without stepping on a bird egg. And for me, it's literally mind blowing. It just brings

the beauty and the value of Redonda to image. And you can see why we had to restore this island.

It's like a scene in a movie that you never thought that you would have been able to experience.

How important is this scientifically and ecologically? I mean, it's obviously extraordinary

to have seen this transformation. But scientifically, how important is it?

Islands are biodiversity hotspots. But also, most of the extinctions of species in this world,

they happen on islands. Once we have a healthy functioning environment, it increases the resilience

for us to battle extreme temperatures, pollution. It increases our ability to fight back and to

withstand that. So that's why it's so important to preserve our biodiversity because it protects us.

When you look at what has been achieved, what are your personal reflections?

When I was growing up, nobody was ever preaching or saying, hey, become an environmentalist.

And to know that, we can set an example for the upcoming generations. We can do conservation work

in the Caribbean, and we can make a big difference.

Jenona Bradshaw, the Redonda Ecosystem Reserve Coordinator. With Halloween fast approaching

in many countries, it's harvest time for pumpkins. Now, most of them will end up on a doorstep with

a candle inside with their innards in a pie if they're lucky. Where there are pumpkin growers,

there are giant pumpkin growers who make it their mission to tend their fruit with gallons of water

every day to see just how big they can grow. There's then the tricky business of transporting

the giant pumpkin, the size and weight of a small car to the weighing scales to see whether,

indeed, it is a record breaker. Step forward, Travis Ginga from Minnesota in the US,

who's pumpkin weighed in at 2,749 pounds or 1,247 kilograms, thus breaking the world record for

the biggest gourd. So what's his secret? I don't really have one. I do a lot of different things

to this pumpkin that just involve time and good products and good techniques of pruning and

weeding and managing the pumpkin throughout. I might start three or four plants, but I'm quickly

down to two plants and then from those two plants we'll get two pumpkins and when they start growing

sometimes I'll lose one so I'm down to one pretty quick. It's kind of an all-in or nothing type of

a mentality. Do you talk to it? Sometimes I go up to it and hit it like a jockey would a horse and

say, hey, come on, we gotta start going. And I'm told that's big enough for 687 pies. Will you be

baking 687 pies, Travis? No, we'll be carving this thing for the Guinness Book of World Records

for surely for the largest circumference and then maybe another one as well, but it's gonna be cool

when it's carved. You'll have to see the pictures. We most certainly will. It is coming up to Halloween,

it's October, and one of the key elements of it is carved pumpkins, jack-o-lanterns. Are you

yourself any good at carving Halloween pumpkins? Terrible. What sort of sense of achievement do

you have having broken this record? In this record's been held by overseas I will say for 10 years,

so to get it back in the States is super huge, but it was 30 years of growing and hard work

coming down to one minute there, and it could have went either way. We could have went home

second place or set a world record just as easy, so it was a lot of excitement and emotion there.

Travis Ginga with the world's biggest pumpkin.

Still to come? We're talking about Fat Bear Week. The annual competition celebrates some of the

largest brown bears on earth. And how do you celebrate being named the laziest person in

Montenegro? You know, the laziest champion doesn't need to do anything. First a few other stories

I wanted to mention. Do you remember the excitement over the capsule containing samples from the

asteroid Bennu a couple of weeks ago? Now NASA has revealed the first images of what was brought

back. It says a quarter of the 250 grams of the rock and dust contained carbon and water,

crucial elements in the evolution of the earth, fundamental to life itself. You might have heard

about the archaeology student in Scotland whose first ever deke turned up a historically important

treasure trove. It's thought the coins Lucy Ankers found buried deep beneath a fireplace may have been

hidden before the infamous Glencoe massacre in 1692. And the safe recovery has been reported

of Fred the pig who's been detained by Aurora Animal Services in Colorado. After reported

been causing mayhem, tearing up gardens, wandering around in the traffic and hanging around a

shopping mall. It took eight people five hours to catch him. He weighs over 180 kilos and now needs

a forever home. He's been described as social, always hungry and a nice boy.

Now a discovery in Spain that could have implications for the early detection of

breast cancer. Liquid biopsies are already carried out on blood looking for circulating tumor DNA.

But researchers in Barcelona detected tumor DNA in breast milk and they think the development of

a liquid biopsy of a mother's milk could be at all for spotting breast cancer early. Christina

Sauer is a senior oncologist and she told us the study began when a mother who was pregnant again

was diagnosed with cancer. She decided to provide us with a breast milk sample that was collected

18 months before the breast cancer diagnosis of this patient. The interesting thing is that we

were able to find in that breast milk sample the same mutations that were present in the breast

tumor. So what does it mean? What does it told you that we didn't know already? So liquid biopsies

are collected from blood to detect mutations that are present in different tumors and in this case

the liquid biopsy from blood is not yet enough sensitive to detect the small amount of CTDNA

that is present in the blood for early breast cancer detection. And in this project we were able

to collect the samples of breast milk and blood samples from patients diagnosed of breast cancer

during pregnancy and in 13 out of 15 patients we were able to detect in the breast milk CTDNA

and only one patient had the blood positive. So the breast milk definitely has more quantity

of CTDNA of the tumor present than the blood. So we are looking for funding to start a prospective

trial with the aim to include 5,000 healthy women that are pregnant and a follow-up of the

patients during at least two years. We will be able to answer definitely if the test that we

designed it's enough sensitive and specific to be used as a new tool for early breast cancer

detection. Tell us about your reaction, your team's reaction. When it became clear that you seem to be

onto something? It's not one single day, the first time that we analyzed the breast milk sample

the results were negative but Miriam Sanson, a post-doc in the lab, she came back to the same

sample with a more sensitive technique and then she was able to detect the mutations. So the research

it's kind of a story of a lot of actors involved, the patient that came to us, the people in the lab,

the people in the clinic and the results are there due to the effort of all of them.

It must be very rewarding for you when you find something that could be of use and could help

generations of women and their families. It is and it's very clear to me when I explain to my

second child he's 12 years old and asked me, mum you work a lot for this grant, if you receive the

money of these 15 millions of euros how many money will be for you and I said nothing this will be

just only for research but perhaps this could help your future wife or your future child. So

we love to work in these kind of projects and it's very rewarding when you really find something

that may help to give the humanity a best care for the future. Christina Sauer in Barcelona.

You may remember last month we heard about the hunt for Montenegro's laziest citizen. The competition

was intense but we do now have a winner or actually two winners as 23-year-olds Lidia Markovich

and Filip Knezovich shared the lazy crown. Boris Kronich is one of the organizers.

This competition had two winners this year, Lidia and Filip. They shared the prize and

Filip like a gentleman gave Lidia the media intention. She appears in media and on the

televisions. The competition has become more and more popular not only in the region but also

in the in all world. Last year record was five days. This year is 50 days. And from the search

for Montenegro's laziest person to Alaska's perfect bear ahead of hibernation perfect tends to mean

fat. Grazer was the winner and as the local park service said she has beauty she has grace

stuffing so much salmon in her face. Harry Bly has more. Fat bear week. Fat bear week. It's in

full swing right now. I kid you not. Fat bear week. Fat bear week is here it's back. We're talking

about fat bear week. The annual competition celebrates some of the largest brown bears on

earth. Fat bear week 2023 has come to an end. Running from the 4th to the 10th of October

the contest invites fans from all over the world to vote on their favorite of 12 brown bears living

around the Brook River in Alaska's Katmai National Park all of which have been eating extraordinary

amounts of salmon. This year's winner is bear 128 called Grazer known by fans for having a long

muzzle conspicuously blonde ears and a bodacious body. She's a mother of two cubs or grazettes

and received more than 108,000 votes beating a much larger bear number 32 named Chunk.

Despite the name it's not all about size as Mike Fitz former ranger and founder of the competition

explains. We ask people to vote based on not only like body size and who they think got the

fattest we also ask people to consider the stories because each bear at Brooks River is an individual

and faces its own challenges to survive and thrive in this habitat and of course it's brought to us

by the salmon and the rich salmon runs that arrive at Brooks River every summer. The National Park

Service credited Grazer for having a combination of skill and toughness making her one of the

park's most formidable successful and adaptable bears. Grazer was seen to work overtime being

spotted on the park's infrared cameras hunting for fish through the night. She's also known by the

park service to regularly confront larger male bears to protect her cubs. The competition started

in 2014 and since then has become an internet sensation with users taking part from all over

the world watching their favorite bears on the park's webcams. This year's contests have passed

previous records with more than a million votes counted. Harry Bly on Fat Bear Week

and that's all from us for now if you've got some happy news from where you live though or a world

record you think we should know about do drop us an email we love hearing from you it's global

podcast at bbc.co.uk. The happy squad this week studio manager Chris Hansen produces Anna Murphy

and Jacob Evans our editor is Karen Martin my name is Andrew Peach thanks for listening the happy pod

is back next week

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.