People Fixing the World
Episodes
The Street Where Houses Come Half-Built
05 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Two thirds of the world’s population are expected to live in cities by 2050 according to the UN. But where will all these extra people actually live...
Fighting Food Waste
29 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Food waste is a global problem. According to the UN, one third of the food that we produce is being thrown away. Two London-based technology start-ups...
Clean Clothes and Glasses for the Poorest in Society
22 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How do you improve the lives of the very poorest people? Sometimes it’s just a question of doing the simple things. In Greece, where an economic dow...
Turning Subsistence Farming into an Investment Opportunity
15 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
How do you pull subsistence farmers in Africa out of the cycle of poverty? All you have to do is help them produce more food than they need to survive...
The Speed Detectors
08 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A growing movement in the UK is devolving the power of catching speeding motorists from the police to the people. Police have been working with commun...
The People’s Peace Talks
01 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
When we think of peace talks we think of politicians from opposing camps meeting behind closed doors in wood-panelled rooms, hammering out the details...
The Schools Trying to Build Bridges
24 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Could bilingual schools help bring peace to a seemingly intractable conflict? In Israel, the school you’ll go to is largely decided before you’re ...
Problem-Solving Prizes
17 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
People can’t resist a prize, especially when there’s money to go with a medal, and for hundreds of years that basic human urge has been used to pu...
The Town Trying to Cure Loneliness
10 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Loneliness and isolation can trigger a host of other problems, particularly for our health. But a town in Somerset, in the United Kingdom, appears to ...
The Babies Teaching Kindness In Class [REPEAT]
02 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
**This episode is a repeat from 23 January 2018**Naomi is not your average teacher. For one thing, she is only six months old. But in many schools acr...
Taking Out the Space Trash
27 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Space is littered with junk – some pieces as small as a fleck of paint, and some as large as a London bus. So much of it is orbiting the Earth, in f...
How to Help Homeless People in Hospital
20 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Being homeless is extremely bad for your health. Homeless people end up in hospital far more often, and when they get there their condition is often s...
The Bird Rescuers
13 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
One of every five bird species could be extinct within the next century. Whether it’s down to the shiny glass office blocks materialising all over c...
Recycling Chewing Gum Litter to Clean Our Streets
06 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
More than $20bn is spent on chewing gum around the world each year. A lot of that gum will end up stuck to the streets. That's why gum is the second m...
How to Talk to Potential Extremists
27 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Social media and messaging apps play a role in the extremist “radicalisation” of individuals. Tech companies have tried to get better at identifyi...
Putting Forgotten Pills Back to Work
20 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
An app in Greece is helping people donate their leftover drugs to people who can't afford to buy them. So far the system has helped to recover and red...
Improvising Your Way Out of Anxiety
13 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
You’re standing on a stage, blinded by a spotlight trained on your face, knees weak, hands sweaty. Someone from the audience calls out a random wor...
The Hydroponics Revolution
06 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Providing food for seven billion people is fraught with difficulty. Fertilising vast tracts of land and flying fresh vegetables across the globe comes...
The Currency Based on Good Deeds
30 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
By its very nature, volunteering means you don’t get paid. But what if there was a way to compensate volunteers that also helped the local economy? ...
The Babies Teaching Kindness in Class
23 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Naomi is not your average teacher. For one thing, she is only six months old. But in many schools across Canada babies like Naomi are a regular featu...
Kids versus Cars
16 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
An English woman has championed a way to bring back community spirit to city streets and keep children fit. She creates pop-up playgrounds by regularl...
Can We Save Coral?
09 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Up to 90% of the world’s coral could be dead by 2050, according to some estimates, unless we take radical action.Tackling climate change remains the...
Checking-in With The Problem Solvers
02 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
World Hacks follows up on some of our stories from last year – going back to innovators around to world to see how their projects have developed. We...
Scouts, Knives and a Community Fridge
26 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This week we hear about three small solutions trying to make a dent on some big problems. We hear about an outdoor gym made from melted-down knives. ...
The Ring That Could Help Save Women’s Lives
19 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In Southern Africa, over seven thousand women are infected with HIV each week. Many can't persuade their partners to wear a condom, so a new form of p...
How to Get Wheelchairs on Planes
12 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
If you are a wheelchair user, travelling by aeroplane can be very difficult. Buses, trains and some cars are designed for people to roll into without ...
Drone Delivery: Medicines By Air
05 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Most Malawians live in rural areas and if they get sick, it can be incredibly difficult to get testing kits or medicines in time. Malawi's government ...
Smartphone-Activated First Aiders
28 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Your chances of surviving a cardiac arrest while out on the high street are slim. It's estimated survival rates decrease by ten percent for every minu...
The Former Neo-Nazi Helping Others To Quit
21 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A retired police detective and a former neo-Nazi leader may seem like an unlikely partnership. But Dr Bernd Wagner and Ingo Hasselbach have taken the...
How Iceland Saved Its Teenagers
14 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 1998, 42% of Iceland’s 15 and 16 year-olds reported that they had got drunk in the past 30 days. By 2016, though, this figure had fallen to just ...
The Missing Maps
07 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Thousands of places in the world don't officially exist on a map. If you're not on a map, it can have implications for how people find you - in times ...
The Town Where Public Toilets Are Everywhere
31 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
to stop people getting caught short. What do you do if you're out and about and can't find a public toilet? Do you sneak into a cafe and hope no one ...
Addressing the World in Three Words
24 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Around 75% of the world's population, approximately 4 billion people, don't have an address. Take a country like Mongolia, with a largely nomadic pop...
How Iceland is Fighting the Gender Pay Gap
17 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Although Iceland is thought to be the best country in the world for gender equality, it lags behind in one metric: the gender pay gap. So a decade ago...
Viking Therapy?
10 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It looks like the set of Game of Thrones. Once a year Wolin in Poland hosts a huge Viking festival - with a twist. Enthusiasts come from around the wo...
How Cervical ‘Selfies’ are Fighting Cancer in The Gambia
03 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It’s not usually a good idea to take selfies of your private parts, but what if those photos could save your life? A new, tiny medical device is bei...
How To Make Sushi From Methane Gas
26 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Humanity’s hunger for meat is not good for the planet. Every cow, pig and fish that farmers rear has an environmental cost – particularly in the l...
When Local Currencies Go Digital
19 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Local currencies – money you can only spend at small local businesses – aim to keep money in their neighbourhood and out of the hands of big corpo...
Condom Lifesavers and Voices for the Voiceless
12 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Each year around 100,000 women die due to heavy bleeding after giving birth. But help is at hand from an unexpected source: condoms. World Hacks goe...
The Dutch Antibiotic Revolution
05 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Antibiotic resistant superbugs are a huge problem both in humans and in animals. Many animals reared for food are routinely fed antibiotics to prevent...
How to Get Blood Where it is Needed
29 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The availability of blood for transfusions saves lives after difficult births and operations. But in much of the developing world, hospitals have a bl...
Pakistan’s Laptop Female Doctors
22 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How do you help female doctors get back to work when they've given up medicine to look after their families? It's a particular problem in Pakistan whe...
Urban Cable Cars
15 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Is a new urban cable car in Mexico more than just a means of public transport? As well as ferrying thousands of people a day, it's been strategically ...
Does Universal Basic Income Work?
08 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Around the world, governments and researchers are experimenting with the introduction of universal basic income. From Finland and Spain to India, the ...
The Teachable Moment
01 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Darius has been shot three separate occasions, but the third time was the last. He was met at his bedside by a stranger, who changed his life forever....
Mexico's Cartoon Therapists
25 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How do you get children who're victims of emotional abuse or physical harm to open up about what's happened to them? In Mexico a psychologist, Julia B...
Cutting Cow Farts to Combat Climate Change
18 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Methane emissions from the burps and farts of livestock accounts for around 15% of global greenhouse gas emissions. But the trick to reducing this co...
Thailand’s Disease Detectives
11 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
World Hacks goes to Thailand to meet an army of volunteers on the front line in the fight against dangerous diseases, like Ebola and bird flu.Nearly 1...
Can We Supercharge School?
04 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A new school in San Francisco thinks it can massively accelerate the speed at which children can learn, using clever technology and smart algorithms t...
Turning Fatbergs into Fuel
27 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Lurking in the sewers beneath the streets there are giant blobs of congealed cooking fat known as “fatbergs”. Now one company has come up with a ...
Thailand’s Condom King
20 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Thailand in the 1960s was on the verge of a population disaster. Thai women were having seven children on average, and the government was struggling t...
How To Be A Better Mum In Jail
13 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
There are more than 200,000 women in US prisons and jails and it is estimated that 6% to 10% are pregnant. One project in Minnesota is trying to use t...
Would You Rent Your Clothes?
06 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Globally, only around 20% of clothes are re-used or recycled. The majority go to landfill or are incinerated. In the USA alone, the amount of clothes ...
The Stickers that Save Lives
30 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Road accidents are the single largest cause of death amongst young people around the world. But a project in Kenya is making impressive progress in ta...
Turning Plastic Trash into Cash
23 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Picking up money - that’s what Haitian’s nicknamed a movement seeking to solve Haiti’s plastic waste problem and reduce poverty at the same time...
Turning Goats into Water
16 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Fariel Salahuddin is not the type of person you’d expect to see wandering around rural Pakistan, especially with a herd of goats. She’s a successf...
Saving Lives with Text Messages
09 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What do you do in a medical emergency when the equivalent of 999 or 911 simply doesn’t exist? After spending time in countries that lack public ambu...
Greener In Death
02 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This is a story about what happens to your body after you die. In many countries, the current options are burial and cremation, but, both methods come...
Helping Disabled People With Sex
28 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How do you fulfil your sexual needs if you have a disability? How do you masturbate if you have limited use of your hands? These are problems that mos...
The Data Donators
18 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The Data Donators Meet Becky. She suffers from arthritis and is in constant pain. Like lots of people – patients and doctors alike – she has a hun...
Postmen Delivering Kindness to the Elderly
11 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
On the island of Jersey, postal workers don’t just deliver the mail. They also check up on elderly people during their routes. In a five minute chat...
The Parent Hack For Cheaper Childcare
04 Apr 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Parents struggling with childcare costs in London are banding together to care for each other’s kids. They run a super-cheap nursery where mums and ...
Toilets in Haiti and Circular Runways
25 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
There are no sewers in Haiti. 26% of Haitians have access to a toilet, so a lot of the sewage ends up in the water supply. Currently, Haiti is battlin...
Checking out the solar hotel
18 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Could we build cities using solar panels instead of walls? That’s the dream that Huang Ming, a wealthy entrepreneur in China’s Shandong province, ...
Moving In With Refugees
11 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
An innovative housing project in Amsterdam is attempting a new way of integrating refugees into the local population. In prefab flats, refugees from t...
How China is Cleaning its Air
04 Mar 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Air pollution is a huge problem for China, but did you know it’s actually getting better? The Air Quality Index in several cities is improving, bec...
The Voter Lottery
25 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Voter turnout is a problem around the world, particularly in local elections. But a small group of academics and activists in the US are experimenting...
Denmark’s Food Waste Vigilante
18 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Food waste is a massive global problem: the EU alone throws away 88 million tonnes a year. Much of this ends up in landfill and produces dangerous gre...
The Sun Water Solution
11 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This is a story about how the most amazing ideas do not always work how you would like in practise. In theory it is so simple. You put disease-ridden ...
Lend Me Your Eyes
04 Feb 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A new app is helping blind people solve everyday problems by combining smartphones video technology and an army of armchair volunteers. World Hacks...
The War On Fake News
28 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The internet is awash with made-up news stories. It’s not a new problem, but the highly charged US election campaign forced people to pay attention...
Superblocks To The Rescue?
21 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In Barcelona, they’re experimenting with a new way of designing the city. Superblocks are vast low-traffic zones, but they’re also deeply controve...
An Unlikely House Share
14 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In one of the most expensive cities in the world, students are moving in with older people who have spare rooms as part of a “homeshare” scheme. T...
Jobs for Syrian Refugees
07 Jan 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Most refugees do not have the right to work. In Jordan they’re running an experiment to find out what happens when they’re given that right. They’...
Respect My Remittances
24 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Some £600bn is sent home every year by overseas migrant workers, almost four times more than all the countries of the world combined spend on foreign...
‘Bribing’ Mums To Feed Their Kids
17 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
One in three children in Peru was growing up too short for their age, stunted by a lack of the right foods in their diet.Then in 2005, the government ...
Teaching Kids To Think
10 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Giving children lessons in how to think and learn for themselves can lead to dramatic improvements in results, according to education researchers. Wor...
Reducing US Police Shootings
03 Dec 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Nearly 1,000 people were shot and killed by the US police in 2015, sparking protests and huge controversy. But a new solution promises to reduce the d...
Cloud Catchers In Peru
26 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
What can you do if you don’t have access to running water? No pipes, no wells, no rainfall? The solution may be to catch water from fog. We meet Abe...
Cash Cards For Syrian Refugees
19 Nov 2016
Contributed by Lukas
Syrian refugees in Lebanon are being handed cash cards instead of blankets and food. Aid agencies say money transfers are a better way to deliver esse...