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Founders of Bold Thinkers, Scientists, explorers and Scholars. Adam mackay, the filmmaker using biting satire to illuminate the dire realities of climate change. A few years back, when filmmaker Adam McKay released his movie Don't Look Up, an apocalyptic climate change satire, he was searching for a new way to talk about disaster. As horrific as all this is, mackay says about the climate crisis, it's important that we create a culture around dealing with this with humor. Now McKay

has the machine to make it happen. The director of Anchorman and The Big Short has started Yellow Dot Studios, maker of such viral hits as a fake Chevron ad juxtaposing idyllic shots of nature with a voiceover about our gasoline fueled impending doom. The approach, McKay says, allows for anger, outrage, frustration, raw sincerity, expressions that are hard to ignore. By Amy Adam Rogers, Mohammed Monsur Muhui Deen the doctor discovering an

unlikely new breed of heart donors. Sometimes tragedies can be breakthroughs. That's what happened a few years ago when a University of Maryland Medical Center surgical team led by Mohammed Monsur Muhui Dean and Bartley Griffith performed a revolutionary new procedure on a fifty seven year old who had terminal heart failure. David Bennett, Senior had been denied a traditional heart transplant

due to a variety of health factors. Thousands of pupil each year face a similar reality, in part because the United States has an organ shortage crisis. Muhuey Dean recommended an alternative, the heart of a pig, genetically modified to minimize the chance of rejection. The experiment, conducted in twenty twenty two, was a success, at least initially. Bennett died about two months later after his heart failed from immune complications.

Muhuiy Dean's second patient, a man named Lawrence Fausett, survived for nearly six weeks. He died in twenty twenty three after his immune system rejected the graft. For muhuiy Dean, a leader in the field of zeno transplantation, the process of transplanting organs from one species to another. Each operation

offers valuable intelligence about the promising field. In an ideal future, we'd have more than enough hearts for everyone, and while the pigs used in muhuiy Dean's procedures have approximately thirty thousand genes, only ten genes were altered to make the heart suitable for humans. Some people may find the idea of killing pigs for their organs distasteful, but Muhuiden believes the practice can serve a greater good whenever it comes to saving a life, he says that takes precedence over

any other issues. By Chris Gayamali next Maya Gaberia, the big Wave surfer, attacking the scourge of plastic waste. For much of the year, the ocean at Nazare, a fishing village on Portugal's coast, is placid, but in the winter, certain storms funnel swells through an underwater canyon, transforming the waves into moving mountains of waters so colossal they have

been described as the everest of the ocean. Big wave surfers have made pilgrimages to the town since twenty eleven, when a video of Garrett macnamara barreling down a seventy eight foot wave established it as having one of the planet's biggest breaks. Over much of the past decade, one of the select few women in the line up has been Maya Gabiea, a Brazilian with a contagious laugh who harbored what some regarded as an outlandist dream. She too

wanted to serve the biggest wave in the world. Growing up in Rio de Janeiro, Gabriel Gabiere had a taste for adrenaline, terrible asthma, and an intense fear of dying out of breath, as she put it, leading to severe anxiety. This would have pushed many people to avoid open water. For Gabieia, it did the opposite. She spent probably half her life in the ocean, says Stephanie Johns, director of

the twenty twenty two documentary Maya and the Wave. She's lived through really hard things, but she has a unique ability to transcend that and get to the other side. Gabierre's early attempts at Nazare ended in disaster in twenty thirteen. Flying down the face of one of the largest waves she has ever tried, she catapulted into the water, and once she was finally dragged onto the beach, had to to be revived with CPR. The near death experience proved

both profound and painful. When you go to the other side, it's dark and full of wisdom, she says. She was left with a broken leg, a severely damaged spine, and even more intense anxiety. Three spine surgeries and four years of recovery later, something inside her began to shift. I got up again, she says, and she felt stronger for it. In January twenty eighteen, Gabierira dropped in on a sixty eight foot monster at Nazare, the biggest any woman had

ever served. Two years later, she broke her own record, surfing a seventy three point five foot wave there that was the largest serf by any man or woman that season. Of course, her time in the ocean has left her acutely aware of the problems faced by marine ecosystems, including the prevalence of garbage and plastic. More often than not, it is a sea of trash, she says, that's just

the reality. As a child, she had learned about conservation issues and the value of pushing for change from her father, a founding member of Brazil's Green Party. As I drifted into the ocean, it was a transition of knowing the green parts through my dad, she says, then diving into the blue. Now she's leveraging her reputation as one of the most world's most prominus prominent big wave surfers to

abdicate for solutions. Gabiira has served as a board member at the nonprofit Oceania since twenty twenty one, and during the pandemic, she was a driving force in the group's campaign to encourage Brazil's largest food delivery service Food to use less prep plastic packaging. Her communication skills played an instrumental role in the campaign's success. She has a practical sense of how to reach the public, says Jim Simon, Oceania's CEO, and she's sensitive to people's aspirations for a

spiritual connection with the Ocean. In twenty twenty two, she became UNESCO's Champion for the Ocean and Youth, a role in which she works to connect with young people about conservation issues. As a surfer, you are always trying to become intimate with the ocean, she says, and when you love something, you care. I feel so fortunate to have built this connection with the ocean and to be able to save myself out there. It would be unfair not to try and communicate the things I learned spending time

in the seas. Last year, Kabira decided to retire, though she continues to live in Nazaree with her two dogs. I can't pretend I did it because it was fun, she says. Of big wave surfing. You're chasing something, and to me particularly, I was so troubled in my mind that I was chasing moments to be present or aware. Whatever she had been seeking out there all those years, she seems to have found it in the concentrated, formidable

power of the Ocean by Molly Longmuir. Next Hector Bellerin The Soccer Player, Dreaming up a more eco friendly future for sports, The transformation of ecdor Bellerin began nearly ten years ago when he went vegan, he was a defender playing for Arsenal in the English Premier League and he wanted a better way to train and recover. That opened so many doors, Bellerine's thirty says of his foray into environmentalism. He started working with a nonprofit to plant trees in

the Amazon three thousand for every game Arsenal won. These days, he's playing for Seville's Real Betis in his native Spain while working with a club to dramatically reduce the team's carbon footprint. The initiatives are highly creative, like installing seats at the club's stadium made from fishing nets recovered from the seafloor. For me, it's a pioneering system, says Bellerine. Loads of clubs around the world now are wanting to peek into what we're doing and promote the same stuff.

He also has a stake in a lower division English team, the Forest Green Rovers, that's become carbon neutral with innovative ideas like serving vegan only meals to players and fans and traveling to away games by electric bus. The club has had ups and downs football wise, Bellerine says, but it also has made a lot of people in the football world conscious that there's a team that is actually

willing to be very radical. The best defenders know how to be vocal leaders on the pitch, and Bellerine has never been afraid to say how the game should actually be played. Next Sterlin Harjo, the storyteller spotlighting Indigenous voices. After more than a decade of making films, Sterlin Harjo, whose work often focuses on indigenous issues, was considering whether to leave the business. My films were getting out at festivals and getting distribution, but not a lot of people

saw them, he says. I was getting frustrated with the fact that I'd been working so hard and there just was not an easy way to make a living. Instead of hanging it up, Harjo Muskogi Seminole changed joint forces with Taika Waititi Mayo to launch a television series that not only thrust him into the spotlight, but also brought

others along with him. The series, Reservation Dogs, produced for FX, which shares a parent company with National Geographic, debuted in twenty twenty one and revolved around teenagers on an Oklahoma reservation. Harjo and Waichi used it to champion Native talent both in front of and behind the camera. I took a gamble thinking the industry would change, he says, and it did. Many of the actors and creatives from the series have

since led other successful projects. These include Sidney Friedland's res Ball, a film that Hajjo co wrote about a Navajo high school basketball team attempting to make the new Mexico State championship, and Erica Trembley's Fancy Dance, a movie centered on the missing and murdered Indigenous women crisis as depicted on the Seneca Cayuga Nation in Oklahoma. Wes Study, the famed Cherokee actor and the only name of American actor ever to receive an oscar, had a recurring role on Reservation Dogs

and continues to see a ripple effect. All of us who have been in the trenches for the past forty years have been working towards this study says. There's this upsurge of interest in Native American stories, and there are more opportunities because of Sterlin and this work. Archio meanwhile, is in production on a new crime noir show. Whether it's a horror, a heist, a comedy, a love story. I just wanted to be part of proving that native

filmmakers can't do all of it, he says by Kate Nelson. Next, Isabel Christina Kamez and Oscar Andres Gamez, the builders finding a novel use for plastic waste around the world. The idea was simple yet profound. What if you could use the plastic waste littering your home country to help solve its housing crisis. For architect Oscar Andres Mendez and his business partner, electronics engineer Isabel Christina Gammez, deb inspiration led

to an invention that embodies their core values. Their Columbia based company, conceptos Plasticos transforms plastic, including bags, snack food containers, and shampoo bottles, into a modular building system of bricks and columns. The lego like blocks are made of about ninety five percent plastic, builders only need to supply a roof and windows. Since launching their company in twenty ten in Bogita, the team has refined their concept to be

increasingly efficient. A typical two bedroom house or a bathroom, living room, dining room and kitchen now captures some six tons of plastic and can be built in about five days at a cost anywhere from four thousand to seven thousand, far cheaper than traditional construction. The structures are also earthquake resistant, fire repellent, well insulated, and not so easy to discard. Each building, Nndez says should stand for more than two

hundred years. Initially, Conceptos Plasticos partnered with private companies and an NGO to build houses in schools in Colombia, about fifty so far. In twenty seventeen, Abubakar Compo, a doctor then serving as the representative for UNICEF in Cote di Brois, contracted Mendes and Gamez to explain how plastic waste clogging sewer systems there contributed to water stagnation and the spread

of malaria. Cote de Voir faced a shortage of schools and many rural communities existing ones made of mud bricks needed frequently frequent rebuilding during the rainy season. We have the solution, Mendez remembers, thinking they just needed to share it. As part of a three million dollar deal with UNICEF, Concepto's Plasticos built a new factory in Abidjan and recruited workers,

mainly women, to source the plastic needed so far. Over four thousand tons of plastic have been transformed into more than five hundred fifty classrooms, all for approximately sixty percent of what traditional construction methods cost. The effort has created a circular economy that removes waste from the environment, improves the educational system by way of well designed buildings, and

creates jobs. Mendez and Gambz are now negotiating on a similar school project in Ethiopia and investigating how to build latrines in refugee camps in South Sudan to share their technology in places where building new factories may present challenges, The partners recently designed a scaled down version of their system that can be transported in a forty foot container. It may run on trash, but as Compo puts at,

the concept is not just beautiful but brilliant. By Eric Wills. Next, Victor Glover, the astronaut launching a new era of space exploration. We still call great human accomplishments moonshots, says astronaut Victor Glover, But what might happen to that phrase when we go beyond the moon? Glover is laying the groundwork to find out by preparing to travel farther into space. Than any

human has ever gone. For the Artemists, two missions scheduled for April twenty twenty six will venture five thousand miles past the Moon, setting the stage for future lunar landings and longer trips to Mars. Glover, one of only seventeen black astronauts out of over three hundred fifty people Nasau has sent to space, believes this kind of exploration is about more than merely going someplace far away. Our eyes are lifted, he says, Our hearts are lifted. That collective inspiration,

that collective support that unifies people by Mosy Secret. Next, Michel Yeo, the Oscar winner, shining a spotlight on the burdens of women in disaster zones. Ten years ago, Michel Yet was visiting Catman Dieu, Nepal with her new husband, Jean Tote, when the city was struck by a magnitude seven point eight earthquake. The couple had been attending an event at a low rise hotel, and they narrowly escaped the devastation when the earth shook. I was immediately on

the floor. Yos recalls, we literally had to crawl out because there was no way to stand in the aftermath of the earthquake, Yo was stunned by the destruction. Close to nine thousand people were dead and millions more displaced. What impacted her most was how helpless she felt. If you are not a first responder, don't try to help,

you just get in the way, she recalls. Yet weeks later, Yo returned to Nepal in the midst of aftershocks and landslides, working with Lived to Love International, a New York based ANGIO that partners with a local nunnery to aid villages. She came back again the following year to join the United Nations Development Programs continuing relief efforts. She visited UNESCO World Heritage sites in the Katmandu Valley and remote villages

on the outskirts of the capital. For Yo, it felt vital to reach people in both the cities and remo villages with messages of hope. We know you are there, She reiterates, we have not forgotten about you. Raised in Malaysia, Yeo sixty two, began her career in nineteen eighties Hong Kong. On screen, she subverted the role of the bond girl in Tomorrow Never Dies, helped put Asian films in the mainstream with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and earned an Oscar

for everything, everywhere, all at once. A moment she used to call out sexist agism during her acceptance speech. She now brings that inclusive lens to disaster zones and recently focused attention on Turkey and Syria, which were devastated by a series of earthquakes in twenty twenty three, with the strongest registering at seven point eight, the same severity as

the Nepal tragedy. She believes that it's especially important to empower women within these heart hit areas because they are often the first to come forward to help others in crisis, but they tend to suffer disproportionate violence and abuse. Yo's experience Nepal cemented her belief that women are the driving forest behind the renewal of their communities. While visiting the region, she saw how women often bore the brunt of the

hard work. However, they also focused on sustainable solutions. These women rally together to resolve the situation. She says, I could see the resilience and they are very forward thinking. In a rural village in the Saint Hapu Choke district, for example, she helped inaugurate a milk collection center. This kind of humanitarian work as convinced her of the possibilities of incremental change for me. As long as you have hope, you will keep going forward, she says, that's the most

powerful thing. By Karina Chocano. Next Lewis Pugh, the endurance swimmer on a diplomatic mission to protect the world's fragile places. The water flowing through the East Antarctic by sheep was nearly as cold as water can be without freezing, just above thirty two degrees fahrenheit. Yet Lewis Pugh war only espiedo goggles and a swim cap. He felt extremely fit, but he'd also bulked up slightly to keep himself warm

on this unprecedented quest. Swimming down a half mile river that tunneled through the shifting glacial ice, he moved methodically in the water, careful not to stir the ice stalactites overhead. It was so cold that at first he could barely breathe, and after ten minutes his hands were swollen, their veins bright blue. On a rocky shoreline, he was greeted by his support team, among them the Vatslav Slava Vetisov, the retired Russian hockey star. I pulled him out from the water,

Vetisov recalls of that day several years ago. I see his skin was so fragile. I said, Oh my god, he's unbelievable, this man. Some adventurers undertake a challenge as the climber. George Mallory once said of Mount Everest, because it's there. Hugh of, British born South African endurance swimmer, whose completed expeditions in each of the world's oceans, undertakes his polar plunges for the en reason these places might not be around one day, at least not as we

know them now. Each of his swims is designed to further missions of a diplomatic variety, persuading governments to designate the waters he diverses as marine protected areas free from offshore drilling, commercial fishing and other are harmful activities. Pugh fifty five, has been a long distance swimmer for nearly four decades. During that time, he says, our oceans have changed enormously. We're now facing what he calls a perfect storm of marine crises, with climate change, loss of diversity

and pollution. I started doing swims to carry a message about the health of our planet. He says, this has always been about justice. A maritime lawyer, Peugh has spent more than a decade as the UN Patron of the Oceans. His aim is for thirty percent of our oceans to become marine protected areas by twenty thirty. It's a lofty target. Currently it's estimated that less than three percent are protected,

but Pugh has helped the cause. In twenty eighteen, when he became the first person to swim the three hundred twenty eight mile length of the English Channel, the United Kingdom's Environment Secretary met him at the journey's end on a beach in Dover. Soon after, the UK began expanding its marine protection and became one of the first countries to support the twenty thirty goal, encouraging other nations to

follow suit. Hugh completed his first endurance swim from Robin Island, South Africa to Cape Town in nineteen eighty seven when he was seventeen, but it was until his mid thirties when he was swimming the Bay of Deception Island, a caldera off the trip of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. That he found his mission that day in two thousand five. As he swam, he saw bones piled next to the

water's surface. They belonged to Wales, hunted decades before. It left a big mark on me, he recalls, I like to think that those boons are a reminder of man's potential for folly. Since then, he's swum in a glacial lake on Evra across the North Pole, and from Saudi Arabia across the Red Sea to Egypt, a journey that

brought him alongside stunning coral reefs. Though most nations have pledged to limit warming to one point five degrees celsius above pre industrial levels, he's worried that change isn't happening fast enough. Beyond that threshold, Pew points out, we would lose between seventy and ninety percent of the world's coral reefs, and then at two degrees, probably all the world's coral This will be the first time in human history that

we lose an entire ecosystem, he says. Along the way, he's made a valuable ally in Fetisov, captain of the Soviet Union's gold medal winning hockey teams of the nineteen eighties and now a member of the Russian Parliament. After a swim across the Ross Sea, deep within the Antarctic in twenty fifteen, Few took the first of several trips to Moscow. There he met Fetisov, who arranged conversations with

top officials. The following year, president Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed to amultae country effort to establish a six hundred thousand square mile marine protected area in the Ross Sea, one of the largest in the world. You remember Ping Pong diplomacy in the nineteen seventies, pus this was Speedo diplomacy.

After his twenty twenty swim through the East Antarctic ice sheet, Pew returned to Moscow, where he and Fetisov hoped to gain Russian support for three more Antarctic marine protected areas. Those negotiations have stalled, though, and it's unclear whether Russia is abiding by its earlier commitment. Recently, Pew found himself one hundred fifty miles north of the Arctic Circle, on

the western coast of Greenland. He'd come to Ibusiat to swim in a tidal fiord fed by one of the world's fastest moving glaciers calving at a rate of eleven cubic miles a year. The glacier contributes to sea level rise around the world. Its ground zero of the climate crisis. Pew says, the water was so cold that he went only for the briefest of dips. I put my head in the water, he recalls, and you can hear little bubbles, and these bubbles are the ice that was trapped thousands

of years ago. When he surfaced, he heard the roar of calving icebergs, a reminder that he'd have to return for another's swim. Next Shouyong the scientists finding solutions in the structures of nature. The way Shuyong sees it, the natural world has allowed to teach us. A chemical and biomolecular engineer, she employs biomimicry, the study of organically occurring structures, to inspire new and often more sustainable solutions that meet

human needs. Two recent projects are a three D printed concrete that emulates properties seen in butterfly wings and an adhesive inspired by snail secretions. What's next, I have tons of ideas, Yan said by an appeal. Next. Lucy Bosch, the app co founder who built an online market place for food waste. When Lucy Bosch was twenty four. She

had zero coding experience. What the French entrepreneur did have, however, was a simmering disdain for how much good food winds up in the trash about thirty percent of global production, which creates as much as ten percent of greenhouse gas emissions as it rots. Bakeries, restaurants, and grocery stores typically threw out perishable items at the end of the day. If someone could connect that supply to thrifty eaters, the food could be sold at a steep discount. She rallied

suppliers first, then built a tech team. Thanks to Bosh's scrappy determination, Too Good to Go is the world's largest market place for struplus food, operating in nineteen countries with more than one hundred million users. I think that's actually what enabled the success, she says, the fact that we didn't wait and just went for it. Next, Carlos Magdalena, the rescuer of plants that are on the brink of extinction.

These journeyed to the cliffs of Mauritius and the rainforest of the Amazon in search of endangered plant species, but for Carlos Magdalena, a botanical horticulturalist at the QWE Royal Botanic Gardens in London. Another adventure revolves around cultivating and preserving flora that's increasingly threatened in the wild. Successes include propagating a cafe mariwned shrub from the Mauritian island of Rodrigues and the pygmy lily that lives in the hot

springs of Rwanda. With forty five percent of flowering plant species potentially threatened with extinction, such work has never been more vital. I always say that obsession has a bad reputation, Magdalena says, but I think obsession makes incredible things. Next, Jeremy Jones, the snowboarder uniting athletes to save our winters. A pioneer of big mountains snowboarding, Jeremy Jones watched as helicopters made remote back country runs suddenly reachable, but he

had misgiving about the means of ascent. I knew when I got in a helicopter I was taking up resources, he says. He began hiking up mountains instead and found the experience exhilarating. The snowboard is a tool to challenge yourself to connect with nature. When you strip away the machines, the tool is much more effective. Jones became a split boarder, ascending slopes on skis that could be combined into a snowboard for the ride back down, and eventually created his

own company to manufacture equipment for the pursuit. He resolved to give one percent of sales to environmental organizations, but he couldn't find any nonprofits in the snow sports world focused on climate change solutions, so in two thousand seven he launched his own Protect Our Winters, aptly known as POW, a nod to fresh powder. The group's alliance of elite athletes now includes Jesse Diggins, the gold medal winning cross country skier, and Tommy Caldwell, one of the most accomplished

rock climbers in the world. This concludes readings from National Geographic magazine for to Day. Your reader hasband Marsha. Thank you for listening and keep on listening. Have a great day.