The world's first accessible bridge climb

Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh now it makes sense.

Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Saturday, the twelfth of April. I'm Zara Sidler, I'm Sam Kazlowski. We're back for another week of the Good News Round Up. Let's do it very exciting. We're actually starting here at home today with a good news story right from Brisie.

Yeah, this is an amazing story. So Brisbane has made history as the first city in the world to host an accessible bridge climb.

Yeah, that's right.

So individuals with accessibility requirements, including wheelchair users, will be able to scale the story bridge a b Yeah, in a specifically designed wheelchair.

This is amazing.

So the new accessibility feature is thanks to a grant from the Queensland government. So within the government there's this Accessible Tourism Elevate Fund and that supports the state's tourism industry to basically enhance their accessible tourism experience.

Should we just acknowledge the irony in being called an elevate fund and the funding being used to literally elevate amazing?

Keep exactly so.

According to the government, the motorized stair climber is of the highest safety standard and it's been customized for the Story Bridge using this advanced technology. Interestingly, the wheelchair was co designed by Timothy Laughlin, who's a professional wheelchair motocross rider who played a key role in quote testing the system and refining its performance on the bridge.

Which is not a small task to have to test that kind of thing out for the first time. I mean someone probably had to go up there first.

And yeah, so one of the first people actually once it opened to take part in the bridge climb was twenty twenty one Queenslander of the Year Dnesh Pallipana, and he said, which I loved. When I was laying in a hospital bed once not far from the bridge, I remember looking out at a wind wondering if I will be outside again. To be now seeing the world from the top of our city's bridge is like a dream.

It's incredible.

Goes to the.

Heart of why accessibility is so important in all parts of our society, and the liberation and the freedom that people who are in a wheelchair can be afforded by this new technology is not to be underestimated.

Incredible and I hope we see this sort of technology rolled out to other famous bridges. I'm particularly thinking of one in our hometown of Sydney. It would be amazing to see that sort of thing happening here. Now, let's go online and we're going to go to the US. And you are a sucker for a viral video. You're a sucker.

Watched me watching this?

I did.

I watched you watching it. Tell us about it?

Okay.

I wasn't sure whether to include this because I think most people have probably seen it by now, but it was just too good to ignore. It had to make its way into a good news podcast. So in case you haven't seen this viral video, let me introduce you to Tanner Smith. Now, Tanner Smith is one of the stars of the Netflix seri's Love on the Spectrum, where people on the autism spectrum search for love.

Which by the way, is an Australian production originally, and it's now this massive success.

Juggernaut all over the world. Yeah, it's an amazing show.

And on a previous season of the show, Tanner who is just bursting with energy and personality and charm. In a previous season, he mentioned that he was actor Jack Black's biggest fan. Now fast forward to earlier this month when Tanner appeared for the second time on The Kelly Clarkson Show, where he was shown a video with Jack Black proclaiming that he couldn't wait to meet Tanner in person. And then lo and behold, as all.

Of these talk shows do, there was a bit of.

A glitch and then Jack Black walked out, surprising Tanner by appearing in real life, marking what Tanner labeled as the best day of my life.

Can we just put a bit of audio in there for everyone, have a listen to this.

I love you on the show and I can't wait for the next season and to meet you in person is really amazing from me.

Yeah, Jack is really meeting for me too.

Thank you so much for sky, Thank you so much.

I do think it's one of those things that you can't watch or can't listen to without a smile on your face. The infectiousness of Tanner's enthusiasm and excitement, it's just so heartwarming. And also to watch the interaction between these two stars. Jack Black is clearly loving the situation as much as Tanner did, and it was just such a feel good moment.

Can I make one observation about Jack Black?

I have nicest guy ever.

Seems like a lovely guy. But I've never seen somebody change so little. I feel like like aging wise, aging like he sounds the same and he's doing the same truth mannerisms. This guy's frozen in like School of Rock comes through Panda, kind of that era, and and he's just he's still got it.

He also does feel like one of the good guys in Hollywood.

So I really feel good moment there.

Let's stay overseas now, Zara, but jump across the Atlantic to the U.

I like this geographical pinning of good news story.

Good news around the world. Good news is a global phenomenon, and this one is, I think one that's very close to my heart. Because I've decided that I'm our office cleaning extraordin are just brought us a new vacuum. Things are feeling really good, and turns out I'm not alone.

That was a loose segue, but I'll take it.

So the Great British Spring Clean has just wrapped up in the UK. Now, this campaign is a bit bigger than Sam buying a vacuum cleanup for the office. It runs for a week from the twenty first of March to the sixth of April, and during that time, three hundred and forty two thousand people from different communities across the UK pledged to pick up four hundred and sixty two thousand, four hundred and ten bags of.

Letter a very specific number of bags of litter.

I mean that was the commitment. That was the pledge.

It builders the nation's biggest mass action campaign. It's been running annually for a decade, but the group that runs it has been around for over seventy years now. According to the organization, over the course of the campaign, people found really unique treasures, as they put it, things like a Retromannequin food rubbish that dated back decades. I'm sure that we want that one, and even someone's dreadlock.

Oh no, that's terrible.

So people were encouraged to submit what their you know, most unique find was, as it were positioning it as a treasure hunt is a great way to get people out and about bring it kids along.

I do feel like that's a I do feel like that's a toddless strategy to get into clean up lego that they just played with on the weekend, and if it works on the British population then sure it does.

Because fun fact, around ninety six percent of people surveyed after last year's campaign agreed that the spring clean reduced the impact of letter on wildlife and the environment.

That's a brilliant story. And now I want to end Zara with one that is I think a little more serious on the good news spectrum, but it's still It's made me feel like there's a lot of innovation and a lot of opportunity that can be gained from interesting ways to use tech. Bring us this last story.

Yes, so, researchers in the US have announced that they are developing a tiny, flexible robot that could save lives in natural disasters. So you're right, this is a bit more of the news of the day's stuff. But what's so amazing is that a team at Penn State University are creating this technology for the very first time that will be able to crawl through earthquake rubble to find

So we know that, you know, after a natural.

Disaster occurs, there's the hours where it's critical that contact is made with survivors, but sometimes it can be too dangerous you won't know where they are. And so this advancement means that, however, many lives could be saved thanks to you know, this pioneering technology.

And the battle with this sort of technology is always that in these early stages, cost is always a big barrier, and so once they kind of figure out how to make it perfect at work, well, then the next challenge for these incredible researchers is to try and figure out how to make it cheap and that way, you know, you can make sure that it's as effective in developing countries as it is anywhere in the world, and that's really going to be, you know, a test of the technology and I think we can do.

I think we can too.

And you know what, today's good news stories show you the breadth of brightness that exists in the world, from robotic technology to cleaning up Bretain to none other than Jack Black. You know what, Sam, I think we need to take today's podcast out with a bitter school of rock.

It hasn't changed in twenty five years. I don't see why that should change. Now that's all we've got for today.

We will be back again on Monday morning with a deep dive as usual.

But until then, I have a beautiful weekend.

See Yahoo.

My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Chalcottin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigol people and pays respect to all.

Regional and torrest Rate island and nations.

We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.