Practical hope, reported close up.
People Fixing the World follows people testing concrete responses to difficult problems, from adaptive fashion to safer LGBT spaces and portable ultrasound. Its tone is hopeful but grounded, with reporting that asks how each idea works and who it helps.
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People Fixing the World is a global solutions programme from the BBC World Service. It looks for people trying to make difficult conditions less difficult, then asks how their ideas work in practice. The mood is hopeful. The reporting stays measured. Recent episodes move across disability access, education, LGBT safety, urban noise, maternal health, environmental restoration, poetry, and animal welfare. The show is especially good at turning broad issues into tangible details. Adaptive fashion becomes a side zip that lets someone dress without help. Inclusive business support becomes a market day where LGBT entrepreneurs find clients and protection. Early education reform becomes mothers leading playgroups while children learn through games. Seagrass restoration becomes the careful choice of seeds with heat-resistant genes. Portable ultrasound becomes a small device that may help detect pregnancy complications in remote places. These are not abstract success stories. They are reported as experiments, with limits, effort, and local context kept in view. The programme often begins in sound and scene: traffic in a city, children playing outside a classroom, bubbles from a seagrass meadow, or a poem read aloud. It then widens from the individual case to the social problem behind it. The interview style gives contributors room to explain the practical bits. That matters, because the show's optimism depends on method rather than slogan. It is not about celebrating good intentions. It is about noticing where people have built something useful, asking whether it reaches the people who need it, and leaving the listener with a clearer sense of what repair can look like.
Made for: For listeners who want constructive global reporting without softening the seriousness of social, health, and environmental problems. It suits people drawn to human stories, practical design, public-interest journalism, and evidence-minded optimism.
What sets it apart: The show's edge is its combination of warmth and verification: it does not just spotlight good ideas, it asks how they function on the ground. Small practical details carry the reporting, making large problems easier to understand without making them seem simple.
Brilliant solutions to the world’s problems. We meet people with ideas to make the world a better place and investigate whether they work.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Myra Anubi turns hopeful social projects into concrete accounts of how change works, what it requires and where evidence enters.
People Fixing the World follows an idea past the uplifting pitch and into the choices that make it workable. Myra Anubi moves between field reporting and close interviews, asking how projects operate and what evidence supports their effects.
A wheelchair-friendly gown and heat-tough seagrass give your optimism some engineering.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Adaptive fashion becomes a grounded case for dignity, independence, and clothing designed to include more people.
Fashion adapted for disability comes across here as a practical matter of independence, dignity, and personal style. Myra Anubi presents clothing projects designed for people whose choices can be narrowed by disability, surgery recovery, arthritis, dementia, or special needs.
From Kenyan market days to a Spanish care home, LGBT inclusion is shown through practical spaces.
The episode takes a grounded route into a large, often marginalised community, showing how safer spaces can also help people earn, find clients and build more secure lives.
A Ghanaian school brings mothers into early learning, while keeping one eye on whether the model can last.
People Fixing the World visits Ghana for a measured look at a modest change in kindergarten life: mothers with little or no education are being drawn into what their children learn.
A grounded report on seagrass restoration, where seed collection and genetic clues meet careful conservation work.
Seagrass gives a quiet subject real texture by moving below the surface, where a healthy meadow bubbles with photosynthesis and dolphins pass through the water.
Adaptive design becomes a question of dignity, mobility, and who gets more choice in what they wear.
People Fixing the World follows adaptive fashion as a practical design challenge for people living with disabilities, where style, independence, and dignity all have to work together.
A clear-eyed tour of how empty U.S. malls are being redesigned for new uses.
Empty shopping malls become a test of local imagination in this practical look at how U.S. communities are rethinking buildings left behind by changing retail habits.
This episode explores adaptive fashion solutions for people with disabilities.
This episode explores the decline of shopping malls in the U.S.
This episode of People Fixing the World explores how teaching about sexual pleasure can lead to safer and better sex, featuring stories from Iraq and Brazil.
People Fixing the World on BBC World Service looks at adaptive fashion for people with disabilities, seniors, and people recovering from surgery.
People Fixing the World, hosted by Myra Anubi, examines LGBT community projects in Kenya and Spain that address discrimination through business networks and elder housing.
People Fixing the World reporter Justice Beidou visits Ghana, where mothers lead play sessions for children aged four to six in overcrowded classrooms.
This episode explores the problem of noise pollution in cities and potential solutions, starting with Mumbai, one of the noisiest cities in the world.
Myra Anubi opens People Fixing the World with a poem and presents Maria Ogundale's "Stroke," about a friend who communicates by head shake and shares a laugh over chocolate eggs thrown at a shopkeeper.
BBC World Service's People Fixing the World follows seagrass restoration with Myra Anubi, Lee Jones, and Ben Wyatt in Maryland and Hartlepool.
This episode explores how a portable ultrasound device the size of a TV remote can help reduce maternal deaths in remote areas of sub-Saharan Africa.
This episode explores two projects that control stray animals by caring for them instead of killing them, featuring a pigeon loft in Germany and a dog program in Mexico.
This episode explores how mindfulness, an ancient practice from Eastern religions, is being used in unexpected places like high schools to reduce stress and improve well-being.