Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Marsha for Radio I, and today I
Speaker 1: will be reading National Geographic magazine dated November twenty twenty five,
Speaker 1: which is donated by the publisher. As a reminder. RADIOI
Speaker 1: is a reading service intended for people who are blind
Speaker 1: or have other disabilities that make it difficult to read
Speaker 1: printed material. Please join me now for the continuation of
Speaker 1: the article I began last time, entitled Inside the Colossal
Speaker 1: Quest for Limitless Energy by Michael Finkel. Specialists in dozens
Speaker 1: of fields plasma physics to electromagnetics to cement pouring were
Speaker 1: recruited and hired. The eater site has its own bus system,
Speaker 1: plying the paved perimeter roads, while dirt lanes in the
Speaker 1: middle are a cacophony of forklifts, dump trucks and backos,
Speaker 1: with teams of hard headed workers marching around on foot.
Speaker 1: In late twenty eight eighteen, the first of the machines,
Speaker 1: ten million pieces, was put into place. These pieces are
Speaker 1: being manufactured by member nations across the globe, then shipped
Speaker 1: to the work site in France. The chief contribution of
Speaker 1: the US is the central solenoid, the megamagnet, which is
Speaker 1: being built by General Atomics, a family owned business in
Speaker 1: San Diego. Russia is contributing additional magnets and superconducting materials.
Speaker 1: Europe is creating some of the main Tokamac hardware, and
Speaker 1: South Korea the rest. India's supplying cooling system Apparatuses. Japan
Speaker 1: is fashioning heating structures. About five thousand companies worldwide have
Speaker 1: been involved in the effort. Some parts made abroad are
Speaker 1: the size of a basketball court and way more than
Speaker 1: a passenger jet. Many are heavily wrapped and encased in
Speaker 1: a protective frame before being loaded onto a cargo ship
Speaker 1: from Asian countries. The trip to France takes more than
Speaker 1: a month. The package is then balanced on a barge
Speaker 1: and floated up a canal across a lake. The last
Speaker 1: sixty five miles are on roads which were reinforced and widened,
Speaker 1: permitting a three hundred and fifty two wheeled transport platform
Speaker 1: to creep at three miles an hour all night for
Speaker 1: three or four nights to arrive at Eeter. How much
Speaker 1: will all of this cost. It's hard to know exactly,
Speaker 1: as there is no official global accounting. The Eater Agreement,
Speaker 1: signed in twenty two thousand and six, claimed that the
Speaker 1: entire project, including the value of items made by members,
Speaker 1: would cost around six billion dollars start to finish. That
Speaker 1: price has ballooned to sixty five billion dollars, more than
Speaker 1: ten times the original estimate, according to the US Department
Speaker 1: of Energy. If it alters the course of civilization, fusion
Speaker 1: supporters say it'll be seen as a bargain. Even the
Speaker 1: new figure represents less than three days of current global
Speaker 1: expenditures on energy, but Eater will be by far the
Speaker 1: most expensive scientific instrument on Earth. Of Eater's delays and
Speaker 1: cost overruns have been self inflicted, and internal assessment of
Speaker 1: Eater's management practices detailed pricey design changes and administrative gridlock,
Speaker 1: but some have been beyond the project's control. Storms at sea,
Speaker 1: pirates in the Suez Canal, the twenty eleven Earth earthquake
Speaker 1: and tsunami in Japan interrupted parts production there for a year.
Speaker 1: The COVID pandemic slowed the world for two more. Yet
Speaker 1: through everything, Eater churned inexorbly on then came an extraordinary accomplishment.
Speaker 1: Eater may be the world's largest jigsaw puzzle, but the
Speaker 1: most essential construction the tukamac and attached components has been
Speaker 1: reduced to nine massive pieces called vacuum vessel modules. These
Speaker 1: will fit together like segments of an orange. Each weighs
Speaker 1: about fifteen hundred tons. To move one, Eater had to
Speaker 1: invent several new lifting machines. Workers rehearsed the sequence of
Speaker 1: events that needed to happen, and on May twelve, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two, the first module, made of parts supplied by
Speaker 1: almost every Eater member, was tucked perfectly into its spot.
Speaker 1: The milestone, decades in the making, was a celebrated Eater triumph.
Speaker 1: Now that one module was in place, the other eight
Speaker 1: would surely follow. After all the hurdles, the machine was
Speaker 1: going to get built and switched on. There was light
Speaker 1: at the end of the tunnel, and then the project
Speaker 1: nearly self destructed. Eater is entirely dependent on funding from
Speaker 1: federal governments, which can be fickle sources of money. Politicians
Speaker 1: like to hear about success and momentum, even when the
Speaker 1: reality is, according to the internal Eater report, that management
Speaker 1: is blundering and the engineering challenges are more formidable than anticipated.
Speaker 1: Some cheerleading by the project's leadership is expected. In twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: the US was reportedly considering a second Eater exit, and
Speaker 1: in order to stay needed to be convinced that progress
Speaker 1: was coming. But what happened at Edar is that showmanship
Speaker 1: seemed to have eclipsed honesty, and in a project of
Speaker 1: exacting revolutionary science, this was bound to bring disaster. The
Speaker 1: placement of the vacuum vessel module in twenty twenty two
Speaker 1: generated glowing news reports from major trade publications. The job, however,
Speaker 1: was apparently done in a corner cutting rush. Inspections revealed
Speaker 1: tiny cracks and pinhole leaks. The Tokamac was compromised. The
Speaker 1: module couldn't be repaired where it was wedge tight, and
Speaker 1: the installation couldn't be reversed without partially tearing the machine apart.
Speaker 1: Workers didn't know what to do, and construction of the
Speaker 1: tocamac ground to a halt. At the very moment Eter
Speaker 1: needed decisive leadership, there was none. Two days after the
Speaker 1: module was hung, the Director General of Eater, Bernard Bigeau,
Speaker 1: died of an illness at age seventy two. Begough, a
Speaker 1: French scientist, was eating third chief, following two Japanese directors,
Speaker 1: Kanami Ikeda and Osamu moto Jima. All three executives seemed
Speaker 1: to succumb at least somewhat to the organizational malaisee known
Speaker 1: as big projects syndrome. A warehouse that eater is filled
Speaker 1: with parts that nobody knows who ordered or why. The
Speaker 1: head of Communications before Bego's tenure, Michael Klasen's, later admitted
Speaker 1: that Ed's public statements often contained lies, propaganda, and misinformation,
Speaker 1: creating an atmosphere that resulted in the reckless installation of
Speaker 1: the vacuum vessel module. An Italian electrical engineer named Pietro
Speaker 1: Vara Bashki, who has a long history in Fusion, was
Speaker 1: appointed by the project's governing body, the Each Council, to
Speaker 1: take over approachable, energetic informal. He often comes to work
Speaker 1: in genes and running shoes, and everyone calls him Pietro.
Speaker 1: He seems comfortable amid chaos. He's fifty nine years old,
Speaker 1: blanking and tall, and speaks fluent Italian, English and German,
Speaker 1: as well as workable French. Taming Fusion, says Pietro, is
Speaker 1: like humans learning to harness fire for the second time
Speaker 1: in history. Being burned by mistakes is inevitable, and he
Speaker 1: publicly pledged that Eeter would be transparent about them, and
Speaker 1: even published an article in the science journal Nature Reviews
Speaker 1: Physics titled The Importance of Documenting Failure. Pietro's first major
Speaker 1: decision as director was that the vacuum vessel module would
Speaker 1: be removed at a normal's expense and multiple years of
Speaker 1: hold up. Either the project would be done right, he implied,
Speaker 1: or it wouldn't be done at all. The sentiment among
Speaker 1: Eeter workers seemed to be that Pietro clearly made the
Speaker 1: right choice and might have just killed the project. I
Speaker 1: thought that was at the end of Eater, says communications
Speaker 1: officer Sabina Griffith, who has worked at the site for
Speaker 1: almost two decades. Lola Zedet and each construction coordinator said
Speaker 1: that the news of the module removal was both understandable
Speaker 1: and shocking. After the insane scrambled to get the vacuum
Speaker 1: vessel module in place, the world had been turned upside down.
Speaker 1: Shifts of people were looking at each other and doing nothing,
Speaker 1: says Zeda. It was almost surreal. But after some time
Speaker 1: in mental recalibration, she says, the crews return to work
Speaker 1: and the unbuilding of Eater began. Many fusion experts believe
Speaker 1: that success is more probable from a nimble private company
Speaker 1: motivated by profit, than from an overstuffed public project like Eater.
Speaker 1: There are currently more than one hundred private fusion initiatives
Speaker 1: worldwide battling for a potentially epic grand prize of an
Speaker 1: energy fortune. Eaters of Uncular stands is that there isn't
Speaker 1: competition at all. The true dream is fusion energy for
Speaker 1: the globe, and the more places attempting it, the better
Speaker 1: the chance it will happen. Private firms are welcome to
Speaker 1: visit the site to study what's worked and what hasn't,
Speaker 1: and to tap into the fount of of hard earned wisdom. Eater,
Speaker 1: striving to distribute knowledge rather than produce commercial energy, is
Speaker 1: like the public library of fusion. Also, Eater shares the
Speaker 1: results of its extensive diagnostics and testing on parts and materials,
Speaker 1: allowing others to save time and money and push on.
Speaker 1: It appears unlikely that any private firm will make the
Speaker 1: public effort obsolete. From the outside, it seemed like Ter
Speaker 1: was going backward right through to the end of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four. Each day further from completion, the machine dismantled,
Speaker 1: the vacuum vessel module pulled out, and then itself disassembled,
Speaker 1: then tests to determine the course of repairs. But on
Speaker 1: the vast campus, the culture had shifted toward progress. In
Speaker 1: Pietro's view, so many elements of the project were pioneering,
Speaker 1: entering the realm of the unknown. That ter was like
Speaker 1: a scientific Lewis and Clerk. They'd gotten lost for a
Speaker 1: while in the wilderness, but had recognized and streamlined the
Speaker 1: management structure and soon would be navigating smoothly again. For
Speaker 1: every problem that may be encountered, Pietro believes there exists
Speaker 1: a reasonable solution. Government funding during this reset did not
Speaker 1: dry up. In April twenty twenty five, just shy of
Speaker 1: three years since the vacuum vessel module had first been installed,
Speaker 1: it was put in again and the project was back
Speaker 1: to zero. Two months later, the second segment was mounted.
Speaker 1: The remaining seven are all in various stages of completion.
Speaker 1: The job site is buzzing, welding, sparks flying from the
Speaker 1: construction zones, cranes swinging through the sky, physicists scribbling on whiteboards.
Speaker 1: Pietro putting in twelve hour days, bounces from meeting to meeting,
Speaker 1: often taking a total of six minutes for lunch, enough
Speaker 1: to wolf down a sandwich or salein. It's both a
Speaker 1: sprint and a marathon, he says, a eater with surprises
Speaker 1: around every corner. But no matter how crammed his schedule,
Speaker 1: Pietro tries to observe two traditions a couple of times
Speaker 1: a week. He puts on a hard hat and protective
Speaker 1: gear and go alone to observe the Tucamac construction, climbing
Speaker 1: up the scaffolding to get to his favorite spot at
Speaker 1: the very top, with a bird's eye view of the machine,
Speaker 1: all of the ambition and folly and genius of it.
Speaker 1: He just takes it in for a while, the sound
Speaker 1: of hammering echoing continuously, a metallic smell in the air.
Speaker 1: Then he gets back to work. The other tradition is
Speaker 1: his first meeting of the morning, usually at six o'clock
Speaker 1: in the distinctly unfancy office of the head of construction,
Speaker 1: Sergio Orlandi, a longtime colleague of Pietro's and a fellow Italian.
Speaker 1: Orlandi is sixty nine years old and has worked on
Speaker 1: nuclear projects for forty five years. As the sun rises
Speaker 1: over the southern French hills outside or Londie's window, they
Speaker 1: have coffee and discuss the plans for the day. Pietro
Speaker 1: calls this his movement of calm, but before he's halfway
Speaker 1: through his coffee, you can see his energy building, his
Speaker 1: left foot tapping, clicking his retractable pen faster and faster
Speaker 1: until the visit is done and he's out the door.
Speaker 1: Orlandi says that he often doesn't interact with Pietro again
Speaker 1: for the rest of the day, but thirty minutes is
Speaker 1: all it takes for them to stay synchronized. The project
Speaker 1: has stuck to the schedule without fail for more than
Speaker 1: a year, which is an all time Eater record, and
Speaker 1: Orlandi expects this progress to continue for the foreseeable future.
Speaker 1: He seems to feel that Eater has achieved unstoppable momentum.
Speaker 1: Perhaps this boost will be enough to follow the plans
Speaker 1: right up to the day of Eater's first energy positive fusion,
Speaker 1: slated for twenty thirty nine, a historic moment that could
Speaker 1: shape the planet's destiny so long as nothing goes wrong.
Speaker 1: The race for fusion Eater is by far the largest
Speaker 1: nuclear fusion endeavour, but it is by no means the
Speaker 1: only one. Government facilities like those at the Max playing
Speaker 1: Institute and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, as well as
Speaker 1: private companies like Zapp Energy and Tae Technologies, are testing
Speaker 1: different methods to achieve fusion. Over the past four years,
Speaker 1: funding for the private industry has nearly quadrupled. Stellarator, invented
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty one. Stellarators use a magnetic confinement method
Speaker 1: similar to that of Eater's Tokomac. Their torque design, as
Speaker 1: seen with this Wettelstein, requires absolute precision, but potentially yields
Speaker 1: more stable plasma. Z Pinch, inspired by lightning strikes, The
Speaker 1: z print pinch process uses electric currents to generate magnetic
Speaker 1: fields that rapidly compress and confine plasma, producing fusion reactions
Speaker 1: that release energy. Zapp Energy hopes its device's compact, modular
Speaker 1: design will make it relatively simple to commercialize inertial confinement.
Speaker 1: Inside a spherical chamber, high energy lasers compress a tiny
Speaker 1: fuel capsule filled with deuterium and tritium, creating a fusion reaction.
Speaker 1: The publicly funded National Ignition Facility was the first fusion
Speaker 1: experiment to generate surplus energy and is the basis for
Speaker 1: future inertial confinement designs. Field reversed configuration neutral beams that
Speaker 1: heat plasm plasma in a smoke ring like formation and
Speaker 1: drive electric currents that generate internal magnetic fields, largely replacing
Speaker 1: the need for external magnetic confinement. Alternative fuels like hydrogen
Speaker 1: boron used by TIE will produce no neutrons or radioactive waste,
Speaker 1: only helium. How nuclear fusion works. Nuclear fusion holds the
Speaker 1: promise of nearly limitless emission free energy. The catch figuring
Speaker 1: out how to create and then harness the power of
Speaker 1: a star here on Earth, which requires temperatures of at
Speaker 1: least two hundred seventy million degrees fahrenheit. When fully operational,
Speaker 1: EATER could very well provide a template for producing the
Speaker 1: fuel of the future. The basics of fusing atoms. To
Speaker 1: capture the energy released during fusion, a reactor must confine plasma,
Speaker 1: an ionized gas that occurs when atoms have been stripped
Speaker 1: of their electrons. Fusion facilities are designed to channel and
Speaker 1: control that reaction for as long as possible, beginning with
Speaker 1: a multi step process. To generate self sustaining power magnetic confinement,
Speaker 1: EATER will rely on a large doughnut shaped machine called
Speaker 1: a p toocomac to induce fusion, a central electromagnet creates
Speaker 1: an electric current that changes the deuterium and tritium gas
Speaker 1: into an ionized plasma. Then the electromagnet, working together with
Speaker 1: twenty four other magnets, shapes and holds the plasma in
Speaker 1: place as it is bombarded with high energy beams that
Speaker 1: raise its temperature to two hundred seventy million degrees fahrenheit.
Speaker 1: Next article At work in the World's Deadliest Garden by
Speaker 1: Tom Lamont, hemlack, hogweed and as matte suits. What it
Speaker 1: takes to tend to over a hundred plants that could
Speaker 1: kill you. The keepers of a poisoned garden on the
Speaker 1: grounds next to Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, England, anticipate a
Speaker 1: great many fainters every year. The garden, the largest of
Speaker 1: its kind, sits behind steately iron gates embellished with skulls,
Speaker 1: and is packed with more than a hundred varieties of
Speaker 1: plants so deadly that you can't enter without supervision. As
Speaker 1: tourists set off guid's worn visitors not to touch, lick,
Speaker 1: or pick. As they learn about poisoners from history and
Speaker 1: see the brews and cuttings that served as their weapons
Speaker 1: of choice. There's the teacup poisoner who kicked off his
Speaker 1: infamous murders, bree by dosing his sister with Atropa belladonna,
Speaker 1: and doctor Death, a physician convicted of murdering fifteen of
Speaker 1: his patients with a drug derived from the opium poppy.
Speaker 1: Every so often Crunch, another guest hits the gravel Gardeners
Speaker 1: attribute the uptick in faintings to all the macabre stories.
Speaker 1: It also will be possible that some blended emanation from
Speaker 1: the plants. The heady perfume of oleander, yew and nightshade
Speaker 1: combines to sweep the more susceptible off their feet. The
Speaker 1: poison Garden, which opened twenty years ago as a ghoulish attraction,
Speaker 1: has taken on new life moonlighting as a destination for
Speaker 1: researchers of all kinds, from scientists curious about exotic toxins
Speaker 1: to crime writers looking for inspiration. One summer day, when
Speaker 1: the annual faint count was at about seventy, Mikey Leech,
Speaker 1: the thirty nine year old had gardener, cracked open a
Speaker 1: glossy laurel leaf protruding across a path. This is one
Speaker 1: of the most common hedging plants in this country, he said,
Speaker 1: cut it open cyanide. Almuckcastle has belonged to one English
Speaker 1: family for over seven hundred years. Traditionally the seat of
Speaker 1: the region's highest ranking of aristocrat, the castle and the
Speaker 1: adjacent gardens forty two acres have been passed down through
Speaker 1: various earls and dukes to the current owner, Ralph Percy,
Speaker 1: the twelfth Duke of Northumberland, who moved in in the
Speaker 1: mid nineteen nineties with his wife Jane. The Duchess set
Speaker 1: about improving the dilapidated property, adding fountains, mazes and sweeping lawns,
Speaker 1: and creating a charitable entity called the Olmwick Garden, which
Speaker 1: includes the Poison Garden. While some of the most destructive
Speaker 1: plants here are also sources of medicinal cures and antidotes,
Speaker 1: like Madagascar periwinkle, which can cause libertoxicity when ingested, but
Speaker 1: is also used in leukemia treatment, the benefits neither inspire
Speaker 1: nor impress the Duchess, who once said, the story of
Speaker 1: how plants can cure I find pretty boring. Really much
Speaker 1: better to know how a plant kills. The ubiquity of
Speaker 1: poisoned in our own backyards motivated a group of forensic
Speaker 1: chemists to conduct a year long experiment in the garden
Speaker 1: quantifying toxins in twenty five different plants that have been
Speaker 1: accidentally ingested by children. A trope of Beledon used by
Speaker 1: the teacup poisoner was one of the most hazardous kids,
Speaker 1: the scientists determined, and better public awareness was needed to
Speaker 1: prevent further fatal consequences. Back in the gardener's break room,
Speaker 1: a whiteboard listed that day's jobs cut the grass along
Speaker 1: and access road ten to twenty lethal mandrakes. Mandragora so
Speaker 1: entwined in human histories, said Leech, who went on to
Speaker 1: explain that Pharaohs used mandragora as and intoxicant, and romans
Speaker 1: as a battlefield and esthetic. More recently, the Harry Potter
Speaker 1: books made squealing sentient mandrakes a source of color, with
Speaker 1: magical roots resembling crying human babies. Leech only started reading
Speaker 1: up on mandragora this spring, he confessed, after receiving an
Speaker 1: e mail from a mandrake enthusiast who wanted to give
Speaker 1: Alnwick her collection, which included a rare varietal native to
Speaker 1: the mountains of Central Asia. The twenty inherited mandrakes now
Speaker 1: live in a covered facility by the break room. It's
Speaker 1: the roots that are super poisonous, Leech said, we're going
Speaker 1: to have to cage them. Caged plants being the most vicious,
Speaker 1: draw the greatest interest. Some Ricinus communis, producer of the
Speaker 1: poisoned rhisin are kept caged. But an innocuous looking green
Speaker 1: and purple plant must be by law, Salvia divinorum, Leech said,
Speaker 1: you smoke it and you go on an acid like
Speaker 1: high for thirty seconds. It's clear why mystery writers like
Speaker 1: coming to Olmwick. The first time British novelist Jill Johnson visited,
Speaker 1: she explored the nettled blaanes, her hands tucked nervously in
Speaker 1: her pockets. Then the initial stirrings of an idea a
Speaker 1: botanist detective who uses her garden as a crime solving tool,
Speaker 1: similar to Agatha Christie's Beloved Miss Marble. Johnson's first book
Speaker 1: and the Professor Eustacia Rose Mysteries. Devil's Breath came out
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three, and since then she's returned to
Speaker 1: Olmwick for inspiration. It's an incredibly good bag full of
Speaker 1: poisonous wonder. She said that will keep me inspired to
Speaker 1: murder more people using more lethal plants for a very
Speaker 1: long time to come. According to staff at the Elmic Garden,
Speaker 1: at least one real life police force has inquired about
Speaker 1: visiting to discuss the use of plants and poisons that
Speaker 1: might be appearing on a watch list ones to keep
Speaker 1: their eye out for in the future. The police force
Speaker 1: in question declined to comment, but there have been several
Speaker 1: high profile poisoning cases in the United Kingdom, famous among
Speaker 1: them the two thousand and nine murder of a man
Speaker 1: whose curry dinner was laced with wolf spain. Leach pointed
Speaker 1: out that it would take just a nail clipping sized
Speaker 1: piece of bandrake root to put somebody in the ground.
Speaker 1: Better for everyone, it seemed if detectives knew their marsh
Speaker 1: marigold from their mistletoe. The garden constantly incorporates new plants
Speaker 1: put but up until recently it was missing one of
Speaker 1: the world's most painful species. The Dendrosnide moroides or gimpy gimby,
Speaker 1: is an incredibly dangerous Australian stinging nettle, and even a
Speaker 1: slight brush with it can make you vomit. After watching
Speaker 1: you tube videos of the plant's victims had tour guide
Speaker 1: John Knox tried growing one from a seed he bought online.
Speaker 1: When that failed, he contacted a man he'd read about
Speaker 1: who kept one the size of a garden gnome inside
Speaker 1: a bird cage in his living room. Knox transported it
Speaker 1: to Almwick in a dog cage covered with trash bags
Speaker 1: to avoid coming in contact with the spindles, which could
Speaker 1: create an effect he described as like being set on
Speaker 1: fire and being electrocuted and having hot acid poured on
Speaker 1: you all at the same time. The gimpy gimpy, now
Speaker 1: several feet larger, lives lecter like in a clear locked
Speaker 1: box at the far end of the garden. We don't
Speaker 1: open it without a hazmat suit, Leech explained. Imagine if
Speaker 1: a gust of wind blew in like Knox. Leech had
Speaker 1: done his research, three or four weeks of sheer pain
Speaker 1: flare ups for the next few years. He reported, it's
Speaker 1: a thing of nightmares, and how do you manage a
Speaker 1: collection that contains nightmares. He had started gardening when he
Speaker 1: was a small boy. Drawn to it, he said, because
Speaker 1: it was just about the least scary thing he could
Speaker 1: imagine doing and look where he ended up. Next article
Speaker 1: A Shurpa's steepest climb by Gloria Lieu. Last year, at
Speaker 1: age eighteen, Nima Regi Sirpa became the youngest climber to
Speaker 1: summit the world's fourteen tallest peaks. His next challenge is
Speaker 1: even trickier, overcoming the conceptions of what Roll's surpas play
Speaker 1: within the industry and how pro climbers are anointed. Last October,
Speaker 1: a slender, eighteen year old Shirpa climber stood atop a
Speaker 1: snowy peak in Tibet and recorded a selfie video in
Speaker 1: the dark. It was six oh five am, and with
Speaker 1: this summit of a mountain called Shisha Pangma, Nima Regi
Speaker 1: Chirpa had topped all fourteen of the world's eight thousand
Speaker 1: meter peceeks, becoming the youngest person ever to do so.
Speaker 1: Like several international climbers who reached the peak that morning,
Speaker 1: he also had support. Nima had been led by a
Speaker 1: Sherpa guide. Breathless in the thin air and wearing a
Speaker 1: puffy down suit, Nima thanked his mom for praying for
Speaker 1: him and his dad for funding his expeditions. He alluded
Speaker 1: to the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and asked for
Speaker 1: an end to war, hate and racism. As a teenager,
Speaker 1: this is my message to each and every one of you,
Speaker 1: he panted, then shouted ooohoo. Once he descended, Nima texted
Speaker 1: the video to his manager in Mumbai, who spliced it
Speaker 1: into an Instagram reel with inspirational music and blasted it
Speaker 1: to Nima's then twenty thousand followers. Reporters called for interviews
Speaker 1: and shared the feel good story of the teenager climbing
Speaker 1: under the banner hashtag Sherpa Power to spread the message
Speaker 1: that his people weren't just supporters of Western climbers, but
Speaker 1: athletes in their own right. Much of this scenario would
Speaker 1: have been improbable even one generation ago. For nearly one
Speaker 1: hundred twenty years, Sherpas have served as porters and guides
Speaker 1: for foreign climbers seeking glory on the world's highest peaks,
Speaker 1: becoming so synonymous with this work that many Westerners don't
Speaker 1: know the word. Sherpa is an ethnicity, not a profession,
Speaker 1: but in the past fifteen years, Sherpas have founded industry
Speaker 1: leading guide guiding outfits and pursued their own world records
Speaker 1: and first ascents. Nima sits on the cusp of the
Speaker 1: next evolution, a sherpa, looking to ensue the business of
Speaker 1: guiding altogether and become a professional climbing star. Two months
Speaker 1: after setting his record, Nima was already preparing for his
Speaker 1: next project, alongside famed Italian alpinist Simone Moro, who was
Speaker 1: attempting a winter ascent of eight thousand, one hundred sixty
Speaker 1: three meter Manaslu. If they succeeded, the duol claimed it
Speaker 1: would be the first winter climb of an eight thousand
Speaker 1: meter peak in pure alpine style, meaning in a single push,
Speaker 1: with none of the established camps, fixed ropes, bottled oxygen,
Speaker 1: or sherpa support that Niema enjoyed on the fourteen peaks.
Speaker 1: Even Morrow, who at fifty seven had summitted more eight
Speaker 1: thousand ers in the winter than anyone else, had never
Speaker 1: done so in pure alpine air. Expeditions like this are
Speaker 1: out of reach for most climbers from one of South
Speaker 1: Asia's poorest countries, but Nima's uniquely set up for them.
Speaker 1: His father, Tashi Lachpa Shrpa and uncles are the founders
Speaker 1: of one of Nepal's largest guiding companies seven Summit Tracks.
Speaker 1: The brothers also owned an outfitter named fourteen Peaks Expeditions,
Speaker 1: which Tashi oversees, a helicopter company called hell Everest, and
Speaker 1: steaks in various other businesses. Thanks to his dad's wealth,
Speaker 1: Nima never had to grind on the mountain guiding or
Speaker 1: schlepping westerner's gear as other sherpas do. Even Morrow's mentorship
Speaker 1: came through family connections. The alpinist works for the brothers
Speaker 1: as a helicopter pilot. A few days before Nina departed,
Speaker 1: we met for breakfast at the Aloft Hotel in Catmandeu,
Speaker 1: where his father puts up clients and which serves as
Speaker 1: seven Summits de facto headquarters. Bearing the hall marks of adolescence,
Speaker 1: a light mustache, clean air, Jordans, and earnest enthusiasm, Nima
Speaker 1: sipped a cappuccino while dishing sound bites at double speed.
Speaker 1: Eloquent and private school educated, Nima Knuah's lines. I only
Speaker 1: want to do projects that are meaningful, he said, because
Speaker 1: we're going to pass away some day. We have a
Speaker 1: very limited time. The Winter expedition would be a major
Speaker 1: step up from what he'd done involving breath taking cold,
Speaker 1: and hurricane level winds that could pin climbers in their
Speaker 1: tents for days, but Nina was undaunted. This concludes readings
Speaker 1: from National Geographic Magazine for to day. Your reader has
Speaker 1: been Barsha. Thank you for listening, Keep on listening, and
Speaker 1: have a great day.