What if we've confused keeping people safe with giving them a good life?

Meet Teun Toebes, Dutch healthcare innovator, author and dementia advocate on a mission to change how the world lives with dementia. At 21, most of us are figuring out what to do with our lives - but Teun decided to move into a locked dementia ward in the Netherlands. Not as a patient, and not as a carer, but as a housemate. For three and a half years, he shared his life with people whose voices are too often overlooked. His experience sparked an international movement, a documentary called Human Forever, and a campaign to open the doors of locked nursing homes.

But this isn't simply a story about changing aged care. It's about friendship, freedom, dignity, and the extraordinary things that can happen when we stop defining people by what they've lost.

(Podcast Image Credit: Teun with housemate. Stan Heerkens)

In this episode:

• Why a 21-year-old nurse decided to move into a locked dementia ward
• What three and a half years living alongside people with dementia taught him
• How football, a motorcycle and a very fast speedboat can change the end of a life
• Why good intentions don't always lead to a good quality of life
• What communities in South Africa and an intergenerational school in America can teach us about dementia
• The Open the Doors movement and the push to rethink locked nursing home wards
• How living alongside people with dementia changed his understanding of death, grief and what it means to be human

Timestamps:
00:00 The Housemate
00:57 Meet Teun Toebes
03:26 Why a 21-year-old moved into a dementia ward
06:05 Zero Risk, Zero Life
08:19 Becoming a Housemate
11:31 Motorcycles, Speedboats and Friendship with Art
13:24 Midpoint Reflections
15:50 What Happens When You Challenge the System?
17:42 What If a Nursing Home Is Your Only Option?
19:37 Human Forever: Rethinking Dementia Around the World
23:18 Open the Doors: Freedom vs. Safety
26:17 Dementia Rights Are Human Rights
27:31 What Families Need to Know About Dementia
28:47 What Happens When All Your Housemates Die?
30:48 The Power of Paying Attention
32:02 Final Reflections

Curious to find out more?
👉 Explore Teun's documentary, Human Forever

👉 Discover Teun's books, including The Housemates

👉 Support his work through Article 25 Foundation

About Fix The News:
Fix The News is a solutions-focused media platform sharing stories from the frontlines of progress - exploring what’s working in the world and the people making it happen.

Subscribe & follow:
If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast and leave a review - it helps more people find these stories.

Production credits:
Hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-Rose
Produced by Fix The News
Audio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That!

This episode was produced in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri and Woi Wurrung peoples.

What happens when the systems we've relied on stop working? And who gets to decide what comes next?

A year after the dismantling of USAID sent shockwaves through the international aid sector, the world's leaders, philanthropists and changemakers gathered in New York for the UN General Assembly and Climate Week. The funding crisis was far from over, and the big questions about what comes next remained unanswered.

Amy spent a week in New York talking to people who weren't waiting for the old systems to be fixed. From former aid workers building a lifeboat for abandoned programmes to a dating app helping tackle HIV, she discovered some unexpected ways of doing things differently.

In this episode, Amy and Gus unpack five conversations from New York and ask whether the messy middle might be exactly where new possibilities begin.

In this episode:

• The Lifeboat Crew: How Rob Rosenbaum and a group of former USAID workers helped redirect more than $170 million towards programmes at risk of closure.
• Grindr's unexpected mission: CEO George Arison on using a global dating app to help millions of people access HIV prevention.
• A billion people in ten years: Felix Brooks-Church on Sanku's extraordinary growth and a business model designed to solve hidden hunger.
• Rethinking philanthropy: Judith Lingeman from the Postcode Lottery Group on the power of trust, unrestricted funding and giving organisations room to dream.
• A world without single-use plastic: Nicky Davies from the Plastic Solutions Fund on bringing 35 foundations together, changing the systems behind plastic pollution and why cities could lead the way.

Five very different conversations that all ask the same question: what becomes possible when we stop assuming the way we've always done things is the only way?

Timestamps:

00:45 Introduction - Amy & Gus

03:45 Rob Rosenbaum, Project Resource Optimization

13:36 George Arison, Grindr

19:39 Felix Brooks-Church, Sanku

25:52 Judith Lingeman, Postcode Lottery Group

32:49 Nicky Davies, Plastic Solutions Fund

42:39 Closing Reflections - Amy & Gus

Find out more:

👉 Project Resource Optimization
👉 Grindr

👉 Sanku
👉 Postcode Lottery Group
👉 Plastic Solutions Fund

About Fix The News:
Fix The News is a solutions-focused media platform sharing stories from the frontlines of progress - exploring what’s working in the world and the people making it happen.

Subscribe & follow:
If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast and leave a review - it helps more people find these stories.

Production credits:
Hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-Rose
Produced by Fix The News
Audio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That!

This episode was produced in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri and Woi Wurrung peoples.

How do you get the world to pay attention to a problem it thinks it's already solved?

Around a billion children are exposed to dangerous levels of lead. It can be hiding in cookware, spices and cosmetics, or released through industries like battery recycling. For a child, exposure can mean losing up to six IQ points - irreversible damage that, multiplied across hundreds of millions of children, becomes an enormous drain on human potential. And yet, unlike so many global challenges, we already know how to prevent it.

Meet Drew McCartor, President of Pure Earth. For the past 17 years, Drew and his colleagues have been sounding the alarm about lead poisoning: gathering evidence, understanding the scale of the problem and building the playbook for how to solve it. Now, after decades of “yelling into the void”, the world is finally paying attention - and Drew believes we have an opportunity to eliminate lead poisoning altogether.

In this episode:

• Why around a billion children are exposed to dangerous levels of lead
• The surprising places lead is still hiding - from cookware to spices
• What losing four to six IQ points means for a child - and an entire country
• How a Craigslist ad led Drew from unpaid intern to President of Pure Earth
• Why Pure Earth spent years wondering if they were crazy
• The young boy in Bangladesh who brought the human cost of lead poisoning home for Drew
• What changed when the world finally started paying attention
• Why Drew believes we can eliminate lead poisoning altogether

About the title: A Useful Truth comes from a 1786 letter by Benjamin Franklin about lead poisoning: “You will observe with concern how long a useful truth may be known and exist before it's generally received and practiced upon.” Almost 250 years later, it feels remarkably apt.

Timestamps:
00:00 A Useful Truth
00:55 Do you ever feel like something is wrong but no one will listen?
03:20 Haven’t we already solved lead poisoning?
05:00 What does lead poisoning actually mean?
07:43 The curse of the Industrial Fairy
10:20 What’s harder: solving lead poisoning or convincing people it matters?
12:31 From Craigslist ad to President of Pure Earth
14:50 How do a group of hippies change the world?
17:36 Midpoint reflections
20:09 When the world finally started paying attention
22:57 What happens when you get the thing you’ve spent 17 years working towards?
25:07 Lead and the global funding crisis
29:06 The story that makes lead poisoning real
33:58 The solutions are already here
34:46 What happens if we raise the IQ of a billion children?
39:01 What’s possible if we solve lead poisoning?
44.59 Final Thoughts

Curious to find out more?

👉Check out the Pure Earth website
👉Support their work
👉 Listen to Drew's TED Talk
👉 The Pure Earth SCALE Initiative to protect 500 million children from lead exposure

About Fix The News:
Fix The News is a solutions-focused media platform sharing stories from the frontlines of progress - exploring what’s working in the world and the people making it happen.

Subscribe & follow:
If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast and leave a review - it helps more people find these stories.

Production credits:
Hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-Rose
Produced by Fix The News
Audio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That!

This episode was produced in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri and Woi Wurrung peoples.