Africa

Trains, a Bio-Truck, and Winston the High-Speed Pigeon

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When you have an item on a pigeon named Winston (right) who is faster than the Internet (OK, the South African Internet), then you’re hard pressed to even care about the rest of the podcast. That’s why I put Winston at the end. That story is like the banana cream pie you get at the end of the meal. But first, you have to eat your broccoli. Luckily, we here at WTP believe in dressing up the broccoli in a delicious sauce that makes it go down a bit easier. We start with two items on trains. With the US Congress’ recent approval of eight million dollars in stimulus money for the creation of a high-speed rail network in the United States, we thought we’d look at international examples that may, or may not, prove to be models for America. We hear a report from Kathy Schalch, who looks at Europe’s high-speed rail. Hearing that piece jogged my memory of a report I put on WTP a couple of years ago. It was about Cambodia’s Bamboo Railway. So, I thought I’d dig out a classic from the WTP archives, just to help you keep the very notion of “high-speed rail” in perspective. Oh, and yes, there’s video!

We also have an update on a story we’ve been following for quite a while now: the mining of so-called “conflict minerals” in Congo. It’s not often a reporter gets to go into Congo to assess the situation. But the BBC’s Karen Allen did manage to do an incredible story on how the mining of coltan and cassiterite (important for your mobile phones!) is affecting local populations in Congo. In slightly that same vein, we also hear about how, and why, the push for hybrid vehicle technology might create a similar run on minerals in other parts of the world.

Winston aside, though, my favorite story from this week’s podcast is Briton Andy Pag and his Bio-Truck. Great stuff.

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