So it's not yet clear with the epidemic is peaked 72 people have died of measles in Sambo in recent weeks most of them young children and state of emergency declared following the outbreak which limits travel in gatherings It's now been extended until nearly the end of the year Michael Bristow the leader of Britain's opposition Labor Party has apologized for his party's worst electoral defeat since the 1930 s. And Ls had published in a Sunday newspaper Jeremy Corbyn said he was sorry that Labor had come up short in Thursday's election however writing in another paper Mr Coburn insisted that he won the arguments on fighting climate change increasing government spending and curbing corporate power. News from the b.b.c. Nicaragua's National Assembly has approved a plan to nationalize a major petrol station company that was the subject of sanctions by the United States 2 days ago supporters of the move said it would ensure the supply of fuel to mimic Iraq wins the Us Treasury Department accuses the family of President Daniel Ortega of using the company d.m.p. To launder money the president or take as has the us is seeking to undermine the left wing governments in the region. An earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 has struck the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines images posted on social media shows some damage to roads and buildings the same region was struck by 3 quakes in October and 1 in November they both or it is in the state of Assam in northeast India have relaxed a curfew in just rates affected by violent protests against a controversial citizenship law the new bill grant citizenship to refugees from religious minorities in neighboring countries the law sparked days of protest in India's northeastern states where many people fear it would allow insiders to take their lands and jobs on Saturday night one person died of one more person died of their injuries a ceremony has taken place to dedicate the new national stadium in Tokyo which will be the main venue for the 2020 Summer Olympics and Paralympics the design by the Japanese architect can go Cooma features a wooden latches structure that echoes traditional Japanese styles and blends in with the surrounding Parkland attending the event the Japanese prime minister Shinzo said the games would be a significant would be a significant moment for the country that in all. We have to make next year's Tokyo games an opportunity to share dreams and hopes to create a proud legacy to show Japan's power to the world and open up the future of this country like I need to write about. And that's the latest b.b.c. News. Hello and welcome to in the balance the program that digs behind the business and economic headlines I'm on wait us out of Austin in this edition mental health in the workplace the broad approach seems to be Don't Ask Don't Tell in the u.k. For instance a study found that more than 2 thirds of people who struggled with their mental well being have never told their employer yet the World Health Organization estimates that depression and anxiety have a significant economic impact costing the global economy about one trillion dollars a year in lost productivity So what is an employer's role in all of this and does the workplace have a role to play in breaking down stigma if so how and what is good practice those are the questions we're going to try and answer with our panel of guests today so let me crack on and introduce some of Nikki Young is in the studio with me here she's the group managing director of a strategic communications company called Mother low salt with offices in London and Singapore Nicky Yes Sally make less is professor of organizational behavior and leadership at side business school at the University of Oxford and Mary Daniels is a u.k. Based on trip in a author and Coach welcome to all of you thank you thank you thank you not 2 of you have personal experience of a mental health crisis and and I want to come to your stories in just a moment but can I start with you Professor makers because Kemet clear up some meanings here when people talk about mental health at work what exactly are we talking about is it about being happy and not being stressed in your job is it about mental illness what exactly do we mean when we talk about mental health work where you're right to ask because it is a very broad term that is used differently by different people in different circumstances so I mean it can mean how people are feeling work some mental health work are people feeling that they have a sense of well being and they feel content with their work life and. Work environment but when we talk about it in the context of people struggling with mental health issues it's normally referring to experiences of depression anxiety or extreme stress or cases of burnout or other often diagnosable mental health conditions Wright says it's a lot more than just being content and not stressed and you know it's we're talking about what would be illness as well mental illness Yes And Mary in the keep you both have personal experience of this cast out with you Mary what is your story. Yes. When I was roughly 24 years old I can just remember really hitting a wall I was running a business at the time it was going really well you know to the outside world my partner and children and where we lived we you know everything looked as if we were flourishing and everything was going really well but inside I just was completely disconnected really numbed out and from a series of events childhood traumas that sort of hit May What I realized afterwards was sort of postnatal depression also just lots of challenges with my mental health and mental well being where I couldn't correlate what I was feeling inside with what was happening externally and then I think one morning I just woke up and realized that conscious that I've had enough and took my son along with me my young son who's a baby and found myself on the side of Tower Bridge and just felt that the only option was to jump and it wasn't panicked I wasn't freaking out in that sense it was probably the calmest I've ever been in my life and it was a scary moment thankfully I didn't follow through with it but yeah everything really got me to that point very very traumatic and also to look back to but it's something you openly talk about as part of your work now isn't it it is I think because you know growing up I was fostered for my early days and then made back with my family who originally from Ghana West Africa I wasn't really aware of mental health any challenges people that you could you know it wasn't spoken about and even after the events and actually not that long ago when my book was released just to talk about it within the family what it did is it just opened up a conversation and I found out how so many other family. This has been struggling and yes I felt it important I think to speak about it write about it and to let people know I think how far certain things can push if you don't pay attention to some of the early warning signs and just just to go back what say you to that day on top which I think just a mixture of things there it's that the bridge at that time in the morning is normally a completely empty I used to walk there almost every morning and at that time for some somewhat said bizarre Some might say synchronicity but there were tourists on there and there's never. A I think also with my son he is such a happy boy and he was smiling and laughing and I think a mixture between that and just something to make clicking I think so many things clicked that almost felt like I was being jerked back and pulled back and now your well I may as well as I can be I mean I have my moments and I think there are times when I know especially when I start to get anxious or overwhelmed you know I've burnt out a few times I think I'm well enough to to know I would never get myself to that situation again but I do still have to keep an eye on things because I can get lost in work or in the environment a new key Times story just similar to to marry Riley I was working hard and my company you know I was I was the 1st employee side been there for many years and I prided myself that I had worked really hard to create a culture that was natural looked after its employees and we're well known for that and I too had suffered from postnatal depression. We were going straight time of unprecedented growth and it coincided with us struggling to find time and good talent. So you still can't find stuff basically and we had a couple of senior leaders on maternity leave I started to step in and before I knew it in addition to my own job I was doing 4 people's job and I think that's quite normal when you feel you have such a vested interest in what I used to refer to my as my 1st baby it it all came together after a big event and then I had been the culmination of 2 months of intense work me doing a lot of those the stuff myself the event was a huge success and on International Women's Day which is the day after I couldn't get out of bed I woke up and my body was paralyzed you have a breakdown I was having a breakdown and then at the time I was confused by the sensation it just kind of took my body and I felt I couldn't get out of bed I talked to my husband about it and he said right into math I'm going to take care of this and he disappeared and I remember waking up with a fright about an hour later because he came through the front door. And anxiety and panic overwhelmed me and the adrenaline got me out of bed and I rushed to the top of the stairs and I I said him please tell me you haven't done it you haven't done you haven't find work that was the most important thing that was actually thinking of that attorney and he said to me it's to make a year you're going to stay home for a couple of months and get better and how would your employees at the time and how did they react as they were compare were terrific I mean I'm very lucky because the 2 found I was the 1st employee and we we have common values and a value base which is to look after people who work for us and immediately on that day we agreed that I would take a couple of months off we also agreed that while my husband a great together with my a chanter rector who I had employed and it was a very interesting situation to you know remove control from myself but my h.r. Director said We won't be in touch it's important for you to just focus on yourself switch off and I think that probably was the most difficult thing because I am a very emotionally achieving person I want to always be in touch and help people perhaps to my detriment I didn't at the time know when to stop but it was really good to actually administer self care and your well now well again position I'm back in my position I went back to work after 2 months and I'm to Mary's point it's a constant journey I think and I'm very aware that many people fall back into clinical depression when they've suffered once before and all I know is that I never want to go there again so I actively work hard to look after myself and I'm selfish not so. Fisch I often say that in the sense that now I know that unless I'm looking after me I can look after the others be them my family my friends were indeed people who work with me Mary how did your business survive that breakdown Did you know the interesting thing is mine unfolded quite slowly so whilst I had that really awful moment on the bridge I started to self manage and find my own tools to bring in place I wasn't actually off work I still carried on but I mentally decided that I had to make some changes and adjustments and it happened over a long period of time I really want to be honest with people I didn't people want talking about it so I didn't even know I had had a mental breakdown or it to me a long time to even come to that conclusion I want to bring Professor Sally Mae just back in here because I think the stories we're hearing here it shows how broad the experience of mental health and mental illness is and there is no sort of one trajectory for someone's illness so what what does that mean from the employer's point of view because you know everyone has their very individual experience of this Yes exactly and so what that means is there isn't a sort of one solution fits all and that what you need to do you know as I think you need to in basically good management anyway is get to know your people and be aware of when someone's behavior starts to change at work take a moment to check in with them to see how they are and to really listen and on that basis see if you can talk talk with them about what they might find helpful if they do you know talk about the fact that the struggle that something's going on but unfortunately research suggests that on the whole people don't talk about their mental health difficulties at work although it's incredibly prevalent you know one in 6 people is dealing with a common man. A health condition that any anyone time of very small percentage of those will feel comfortable talking about it and in fact the people they feel least comfortable talking to about are often the line manager in h.r. So we've got the situation a very prevalent set of struggles for people at work and fear because of the stigma around mental health issues of letting anybody know what's going on so you have to be really observant and attentive to people to even be able to get wind of what's going on you know or preferably to have good working relationships with your employees so that they feel able to come to you when they feel marriage of a crisis and that's it isn't it I mean you have to have good working relationship that's easier if you have employees who have been there for a while but I imagine that you know these situations happen also in companies where perhaps there is a high turnover of dollars I think this is that they caters biz to points one that the importance of leadership was emotional intelligence is moving up the agenda and one Sally describes as the need for leaders who no longer are looking to take boxes in terms of process and are we doing things rise in terms of this function achieving this role is actually empowering then direct reports to look at employees as human beings you know in the it's all about getting to know your employees and I am from the word go absolutely but also to read and to recognize that as a leader and as management that hard skills need to be supplemented by soft skills and by soft skills I mean been able to recognize those emotional elements that essentially make an I'm a work force thrive Professor make less I think the issue is though that this all is fine perhaps in companies that are slightly smaller where you know you can keep a tab on staff but most organizations many organizations have hundreds and hundreds of staff how do you manage mental health when you have hundreds in her. As a staff well you create a culture where mental health is not stigmatized and where it's understood that it's going to be an experience that many many people in the workforce have been there for just like physical health and and everything else the organization needs to address this and have have routines in place and norms around but make it something that can just be out there in the open but isn't the thing that's happening at the moment which I've seen in many reservations is that they'll they'll set up a phone line there's a there's a you know a therapist at the end line if you have a problem just call that line or becomes a bought the king exercises sort of a way we're covered but they're not really dealing so you see a downside that's the danger I think that's a big danger because again taking boxes of 10 people assume that that will achieve the job but today employees are digitally connected they have the opportunity to work for themselves employers no longer have the opportunity to hide behind take box 3 scenes and I speak as an employer it's important that you actually put into place practices that make a tangible difference and then work strategically as you would with a supply chain issue or an initial manufacturing plants and think of it as a business as she is when people think of it as with respects in h.r. Issues that perhaps they get sidelined to a department rather than being considered a business issue Nicky you have offices in London and in Singapore That's right the difference has it been very different the way people approach mental health in the workplace in the 2 different offices I think there is certainly a team in Singapore is very interested in the subject matter but I'm speaking with teams over there the way in which they approach it is different to the u.k. In that the phenomenon of saving face perhaps stops employees from coming forward in a way that they are starting. To decern the u.k. That said they do emphasize this notion of stress and managing stress so that it doesn't then progress to anxiety or Ben Now it's a reminder that you're listening to in the balance from the b.b.c. With me man where I sat also where we're discussing mental health in the workplace I want to ask you Professor Sally may place when we speak about to sort of situations really where the work causes the mental health issues but what about when the mental health issues or you know outside of work they're coming from completely different parts of people's lives employees lies what were sponsibility then does the employer have does it change the situation in any way when they when the problem is outside of work yes for meth I think people will bring their mental health issues into work because they're people and they're carrying them and I think they used to be a sort of idea that people would leave certain parts of themselves at home about their emotions or you know their mental health problems this kind of expected isn't it you think about it how do I think I think wonderfully is less expected now that there's more there's more realisation that people need to be able to bring more of themselves and work to be able to be good at work but there is a different set of responsibilities I think if you are in a organization which is really promulgating to practices which are making people's mental health worth you have a certain set of responsibilities around what you ask of people at work I think if people are coming in with preexisting mental health conditions I'm often think it's very hard to tease those 2 apart but I mean in my research there's usually an interaction of some early seeds of something which then get really amplified by the experience of of working and working in certain kinds of cultures but if people are bringing about peace of themselves in then we owe it to them as you humans that we're employing we're expecting to to do good stuff from us to at least support them in trying to deal with it themselves and for a period. Time to accommodate them so that they cam manage to sort themselves out or combined sort themselves out with doing work and that's often something that an employer you know is very well placed to do and that is really not all we're going to be a nice organization supporting people with mental health or are we going to be a good effective you know moneymaking enterprise if you're going to be a better organization with more productive people doing better in the marketplace if you have healthy people working for you well because let me ask you is there ever a tension there between making money and looking off to staff Yes I think it is because as an m.d. I know that it's at the end of the year and I have a budget proportion of that goes towards people people can be trained in and development and then there's mental health that is now being added to. That is fake and I think the challenge is that as employers particularly small businesses you have to make choices and I think that's where it will be fantastic if government could offer tax relief for those employees who demonstrates the detail of care to employees is it helpful to have people talk about mental health work as if it were a disability Professor Sally made less is it helpful to have it described or spoken about as if it is a disability I don't think it is in fact in some of the interviews I've done people have been very clear with me that this is a sort of case of you know maybe in your a divergent stories about having more you know accepting more diversity than other kind of diversity in the workplace yes because it's something that anybody could get any time and it's so different to the something that is expensive it might be obsolete disabling other people who've got to bipolar for example have said I wouldn't give this up for anything because when I'm in my Mom it phase I'm so creative I get so much done so it feels very problematic to regard it in a sort of blanket way as a disability even though it can be very disabling for but that's interesting that you think it should be a diverse. T. Issue. That is it is yeah is that would you hope we would be moving towards Mary Yeah I mean I think I have to agree with Laban is disability I think there's the bigger issue here is also the connotations of the way people are still struggling with dating with different levels of abilities and disabilities within the workplace that I think there's a stigma around that and also because mental mental wellness and mental health is a continuum a Sally was saying you know you can be really well one day and be really struggling a few days later depend on what's triggered that I think it could be dangerous to just put it in another space and label it as something way can get lost in that that world of what does that mean and I think it's finding balance and it is about you know I love what you were saying Sally about this sense of diversity it isn't pricing everybody's difference there is one thing I'm really strong I feel passionate about is we can be many things in a single moment at the same time and so it's really hard to know where this starts and stops and what is mental health what isn't I want to and with a question to all of you what does a healthy working culture look like and profess to make this if I could start with you I think one where people can bring. Ideally their full thoughts to work you know most of them selves to work and feel able to perform in ways that they feel is them at their best Mary what you think makes a healthy workplace I think healthy workplace is really about nurturing your people and bringing out the best of them and looking at how do we co-create a caring culture where everyone is accountable and takes responsibility for what that means and that starts with sort of self-awareness at all levels so yes you need a leadership team that is driving that but you need to empower everyone to be able to see. Cop about what their needs are I think that's what I've loved doing work with the minds at work who've been really bringing this into the charitable organization that's a promoter mental health in the workplace Yeah so that they're really sort of opening up these conversations and making people more conscious about what does a healthy workplace Mayne and look like for us as an organization because it's very different depending on your size what you're doing so it really needs to work for that group of people that organization and Nicky What's your opinion I think it's an environment where people feel that they don't have to hide from themselves and they feel that leadership understand and appreciates science mental illness is on equal level with physical illness and that culture is within business plans thanks to our guests today Nicky young group managing director of modern low salt Sally makers professor of organizational behavior and leadership at the University of Oxford and Mary Daniels a u.k. Based entrepreneur author and coach that's it from this edition of In The Balance and we're back again at the same time next week. Distribution of the b.b.c. World Service in the u.s. Is made possible by American Public Media producer and distributor of award winning public radio content a.p.m. American Public Media with support from Progressive Insurance offering a way to buy a home insurance with her home quote Explorer tool custom coach and rates are available online learn more at progressive dot com or 1800 progressive Now that's progress. This week on crowd science we're entering the little known world of insects a world where species seem to be disappearing faster than we can discover new ones one listener wants to know what would happen to our lives if the insects died out we were basically dark. So many of our crops are mated and so many plants are permitted but can you imagine we don't have the insects to get rid of our faith that would be rather unpleasant joined me money Chesterton after the needs. B.b.c. News with David Alston un climate talks that produce to end on Friday have continued all night in Madrid as negotiators try to patch up significant drifts over emissions cuts the Chilean government minister leading the discussions has appeared to delegates to show flexibility adding that a deal is close the Palestinian group airmass has condemned Israel's decision to prevent Christians living in the Gaza Strip from travelling to Bethlehem in the West Bank to celebrate Christmas Eve Israel has cited security concerns for its decision the early every citizen of the Pacific nation has some aware has not been vaccinated against measles following a deadly outbreak of the disease the government says 93 percent of the population has been inoculated 72 people have died of measles and some are in recent weeks the most of them young children an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 has struck the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines 60 kilometers southwest of the city of to images posted on social media shows some damage to roads and buildings Nicaragua's National Assembly has approved the plan to nationalize a major petrol station come for day that was the subject of sanctions by the United States 2 days ago the Us Treasury Department accuses the family of President Daniel Ortega of using the company to launder money police in New Zealand say teams who have conducted a further land search on White Island have been unable to locate 2 bodies still missing after last week's deadly volcanic eruption the leader of Britain's opposition Labor Party has apologized for his party's worst electoral defeat since the 1930 s. In a letter published in a Sunday newspaper Jeremy Corbyn said that he was sorry that Labor had come up short in Thursday's election b.b.c. News. Hello and welcome to crowd science this is the show that's how would buy listeners curiosity Fortunately a source that's both plentiful and renewable for those who are new to the show we take a question about anything scientific and try and find says today we're looking at insect decline in the world. The with. My name is Daria Russian but living in the capital of Germany Berlin I want to crowd science to find out what is going on with our insects I have read that their numbers are declining around the world if this continues what will happen with our crops that are aligned and 6 for pollination as someone who is in the city is there anything I can do to help the insects is this something that you've noticed personally few insects or are you just going by articles that you've read it is hard to say I mean I think since I heard about it 1st last time I have paid attention a bit more and then I does that for instance if you take a long trip out of town which we sometimes my do on a car you have far less insect dying in your windshield than you would normally do I remember cycling as a kids and when you go down this big hill near my house at speed you really have to keep your mouth shut because otherwise you just you just inhale a whole bunch of insects. And now not so much and then oh really yeah I remember how my father always had to wash his car really really well us or we would take like 4 or 5 hours from one time to another term normally from Oscar or relive to my grandparents up north and it would be completely covered in those like smashed yellow dead bugs and nowadays we would have 5 hour trip across Germany and very little of this would have. A recent scientific report shows that in the country where Daria lives Germany insect numbers have declined by 75 percent over a 27 year period and she's not the only one who's worried about the world's insects we put a call out to listeners all around the world to find out about their experiences with insects back in the day and now. Driving around in summer used to mean the front of the car was covered in 6 today scarcely any even after hundreds of miles I went to rural school in a village on the to tell coast of South Africa as a scholar in the late 1950 s. And early sixty's I experienced a profusion of insects the volume was such that the windows of our prayer prune would be covered some wonder whether pesticides of the problem bees are getting more rare possibly due to uncontrolled perfect side and less flowery plants. What is going on with our insects time to call in an old friend of the show the curator of fleas and flies at London's Natural History Museum they're going to do is go on Instagram and I update people. Not to be north of New York to be ever commit Callista is a woman who knows her stuff and uses that knowledge to police social media pointing out when people have misclassified a flaw is a b. And then I think that woman got a tattoo and she's like look at Milo Now you've been you're like. Really bad I got a really nice bowl in Italy and then the guy in the obviously didn't begin leaves and I get a big valley and and here guys there may be and I'm going to be fly because I've been I might believe that I was great because I've never advise you to be fire on a piece but Erica came into the studio to explain why the rest of us should love flies as much as she does most of us think of bees as the insect pollinator And granted they do. Do the majority of the work on important crops but fun fact 30 percent of the pollinating is done by Floyd even the much hated must be. Their important pollinators all those products that people love like parsley and onions and mango and chocolate bats fly pollination. Just not given any credit. But if they dress up as beads to deliver it then you can you can forgive people for eternity there are bands true but the things that poem night chocolate are your biting made j. Is that everyone hates I bits I hate midges I hate chocolate specifically image that out there are about 17 polar ages of chocolate where pigs. One is a tiny tiny one is a little micro muff was what we call a really small math one in a go make another type of lie in about 15 or 16 of them are these biting made. But we know so little about them so chocolate lover or not I think you can agree that bees and flies and morphs and other insects play a crucial role in pollinating important crops the work they do for free has been valued at $350000000000.00 but globally all the numbers declining. Humans have created a time in our earth's planet called the Anthropocene we've colonized a huge amount of the world to provide ourselves with resources that are inevitably going to have an impact on the other animals who share our earth everyone seems to have anecdotes but my producer and I've been hunting through the scientific literature and this shockingly little known about global decline of insects the insect community several 1000 entomologist like Erica recently met up at the entomological Society of America conference and everyone is on the same page finding way fewer of their chosen insects available to study than they used to be our overall feeling is there is something very bad happening however because infects the data has been quite limited being lots of long term studies on birds and other mammals and they like that but we're only beginning to catch up with the . Sex in a long study. And we've all seen 1st hand the difference between you know an a brownfields and beautiful pristine forest we know that we're killing them all problem is as well is that we don't feel know what's their Ysaye we still don't know all of the species so there are a whole lot of insect species that we've still haven't say Ok we think was there is 1.10 about 2000000 describe species of insects they've always been as maybe 5 to 30000000 who we're talking big numbers of difference even if we are only talking 5 you know we've been describing in states a 300 years and we haven't even got halfway yet and they're dying out before faster than you can name them and Yassar for them is a really sad thing I sit there looking at the undescribed material on a collection and from habitats I know no longer exist so you know they're they're from samples around the world caught in the 193-0000 forty's and I'm like you realistically as extinct species in that now and as a Reliant. It's just one of those. Right before quite sad that at this point you may be wondering how do scientists study tiny things like insects a simple way is to put up a white sheet and turn on a light and then wait till moths and other light lovers gather around start counting or if you prefer more complex methods you can build giant machines to suck them out of the air I've been to rock them stead research institute in the u.k. To see this bit of kit so I've brought you out to see one of our traps Richard Harrington who spent decades studying crop eating pest insects called a feeds and showed me around one of the gadgets he uses to measure the number basically is the John topside down vacuum cleaner you can hear it in the background all open the door and turn it off so that we can hear ourselves free. And it's one of 16 that we have around the country specifically for identifying a food it's pretty representative of what's in the air up to about 2 at least 50 miles wise so with a fairly sparse number of traps around the country we've got a pretty good idea of what's going on over the whole country. Tiny insects can cause huge problems for us a fades eat a lot of our food crops but Erica fan of the harvest fly says the insects are really good way to fight insects you don't want baby flies and known as maggots and each baby Hope a fly will eat $400.00 a fades before it gets to adult hood so Hava flies have another service on offer pest control let's think about using natural enemies i.e. Some of the clients that go around eating things those are what we want to encourage that. So fight flies with yet more flies are now going to telegram I had my thighs with flies. When they all of my eats the a fit it lifts it up in the air when a fit guy telling me this does right away so there is the whole bite of the Arab just sucking out the insides God if you took all the insects off the planet if we took all the insects of the planet we would basically dog because so many of our crops are mated and so many plants are part and I said that we take all of that for granted but can you imagine we we don't have the insects to get rid of our feces that would be rather unpleasant. Can I use my absence Gow Yeah go on I think of the biomass of the poor of an elephant every day I think is about 1000000 people so it's a lot of Peru and we didn't have the insects get rid of their ad that's why all the other animals on the planet when needed we always women through it and then add the fact that their decomposing bodies. Would be like swimming in Peru with dead animals and that saw stuff that the in 60 a lot of it they doing a lot of the major breakdown Ok and they converted it in for it to be usable for bacteria etc so they recycled. Just a reminder you're listening to crab science from the b.b.c. World Service and you've just heard a picture of a world without insects because we're tackling the topic of insect decline. We don't have exact figures and we don't have the time to wait until we have exact figures we do have a good idea why their numbers are being decimated habitat loss invasive species spread by humans and the big one climate change Erica McAlister has been telling us about the many unsung species of insect like all the flies that are important for pollination she's not the only fan meet Tasha Tucker c.e.o. Of a long architect and champion of the bugs they're the underdog of the pollination community I mean I think that's where I was extra track that to them and originally from Philadelphia we love a good underdog rooting for the unsung heroes in life are exactly that Tasha is working on a device that will help us to collect crucial data about the flies and help growers and people who want to attract insects why hold the Flies Besides a very adorable and really great pollinators there's something that's native to a lot of the crops that are so important to us and do a really great job on them already so which crops we took them out as a lot of your Berry and crops in particular so strawberries and blueberries are some of the early crops that we've traveled on and then starting to move into almonds and looking at the nut crop as well so can you tell me about how commercial pollination of a lot of these crops like Armin's might actually work because I think a lot of us don't really think about it and you just. Assume that nature and sunshine and rain and insects or whatever natural pollinators just do their thing so you can imagine and February in the us almost every single commercial beehive in the country gets on the back of a truck. And then drives for days and days across this entire country arriving in California just in time for the bloom season previous to that they were enjoying wild flowers and living their life in a normal kind of scenario and now they eat almonds for 3 weeks and then they get packed up and they get moved on to cherries and then packed up again and moved on to citrus fruit and then packed up again into berries. So that by the end of the season when they return back home they're exhausted their colonies are completely devastated so besides pesticides which are damaging bees just the sheer math that have power using them for pollination is destroying the bees this well. There's about $2000000000.00 that spent each year on just pollination services on just printing and purchasing will be used to $1000000000.00 in the u.s. Alone on a job in 6 used to dig for free. With rising populations the demand for food to does Annie going to go right and maybe it's time to give the bees a bit of a break film is complete Tasha's device out amongst their crops and it will gather data on waters around insect wise and what they're doing it's easily controlled through a single user interface for farmers on app and they're distributed throughout an orchard and as part portions of the crop start to come into bloom you can imagine if there's a few different varieties of the same crop 1 May come into bloom slightly before another one you can start to target and direct the pollinators right where they need to be and as you need them in the next area you pull them in towards that area you cover so it's not just you keeping them. In the right crop you're keeping them in the base of the crop that is ultimately the bit that needs the pollination directly right now as opposed to tomorrow when they are in the afternoon all of these nodes are connected and controlled by the farmer for example on an app on a smartphone and they send out smells that the right kind of flies like and if there aren't enough pollinators farmers can buy flies in a box but you need to control them otherwise they may just buzz off in the wrong direction you can imagine a strawberry farmer having their fields right next to oil see to rape all seek rape to them is like McDonalds or k.f.c. It's a super quick fast easy meal so it's very easy for them to get distracted and go off onto another field so you want to keep them focused on right where you need them to be now our listener Daria isn't a farmer but she talks know what she can do to encourage insects to stave off insect Armageddon do you magine these devices could be used by people in cities for example absolutely absolutely I'm a city girl myself and you know I think besides planting in my small areas window boxes and courtyards we can really start to look at ways to encourage pollinators cities. Increasingly more of us around the world are living in cities crops are grown in rural locations now our listener Daria lives in a city and she's wondering if there's anything urban dwellers can do to help We sent reporter Katie McAllister down to Curtin University in Perth in Western Australia where one scientist is teaching the public how to do this. In a debate today all say you get this if you meet the patent let's keep trying to get us to maybe base scientists running a workshop on building a hotel now what we're going to be full of and they should they. That. Keep putting up hotels. Hoping to entice night back into the environment when people think they usually think of one species as military which is the European honey Bay but is actually 20000 species of bays in the world and about 2000 species of bays in history more so than actually don't make honey most of them don't live in colonies in hives there's solitary and the females are all queens basically all of them can reproduce but they also have to do the foraging themselves as well why. Shouldn't 20000 species this is incredible in terms of evolution it's an amazing amount of diversity in body forms and behavior is native babies are important it is of many plants and older honeybees generalists this sort of like a jack of all trades master of none and so there's some of the native bees have called volved with particular Flora for millions of years and they've developed very specialized relationships making them better pollinators compatible. So they're going to do. Would create should by. But these big bits of wood are getting harder to find. Are often in short supply especially in urban areas in agricultural areas where trees that have these nesting cavities are unfortunately cleared. Because big bits of wood are in short supply in an agricultural areas hotels are an artificial way to make a space for the. Kids love of babies has spread to the rest of her family. And leaves. And Stephen we have had Bay hotels in their garden for nearly 4 years and they we've had them about 3 or 4 years now and I'm still learning much they just wonderful to say what do you see what difference that made in your garden It's amazing watching them actually putting all the little bits and pieces into the hole and and then sealing them up and didn't realize it oh my gosh the round uncapping them again and they gadding them and you know it's just you're just learning so much and you think well and they so strong. Even some of becoming more prevalent and we've got you start to give them lines believe it or not you naming babies yes all the regulars are going to share some of those names that are. Very very. Very innovative So how to lose a buzz the and a baby to your garden to make a baby hotel you need a pipe a cat for it bamboo kinds and some string to have a Friday of Diana to say that he can have different species of. So is it kind of like an actual hotel where there is you know the really big fancy sort of suite rooms and there's the more basic ones is that what we're talking about a little Really I guess you could describe it like that. Got the big. Big holes and then a little bays that we used a little hole it's not just important for the babies to have somewhere luxuries to live turns out it's important for us to now honey bays current day what's called pollination where they take your file is for example to matters need to be vibrated at a particular frequency for the point of a released honeybees can't do this that Al I strongly in. And the bomb this days they are very good at pollinating so. They are extremely good at pollinating crops like to modernize and. In Chile things like that is it fair to say we maybe have bases we wouldn't have access to the food that we ate today we wouldn't die if Baze went extinct we would have fewer food options but most importantly the world would be a much more to poor prick place and I would be very very and I think so would some of the children who made. The workshop. Times. And what happens do you think you don't have enough time. They could. Think. I'm down you and I and. Tell me what you just made and you're going to tell looks like kind of kind of like instead of square holes and what have you I've said you've written something about it what have you. Come and visit the luxury. Hotels are so important for the next generation of babies because they're the place. Like a nest it's so. Big leaves provisions and seals the nest and the new baby baby emerges when they're ready despite all of these we still don't have a complete picture of the world of 900 babies but one of the things is that most of them on being monitored rush to them we don't really have an idea about how the numbers of fluctuating and we really are only after the event when a baby comes it's. Just because you live in the concrete jungle doesn't mean there's no room for insects you. Can help by planting green roofs and green walls town planners can use the least likely places traffic islands can become urban nature reserves and of course our gardens and window boxes can be made brilliant for insects as Erica McAlister explains so when I was there as you can see you do it look at your food supply that's a really easy and obvious thing to do Ok the best is to do local and the best is do seasonal if you can organic I know it's quite expensive in a lot of places but we can start thinking about that so you encourage people not to chop down. Rainforest and plant culture not to use pesticides just 3 Boeing different from yeah we want our tropical fruits in the middle of winter we want these and it's like hold on every thought by the impact of doing that yourself you couldn't plant a load of plants and you garden or flower pots balconies everywhere and plant local plants for us and actually globally what the pollinators love are things like the lavender family. And so I need say you got amazing smells anyway margarine and all of that beautiful smells and insects you love it I don't know if you ever walked past a lavender bush in spring summer and it covered completely covered and it's so noisy . Through the little insect doing a little thing or are laughing their nice smelling nice flowering plants go for it I think you've my garden I've got lavender I don't really have a lot of space but probably a good thing because I definitely don't do a whole lot of gardening so it's all ramshackle you know we're doing not much gardening as lovely as well so that is nice let's not mow the lawn so much Ok we do not need to have grass once and me too long I mean doing you're not disturbing is a much so. Well you a little solitary bees can make their little homes in your garden. Late for work April right for you Miles which is why off because I have a lot of solitary babies in my lawn and these solitary bees are attacked by beef life which arguably the cutest guys on the planet and therefore the cutest animal on the planet and I'm watching them and this is a really complicated battle going on between all these insects and survival than is like a 980 s. Night club. Everything is either trying to beat each other up or cop off with each other because I'm not the best God I can see all of this now going on which is brilliant by being lazy or doing good. As a lazy person this is really a message I can get behind so listen to Daria Yes there is a problem but also yes there are things we can do to help as individuals to make things better keep your little patch of the town or city you live in floral and messy but also think about the problems further up the food chain so many species are being lost because their habitats they cleared for commercial foods like palm oil crab science recently took a trip to Malaysia to look at that in more detail so I'd really recommend having a look through our extensive back catalogue and listening to. Their search for this edition of crowd Symes from the b.b.c. World Service Today's question was from me Daria in Germany the program was presented by a mining Chesterton and produced by Elisa field if you have a question about life Earth or the universe please email it to crowd science at b.b.c. Dot. K. Thanks for listening. We know you're busy your phone Santa calls come this struggle to get I'm so sick of hearing about the meat that we put on Morning Edition your things and I think. It's Morning Edition from n.p.r. News I'm Steve Inskeep whether you're in North Carolina and North Dakota or maybe up the North Pole we've got you covered this holiday season Morning Edition it's the gift that keeps on giving you the news every day all year long from N.P.R.'s News and weekday mornings from $510.00. This is Connecticut Public Media believe in p.r. And w e n p r h d one marriage and at $90.00 there p k t p k t h d one door which at 89 point one w e d w at and Stanford at 88.5 w r o i f m Southampton at 91.3 n.w. Npr dot org. On from our own correspondent after this but listen Germany has gone cold on cold but it's still a woman some homes as he leads me down the narrow staircase into his cellar I'm hit by a wall of hot air the furnace door swings open it's running well now he shouts over the role music politics and violence collide in Haiti the yard shouted with the dissonant bass needle shop drums of Haitian trap music as for actors armed with shotguns and m. 16 stormed in and dramatized holding is a lance crew of gun point the musicians didn't even flinch the chorus rang out. I don't run and a story of grief and longing from Kuwait I know from personal experience that coming to terms with the violent loss of a relative you've never really known is his own journey you try to answer the many questions at least behind what happened to them what kind of person would say all of this and more on from our own correspondent off to this bulletin of b.b.c. World news. Hello this is David Alston with the b.b.c. News un climate talks that were due to end on Friday have continued all night in the Spanish capital as negotiators try to patch up a significant rift the Chilean government minister leading the discussions has appealed to delegates to show flexibility adding that a deal is close our environment correspondent mapa Gras is in Madrid the most divisive issue would come 25 years over the ambition being shown by countries how far will they go in the face of scientific urgency about climate change the European Union and small island states want all nations to put new much improved climate pledges on the table by the end of next year but the Us Australia India and China have objected However as suggested compromise would see new plans from all countries next year but would also ask the richer countries to show they have kept their promises to cut carbon in the years up to 2020 the Palestinian group Hamas which controls the Gaza Strip has condemned Israel's decision to prevent Christians living in.