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Episode details

World Service,20 Mar 2017,49 mins

Writing My Cellmates' Names in Blood

Outlook

Available for over a year

Mansour Omari spent nearly a year in a Syrian government prison in 2012. We hear his account of life in an underground cell and how, against the odds, he managed to smuggle out the names of his fellow cellmates to their loved ones - by writing them down, using chicken bones and blood on a piece of cloth. He's now writing a book about his experience. Wu Yulu is one of millions of farmers in China, but he's always loved inventing things. Now he's become a robot inventor and over the past forty years he has created more than 60 home-made robots - what he calls his robot sons - in his garage in a small village near Beijing. For Outlook, Dandan Chen went to visit him in his workshop. Wendy Baxter began climbing trees as a child and she's never stopped. Today she spends her working life climbing the emperor of all tree species - the giant sequoia of the Sierra Nevada mountains in the western United States. These trees can live thousands of years and grow to a height of more than one hundred metres. Despite her own fear of heights, Wendy climbs them to study the effects of climate change. Image: Mansour Omari's list of names Credit: Mansour Omari

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