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Outlook: A Family Affair: Spiders, Gandalf – a brother's bucket list

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Royd Tolkien taking on his bucket list

02/01/2024 GMT

A Family Affair: Spiders, Gandalf – a brother's bucket list

BBC World Service - Outlook, A Family Affair: Spiders, Gandalf – a brother's bucket list

Royd Tolkien’s brother Mike left him a daring list of tasks to complete after he died

When Royd Tolkien’s brother Mike died of Motor Neurone Disease, he left a bucket list of 50 outlandish tasks for him to complete. Carrying them out gave Royd a reason to go on.

Royd Tolkien is the great-grandson of JRR Tolkien – author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Royd and his younger brother Mike were very close, but also very different; Mike was the adrenaline junkie who loved bungee jumping whereas Royd likes nothing better than a cup of tea in the garden. When Mike died of Motor Neurone Disease in 2015 he left Royd a bucket list of 50 daring tasks, and completing them gave Royd a reason to carry on. Royd has written a book about his experience called There's a Hole in my Bucket: A Journey of Two Brothers. (First broadcast in August 2021).

In her thirties, Elide Castillo Tzab found herself raising her children alone, toiling to earn enough money to provide for them. Her mother saw her struggles, and taught her the recipe for recados, the flavourful spice mixes that are the speciality of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. This was to be the start of Elide’s successful food co-operative, Semilla De Dioses, or Seeds of the Gods. And after a hurricane, Elide’s sister Delfina joined the business that the sisters now call “a life project.” Outlook's Claudia Alarcón went to meet them.

Presenters: India Rakusen and Jo Fidgen

Get in touch: outlook@bbc.com or WhatsApp +44 330 678 2707

(Photo: Royd Tolkien taking on his bucket list. Credit: Royd Tolkien Productions)

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