4.4 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2025
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
In September 2014, the world's first baby was born to a mother with a transplanted womb, making headlines around the globe.
Malin Stenberg had the pioneering surgery over a year earlier when she received the donated organ from a family friend, giving birth to her son Vincent at Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden.
Reena Stanton-Sharma speaks to Prof Pernilla Dahm-Kähler, who was a member of the talented team whose dedication would help bring Vincent into the world.
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there. For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more. Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue. We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher. You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.
(Photo: Prof Pernilla Dahm-Kähler. Credit: University of Gothenburg)
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm Rory Stewart and I grew up wanting to be a hero and I'm still fascinated by the ideas of heroism. |
| 0:08.9 | In my new series, I'm taking in the long sweep of history from Achilles to Zelensky and asking, what is a hero? |
| 0:16.1 | Simply doing your job, being a decent human being. |
| 0:20.0 | A true hero is someone who just kind of shines by |
| 0:23.1 | their own light and that light is to be recognized by others. The long history of heroism |
| 0:27.8 | with me, Rory Stewart. Listen on BBC Sounds. Hello and welcome to the Witness History podcast from the BBC World Service with me, Rina Stanton Sharma. |
| 0:43.8 | We're about to take you to a moment in history where you'll hear the amazing memories of people who are there as well as powerful archive recordings. |
| 0:53.6 | The program is just nine minutes long and comes out every weekday. |
| 0:58.3 | So if that sounds like your kind of thing, make sure you subscribe wherever you get your BBC |
| 1:03.9 | podcasts and turn on your push notifications so you never miss a thing. |
| 1:09.5 | Today, I'm telling you the story of a pioneering moment in medical history, |
| 1:14.6 | which would go on to change lives around the world |
| 1:17.8 | when the first baby was born to a mother who'd had a womb transplant. |
| 1:24.5 | It's the 4th of September 2014 in Gothenburg, Sweden. |
| 1:31.3 | This is the baby boy born to parents who thought they might never have a child of their own. |
| 1:36.5 | His name is Vincent. |
| 1:38.3 | The baby is doing fine and of course that was fantastic happiness among me and the whole team. |
| 1:43.8 | But in the same time it was a little unreal sensation also |
| 1:47.7 | because we really couldn't believe that we had reached this moment. |
| 1:53.6 | Little Vincent has helped push back the boundaries of what's possible. |
| 1:57.2 | He may be the first of many. |
| 1:59.6 | And he was. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.