Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: Eight-year-old steals the show at the Six Nations

Episode Date: February 17, 2024

This week, the eight-year-old boy who sang in front of tens of thousands of people at a rugby international. Also: the campaign encouraging appreciation of the people who do the vital job of waste picking in India. And how a penguin helps out his short-sighted friend.

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Search for Amazing Sports Stories wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Come on, Ireland! I'm Stephen Kilkenny and you're listening to The Happy Pod. He's quite right. This is The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and in this edition, uploaded on Saturday the 17th of February, the eight-year-old who became a media sensation after singing in front of tens of thousands of people at a rugby international in Dublin. Wenders pressure on Stevie has always delivered so

yes we're very proud of him. We'll hear about the campaign in India to encourage people to see waste pickers differently. These people are not just waste pickers, but they are recyclers, they are entrepreneurs. Celebrating 10 years of the Africa Prize. What the Africa Prize has done is that it's really shown that innovation happens everywhere. Also in this podcast, meet Joe, a man unafraid of a challenge. It's kind of a chatting of like a midlife crisis, like a guy who's 40s doing a marathon, I think. On long distance running, dealing with a stammer and learning a foreign language and a very special Penguin partnership. Now, whether you're a sports fan or not, there can be something very uplifting about the pre-match ceremony of the teams and the crowd united in at home and on social media were blown away by this. Eight-year-old Stevie Mulrooney singing the Irish rugby anthem, Ireland's Call. We spoke to Stevie and first to his dad Seamus about talent,

staying calm under pressure and newfound fame. He didn't always sound as good as he does now, shall we say that, but he always was an entertainer from the time he could walk and talk. He was doing magician shows, he was singing. He used to sing Johnny Cash and even Queen, Freddie Mercury, Jackie, and what would happen is if he forgot a word, he would just improvise, and I was always amazed at how he used to do that. I will say, any anytime he's had to perform

in public or when there's pressure on Stevie has always delivered so yes we're very proud of him as you can imagine Jack. I can imagine Stevie okay we're getting a picture of you as a born entertainer but that was a big crowd it would have been easy to have been overwhelmed by just the scale of the whole experience what was going through your head yes I was very nervous because the big crowd it was very hard but I got over it when I sang and the nerves just went when I got into the song. And when you're preparing for something like that the things that you have to to worry about are the tempo and the acoustics because you know you won't necessarily be hearing the same thing that the people at home are hearing and it's difficult to hear your own voice perhaps and there's just so much going on.

In terms of preparing yourself, stealing your nerves, how do you do that? Earphones. No, the actual earphones they gave to you helped block it out, didn't you? Tell Jackie the story on that. Yes, the earphones block out all the sound around you, so they'll block out the crowd roaring, but when someone's speaking to you, you can't hear them.

And after you'd finished and you then went and watched the match, you probably didn't have any idea of the sort of reaction that was going on online, did you? No, I didn't know anything about online, what was happening. I was just enjoying the match. I was very proud of what I did. And I was just enjoying the match till Dad started looking it up on his phone,

the amount of likes that was coming up. I was going to ask you that, Seamus, because if you'd had your phone with you, presumably it would have started going ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping, ping really fast. There was an immediate reaction, wasn't there? Jackie, before I got to sit down, I had already been contacted by a television crew who wanted to speak to me the next day. And I was just, could they at least let me sit down and watch the match? So, yeah, it started immediately. And I mean immediately. But a funny story where I was actually placed or where I was,

I was right at the tunnel as the teams were coming out. So I had a fantastic view. However, I could not see Stevie because he's so small. He was behind the team. I was able to see the yellow boots from time to time, but I had to look at the big screen to see him sing it. So it was interesting. I'm offended.

You're offended? I'm offended because the rugby players are so tall. They're very tall compared to me as well. So Stevie, you obviously are very good under pressure. Offer some advice to anybody who is facing a big performance in front of a lot of people and they're a bit nervous about it. What would you advise them to do? Yes, they should sing from their heart and just try and stay calm. Even if there's a big crowd, just close your eyes.

When I was on that field, I taught. I closed my eyes and said, OK, this is just a big green field with just a couple of people standing around me. That's a really good piece of advice. If you think that you're just talking to one or two people or singing to just one or two people, that's really solid advice. What's it like now, Stevie, to be famous? It feels great. It just feels great. Anybody, ordinary people can do extraordinary things

if they believe in themselves. Stevie Mulrooney who's eight we also heard from his dad seamus and a shout out to singing coach alberto school teacher sylvia knox and definitely not to forget his big sisters his little brother and his mum carolina it takes a village now to india where a campaign is underway to foster an appreciation of the people who do vital but dirty work, picking through rubbish. And as Claire Bowes found out, it starts with a song. 3-8-3-2-5-0-0-0-0 That happy number, let's have it one more time, 3-25 0000, that is 383,250,000 kilograms. And that refers to the huge pile of rubbish that waste pickers prevent from reaching landfill each year in the Indian city of Bengaluru.

That's the city previously known as Bangalore. So it's this huge pile of stuff which people have thrown away, thinking that there's no more use for it. But in actual fact, the waste pickers sort through it and find the bits that can be sold or recycled. And this job is mostly done by families belonging to a particular caste. I am Indira and I live in Bengaluru. Indira's family are all waste pickers and aged 10 she joined them too, picking through the waste. But people like Indira are not widely valued in Indian society.

Instead, they often experience discrimination with people regarding them as both dirty and untrustworthy. Yes, caste discrimination is still there. People still differentiate between upper and lower castes. But aren't we people first? There's a huge campaign going on in the city of Bengaluru at the moment and 10 different organisations are involved. They're looking at all aspects of waste pickers' lives

but we're looking at what one organisation, BBC Media Action, is doing. I spoke to Radharani Mitra, whose global creative advisor there, and she told me the priority for them was to try to reframe the role of waste pickers and to remove the distrust and disgust factor. There's definitely been a shift amongst the general population of Bengaluru. And the fact that they now see that these people are not just waste pickers, but they are recyclers, they are entrepreneurs. So as well as composing the Happy Numbers song,

they also conducted a social experiment on Facebook. And this was to connect the general public with waste pickers. So they could understand what their lives were actually like. And ultimately, to understand that they do all this and it's super beneficial for the city. And this really seems to have struck home. I had a lump in my throat because my heart goes out to these people who are doing things that none of us want to do. They also introduced the glam factor. With a series of filmed coffee dates with celebrities. Now here's Indira, who we met earlier, chatting with a famous Indian actress called Bhumi Shetty.

And Indira says in her everyday life now, she's already noticed a change in the way people treat her. In the past, people used to look at us and move away from us. Now the situation has changed. Today I'm invited to places and offered a seat and some water or tea. There is definitely a shift in the way people see me, which makes me happy. Indira ending that report from Claire Bowes, and you can hear more about that campaign in the BBC World Service programme, People Fixing the World.

Now, it's quite a challenge to move to another country and learn a new language, but imagine doing it when you have a stammer. Jim Tong did just that when he moved from the UK to Germany. But if that weren't enough, he also decided to run a marathon to help put his speech impediment into the spotlight. And he spoke to Harry Bly about it. I think after having had six or seven years of learning how to speak English

and release my vowels and consonants in certain ways. I haven't had this training at all in German, and German's just like a ridiculously consonant-heavy language. You get words that are just consonant after consonant after consonant, and then there's compound words that are extremely lengthy. And one of the challenges in Berlin as well is that if you stumble when you speak German to people, they immediately assume you can't speak German or that you're a tourist,

so they will reply to you in English, which also makes it more difficult to learn the language as well. And you've got into running and you did a marathon. Tell me about that. Yeah, it's kind of a classic thing of like a midlife crisis, like a guy who's 40 is doing a marathon, I think. Because I know Stammer all the time in German, I've kind of reconnected with this part of myself. And so I kind of wanted to do this run for the charity Stammer, which is a UK charity to provide help and access for kids and people who stammer uh which is a uk uh charity uh to provide help and access for for for kids and people who stammer so many people have run the london marathon or the berlin marathon and i was like that's kind of boring how can i make this an interesting story so i was like i'll do the original marathon so um i decided to run in athens but unfortunately i didn't look at the

route beforehand and there's quite a lot of hills. Right. And how did it go? It went okay. It was pretty brutal, like 24-degree heat. And you run from Marathon, which is where the Olympic flame is, all the way to Athens, uphill from about 10 kilometres to 32, which was a bit unpleasant.

And I just had loads of pain gel with me to rub into my legs. But then when you get to the end and you run into Athens and then you see the Olympic Stadium, like the original Olympic Stadium, and everyone's cheering in the street, that kind of spurs you on for the last few kilometres. Jim Tong and the charity was Stammer. Still to come in this podcast... They did find each other. They both were learning to explore the colony and the beach,

but from very different perspectives. The poorly penguins that found friendship over fish. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. Remarkable personal stories. Betrayal. It runs through my life and runs through my story.

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Now, something that could potentially, eventually, help improve the lives of millions of girls and women around the world. Endometriosis can cause severe life-impacting pain, as well as nausea, fatigue, sometimes depression and infertility, and it can last from a girl's first period all the way through to menopause. Such treatment as there is, is usually just about easing the symptoms, but it can take years for a woman to get a diagnosis. Now, Zewig, a start-up from Lyon in France, has developed a saliva test with the help of three French university hospitals.

Zubik spokesman Andrew Spears says it could be life-changing. Endometriosis has a huge impact on quality of life. It's actually a disease where there are three key figures which one must be aware of when we talk about endometriosis. The first is seven years. This is the average time from when patients will start feeling symptoms until when a diagnosis is finally reached. The second key figure is 40%, and that is 40% of patients will have between five and 10 consultations until a diagnosis is reached. And then the third key figure is 25%. That's one in four patients will actually need to be operated on in order for a diagnosis to be reached. And what we've come up with is a saliva-based diagnostic tool.

So from a simple saliva sample, patients will then have a diagnosis which will be given. They have endometriosis yes or no after a period of time of three weeks rather than a diagnostic delay of seven years now there are actually three subtypes of endometriosis there's superficial peritoneal endometriosis and this represents about 80 percent of cases. Then there's cysts, which can form on the ovaries, and then deep nodules, which infiltrate. The superficial form, which forms 80% of cases, is actually the most difficult to detect. So we're now able, with over 95% accuracy, to find this form, which is not only the most prevalent, but which is by far the most

difficult to find. What needs to be done next before this sort of test can be made more widely available? So the next step is that the saliva-based test comes into practice and is introduced into national and international guidelines. So today we're no longer asking the question, does this test work? Is it accurate enough? We're now really working on where best to offer the test to patients. And it is already available in a number of European countries and countries in the Middle East. And it is being now rolled out on a global scale.

So we really want to make this breakthrough available to the largest number of patients which are desperately in need. And one must not forget that the aim of treatment is to slow down or even halt the worsening of pain, to optimize fertility management, which will obviously have a huge benefit on quality of life. Andrew Spears of Zewig in France. For 10 years, the Africa Prize has been celebrating and boosting inventors and innovators. Since it was set up by the Royal Academy of Engineering, it's awarded more than one and a quarter million dollars among 150 entrepreneurs across 23 African countries. Rebecca Enonchong from Cameroon is an Africa Prize judge. She told us about its impact and how inventions are changing the world for the better.

The Africa Prize is a prize to showcase and celebrate African innovators. There's always this impression that innovation comes from the West and then we implement it in Africa. But I think what the Africa Prize has done is that it's really shown that innovation can come from the continent, that innovation happens everywhere. And so what the prize has allowed the world to see is that, yes, there are innovators that are coming out of the African continent that have solutions for Africa and have solutions for the world. What sorts of innovations have really stood out for you? Oh my God, there are so many. I mean, I'm just always fascinated and inspired by the amount

of talent and creativity, ingenuity that comes out from the applicants. For instance, we had a winner a few years ago out of Uganda that created a device that was able to tell you if you have malaria. I'm using sensors without having to take blood, which means that it was also reusable. So there's a huge variety of innovation. There are some really big numbers, aren't there? Something like 150 entrepreneurs across 23 African countries generating tens of thousands of jobs. It's a lot, isn't it?

Yes. I mean, wow, it's almost 30,000 jobs created through the innovators that were finalists in the Africa Prize. That's tremendous. It makes a difference, especially when you know that in Africa, one job feeds up to 20 people. And so the impact is huge. And so the Africa Prize is like this support that not just is giving you funding, because we have a whole mentorship program to help them really create more of a business from this idea or this product that they have. Now, applications for the next cohort of the Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation will be opening spring 2024, fairly soon. Just between us, Rebecca, what are you looking for? Oh my goodness, I just love creativity. I love the ability to demonstrate real engineering skills and looking at how impactful the product can be in your

community and for the world. You know, I love to see innovators that are thinking not just about their local markets, but are thinking about how their innovation can be applicable to problems across the world. And we've seen this. The winner of this year, the innovation, which is basically a hub that people can come and get their medication from without having to go into a pharmacy, without having to go into a clinic. So they get a code to their phone and they can then just go and pick up their medication when they have the time to do so. That is not innovation that's unique to Africa. That's something that I know that even in London during the discussions when the prize was announced, they're like, hey, I would love that too. So I think that that's what we're looking for,

people that are creative, that really want to build a business that will have an impact on the lives of people across the world. Rebecca Enon-Chong from Cameroon. Now life can be hard for a partially sighted penguin. Indeed, an African penguin called Squid used to struggle to find the fish at feeding time after developing cataracts as a chick. But this is the happy pod and this is the story about how she found a penguin friend to help her. Polly Bramham of Bird World in the UK told us about Squid. She's probably one of the smallest penguins we've got in our African penguin colony but she's a big personality there's no two ways about that one

and if she was fully sighted I don't know what kind of terror she'd be on the beach. But yeah, she's got this condition of cataract, which affects both her eyes. So she's got some vision, but she's not very good at being accurate. And that's the factor that has the most impact for her, because she has to be accurate when it comes to taking fish from the keepers or picking up fish and she can't pinpoint it. So that's where Penguin comes in. Please let me just interrupt you here. Her friend is called Penguin. Who is a Penguin? You did not put a great deal of imagination into his name, did you? It is a bit of a superstition that keepers have. So with Penguin, he was so sick as a little chick and had to be on a lot of antibiotics and he had to be hand raised.

So he was going through an awful lot. So the whole time we're just referring to him as the Penguin because, you know, we didn't want to jinx it and give him a name and then it was all going to go wrong. So meanwhile, the keepers are building up this lovely long list of potential names for this wonderful penguin when he finally makes it. And when he is out of the woods, all he answers to is penguin. So we tried various names, but it was not going to happen. You go on the beach and you call penguin and he knows. So we're stuck. So both squid and penguin have been through quite difficult times, but they found each other. How does Penguin help Squid out? They did find each other. Whilst Penguin was going through his struggles as a very sickly,

hand-reared chick, Squid was out under mum and dad in the nest on the beach. And it was only sort of as she started to explore and leave the nest that we could see the impact of this problem with her vision. So she grew up with the sounds and the bustle of the colony. We've got over 50 penguins and that for her is normal life. Whereas for Penguin, he was very much cotton wrapped and cared for. And we would have to take him out into the colony for just very small sessions at a time to build up his resilience because he was terrified of everything going on out there. So they both were learning to explore the colony and the beach around the

same time as each other, but from very different perspectives. And for both of them, the important factor in their day was the keepers coming out to do the feed. So they were both drawn to this one spot. So Penguin would come over to the keepers because he thought they were wonderful. You know, he'd been raised by them. And he was confident and he kind of knew how to take the fish. And Squid would come over because it's what she was supposed to do. But then she couldn't discover how to actually make that contact with the fish herself. And of course, by then, her parents are saying, no, you're kind of old enough to do it yourself. And so she would

then stand by the bucket. And very quickly, this whole scenario developed whereby the keepers, we'd go to feed Penguin and Squid would wait for Penguin to be offered a fish. And then she would steal it from him as it was entering his beak. So she would be like nose to nose with him. So we just play this game of feed penguin to feed squid, feed penguin to feed squid. And the penguin is so laid back, doesn't mind at all. He'll peck him and she'll tell him to, you know, hand it over and she'll be a right little madam to him. And he totally chilled, doesn't mind at all. Now, Polly, you clearly like penguins. You must have been quite delighted to see this relationship between squid and penguin develop.

Yes, yes. I find penguins endlessly fascinating. I have a huge amount of respect for their fight. They're only a small penguin, but they encounter great white sharks and seals and so much in their natural world that they have to contend with. And the resilience is incredible. So seeing these ones, the likes of somebody like Squid, her approach to her disability, it doesn't surprise me. It's just been fascinating to watch it develop because it's not something that we would have predicted equally keepers we've been watching this relationship since it started about three years ago and it's now reached a really nice stage of it's solid it's there we've been watching it from the get-go and it's very gratifying. Polly Bramham of Bird World.

And that's it from us for now. If you would like to be part of the Happy Portal, you just want to say hello, do please email us. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Nick Randall. The producers were Anna Murphy and Siobhan Leahy. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard, and until next time, goodbye. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads?

Get current affairs podcasts like Global News, AmeriCast and The Global Story, plus other great BBC podcasts from history to comedy to true crime, all ad-free. Simply subscribe to BBC Podcasts Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcast Premium on Apple Podcasts or listen to Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts.