Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: How baby showers saved a rare bird

Episode Date: August 9, 2025

We hear how a woman helped save one of India's rarest birds by holding baby showers to celebrate the arrival of their chicks. Thousands have now joined Purnima Devi Barman's Hargila Army, which campaigns to protect adjutant storks and guards their nests. Also: a chef stranded on the cargo ship, Avontuur, for months during the pandemic says inner strength can turn a challenge into an opportunity; the volunteers helping older people feel the wind in their hair on cycle rides; the baby found at a train station who's inspired a song; and the huge range of unique moves that keep cockatoos dancing.Presenter: Nick Miles Music: Iona Hampson. (Picture credit: Getty Images)

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How one woman in India helped save a rare bird by persuading others to share her passion for them. Also, lessons on overcoming adversity from a woman who spent months, trapped on a small boat during the pandemic. No matter how challenging, it can be in the moment where I am in. I have enough resilience and strength within me to transform it into a growing opportunity. Plus, helping older people keep enjoying the thrills of cycling. These rides were breaks for her to be able to get out

and to feel the air, to see around her. It's a breath of fresh air for her, literally. And the unique dance moves of cockatoos. We start with an unusual and rather amazing idea that's helped save one of India's rarest birds from extinction. Pormina Devi Barman, who lives in Assam, was moved and upset when she saw so many baby greater adjutant stalks

dying when their nests were cut down. They are very captivating. They have a dangling, inflatable, gular power. and their eyes are deep blue, intense blue, so innocent, so mesmerizing, so unique. They're the most beautiful bird in the world and, you know, I mean it, I mean it. So having recently become a mother herself, she decided to draw attention to their plight by doing what many of us do as a celebration for expectant mothers throw a baby shower for them.

The stalks, known locally as Hagila, used to be found across India and Cambodia, but became endangered because of the loss of their wetland habitat. Ella Haber from the BBC Science Unit told me more. It's a huge bird. It's around 150 centimetres tall. That's just 20 centimetres shorter than me. And they have these huge black and white wings, which have this massive 250 centimetre wingspan.

It's incredible. And then it has this lovely, bold pink head. But most strikingly, they have these big pink pouches hanging below their necks. And it's actually attached to its nostrils so they can inflate them and swing them around in a mating display. It's apparently pretty incredible sight to see. They were seen as a bad omen and people at Assam would cut down their nesting trees to get them away from the area. And Pernima, as a conservationist and also a mother, could not stand to see the baby birds being harmed when the nesting trees were cut down

and so she essentially created this amazing movement to get local people to care about the birds and she tried many things for this but what she found work the best was appealing to the women around Assam so she would hold events like cooking competitions where they would compete and she would teach them about the birds and how important they were for the environment and as part of their culture during these events

eventually she built up a group of women who call them themselves the Haggila army. And this started in the tens of people, but now is over 20,000 women around Assam. And one of my favorite things about the Haggila army is that they hold baby showers for the newly hatchedorks. So they do traditional songs and food, just as if this were a human baby. And it really brings that bird further into the culture and consciousness of the people of Assam. They are extraordinary, aren't they? I've seen pictures and videos of women from the Haggila army with stalk hats on with the enormous great beak sticking out in front of them.

It's quite a sight, isn't it? Yeah, it's amazing. They will gather in the wetlands with these paper mache hats on and kind of sing songs and celebrate the stalk. It's just very, like, strong community building around this bird. And you say there have been thousands of people working to try to restore the numbers. What has been the impact over the last few years?

Well, the effects are kind of twofold. The first is, of course, that the numbers of the Greater Adjutant are way up. I think the nesting sites are about tenfold, and the bird is no longer considered endangered, which is incredible. A lot of this has to do with the fact that the Haggila army and the greater community no longer cut down the nests. In fact, they've been planting the trees which the storks nest in, and they also help rehabilitate and care for the wetlands.

The second massive impact, though, is on the women in the Haggila army. Many of them have expressed that the army has given them purpose outside of the home lives they may have felt confined to. And actually, Pernima has been able to buy looms for some of the women who have been weaving cloth with stalk motifs and then making them into bags and clothes and selling them, which actually gives them some financial independence as well. It's just an all-around great demonstration of how impactful, like a grass roots. roots movement like this can be. And with that success, I suppose it just gives a broader understanding for people in many parts of India and beyond about the importance of protecting the natural world. Absolutely. It's about bringing that kind of wildlife into your culture

and seeing how important it is to preserve it. That was Ella Harbour and you can hear more on this story on Discovery Unstoppable wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Have you ever embarked on a journey that didn't go quite to plan? Julia Bacassi did, along with 14 other crewmates, on the Avantour cargo ship. A trip that was only meant to last for three months turned out into more than a sixth month journey at sea because of the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns happening across the world. Julia was the ship's chef, and she spoke to the Happy Pod's Holly Gibbs about her personal experience and what it was like being stuck on board with her crewmates?

There was all a bunch of stages that I personally went through. I think the beginning was a bit of denial. I think there was a moment of acceptance. To understand that really I had no more control of what I would do. And that was absolutely precious. It was such a precious learning. It was really like putting us into the condition and in the position were millions.

if not billions of humans live every day, like their restrictions of movement. So I think that there was a lot of redefining the sense of privilege and understanding that what is absolutely dramatic and tragic. What I find striking is that you have a really positive outlook on the situation. You were saying there about it was a precious experience because it's taught you a lot. That's amazing. But did it take you a while to get to that place? Absolutely. I think that I had glimpses during the trip, especially during the Atlantic crossing back.

But I think that the full realization of how useful, precious and eye-opening and rich this experience has been just when I was back on land and after eventually months and years. How did you try when you were on the ship to keep your morale high as well as everybody else's? I think I was seeking a lot for human connection. There were some people that were absolutely amazing human beings. So the connection between us was really, really powerful. I'm so fascinated by the stories that you have. And I'm just purely thinking of myself in that situation. And to put it bluntly, I think I would have gone mad.

It's easy to talk now, right, five years afterwards when this is just a memory. I went mad. I mean, I'm not a sort of like Zen guru. I'm very Italian. I'm very fiery. I'm very impulsive. I'm very sensitive. So it was not as smooth, of course.

And I've been through all the possible palette of emotions and feelings. Like now, of course, it's easy to sound very wise and be here, philosophing about all the great ways of dealing with such situations. The reality is that you just do your very best with what you have going on. So let's now talk about you being the chef on the ship. What was your favorite thing to cook? Parmi lasagna, which is a thing that I came up with. It's an hybrid between a parmigiana and a lasagna. And it was really good to eat.

And especially it was really good to see the people highs when I would say, oh, tonight it's parmi lasagna. Or people come and asking me, are you making parmilla zane tonight or tomorrow or the day after or can we have it all week long I know it's just like the pleaser part of myself that is very happy to serve food that is going to be a party and people are going to be happy well that was I guess part of your job as the cook is to cheer people up through the food that you were serving yeah absolutely and the morale on board of a ship is always quite critical aspect and very often

it passed through food and I think everybody everywhere in the world can relate and what is the one lesson that the whole experience has taught you that you now carry with you throughout your life I think it's really to trust the process because no matter how

challenging it can be in the moment where I am in but that I have enough resilience and tools and strength within me to transform it into a growing opportunity. It doesn't always happen and I not always succeed.

But I really try to, when I feel absolutely overwhelmed, to say, okay, to plunge back into that state of mind. I say, hey, wait, maybe this is actually a great opportunity for you and just by being so negative. Julia Bacchese, and if you want to hear more about Julia and the Aventure, just search for lives less ordinary wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Furious headbanging, body bopping and hip thrusting are just a few go-to options for an often mischievous member of the parrot family. Apparently the bird, the cockatoo, is not only copying us, but inventing its own moves too, as Chantal Hartle has been finding out.

In 2007, this white, this white sulfur-crusted cockatoo called Snowball gained many fans online after his owner uploaded a video of him dancing to the backstreet boys. Animal behaviour researchers studied his dancing and identified 14 distinctive movements, ranging from headbanging to voguing. Now, almost two decades later, it seems Snowball is not alone in his dancing ability. Scientists at Charles Stutt University in Australia analyse 45 social media videos of pet cockatoo's dancing. They noted a total of 30 different movements,

including 17 that had not been documented before. Curious by what they'd discovered, the team then studied six different species of cockatoo at a nearby zoo. The birds were played either a podcast, song or no music over a period of 20 minutes. All of them performed dance moves whether there was music playing or not. Some coordinated their head bobbing with foot movements while others did body rolls. One particularly enthusiastic cockatoo made a total of 257 moves while listening to a 20-minute loop of Avici's song The Nights. Animal behaviour experts aren't sure what

exactly motivates the birds to dance. One said it was a sign of well-developed cognitive and emotional processes. Another likened some of the dance moves to displays of courtship by wild parrots, suggesting that captive cockatoos may have redirected their courting dance towards their owners. Chantal Hartle. We heard earlier about baby showers for birds, but when it comes to human children, what to buy is a real dilemma for many people. So instead of a shower or a religious ceremony, how about asking well-wishers to share their favourite books to help create a mini-library? Abby from Bedfordshire here in the United Kingdom spoke to the BBC about the idea. We invited our friends and family and we asked them to bring a book which had

been important to them in their lives as a gift to our children. It didn't have to be the actual book itself, but it could be if they wanted to be. And what happened as a result of that is that they both ended up with this magnificent library of books that range from children's books all the way through to books for adults, that they have been able to read and enjoy through their lives. My father-in-law gave to my son, for example, a copy of Hillare Belloc's cautionary tales that was his own copy when he was a boy. But the copy itself is stained with water because he lived on a houseboat when he was a child. And in the 1952 floods, they were asked to evacuate and grab the things that had been important to them, something that was

important to them. His mother grabbed her wedding dress and he grabbed his copy of Hill Air Belhock's Cautionary Tales. Well, if you've got a favourite book that's made a huge amount to you, we'd love to hear about it. Send us an email or a voice note to Global Podcast. at BBC.co.com.uk. Coming up in this podcast, finding the joy in the story of a baby left at a railway station. It was actually a gift.

It's funny because Daniela, Tom's wife calls it a gift to Tom, but actually Tom's story was a gift to us as writers. The right to wind in your hair. That is the motto of cycling without age, which offers bicycle trips to older people who can no longer ride the bike for themselves. It began in Copenhagen and it's gone global with chapters in three and a half thousand locations across 41 different countries. Especially trained pilots take passengers on slow, scenic rides on what they call tri-shores, bicycles, with a two-person carriage at the front. Kieran ordered a cycling without age trustee and volunteer in the UK

spoke to my colleague James Kumrasami. One passenger told me it was like going on a roller coaster, it wasn't unsafe, but I think it just activates those feelings. And it's just good for people who are particularly on their own or lonely or in care homes and had active lives in the past. And for those people who can talk, there's also that conversation that goes between the pilot and the passengers as well, which is always very interesting. Tell us about some of those conversations.

Well, one family member spoke about how he spoke his first words in a long time after a ride on a tri-shore, which was quite touching. Personally, I had one of our passengers who, it was just after lockdown, who was quite an active person going out into town quite often. But when he went on the bike, he was silent for the first ten minutes. Then afterwards, he just said, that's a different smell. This spells of spring. And he'd not smelt spring because he'd been in the home for so long. Like I saw, we were all locked down. But the small things in life add so much to their benefit. I mean, that's remarkable. So someone who hadn't spoken for some time, sort of regained the gift of speech. Yeah, and that's not unusual because I think it's also the eyes

light up as well for some people who may not necessarily speak. There was one daughter who his father was in a home for some time. And she went on a ride. And when she came back, she she could see his eyes light up and they had meaning between them, which she didn't have that for a long time. And when you have someone who has advanced dementia, such as Alzheimer's and things like, you can lose that connection. And I hope you don't mind me sharing that you are one of those who has a mother with Alzheimer's. And you've taken her on a tri-shore, haven't you? She got Alzheimer's in late 60s. But she's always been. very active. These rides were breaks for her to be able to get out and to feel the air to see around

her. It's a breath of fresh air for her, literally. And it's good to see her come back after a ride with red cheeks. And apart from your mum, you have some regulars, don't you? You call them frequent flyers. Yes. I was just speaking to one of our volunteers today. We were just talking about how some of them just can't get enough of it. And we were thinking about putting a point system towards a free cup of coffee after every hundred kilometres or something. That was Kieran Audit. Across the world, it's estimated that around a billion tonnes of food is wasted every year. And much of it is still edible, thrown away by shops or consumers, just because it's

passed the best before or expiry date printed on the label. But now packaging is being developed that can tell us whether food has actually gone bad or is still safe to eat. The technology is already being tested with major supermarkets in the US, Europe and the UK. Craig Langren went to find out more. Hi, Max. I'm here to meet Max Grell, co-founder and CEO of a company called Black Bear. And Max has one simple mission.

Food should tell you how fresh it is. Back in the 1970s, the UK pioneer expiry dates on food. These dates have since been rebranded as best before dates. But Max tells me there's still a fundamental issue with how they're set. So they'll choose that date to cover all eventualities. If it was a really sunny day, if it was a cold day, if you had a long journey home or a short journey home, the variation between the food that actually comes in to the factory.

But then, of course, then you get this worst-case scenario date, which creates unnecessary waste. And here's the crucial point about why so much food gets wasted. Either you will trust your nose or you'll look. at the date, or maybe some combination of the two. But if you're a business, if you're a restaurant, if you're a supermarket, if you're like a food manufacturing site, they have to pull it off the shelf once it's past the date. In the lab, Max shows me his solution. The sensors do two things. They smell or detect the presence of gases like putresene and ammonia, which are

only present if the food's going off. They also measure the temperature inside the packet, so if if the temperature goes up, the amount of bacteria also increases. In simple terms, this replicates what we do with our noses when we open a packet of food and smell it. A technician at Black Bear called Chauvin gets out two packets of meat and puts them on the table in front of us. So I will first open up this roast chicken slice. Chivonne opens the first pack and immediately pulls a face. oh yeah okay it's not terrible but it is a bit of vinegar isn't it

it's a bit pungent meat smell we're using a five point scale here to rate how the food smells one is no odour two is some odour but it dissipates quickly three is could air out and cook then four is unacceptable five is I would not feed this to my dog brilliant for me I'd say this is four unacceptable but you would feed this to a dog

yeah my dog would probably I've got a dog actually and she'd probably be okay with this. I think she eats almost anything, to be honest. We then open a second pack of cooked chicken from the same batch. To me, that smells fine. Between a one and a two? I agree, I would eat that. Even though both of these packs have the same best-before-date

and restored under identical conditions, one smells fine, well, the other's definitely off. Max pulls up a laptop showing real-time data from the sensors. The graph is measuring odour, and then it's also predicting how the odour will grow into the future. And so this orange line is growing much higher and sort of gets above this number four, which is an unacceptable threshold,

whereas the blue line stays below a three. And that's exactly what we said, isn't it? So in this case, it's worked out well. So just why did the two packs of chicken smell so different? It just depends on sometimes when they're kept in the supermarket, on which level they're kept, or even if some are slightly forward, where there is perhaps warmer.

There's this huge variation between packs of food, even when they're produced at the same time. And part of that could be temperature, but also there's intrinsic variation in the product, right? There's literally a different amount of bacteria in these slices of chicken when they are packed. And that variation, we have to safely encompass that with used by dates at the moment,

which is so hard to get right, which is why they're so risk-averse. That's the key to this whole solution. Smart sensors sending real-time data about individual packs of food to the shops and the suppliers. So if one pack of chicken goes bad, they can pull it from the shelves without having to waste all the other packs. If you have an extra day shelf life on a short life product,

like some chicken or some strawberries or a sandwich or something, reduce waste by about a third. It's significant. Max has even bigger ambitions. We know that most food at the date is still good to eat or good to cook. Our core belief is in 10 years' time, there will not be fixed dates on food, creating unnecessary waste everywhere.

As a great goal, Max Grell, ending that report by Craig Langran. And you can hear more about innovative ways to tackle food waste on people fixing the world, wherever you get your podcasts from. Now, to a sad story with a very happy ending. That is The Waiting Room, a folk song about a little baby who was wrapped up and left in the ladies waiting room at a train station in England. It was the 1960s and the mother was an unmarried Catholic woman from Ireland who faced social stigma and shame at the prospect of being a single mum. So she left her baby, hoping another woman could give him the life that she couldn't.

The baby's name was Tom and Stephanie Prentice has been hearing more about his story. She didn't really probably want to leave me but had no alternative. as women didn't in the 1960s, and then in February, in 1966, I was adopted. Witnesses from that day described Tom's birth mother as wandering around in circles for an hour, struggling to leave him. Now, age 60, he's had a song written about him as part of BBC Radio 2's 21st Century Folk series. Musicians, Chris Weil and Julie Matthews, met with Tom, and while at first they said his story was heartbreaking, They soon began to see it differently.

So we wanted to come from the point of view of his two mothers that both loved him. One sacrificed for him and the other one gave him everything. What struck us about Tom's story was that he's only ever been loved by the women in his life. As Chris said, his biological mom made the ultimate sacrifice. And then he was raised by a beautiful woman too. There is this theme that runs throughout Tom's life that even though there are sad elements to all of this. It's also a really beautiful, happy ending. So you're tempted as writers to delve into the sadness of it, but actually it's a joyful thing too. So we wanted to celebrate that.

But what else was I supposed to do? With love and hope alone, I could not make a life for you, dear child. The writing duo said they felt lucky to be able to tell not just Tom's story, but those of many children who were born out of wedlock and abandoned. As Chris always says, write about what you know. And we spent a beautiful afternoon with Tom where he was so open with us about something that we actually can't really imagine happening and how from all of those people involved, how it feels. But because he was so open, he gave us all of this beautiful material to then delve in.

to and write about. So it was actually a gift. It's funny because Daniela, Tom's wife calls it a gift to Tom, but actually Tom's story was a gift to us as writers. And for Tom, the song has given him a new way to look at an old chapter of his life. It took a couple of listens to sort of get all the lyrics because it was just so emotional and I still get emotional listening to it. I just think that they've done a brilliant job and they're brilliant musicians. Tom, and the song about his life, ending that report by Stephanie Prentice. And that's all from us from The Happy Pod for now, but we would love to hear, as I said earlier, about the books that have meant a lot to you. As ever, the address is global podcast at BBC.co.com.

And you can now watch some of our interviews on YouTube. Just search for The Happy Pot. This edition was mixed by Ben Andrews and the producers were Holly Gibbs, Harry Bly and Rachel Bulkley. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Nick Miles and until next time, goodbye.