Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: Hurtling into History

Episode Date: February 24, 2024

This week, we hear from Africa's first bobsleigh champion. Also: the Spanish football club doing its bit to make the beautiful game greener. And how foxes are providing therapy in the Florida Keys.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. 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 Thank you. Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. The Global Story, with smart takes and fresh perspectives on one big news story, every Monday to Friday from the BBC World Service.

Search for The Global Story wherever you get your BBC Podcast podcasts to find out more. Hello, I'm Joy and you're listening to The Happy Pod. This is The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and in this edition, uploaded on Saturday the 24th of February, hurtling into history, Africa's first bobsleigh champion breaking more records. Not only am I breaking this barrier and making this history, but really just compete with the rest of the world. That for me would be success.

The Spanish football club doing its bit to encourage players and fans to be more environmentally friendly. Forever Green is the platform launched by Real Betis for inspiring society for fighting against climate change. Also in this podcast. He definitely has only child syndrome. He is a local celebrity and he writes a column for our local newspaper. A surprising therapist, celebrity and columnist in the Florida Keys and the viral social media post that wasn't quite what it seemed. This was very unintentional. It was a late night post for me.

It was all in good fun. It was all, as somebody coined recently, killer banter. Hurtling down narrow, twisted, packed ice tracks in a gravity-powered sled might not be everyone's first choice in sporting endeavour. But then Nigeria's Simidele Adeagbo isn't everyone. In 2018, she became the first Nigerian to compete at the Winter Olympics and became the first black female Olympian in the sport of skeleton. Now the Bobsleigh World Championships are underway in Winterberg in Germany, the same place where two years ago Simidele became the first African to win a World Cup race when she claimed the monobob title.

And she's looking forward to her next challenge. I feel a great privilege, first of all, for the opportunity to take this huge step forward for not only Nigeria, but for the continent of Africa. You know, the IBSF, the International Bobsled and Skeleton Federation has just celebrated 100 years of existence. And in that century, there has been no African athlete in bobsled that has competed at the World Championships. So it took a whole century to break this barrier. And so for me, I feel very privileged and honored to be the one that has this opportunity to do this on the world stage and very proud to be representing Nigeria and the continent of Africa. So I really just want to just show up for the country and the continent to really show that not only am I breaking this barrier

and making this history, but really just compete with the rest of the world. So that for me would be success. I've had to just overcome so many barriers just to get here, but I'm here and now it's just time to show the world what Nigerians can do. While the landscape continues to grow, I think, in small ways, I think the bar has been set in terms of different examples that we can pull from to show that it's possible. Not only myself, but my teammates that I made history with back in 2018. In 2022, Nigeria had representation at the Beijing Olympics with a ski athlete. And even when you look at the Youth Olympics that just took

place a few weeks ago in Pyeongchang, there was a Nigerian curling team. So we are seeing some small steps forward, but I'm hopeful that the investment will be made for it on the continent of Africa. I think it's going to take a very intentional plan and a strategic plan for it to be sustainable going forward. Nigeria's Simidele Adiagbo, who'll be competing next weekend. And staying with the sporting theme, moves to make Spanish football more environmentally friendly. Our reporter Ashish Sharma has been to see what Real Betis is doing to encourage a greener approach from players, coaches and fans. When it comes to football, this is not a sport we associate with being environmentally friendly. Large squads flying

around the world, players on private jets, even fans who follow their team everywhere. But as with all things in life, there are exceptions. A ball stopped, goal scored! Forever Green is the platform launched by Real Betis for disseminating and inspiring society for fighting against climate change. The La Liga Club Real Betis are green pioneers here in Spain. I'm standing outside the newly built Ciudad Deportiva Rafael Cordillo.

It's a training complex and everything on the other side of the gate from where I'm standing outside the newly built Ciudad Deportiva Rafael Cordillo. It's a training complex, and everything on the other side of the gate from where I'm standing is completely carbon neutral. The club permits no use of plastic in training, and players are assigned glass bottles of water. Only bicycles and electric vehicles are used, but star players like Ayose Perez has bought into the Forever Green ideas. We are, how could I say, big boys that get to many places. So we got the platform to help and make people involved as well. There are always fans waiting for autographs once the players finish and I'm lucky enough to be joined by two of them. At the beginning, they started playing with the Forever Green logo in the chest.

So I thought that it was a new sponsor. But then when I saw the club doing a lot of initiatives related with sustainability, I thought, OK, it's not a sponsor. I think it's anything else. It's something more. I'm very proud of my team. Last match I came by bike, but only if the weather is good. That's true, because if it's raining, we try to come by car. But I'm always sharing car.

We have one player that he used to come to the training facilities by bike. So, yeah, they have the mentality too. That report from Ashish Sharma in Spain. The idea of therapy animals isn't a new one. Well-trained, friendly dogs are welcome visitors in many a school, retirement home and healthcare setting, not to mention podcast studio. But when Nicole Navarro from the Florida Keys in the US encountered and took in foxes surrendered by fur farms, she realised they could provide a different sort of comfort to people who'd been through trauma themselves. She told us more about them. They were a little traumatised and confused. So once I formed this bond with them, I just became

very intrigued about what it would take to start rescuing foxes that were being saved from the fur trade. And then in 2020, that dream became a reality. So I reached out to the women's only mental health facility. And I just pitched the idea of bringing one of my tamer foxes in there and sharing their story of survival from fur farm to freedom. And they were all for it. And then the Florida Keys Children's Shelter reached out to me and it has really taken off. You very kindly sent us some video and I think you would agree with me that the sound that the foxes make does not necessarily chime with what people would think of as a therapeutic sound.

Yeah, no. Yeah, they only make those sounds for me. Lucky me. The most vocal fox is Reef. He is the first fox I got as a baby. So he definitely has only child syndrome. And now he is a local celebrity. And he writes a column for our local newspaper, The Keys Weekly, every week. He does, does he? Hell yes, he does. Yes, he does. It's a very popular column. People get upset if for some reason they have to bump him one week to make space. And it's really just a sign of how supportive our community has been as a whole. I really can't imagine being with these foxes anywhere else in the world.

So what is their life like now? Well, I obviously feed them a proper diet. They get above average veterinary care. I would say they have better health care than I do. You know, I give them enrichments, they get toys, they get places to dig and den. Since we are in South Florida, they all have access to air conditioning in some capacity. So they definitely have all settled into the island life, as I call it. And you obviously will have had lots of feedback from both children and from

the women that you have introduced your foxes to. What have they said to you about what those interactions mean to them? So women really resonate with the fact that regardless of species, with the right set of circumstances, the right environment and the right people cheering you on, you can go on to live a very full and purposeful life that your past does not have to define your future. And when the children come, the children's shelter brings the children to us. The children I hear always say it makes them feel very special. And know, and I start to tear up when I think about it because some of the children, I know they're very painful backgrounds,

but they say that when they're with the foxes, they just feel like the foxes accept them for who they are. And, you know, I think especially with the children who are a lot of times going to foster care, they just need a place to come where they can just relax and not feel any sort of pressure to be anything but a child. And they resonate with the foxes because that's the environment I provide for the foxes. I allow the foxes to be exactly who they want to be. You know, I don't force them to do anything. So I think when the children see that a life like that is possible, it gives them hope.

Nicole Navarro. Still to come in this podcast, discovering another thing that people have in common with orangutans. The more bridges we build to connect us with our closest living relatives, the better we will understand our own nature and our place in it. To be continued... 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. In 1969, a plan to show support for an anti-racism protest turned the lives of 14 promising black student-athletes upside down. I don't think we realized what the true flavor of Wyoming was back in 1969. Amazing Sports Stories from the BBC World Service

tells the story of the Black 14. There was a rebel Confederate flag being flung. It was different. It was definitely different. Search for Amazing Sports Stories wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Now a couple of other things that caught our eye in recent days. The organisers of the London Marathon have announced that this year's event will be the first global marathon to have equal prize money for wheelchair and able-bodied athletes. The London Marathon already had the highest prize money for elite wheelchair racers. Congratulations to a singer who has become the first black woman to top the Billboard Hot Country

Songs chart in the US. The single is called Texas Hold'em and is the work of an up-and-coming country star known as Beyonce. And a Highland Games trophy missing for almost 90 years has returned home after being rediscovered in England. It was last won at the Cabrac Picnic and Games in the 1930s by Charles Taylor, a man described as a brilliant athlete as well as a fine musician, being particularly talented at the bagpipes. It will now go to a new winner.

And from that, another seamless segue into this. Do you recognise this language? Got it? That is Scottish Gaelic, a language spoken by an estimated 60,000 or so people. As we record this podcast, World Gaelic Week is drawing to a close. It's an event to celebrate the Scots language, not only in Scotland, but around the world too. And it was the idea of one of our colleagues,

BBC weather presenter Joy Dunlop, who works on BBC Scotland and BBC Alba, forecasting in English and Gaelic. I grew up singing in Gaelic, I grew up playing traditional music and then I learnt Gaelic as a second language in secondary school before doing a full immersion degree. So I came from it in a bit more of a slightly different route to maybe some who are lucky enough to speak it from birth.

And the fact that there is now a World Gaelic Week and there are events taking place, I mean, all over the world, I think, Australia, Canada. Is this the Scottish diaspora or are these people who had nothing to do with Scotland but are turning to the language purely out of interest? I think it's a bit of both, to be honest. I mean, we definitely have a wonderfully strong diaspora community. People remember their roots and they feel very Scottish throughout wherever they are throughout the world. And they're very passionate about that.

But also we have a really thriving online community of learners that are, I guess, particularly from around lockdown, it was the one silver lining of lockdown that actually people had a bit more time to learn languages. And we saw that Gaelic in particular had a huge resurgence through free learning tools like Duolingo, the Speak Gaelic

course and I think actually you're really seeing now how people are bringing the language into their lives and that geographical barrier that perhaps might have been there beforehand isn't now. So our language, our culture is being celebrated throughout the globe and I just think that's a wonderful thing. Is the initial barrier quite high for an English speaker because the sounds of the syllables and the words seem so different? I think it's interesting because in practically any other country in the world speaking more than one language is very normal.

So I think that's actually the biggest barrier that we're just not used to learning in the same way. If you're Scottish, a lot of the sounds are in there. There's the chas, the yas, the yas. We've got that anyway. That's in our Scottish speech. But actually, I think the difference is it's not a romance language. So when you come to it speaking English, you maybe expect it to have the same sentence structure. You maybe expect it to have the same grammar.

It doesn't. But actually, I think Gaelic is a much, much easier language to learn than English. I take my hat off to anybody who manages to learn English because actually it's a lot more regular when you start to learn the sounds and the spellings. Whereas Gaelic is very, very regular. It follows a pattern. And it's just so beautiful to listen to. It has that mellifluous sound to it. There's a sing song in it.

It's the rise and fall. I think if you can crack into that, it's just such a beautiful language. It really hides the community and the heritage. Thank you so much. Thanks. Joy Dunlop. How do I say thank you to you in Gaelic? You say, Thank you so much.

Perfect. Joy Dunlop was talking to Michelle Hussain, and it did make us wonder about other languages that listeners speak that might be rare but are still worth preserving, celebrating and indeed speaking. Do let us know. The usual address, globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. And it turns out that something we thought was unique to human language isn't. In a study of wild orangutans in Indonesian Borneo,

long calls were recorded and the researchers tried to track the rhythm and acoustic features and they discovered something a bit unexpected. The study was led by primatologist Adriano Lamiera of the University of Warwick. This isn't him. We discovered a way of combining calls that we so far thought it was unique to language and to humans. This operation is called recursion, and it's simply this idea that you can put a signal inside another signal that is of a similar kind. So, for example, if I'm talking and I insert the phrase to, for example, elaborate an explanation or provide more detail, and then I continue my original phrase. When you say that, you mean something like the cat which had eaten the ham

was asleep on the sofa. And the bit about the ham is the extra sequence inside the longer sequence. Precisely. And so that's what brings extraordinary expressive richness to language, because we can keep on elaborating and offering depth. And that was exactly the pattern that we found that wild orangutans are doing. So what does it mean when an orangutan does it? What does this style of communication do? What does it achieve for the orangutans you've been observing?

So it's a patterning that orangutan males are using in their advertisement calls to attract mates and discourage other males to come in their vicinity. So it's something that the males do when they're trying to show off, basically. Correct. Yes. Okay. So were you surprised by this discovery? Yes and no. Yes, because theory told us that we shouldn't be expecting this in any of the primate species. On the other hand, we can only theorize and predict things that we have thought about. But in many cases, we haven't put in enough research efforts to actually describe and characterize what these animals are doing in the wild. And so in that sense, at first we were very excited about the finding

and then thinking about it was like, well, maybe that was to be expected because actually no one had ever looked for these patterns because everyone assumed they were not there. And so does that mean that it probably isn't just us and the orangutans, some of the other primates might do it too? Oh, absolutely. I believe that the more research effort we're going to invest, the more we're going to discover that primates and great apes will have way more parallels to our own behaviour than we

sometimes care to admit. It kind of makes me remember this idea that not too long ago, we assumed ourselves to be the only tool users in the animal kingdom. And now it turns out that there are thousands of examples, including vertebrates and fishes. The whole animal kingdom is using tools. And to believe that for centuries, we thought we were the only ones. And I think the more bridges

we built to connect us with our past and with our closest living relatives, the better we will understand our own nature and our place in it. Primatologist Adriano Lameira. Now to Tanzania. The man known as the Flying Chef caters for a very select and wealthy clientele, and one of his unique selling points is that most of his staff grew up on the streets of Arusha. Rachel Wright reports. Onsia House is a luxury lodge development which is nestled amongst the tropical trees on the side of the hill overlooking the northern city of Arusha. And most of the people that are employed in this large, beautiful complex

of chalets and bungalows are former street children of Arusha. The kitchen at Onsia House produces Michelin-quality food. Innocencia is one of the main waitresses, but she grew up on the street. In the street there, I was just hanging around, doing nothing at home. One meal per day, no money at all. I was feeling so bad so bad but I was just encouraging myself that one day I can reach somewhere to afford for the survival. Through an NGO called Job Opportunity which helps poor families she got placed at Onzia House as a waitress. Actually my life changed from hanging

around the street and coming to the place where I can achieve something in life. And you are smiling a lot. All the time I see you, you are smiling. Thank you. This is because I have something to be proud of. Something makes me happy. My comfort zone is my job now. And the man to whom Innocencia says she owes her life is Axel Janssens,

a top chef from Belgium who, together with his cousin, set up Onsia House. A lot of them are actually people that we take from the street and that we train during a minimum of three years in our kitchen. 80% of the trainees are making it and I am super proud of them. Two years ago, I had back surgery and I couldn't be here for two, three months. And they kept the place fully alive and beautiful. Axel is known as the flying chef because not only does he cook for the restaurant, he's also flown around Africa cooking in unusual places for billionaires. And he takes his deputy, Baraka, who grew up on the streets, with him.

Out in the car park, Baraka is preparing a huge trailer to drive to the middle of the bush and cook for 13 people. He told me about an earlier trip to the top of Kilimanjaro, to which he took 80 people to help carry the equipment. We cook lobster on top of Kilimanjaro, to which he took 80 people to help carry the equipment. We cook lobster on top of Kilimanjaro. You can't imagine that. Lobster? Lobster, yeah.

We bake lobster there. Even the pizza we bake in Kilimanjaro. We have our techniques to make our oven ourselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So how do you feel about your life now? Because before, is this your truck you were going? Oh my God, there's a lot of smoke coming out the back. Yeah, to be honest, I feel very good because now I have my own family.

Now I have my house, I have children, I have two children. Now they are in a good school. So is it like a dream? Yeah, it's not like my dream comes true. It's a big step for now. Rachel Wright was reporting from Arusha. Now to Kiribati, or is it? Kiribati is an island nation in the Central Pacific Ocean.

And a few days ago, its ex-account, or more accurately, what looked like its ex-account, or more accurately, what looked like its ex-account, went viral. Follower numbers for at Kiribati.gov went from a few hundred to thousands after it quoted another user who had made fun of Kiribati's place names like London, Paris, Poland and banana with, fine, you're not invited. There followed further playful posts, and it looked like a big social media win for Kiribati tourism. Except it isn't official. The person who responded when we contacted the account was a man who says he was born in Kiribati, but now lives in the US. My name is Gabea Derniaki, and this is my second time, guess impersonating the government of my homeland the republic of

kiribati i noticed that there was never a twitter active twitter presence and i just took it up on myself to pretty much copy and paste everything that they were doing on Facebook. And then Twitter shut it down. And then I started an account, I think November of last year. And I'm assuming you probably saw the viral posts and that's how everything blew up. But I did have a little fun with it. I was constantly retweeting any articles or any posts that were either informative or positive. I started responding kind of sassily or a little bit of snark when I thought I could kind of get away with it. Never really to make it go huge and viral like

this. This was very unintentional. It was a late night post for me. Kind of just a throwaway. It was all in good fun. It was all, as somebody coined recently, kidder banter. My people are definitely known for being mischievous and tricking each other, but never in mean spirits. And even if the hammer falls and it all goes away, I would like to ultimately think that the little bit of positive exposure brought to my home country made it well worth it. And at the very least, it makes for great stories. To be clear, we are not condoning catfishing. We did try to get a

comment from the Kiribati government. But as we record this podcast, we haven't heard back yet. And that's it from us for now. Remember, if you'd like to be part of the happy pod, we would love to hear from you. The address as ever is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Alicia Thursting. The producer was Anna Murphy. 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 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.