Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: It's never too late to graduate

Episode Date: November 25, 2023

Our weekly collection of the happiest stories in the world. This week, the war veteran from Texas who's graduated from high school 60 years after he left. Also: the comic book that is educating girls all over the world about periods and menstruation. And: the cat meowing her way to a Christmas hit.

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 World Service. Search for The Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Mike Phillips never finished high school in the 1960s. With the help of his girlfriend, Mary Jane, he's just attended his graduation at the age of 77.

That was probably the best surprise that I ever got in my life. But on the way there, he says, now I don't want any surprises. Make sure there are no surprises. And I thought, oh, brother, boy, am I in trouble. Hello, I'm Harry Bly, and in this edition of The Happy Pod, meet Nicola from England. She makes pottery for people with disabilities. It just seems to have been that people don't want a medical aid, they just want to sit and continue to enjoy drinking their cup up. Her work went viral online and now she's helping

hundreds. Aditi Gupta wrote a comic book in 2014 to teach girls about periods. Now, menstrupedia is used all over the world. And we hear the impressive clean energy record set by Portugal. All that and more to come on the Happy Pod. And I'm on the chat with the Happy Pod. Pod, P-O-D. You got me. Hello, this is Mike Phillips, and I'm listening to The Happy Pod. That's lovely. And I'm from Dickinson, Texas. That's right. This is The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. Let's begin in Texas, in the town of Dickinson. George Michael Phillips, or Mike as he's known, is 77 years old. He left Dickinson High School in the 1960s at the age of just 17 to enlist in

the US Navy, where he went on to serve in Vietnam. He had a successful career, but there was always one regret. He hadn't graduated from high school. His old friend, now girlfriend, Mary Jane Music, who later became a teacher at the school, made it her mission to fix this. She found Texas Education Code 280251, which allows school districts to issue diplomas to military veterans, and she hatched a plan. I've been speaking to both Mike and Mary Jane. She began by telling me how they met up again after 60 years. We went to a mutual classmate, high school classmate's funeral, and realised that we were high school classmates.

And I asked him if he ever played putt-putt golf. And he said, yes. So I said well we need to go sometimes and we did. So we've been dating for about five and a half months. Wow and you were both at high school together in the 60s. Can you first tell us a story about why you didn't graduate? Well it was you know Vietnam was just going on then said, well, I just need to join the Navy and go see what I can do. So I ended up quitting school and went in the Navy and I ended up on a 36 foot wooden boat going up and down the river in Vietnam. And Mary, 60 years later, you're the reason that this came together, that Mike graduated at the age of 77 with a high school diploma. Can you tell me about that story?

Well, he would tell me my biggest regret is that I didn't graduate from high school. He got his GED from the Navy. When he got out of the Navy, he worked on a police officer certification. And he would say, but yet my biggest regret is that I didn't get a high school diploma. And that just really bothered me because he was so accomplished in so many areas of his life. It just didn't make sense that he didn't have this high school diploma. So I decided to get online and look. And I found an application for veterans who did not complete their high school diploma to be able to apply for it and receive it. And so I wrote a letter to our school district and it all came to fruition. And you went back to Dickinson High School to receive your diploma.

And it was quite a ceremony, wasn't it, Mike? Can you tell me about that? Well, first off, I got there under the impression that the school board was recognizing some of the veterans that went to school there just for Veterans Day. My diploma, that was all kept secret. I didn't know any of it. Those ladies, the superintendent, she stood up and she asked the veterans to stand. And there was about five or six of us there. And then she started talking and we all sat down.

And the next thing you know, she keeps talking and I'm looking, she's talking about me. And next thing you know, she's calling me up and she's handing me my high school diploma. And then I got the cap and gown. They had students there from the high school band that played the- Popping Circumstance. Popping Circumstance for it. And after I've done done that, one thing she asked me, she said, was you crying? And I said,

I may not have been crying, but I had big old tears rolling down my eye. That was probably the best surprise that I ever got in my life. But on the way there, he says,

now I don't want any surprises. Make sure there are no surprises. And I thought, oh, brother, boy, am I in trouble I think one thing that Mary Jane said like this proves is you don't ever get too old to to accomplish something to me is a great feeling and and Mike what would you say to someone who perhaps is in your position who also served in Vietnam or perhaps another war,

who wants to do the same? What would be your advice to them? Go for it. You know, if you can get that and you like say if you want that diploma or whatever you want, just go for it. Don't you don't say that, you know, it's a pass and you can't get it done because Mary Jane showed that it can be done. We honestly are hoping that young high school students will say, gee, I can accomplish this as well because sometimes it gets tough. Times are hard. It can be done. We want Mike to be looked at as a model for getting that high school diploma, that it's never too late. Dickinson High School, Class of 1965, 2023 graduate Mike Phillips and the woman who made that possible, Mary Jane Musick. We have talked about coral reefs a few times on this podcast. We've heard from scientists around the world who are coming up with innovative ways to protect corals from the threats posed by climate change.

In July, we spoke to the Australian marine biologist Tim Lamont, who introduced us to the array of sounds you can hear on a healthy coral reef. When we listen with a special underwater microphone, we hear all sorts of weird and wonderful noises on a healthy reef. So first you'll hear this sort of background crackle. It sounds a bit like radio static or like bacon frying in a pan. And what it is, is it's the sound of thousands of snapping shrimp, all clicking their claws. Some fish make sort of chattering sounds. Others make whooping sounds. Others buzz or grunt or hum or bellow. There are so many sounds that we're struggling to come up with words to describe them sometimes. Tim and his team found that playing these sounds to dead coral reefs

entices back fish and the nutrients they bring with them. Today's story is across the South Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Ecuador. A team of scientists have identified two enormous and healthy cold water reefs located far deeper than the ones we usually hear about. These reefs were found in the waters surrounding the Galapagos Islands, known for their vast and unique range of wildlife. These reefs were spotted and investigated by an underwater, remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, named Sebastian.

I spoke to the expedition's chief scientist, Kathleen Robert. So the ROV is a very big robot. It has these two robotic arms and a camera in the middle. And then we are at the surface of the vessel in a mission control room where we have two or three ROV pilots. So one person that will fly the ROV, so control the thrusters, and then one other person that will control the arms when we actually need to sample, because we often cannot tell what the exact species of an animal is just by the video. So we need to have a sample of that species so we can look under the microscope as well as take genetic samples. Wow. And so the ROV goes down to the bottom and it found these deep water coral. Describe that moment for me when you discovered them. What was that like? It's always quite exciting. We start seeing a few isolated patches. They're orange and they grow

a little bit like a bush. They're quite beautiful. And there's quite a few isolated patches. They're orange and they grow a little bit like a bush. They're quite beautiful and there's quite a few other species that tends to live on them. And so usually we end up seeing a few patches on boulders. As we get to the right depth, which is around 400 meters, we'd start to see a few colonies. And as we would go up, then we start seeing more and more. And around 350 meters, then the whole seafloor was covered with these corals. It's very much like walking in the understory of a forest. So all the bushes would be your corals. And then as you zoom into there, you'd see all the different organisms. You see fish of all kinds of colours. We saw a few different species of sharks as well as skates.

And then a whole lot of crabs, squat lobsters that tend to climb at the top of these corals and extend their arms to try and capture food. Let's talk about the discovery and why is this important? We often hear about the demise of coral reefs and coral bleaching due to warm waters. So what does this discovery mean? So what's really interesting about this discovery is it extends what we know about cold water corals across the world. Obviously, it's very expensive to send ROVs down to hundreds of meters. And so we don't necessarily know all the conditions, the environmental conditions in which these corals can thrive. And so being able to find other corals in other places helps us understand a little bit

more about the range of environmental conditions that they can survive in, the kinds of temperatures they can survive in. And that allows us to better understand in the future, as the ocean is changing, what might happen to these corals. And what's interesting about the Galapagos is it's been a marine park for decades now. So they are in really good condition. Kathleen Robert. Here in Britain, a potter has developed specially modified mugs for people with disabilities. Nicola Swan started making ceramics on a potter's wheel just eight years ago, and recently she was inspired by a friend's husband who struggled to hold a typical-looking ceramic mug. She's gone on to make more mugs tailored to individuals' needs. After posting a video of her initial design to social media,

Nicola receives hundreds of messages every day with requests for special mugs. She's now turned it into a business. When I was contacted by a friend of a friend, we worked together to come up with a double-handled mug for her husband. I believe he had Alzheimer's and he wasn't enjoying drinking out of a plastic sippy cup because she could only find very medical looking cups. So I worked correspondingly with them what they were actually looking for and came up with a double-handled mug with a lowered handle so he could put a silicon lid on it for when he needed to use a straw.

But there are others too, aren't there? You've made more specialist mugs for individual needs. Yes, because I put that one out on my accounts, the next thing was a friend got in touch saying her dad really likes that mug, but he doesn't want another handle that's really obvious so I kind of just it was like an almost like a little block on the side that he could rest his hand up rest on top of his second hand to give him the stability because he had a tremor and then really it's just come from people approaching me having seen what I've made for other people saying I've got this problem or occupational therapists have come into my live streams when I've been on social media, describing what some of the issues they've got with some of their patients and worked with people to come up with different ideas. And a video of your pottery went viral on social media in April with more than 800,000 views. What's that been like?

So yeah, it seems to hit on different platforms all at the same time, because some of these mugs I've been making for a couple of years, I was just part-time potter, working in my studio and putting things in the shop. And he always said, I'll always have these in alongside my other mugs, so if anyone ever comes across me and wants one but then they just started selling out going off on the social media and I genuinely I couldn't keep up I was making them day and night and I'd list them and they'd sell out in under 10 minutes. What's the furthest that you've reached around the world? It has gone global there's I've had people contacting me from Australia. There's a lot of people in America that have been asking all over Europe.

It just seems to have been that people don't want a medical aid. They just want to sit and continue to enjoy drinking their cup of tea. Somebody may just have weakness in their arm and not have a condition such as Alzheimer's or dementia that wants the dignity of just drinking out of a mug like everybody else. And you can see Nicola's mugs on her Instagram page, Made With Mud. Coming up in this podcast. Check me out, check me out. My name is not around, I'm a TikTok sensation. The cat from England who's vying for this year's Christmas number one.

Food is incredibly important in the world. It's about survival. Thank you. significance of food. If this kind of food is lost, a community will lose its identity. On what it takes to put food on your plate. This is an incredible journey. Search for The Food Chain wherever you get your BBC podcasts. 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 Podcasts. Welcome back. Portugal has set a new record for running off renewable sources of electricity. For six consecutive days at the start of November, the entire country was powered by wind, solar and hydropower. More renewable energy was produced than was actually needed by households and industry, with some being exported to neighbouring Spain. I spoke to our correspondent in Lisbon, Alison Roberts. Well, in fact, there's now quite a long tradition of investing, first of all,

in hydroelectric power. There are a lot of fast flowing rivers in the highlands that make that possible. And more recently, in onshore wind power and now increasingly in solar power as well. There are even combined projects such as floating solar plants on the reservoirs that were created by a hydroelectric dam. So sort of getting a win-win approach there. And now the investment is probably going to go into the more expensive but also larger offshore wind projects. They're just going to start doing that now. There are also various pilot projects in tidal and wave power. There have been various experiments, not all of which have gone as well as they might want them to.

But it's certainly been a consensual strategy in recent decades. In fact, the last coal-fired plant shut down two years ago, a little later than expected initially. And that was making Portugal only the fourth European Union member state to wind up coal altogether. So what has Portugal done and the Portuguese government done to make this possible? Way back in 2016, the entire country managed to rely on renewables for four days. Just in February of this year, there was a weekend when the country didn't use any non-renewable electricity. And in fact, in 2018, for the whole month of March, overall over that month, Portugal produced more power from renewables than it needed over the month. So that was the first time that that had happened. So there is definitely a consensus here in

Portugal that this investment needs to continue. Alison Roberts, Portugal is very ambitious when it comes to going green, as well as closing its coal power stations, as Alison mentioned. There are also plans to close all its natural gas power plants by 2040 and double the country's solar and hydrogen energy capacity with the hope of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. Pedro Amaral Jorge is the president of the Portuguese Renewable Energy Association, APREN. He's optimistic about the country's continued push for renewables. Portugal, because it's a very narrow piece of land, between wind, water and sun, we are always with a huge amount of renewable resources to be converted into electricity. So

I think it's highly likely that we will continue to grow in the incorporation of renewable energy and electricity generation. And of course, if we do this properly, and I'm betting my professional life that we will, we would be able to make sure that we create this compound of renewable energy sources that will allow us not only to generate electricity, but also green hydrogen and synthetic or renewable fuels of non-biological origin. So I'm really, really positive.

Billions of women around the world have periods, but it's not something that's often talked about. In various cultures, religions and societies, menstruation is seen as a topic that should be avoided, whispered about or even a taboo. This leaves many women and girls around the world uneducated and unsure about their own period cycles, ashamed to ask questions and unaware of how to practice safe hygiene. One project that is addressing this stigma head-on is the Indian comic book series Menstrupedia. Its creator Aditi Gupta has spent nearly a decade demystifying menstruation in her country and beyond. Lorna Aqua has been finding out more.

This is a story about three friends who are going to learn about an important... This is the sound of a cartoon that's reached millions of people in India. Open your mind and keep your ears alert. It's the creation of Aditi Gupta, who like many women, grew up in a society deeply affected by menstrual stigma. None of the girls menstruating would know why do periods happen, what happens during our periods, but everybody seemed to know that this is something that you don't have to talk about. A huge part of it is used as a control mechanism. It is used in all societies, really.

Any fluid that comes out of a woman's body is seen as a taboo. So I grew up looking at myself like that, and periods were always very limiting for me. Sharing these experiences with her husband while at university made them realise two things. How little they knew about menstruationation and how much needed to change. Tuhin and I are communication designers. We are studying how design can change human behaviour

and make them feel comfortable about a certain topic or a certain function. They settled on comics and that's how Menstrupedia was born. The first comic was published in 2014. I got Aditi to talk me through its characters and how they're filling the menstrual knowledge gap in India. Wow! Menstrupedia comic book! Yes, Pinky. This comic book explains everything about periods in a very...

So we have Pinky, Gia and Meera. So these characters really represent three segment, reader segment. One who has not gotten her periods and she is curious about growing up. One who gets periods during the narrative of the book so that the readers come to know what to do when they get their periods. And then we have Meera who has been getting her periods and then she has certain misconception. And through her, the readers come to know what are the myths and misconceptions. Let me answer all your questions one by one. certain misconception and through her the readers come to know what are the myths and misconceptions. Let me answer all your questions one by one. Every month... That's Priyaditi. She's a doctor in the cartoon and the driving force educating Menstrupedia's characters and readers.

We also talk a little bit about how to take care of a cloth pad if you're using a cloth pad. We are talking about what to do when you get your periods in school, how to dispose these napkins, and how to keep yourself clean on a regular basis when you're on your periods. These comics started out as physical books that have now been distributed to more than 25,000 schools across the world. They've also been animated into cartoons, available on YouTube in 17 languages, including some of India's most spoken languages like Hindi and Gujarati.

Right now, 13 different countries publish and print menstrual video comic in their own language and the characters look like them. Like, for example, the book that is in Shona language in Zimbabwe, the characters look like them. And in Shona language, I think it is the only piece of literature that is on menstruation. Right now, those girls who are reading the comic book are growing up and they are teaching the junior girls in their class about menstruation. The whole shift in collective wisdom is something that is very fascinating for me. And I'm so grateful to live this life where I could see this change happening. Everyone faces a bit of inconvenience during periods so always help each other out

and take care of each other. Lorna Akwa speaking to Aditi Gupta. You can hear more stories about tackling period poverty by searching for BBC People Fixing the World online or wherever you get your podcasts. She's a ginger cat from Stevenage in England who's risen to online fame recently after being photographed hundreds of times in her favourite spot, the ticket barriers at the local train station. But now Nala's fame could be about to go to a new level because her owner has produced a song using her noises or meows and is hoping to get the coveted Christmas number one spot in the UK music charts. The song even got the attention of our friend, the DJ at BBC Radio 2, Scott Mills.

Stephenish train station has hired itself a new ticket officer. She's called Nala. She's a cat. And the commuters are getting a bit obsessed. So much so, one of them has made a song about her, and I won't lie, it's quite good. Song is called Meow, in case you were wondering. Nala just sits on the top of the ticket barrier. There is a rap in it as well. Who's this? That's not the count.

I mean, worse has got to Christmas number one before. Andrew Peach has been talking to Nala's owner, Natasha Ambler. She did those little adventures beforehand, but now it's particularly at the train station. She gets all the attention, so she just goes there now. Okay, and like any 21st century influencer, you think, okay, people like taking my photo at a railway station how am i going to branch out into other areas of show business maybe i can learn to sing and release a single yeah no it's just a really funny thing because obviously she's been

quite in a few countries now so a lot of people know about her so we thought why don't we just make a Christmas song and make some money for charity and we can give back even more to the community. That's just too big a leap. My cat is popular with people at a local railway station. Maybe we can release a Christmas song. How did that happen in your mind?

Yeah, honestly, everything's just happened so quickly and it's been so overwhelming but we thought yeah let's just see what's out there let's just try it and see if we can make some money for how did you go about you know thinking well how can we put this music together who did that for you funny enough we have a friend, so we contacted a producer and he contacted a songwriter and they were all on board. And yeah, they produced what we've produced today. We didn't want something like a particularly Christmassy song. We wanted a feel good, upbeat, catchy, feel good, happy song that everyone could like sing along to or yeah just a little feel good natasha ambler speaking to andrew peach about this music featuring train station loving nala the cat

before we go an update from a story in last week's episode. We heard from Neil Jones, who was working as a tiler before a win on the UK National Lottery allowed him to give up the day job and buy a pool table. Well, this month, Neil won a bronze medal for England in the European Pool Championships in Malta. And our listener Thomas has been in touch to tell us about a miming festival

that's taking place this week in Liptovski Mikolas in Slovakia. The festival is focused on children and teenagers. It started small, but now in this year, there is 350 young people who love mime and pantomime and they are eager to learn. It's 300 people but the atmosphere is like a family. We love it when our listeners get in touch about news and events that make them happy in their part of the world. To share your news with us, send us an email or a voice note to globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. And that's all from us for now, but The Happy Pod is back next Saturday. This edition was mixed by Matt Hewitt. The producer was Anna Murphy. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Harry Bly. 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.