Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: Kylie thanks fans who got her through cancer

Episode Date: October 12, 2024

Pop superstar Kylie Minogue tells us how the love and support of fans around the world helped her breast cancer recovery. Also: the penguin post office; making plastic from onion peel; and learning happiness from dogs.

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. Life and death were two very realistic co-existing possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference.

It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. To hear more stories of recovery, visit camh.ca. 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. This is The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson, and in this edition... I got letters and letters and letters and drawings and messages and I kept them all, and they really, really made such a difference. I just felt like there was just a trail of love and support and it was just beautiful.

Pop superstar Kylie Minogue on how love and support from around the world helped her through breast cancer. We hear what it takes to get a job where there are more penguins than people. Could our four-legged friends help us learn to be happier? I think dogs understand that the things that make life worth living are those things that we do for their own sake. All the things that they would do just because they want to. And reunited. I could see my parents, Bill's parents, Bill's grandmother and grandfather.

It was just unbelievable. The couple whose wedding video lost nearly 60 years ago has been found half a world away. If you or anyone you love have ever been diagnosed with cancer, you'll know just how devastating that can be. And even if you get the all clear, it can be hard to move on with life. Getting through takes a lot of love and support, whoever you are. Nearly 20 years ago, the global pop superstar Kylie Minogue joined the many millions around the world facing the disease,

news that sparked a huge rise in the numbers of women getting checked and treated early enough to survive breast cancer. Now, with that latest milestone approaching, she's been talking to our entertainment correspondent, Mark Savage. One of the most tangible things, I guess, even outside of music and acting, when you talked about your cancer diagnosis the number of women who went for screenings shot up and that's a real difference that you've made to people's lives just by talking about it publicly that must have been I guess quite moving for you moving's a good word um because there's so much else going on at that time. And actually it just jogged my memory that after my diagnosis

I had a booking in to go to the children's hospital. I still went, but I think the news had just gone out. And so it was really so... I've done that a lot over the years, but I just recall being at one particular bed and, you know, this kid going through such a difficult time and the parents being on the other side and me being on this side. And I'm doing what I would normally try to do, just bring some distraction and some happiness and I'm going through what's in my life at that time I remember the parents looking over to me and just saying they were

concerned it was this kind of triangle of care and love and all of that was just really moving and that didn't stop and then I got letters and letters and letters and drawings and messages and I kept them all and they really really made such a difference to me. On the life such as said Kylie Minogue pop star or Kylie Minogue and I would think they did this or their parents helped them they put a stamp on it the post department have bothered to I just felt like there was just a trail of of love and support and it was just beautiful and as you're saying the the kindly effect that they called it at time was was yeah really moving I didn't realize that initially you were misdiagnosed and that's very important to talk about as well, isn't it?

Yeah, I mean, someone misdiagnosed is possibly too strong a terminology, although I did say that, but all I would say is if there's any uncertainty within yourself, have a second opinion. Yeah, you know when something's not right. Yeah, I mean, i would go back and think and i was about to go on tour that i was in um the uk and you know part of that's my fault i was there's there's different steps of checking and i didn't have all the checks but certainly one of

them said well that's you don't need to worry about that. And I kind of wish they'd said, you might want to do this other test and this other test. But it is what it is. And I'm obviously so grateful that when things progressed, that I knew about it and I was able to action everything. And it's 20 years ago now, presumably. Got the all clear. Next year. Yeah, there's definitely milestones.

There's the getting through the surgery, the chemotherapy, the radiotherapy, the getting the news when you are finally in remission. So, yeah, whoever's going through that right now, I just send, you know, all the love possible and best wishes, yeah. And then in March, you were in America and you went on stage with Madonna. Yeah, there was conniptions and kind of explosions of glitter and, I mean, people gobsmacked um but it's kind

of carrying on from from our previous conversation that when i spoke with her manager who i've known for a long time and he said oh you know m would like you to join her on stage and i thought i just presumed it's going to be where they hold up the cards and she kind of has guests on each in the Vogue section and I said, she'd really like to sing I Will Survive With You. The reasoning for that is she lost her mother to breast cancer. She knows some of my story. I will survive.

Pop star Kylie Minogue. Now, if you like the sound of living and working somewhere that has more penguins than people, this might be your ideal job. A few months ago, adverts went out for someone to run the world's most southerly post office in Port Lockroy, Antarctica, as part of a team that also monitors conservation efforts

and restores historic buildings. Applicants had to be prepared to adapt to unpredictable weather, constant daylight, sub-zero temperatures and, of course, the new penguin neighbours. Well, George Clark got the job, and he's been speaking to my colleague Matthew Amroliwala. It's still quite surreal, to be honest, but it's incredibly exciting and, yeah, really looking forward to it.

There was a fairly interesting selection process. There was, I think, about 15 or 16 of us and then they narrowed it down to five of us as well as other carpenters and conservators that are going out. And, yeah, we've all been together, we've been training together, and I think we're all just really looking forward to getting out there now. You said in a classically British way it was an interesting selection process. What do you mean by that?

So they put us through some, yeah, weird and wonderful tasks. We were putting up tents, blindfolded, wearing oven mitts. We had to do all sorts of things. So that was an experience in itself. Tell me a little more then about what prompted you to actually want to do this in the first place. I mean, the obvious answer is, you know, why not? I was reading an article.

It seemed like an amazing opportunity to work with an amazing charity, UK Antarctic Heritage Trust, and I decided to go for it. To be honest with you, I didn't think it would go this far, and yet here we are. It is really isolated. Tell me the sorts of things that you will have to do whilst you're there. Yeah, like you say, it's very isolated. It's a small island about the size of a football pitch, so I'm going to be running the post office. So I'll be sorting through the mail, selling stamps, putting the Antarctica stamp on the postcards and letters and sending them off. Basically, that's my job. And how much mail do they get? How many people

are there around you? It's in the hundreds. I know that for sure. We get a very few amount of letters to us, but most of the mail is sending it away from the island, from the visitors that are able to come and see the beautiful scenery. Now, I know you get to take a little basket of goodies along with you, not very much, but what are you actually taking along? A sketchbook, reading materials, things to keep us busy. The penguins are all around the area that you'll be working and living in. What have they said to you about that? We had a training weekend where we were really lucky to have a talk from a penguinologist.

I think that's the official title. So we're going to be observing their behaviour, observing their nesting patterns, their hatching patterns. We're all going to be doing observations and wildlife surveys to keep an eye on the penguin colony that we're going to be living alongside. George Clarke. And if you've ever had any unusual jobs or job interviews, we'd love to hear about them. Email us or send a voice note to globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

We all know one of the biggest challenges facing the environment is plastic waste, a lot of it from food packaging. Well, imagine if some of that packaging and some of the paper and cardboard made from cutting down trees could be replaced by using the skin of one of the world's most commonly eaten vegetables. A small firm in the north of Scotland is developing eco-friendly packaging made from onion peel. It's called Howd and Cameron Angus McKay has been to the lab to meet the woman behind the idea. Any meal that you have, there's bound to be some onion in there. Onions are like a global staple for a lot of cuisines. They're everywhere, so their waste is everywhere too.

Former textile student Rainika Ramanujan first experimented with onion skins as a source of clothing dye. When I was working at university, I was working with textiles, thinking about how everything around us is made from something. And upon digging into it a little more, realised that a lot of those things weren't made in the best way or with great materials. When you heat up food in plastic packaging or your water bottles, for example, they leach parts of the chemicals into the food or water that we're drinking. Originally from India, but Dutch by nationality, Renika explains haud is the Dutch word for skin.

Supported by industry-led body the National Manufacturing Institute Scotland, she's working on a cardboard-like material and an alternative to flexible film. A big conglomerate said, I'd love to see more of this when you can scale it. And I just thought, oh, we're onto something here. But everyone I tried to get in touch with in London didn't respond. Doors were shut. I had a friend up here who said, why don't you come up to Oban and just give it a go and try and build this thing that you're passionate about?

Marie Rappin is the company's chief scientific officer. In this box, we've got some red onion peels and we've got some brown ones. The process is pretty simple. We use our onion peels and put them in a mixture that we heat up for a little while and then we let it cool down. Once it's cooled down, depending on the colour we want, we might bleach it or not bleach it. And then we're going to mechanically process it

using something akin to like a motion pillar system just to refine it to get this really fine pulp. The pair hope to launch their first product next year, paper made entirely from outer onion skins. refine it to get this really fine pulp. The pair hope to launch their first product next year, paper made entirely from outer onion skins. It is something that we're quite proud of to have managed that quality of paper just from onion peel because it wasn't a given. It's something that people might be a little bit dubious about but turns out it's possible. Renika doesn't just want to find alternatives to plastic. Her sites are also set on replacing paper and cardboard packaging. Trees are super important to the environment for all the benefits they bring,

the animals they home, but also the carbon sequestration that is such a big conversation in the whole net zero space. Onion skins do not have that same responsibility. They are not sequestering carbon. So what we're doing here is by using our paper or our onion skin derived material, you are saving trees. Howd sources waste peel from farmers. Because of antimicrobial properties, onion peel packaging could help extend the shelf life of perishable foods. Marie's working on a flexible film which could replace plastic bags for food items like

spinach. Something we want to achieve with our film in the future is obviously similar properties than what your spinach bag has. It's transparent, it's nice, it's light, you like to use it. But we also want to add some extra properties which would help elongating the shelf life of fresh produce. So you could keep something in your fridge for extra days, things like that. And the question everyone's asking, do the prototypes smell of onion? Whenever we are showing prototypes, one of the first things people tend to do is pick up the samples and smell them. They're always convinced that they'll smell like onions, which is a logical conclusion, but we always have to disappoint them. They smell quite bland. If anything, maybe a little sweet.

Renuka Ramanujam ending that report by Callum Angus McKay. Now to football, where fans of Greece's national team had quite the week. And Pavlidis is first. Now it's your goal. Goal. 2-1. Pavlidis wins. Leave this opportunity for you. That's the sound of the Greek commentary Goal! Goal! 2-1! Goal for Pavlidis!

That's the sound of the Greek commentary after their team scored a goal in the 94th minute, take a historic victory over England in a Nations League game. Vangelis Pavlidis scored the winning goal and the team were determined to honour their late team-mate, George Baldock, who died recently at the age of 31. Coming up in this podcast... I actually was not planning on getting a matcha latte, but I'll have to for the sake of the art.

All of it looks really, really real and really, really delicious. It's a good thing I'm going to go eat later. The Japanese art that looks good enough to eat. Life and death were two very realistic coexisting possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to my 16th birthday, to be honest.

I grew up being scared of who I was. Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference. It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. To hear more stories of recovery, visit camh.ca. 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. Now, if we want to make our lives happier, it seems we should try to follow the example set by dogs. Mark Rowlands, a professor of philosophy at the University of Miami, believes there are many ways in which we can learn from our canine friends about how to live in the moment and be contented with our existence. He's just written a book called The Happiness of Dogs and has been speaking to my colleague Rebecca Kesby.

One of the things that dogs know that we've forgotten is that there are certain things in life we do for their own sake and there are certain things in life we do for the sake of something else. I mean, most obviously we worked in order to get paid. I think dogs understand that the things that make life worth living are those things that we do for their own sake. Like playing, sleeping, eating, these sorts of things? Yeah, all the things that they would do just because they want to,

not because anyone's making them do it. And we assume that they're happy with this life. How are we grading that? Well, I mean, how do we know that anyone is happy, whether dog or human? Basically through close personal knowledge and observation of behavior. I mean, I take my dog every day running along the canal. He chases iguanas, they jump into the water, they swim to the other side, and they stay over the other side for the rest of the day. When the next morning comes around, they're back on our side, and he repeats the whole thing over stay over the other side for the rest of the day. When the next morning comes around, they're back on our side and he repeats the whole thing over and over again. This kind

of repetitive activity that aims only at its own continuation, that is when I think he's happiest. This was a puzzle for me. What's the difference between us and dogs such that what would be utterly meaningless for us can be intensely meaningful for them. You know, we fight our way to work in the mornings, we slog our way through the day, fight our way home again at night. And we do this over and over and over again with very limited results, typically. So the idea was, well, if I can work out how shadow solved this problem, then we can also solve the problem for human beings.

Well, yeah, I mean, I think I'd rather chase iguanas than get on the daily commute. That does sound more fun, even if you do it every day. But I mean, are we not sort of taking a little bit of a simplistic approach on this? I mean, it is true that animals feel grief or fear or anxiety. They're not always happy, are they? No, they're not always happy. And there's certainly nothing I want to claim or suggest they are. The idea is that when they're happy, then they're capable of a kind of happiness that has a sort of intensity and purity that humans find very, very difficult to match. OK, so but I guess it's what, trying to be more simple in our lives and take pleasures

in simple things. Is that the message? Well, there's something that happened to us. We developed a capacity that's very limited in dogs and other animals, a capacity for reflection. And reflection is the ability to think about yourself, to think about what you're doing and why you're doing it. This has great advantages, no doubt, but there are also certain disadvantages. As a result, we became very anxious, sort of timorous creatures who were always second-guessing ourselves. Instead of just going about our lives and believing things and

wanting things, we worry about our lives, we worry about what it is we believe, what it is we want. And this makes us trouble creatures in a way that other animals, particularly dogs, I think, are not. And in your experience, does it help humans to observe animals, whether or not they're pets, whether they're wild animals or birds, and sort of try to understand their point of view in life and to try to copy them maybe? What humans tend to do when we try to understand ourselves, when we try to understand the world

around us, is that we overcomplicate things. This is a sort of habitual tendency of human beings to overcomplicate things. I think thinking about animals, what they do, is a very good antidote to this basic human tendency towards overcomplication. So if anyone was listening and wanted to become more dog, what would be your top tip? Don't bother because you can't. The closest we become to dogs when we were children, and I think as life goes on, capacities, reflection grow and grow and grow. We basically have lost that ability. Professor Mark Rowlands. If you've ever been to Japan, you may well have seen restaurant windows filled with plastic models of food, offering a glimpse of what's on the menu. These replicas have been drawing in potential customers for almost 100 years. Now, the art form is being celebrated at an exhibition here in London.

Our reporter Will Leonardo went along. Simon Wright, the director of programming at Japan House London, is talking us through what's believed to be the first exhibition of its kind in Britain. Anyone who's visited Japan will immediately know what food replicas are. Intriguately detailed, life-size plastic models of dishes being served inside cafes or restaurants, often on display in glass cases. They're always hyper-real. At times, they're uncanny.

And seeing as their main purpose is to draw you inside, this exhibition has our mouths watering. There are bowls of noodles so real looking you can almost smell them and sashimi with every groove and pattern of the raw fish perfectly recreated. Tammy, what did you make of the exhibition? Oh, I love it.

I absolutely was not planning on getting a matcha latte right now but I'm afraid that I'll have to for the sake of the art. Is it making you hungry? A little bit, yes. I mean, yeah, OK, we all like a bit of sushi, but some of the dishes are just completely different, something I've never seen before. So, yeah, it makes me want to go and see Japan.

All of it looks really, really real and really, really delicious. It's a good thing I'm going to go eat later. As another exhibition visitor pointed out, it's amazing how something that started as a marketing device can through decades of craftsmanship be elevated into such an art form. Their story began in the 1920s, but they really took off properly a decade later, largely because of the efforts of one man, Takizo Iwazaki. The replica's heyday came in the post-war Showa era, with the proliferation of Western-style cafes serving lurid green melon sodas and fluffy pancakes, among other things.

They soon spread to Western restaurants, Japanese eateries and Chinese ramen joints. Plastic is often moulded around real food items, painted and then assembled as he would a real dish. It's an industry which requires precise and unique skills. That's Tsuyoshi Iwasaki, the grandson of Takizawa, who runs one of the original firm's three offshoots. He's explaining one of the most exciting parts of this exhibition. Food replica artists mostly work within the bounds of what their customer restaurants want, but once a year they get to let their imaginations run wild at the company's annual contest. Here there's a crab made to look like an anime robot, a multi-layered

burger half a meter tall, and a lifelike honeycomb dripping with nectar and with bees buzzing around it. And it turns out that this is Mr Iwasaki's favourite. In English, I think you would call this food education. I like this piece because it gives you a sense of gratitude for the bees that create the honey. I hope that through viewing this exhibition, visitors may be able to imagine how our art form might be of use to people here in Britain. As with restaurants, coronavirus hit the industry hard, Mr Iwasaki says, but there's now a recovery helped by huge numbers of foreign tourists. Another key issue is the digitisation of menus. More and more places in Japan are relying on

screens. But, as Simon Wright says, those just don't match up to the allure of a perfect plastic model of the dish that you're about to eat. Food replicas seem to have had their day a few decades ago, but there has been a resurgence. Somehow photographs and digital signage doesn't always work. And the idea of these food replicas is that they trigger in your mind the memory of the food that you see and therefore enticing you in. Simon Wright from Japan House, London, ending that report by Will Leonardo.

Now, here's a reunion worth waiting 57 years for. A husband and wife in Australia have been reunited with the long-lost footage of their wedding in Scotland after it was found by chance decades later. Rebecca Wood has the story. As a smiling bride walks down the church steps, new husband proudly on her arm, confetti is flung into the air and a small pageboy and flower girl gather by their sides. The couple in question are 20-year-old Aileen and Bill Turnbull in Aberdeen, Scotland.

The date is August 1967 and somewhat ahead of their time, they got their wedding day filmed, a way of preserving their memories forever. Or was it? After the wedding, we wanted to see it. Bill borrowed a projector from a guy at his work. So we were able to see it just that one time. And then after that, it disappeared. And we did try and ring this guy a couple of times, but we couldn't, you know, we didn't have any luck. We couldn't get it. So that was it. Aileen and Bill went on to have

three children and they later moved to the other side of the world, to Australia. The film was never found and they thought no more of it until 57 years later when Aileen saw her picture online. Just all of a sudden, you know, I saw this photograph and Bill was sitting with me at the time when it came up and I thought, oh my goodness, here's my wedding photograph. And then when I read it and it said, does anyone know this couple? And I knew right away that this is from our wedding video.

Back in Aberdeen, it was Terry Cheen who'd posted the picture on social media. He stumbled across the wedding video after having his own film reels transferred onto DVD. It turns out his uncle was Bill's colleague who'd lent him the projector. I took a screenshot and I posted it on a Facebook web page. Can anybody tell me who this is? And there was no response for five months. And then all of a sudden one night there's a lady called Aileen. Hi, this is me. So after after nearly 60 years, and thanks to Terry's quest to reunite the film with its mystery owner, Aileen and Bill once again get to see their wedding day come to life, before their very eyes.

I just couldn't believe it. What struck me was the fact that it wasn't just like a photograph. I could see my parents, Bill's parents, Bill's grandmother and grandfather. It was just unbelievable. It's quite amazing to think that the Page boys, he's 60. He's 61. 61, and the Page girls, 60. What made me even more emotional

is just the response that I've got from everyone. People wishing us well, and I keep saying to Bill, I say, no, all these people, we don't know them and yet they're sending us all these good wishes and it's just been overwhelming really. Aileen Turnbull ending that report by Rebecca Wood. And before we go, an update on the story in our last episode about Alaska's fat bear Week. After a week of public voting on which of the brown bears at Brooks River in Katmai National Park had managed to gain the most weight for hibernation, a winner

has been announced. And for the second year running, it's Grazer. This year she's a new mum and is the first mother bear to win the competition while raising a cub. And that's all from the Happy Pod for now but if you'd like to get in touch as ever, the address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk This

edition was mixed by Matt Cadman and the producers were Holly Gibbs and Rachel Bulkeley. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritz 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