Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: Mobile coverage reaches remote Norwegian town

Episode Date: December 30, 2023

Our weekly collection of the happiest stories in the world. This week, how a settlement in Norway is taking a unique approach to mobile phone etiquette, after getting signal for the first time. Also: the man who composes music on TikTok to tell short stories. And we look ahead at what's to come in the worlds of sport and music in 2024.

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. Lives Less Ordinary and Amazing Sports Stories, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You better be ready because we're going to bring it to you. Billions of text messages are sent worldwide every day. We've been sending them for more than two decades.

But for the people living in Nijollesund, a Norwegian town on the Svalbard archipelago, it's only just become possible. I received text messages from them the very first day just to test that we are actually alive. It has been a very positive response that they are having a, let's say, normal life. Hello, this is The Happy Pod i'm harry bligh in china hear how makeshift buildings constructed

during the pandemic are being repurposed into homes and shelters the company in slovenia turning a pesky plant a huge very dense bushy plant about 12 feet tall and there is a lot of it. Into something more useful and we look back at one of the lesser known but important sporting events of the year, the Special Olympics. We're in 190 countries and as a person who's been a part of the leadership team for a long time I feel like it's given me a front row seat for the best in humanity. All this and more to come on The Happy Pot from the BBC World Service. We begin in the town of Njølesund, one of the world's northernmost permanent settlements. It's located on the Norwegian archipelago Svalbard. And to give you an idea of how far away it is from the rest of Norway,

the town is 1,000 kilometres closer to the North Pole than it is to Oslo. In the summer, the town has a population of around 200, many of whom are scientists researching climate and space. Last month, it became the last town in Norway to get mobile coverage. But the town hasn't been left behind with all technology. They have internet there, but only through a wired connection. Wireless networks have always been banned, so as not to mess with the delicate scientific monitoring equipment

used by research laboratories. Talks to get mobile coverage began back in 2001, and now that it's established 22 years later, it means the residents of Ny-Ålesund can use text and calling services like the rest of the world. Julie Tromborg is one of them. To be honest, it's been making life easier, I have to say. But we were, of course, a bit concerned at the start

because this is a special place. It's a very tight community. We are far away from others, So the social life is very important. And of course, we were a bit worried that it would impact the social life, that people would sit with their phone. But that hasn't been a problem so far, luckily. Who was the first person you sent a text to when the mobile signal started? My mother. Julie Tromborg speaking to me on her newly enabled mobile phone. Christian Skotten is the chief executive of the telecoms

company Telenor in Svalbard. I spoke to him from his office in Longyearbyen. It's a settlement which can house about 200-250 people, mainly researchers, mainly for astronomic research, because it's so rural and so outside everything. So you can, you have no radio pollution, no light pollution. So it's a very good place for observing towards space. In the wintertime, it's only about 40 people living there. It's in the summer when the research is going on and the station is manned when we are up to about 200. And why has it taken so long for mobile service to become a thing there? There is a sight there of certain importance to listening to things in outer space. It has been a concern that a mobile network

could make disturbances to those signals. So that was an assumption made very early. And since then, it hasn't been followed up very closely. And also mobile signals, the way we do mobile today is slightly different from what we did 20 years ago. It has been more ruggedized, more resilient. We had better control. So today we know exactly what we are doing, so to say.

And also that in this area, it is protected from the use of frequencies about two gigahertz. So we have to stay on the frequency bands below there. For example, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth is not legal. So you have to switch off all Wi-Fi and Bluetooth devices when you're there, because there's a risk that those frequencies can disturb this site. But for mobile signals, which are quite robust and have very strict control and don't make much disturbances to its surroundings, that is quite safe to use. So what does this mean for people living there? How did they communicate before this?

Before this, we have a fibre connection up there. So they had fixed access through a regular cable in the wall. So for them, it was more all of those things we do through a mobile network, typically banking and so on, and also to be mobile, actually not being linked to your desk to be able to make a call or communicate. They had this great opportunity that they could benefit from the experiences we have elsewhere of how do you develop a good culture for use of mobile. They have had the privilege of talking to each other, not people facing down in their mobile phone every day like the rest of us does.

So when they knew that they will have a mobile network coming, they had this golden opportunity to develop culture for how to use a mobile phone. Where do you use it? Like mobile-free zones where they are dining and so on to keep some of that good social relationship thing which they always had up there but in the same time be a modern community i hope they keep on building a healthy mobile culture maybe the rest of us can learn something from that as well yes i think so and and have you heard from any of the residents have they given their reactions to having this new technology, so to speak, being able to send texts and calls? So far, I have received several very positive responses. Of course, I received text messages from them the very first day just to test that we are actually alive.

It has been a very positive response that they are having a, let's say, normal life, like using FaceTime, like you and I are doing now, for example. It's something we take for granted, and you don't really know what you are missing until you don't have it. Christian Skotten from Telenor Svalbard. How to turn a symbol of sickness and confinement into something positive. During the coronavirus pandemic, China constructed a lot of buildings that were used as makeshift hospitals

or state quarantine centres, places where people had to stay if they tested positive. Now, though, they're being repurposed, as our China media analyst Kerry Allen explains. During the global pandemic, people in many urban areas of China became very familiar with what are known as fengtung, literally translated as shelters. These were large blocks of quickly erected studios, complete with a bedroom and a small bathroom that people were isolated in if they tested positive for COVID-19. And I should mention that people were housed in these not by choice, but because China had a strict zero COVID policy in place.

But now, a year on from China ending these measures, an opportunity has been recognised that there's the potential to turn some of these units into affordable housing. In Beijing, a shelter with more than 4,900 of these rooms has been turned into a community of brightly coloured affordable rental homes. Another in the city has been turned into a youth hostel and some have been earmarked as resettlement housing for people affected by natural disasters. This is not just happening in Beijing but in other parts of the country too. In a city called Lingsha in northwestern Gansu province, some of these shelters, which have been standing empty for some time, have very quickly been put to use as temporary housing for people affected by an earthquake in the province earlier in the week.

As it was for most people in the world, the pandemic was a dark period for a lot of people in China. But three years of mass testing and strict lockdown measures meant that these huge shelters were generally seen as something to be feared. So on the social network Weibo, many young Chinese have been praising these new housing units for rewriting a new chapter in China's history, turning something that might have been associated with bad memories

into something good. And it's not just happening with these shelters either. In many major cities, it was common to see testing booths where people could get their COVID-19 test in order that they could continue going to work or school. And many of these have since been turned into places for young local craftsmen to display their goods. Others have become places for sanitation workers and labourers to rest. And factoring in that it's very cold in much of

China at the moment, these have likewise been warmly welcomed. Kerry Allen. Now, you might have heard of Japanese knotweed. It's a plant that's one of the most invasive species which grows and spreads rapidly. It's been known to cause havoc in people's gardens all over the world, with its incredibly strong and durable roots that can not only kill other plants, but can damage concrete foundations and buildings. It's not easy to get rid of either. Japanese knotweed needs strong chemicals or extensive digging up to remove it. Now a design company, Trina, in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, has been using

the invasive plant to make it into something more useful, paper. The project's called Knotweed, without the K as in not a weed. Zoe Gelber has been finding out more. We normally talk about invasive plants as something that we need to eradicate and move away out of our communities and environments. Gaia is a designer and is one of the co-founders of Trina. They first started thinking about designing with invasive species eight years ago. What we are trying to kind of push forward is to embrace their presence in a way and try to get to know them also from their kind of beneficial uses, let's say.

So that took us to these ideas of exploring their potential for paper production. Since 2017, every April, they gather together volunteers to pick Japanese knotweed around the city, which they then process into paper. Gaia walked me through the process, starting with showing me the knotweed that the city, which they then process into paper. Gaia walked me through the process, starting with showing me the knotweed that grows on their site. So this is all Japanese knotweed here? Yeah. Okay, wow. It's just like a huge, very dense, bushy plant, about 12 feet tall, and there is a lot of it. People say that it resembles bamboo in a way because of the stem structure and also the hollow stems that it has.

Like bamboo, knotweed is known for growing incredibly quickly in huge bushes. With big heart-shaped leaves and ornate white flowers, it's hard to imagine this peaceful-looking plant as the fearsome adversary it's so often made out to be. When I saw it, it was green and full of leaves, but Gaia and the team gathered the stems when they're dry. These are then shredded into smaller pieces and put through a paper mill, which continues to break down the plant fibres. Andrei, Gaia's co-founder, showed me how it worked.

At the end, we come to a paper pot that is like this. down the plant fibers. Andrei, Gaia's co-founder, showed me how it worked. At the end, we come to a paper pulp that is like this. OK. It looks like a kind of brown, soupy... It's just like a brownish broccoli soup. It's nothing else. It's just a fibrous broccoli soup. At a factory in the city, this pulp is sprayed onto fine mesh and then put through huge industrial rollers to produce big rolls of white Japanese knotweed paper. Andrei showed me the finished product. Does it come out this tone or do you bleach it?

It's really different because every batch has a different colour. OK, nice. So it's like wine, yeah. Every batch has its own properties and colours. Currently, Knotweed is producing around 500 kilos of paper every year from its annual foraging events. It's still very much a small-scale project. But Gaia and Andrei hope that their world-first Knotweed paper will inspire others to do the same

and start to see the invasive weeds around us as something that can benefit the wider community. So our idea is definitely to present knotweed as a potential resource but it's really important also that through this brand that we do that we also have an opportunity to introduce some other ways of engaging with production of goods that can serve the local community but also the ecology. Zoe Gelber and you can hear more about Japanese knotweed and other stories like this from our friends at People Fixing the World on the BBC World Service or online. If you heard our edition on Christmas Day we caught up with some of our

colleagues from around the newsroom and asked them to look back on their highlights of 2023. Well, in this podcast, as we approach the new year, let's have a look forward to some of the stories to expect in 2024. Here's our music correspondent, Mark Savage. Looking ahead to the music of 2024, I think there's no escaping the fact that Taylor Swift is still in the middle of her imperial phase. Her record-breaking Errors Tour is going to move from America to Asia and Australia and Europe. And I think we're just going to continue to see those scenes of hysteria around everything she does. But in terms of new music, there's one artist I'm really interested in for 2024, and her name is Tyler.

She's from South Africa, and she's just had a massive hit with a song called Water. It's gone viral on TikTok. It's had more than 1.2 billion views. She's been nominated for a Grammy. And she is the first solo artist from South Africa to have a hit on the US charts for 55 years. That's really significant because South African artists just haven't been able to achieve that kind of global success before. But what Tyler has is this really accessible sound. She's taken Amapiano, the very popular African genre that mixes house and cueto bass lines, reggae and dub, and she's fused it with the pop and R&B that

she grew up loving, you know, artists like Chris Brown and Rihanna. And she's made something that is completely unique to her, but also incredibly compelling. She grew up in Johannesburg and she's wanted to be famous from a very young age. She used to steal her dad's phone so she could post videos to Instagram and she was messaging people like Drake and DJ Khaled hoping to get their attention. That didn't quite work, but it did help her find a manager who put her in the studio and helped her write a song called Getting Late. The video for that went massive in South Africa and it attracted the attention of Sylvia Roan. She is a legendary music executive in America who worked at Motown, who's been part

of the success story of people like Travis Scott and Mary J. Blige and Simply Red. She hired a billboard in Johannesburg, put Tyler's face on it and added the message to Tyler with love from Sylvia. And it's easy to see why she got so enthusiastic about this young 21-year-old artist. She is so charismatic. She has such a beautiful, soulful voice. And she's got the songwriting chops to match it. Not only that, but she's hugely ambitious. Here's what she said about her plans for global domination. I mean, my goal has always been the same. And it's been to be one of the biggest pop stars and being a pop star from the continent Africa, you know, that's always been a goal of mine. I feel like people are going to be like, where did this girl come from? People are

not ready. So I can't wait to see what she does next. Mark Savage and later in the programme, we'll hear from Nigel Adderley on his thoughts for the year ahead in the world of sport. Coming up in this podcast. The man composing music based on social media comments. Don't worry, they're nice ones. 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.

Do you ever pass someone in the street and wonder, what's their story? ABC Podcasts. I wanted to see what would a shot-for-shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark with kids look like. And their secrets. I was almost a school shooter. Unmissable stories from around the globe. Lives Less Ordinary from the BBC World Service. Find it wherever you get your BBC podcasts. We're looking back now at one of this year's sporting events for people with disabilities. The Special Olympics is the world's largest sports organisation for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, and this year's Summer Games were in Berlin. My name is Liam Stewart.

I am from Atlanta, Georgia, and I do soccer over for Unified Cop for the USA. From my experiences with Special Olympics and any kind of sport that I was involved with. I've learned about friendship and communication and trustworthiness. So Huda Ghayib Al-Sayed, she's an orphan. She's in her second year, industrial technician in knitting department. And she's a multitasking person.

She does a lot of sports while studying. Liam Stewart from Team USA and Noor Masood speaking on behalf of Hoda Shalabi from Team Egypt. The Special Olympics was founded in the US state of Maryland in 1968 by Eunice Kennedy Shriver. It began as a day camp called Camp Shriver for children with disabilities. Now there are 5 million participants from 172 countries taking part in the summer and winter games. I spoke to the founder's son and now chairman of the Special Olympics, Timothy Shriver. The Special Olympics is the most inspiring, joyful, positive, hopeful, life-changing movement in the world today. And I'm biased, but I believe that to be true. It's a movement of and for people with intellectual and developmental differences,

but it's also a movement from them. People with intellectual disabilities are in every community, they're in every country, in every village and town. So it's an invitation from them to come into a world where what matters most is how brave and how courageous and how hard you try. We're in 190 countries. And as a person who's been a part of the leadership team for a long time, I feel like it's given me a front row seat for the best in humanity. It's really spectacular. And tell me about you. Tell me how you got involved and started this. Well, my mom was involved in the founding of the movement.

She was running summer camps for people with intellectual challenges in the 1960s. And so I grew up learning to play with people who were different before I learned that they were different. And this is the message in some ways of our movement. Before you form your judgments of people, before you start to label people, before you get afraid of people who are different, why not try playing first? Why not try taking to the playing field? That's why schools are so important to us, because if we can get very young children involved in what we call unified sports, where children with

and without intellectual challenges play on teams together. What we find is they're not afraid. And this year's games, it was quite a momentous location, wasn't it? We were in the Berlin Stadium for the World Summer Games that Adolf Hitler imprisoned for the 1936 Olympics. There hadn't been an Olympic torch in that stadium since 1936. But this time, the torch was carried in by the very people who would have been scorned and humiliated and even killed in 1936, people with intellectual disabilities from all over the world. And they came into that stadium in the country of Germany,

in the city of Berlin, and all of Europe really cheered. I mean, people were tears streaming down our faces. And we, I think, inaugurated a whole new energy field there that was all about a culture of welcome for everyone. And for you, what were the highlights of these games? It's hard to overstate walking on that track during the opening ceremonies. It's hard to overstate being there with Sanaa. She's a young woman who was on

the Special Olympics team from Pakistan. A film had been made just prior to the Games about her life that showed her locked in a chain every morning in her own home. And she carried the torch into that stadium. You know, he ran right through the stop sign. You know, she was supposed to stop at a certain point. She just kept running. And I just couldn't, I couldn't believe my eyes. I saw a woman bursting with joy, 60,000 people cheering for her, embracing the world. How does someone do that? so much humiliation and so much discrimination and so much injustice and turn with a smile on your face and welcome all the joy and create all the joy the world needs to overcome its fears. It was an extraordinary moment. I can't quite describe it, but to meet her afterwards, to see that smile, to hear her speak about how important it is for others to get involved in sport was really quite extraordinary. Timothy Shriver. Let's stay with sport now and look ahead to 2024. Here's Nigel

Adderley. Paris 24, Los Angeles 28. All eyes will be on Paris in 2024. And after the French capital has hosted the Olympics, the largest ever Paralympics will take centre stage, with 4,400 athletes, an anticipated 3 million tickets sold, and so many remarkable stories. Before the 2016 Games, Daya Young Craddock was struggling with depression and anxiety. But after reaching out for help and the support of her family, the US sprinter

recovered to win gold in both the 100 and 200 metres in Rio. She took a break after the Tokyo Games to prioritise her mental health. Badea will be back in Paris as a Paralympic mum following the birth of her daughter, Sia Ray, in 2022, hoping to join the long list of medalist mothers at the Games. Euro 2024 in Germany will dominate the football agenda in Europe. People love football in Germany, and of course we all can't wait to have all the countries in our fantastic stadiums.

It will be big. And offers Jude Bellingham another chance to show off his prodigious talent. I commentated on him when he was outstanding for Birmingham in the English second division at the age of just 16. And the guidance of loving parents, determined to ensure humility was as important as his football, has produced a grounded individual who is now in the demanding environment of Real Madrid and is one of the best young players in the world. With Bellingham playing well, England's men could end their long wait for glory.

Finally, back to Paris 2024 and a story which may not end in an Olympic gold medal, but has reunited a nation. South Sudan is best known for the ruinous civil war which ripped the country apart following independence. But its basketball team are looking to create a more positive narrative. The country doesn't even have an indoor stadium, and the team began its journey on concrete courts in neighbouring Kenya. But helped by the former NBA star Luol Deng, who became a refugee after fleeing the country as a child,

the team began a fairytale run, which ended with qualification for the Olympics as Africa's top team. Thousands filled the streets of the capital, Juba, to welcome the players home. And while a squad of refugees, and the children of refugees, will find it tough at the very highest level, they've given the people in South Sudan a moment of joy and hope to carry into the new year. Nigel Adderley. We love to end this podcast with some music. Earlier this month, Julian Shoming

caught our ears when he started posting short compositions on TikTok. He writes and performs melodies that illustrate comments left by other users on his videos. Here's an example. Try to imagine what picture the music is painting. This was a comment that imagines a dog floating in space trying to bite a nearby asteroid. And then there's this, a bird walking around a railway station. When the bird accidentally boards a train, which then starts moving. I spoke to Julian and asked him how he comes up with these songs from just a short line of text.

People commented a lot of things, so I had a lot of ideas to work with. I'll go in and I'll find one that I feel can be expanded upon. And I'll just kind of start thinking through like the, you know, I'll get like a rough story in mind. Like a recent one I did was like an ogre wanting to learn ballet. So I kind of started it off like the ogre's going through the town and he's all angry at everyone doing his ogre thing. Secretly we learn about him that he really wants to dance but he feels like he can't do it because he's such a grumpy, angry ogre.

There's like this waltz that starts and it's kind of like supposed to give this idea of like a teaching sort of air to it. And so she's like, okay, here, here's the steps. And, you know, of course she can do it really well because she's a dance instructor. And then the ogre tries it, he messes up. So that's that kind of back and forth thing.

But then as he's trying it and trying it it starts to come together starts to come together and then like finally at the end he's he's like wow i'm doing it i'm dancing i'm not uh here i am This one was actually a very short comment. An ogre that wants to learn ballet but is too clumsy at first. There's another one you've done, which it received just under 3 million views on TikTok, which is a huge number. And this is the one that really caught our attention. And the prompt is, when a puppy sees grass for the first time,

maybe some barks with excitement. What you do with the piano is amazing because you almost emulate a dog's bark, a friendly bark with the high-pitched keys. Talk me through that piece. Yeah, I wanted it to have that playful atmosphere, the puppy barking. So if it were an angry dog with a vicious bark, it might have been a more dissonant chord

and maybe down lower in the register of the piano. But to make the bark more like a puppy, it's up in the higher register of the piano. So it's like a playful, you know, like a puppy might bark at the grass and it's kind of like, whoa, what's this? What's this? And then there's this kind of like you know a joyful kind of like oh i want to be a part of it i want to roll around in it well one thing i've noticed is that people really especially enjoy them if there's somehow an animal

in it anytime that there's like an animal especially like you, this one was with a puppy. It really helps, which makes sense. Musician Julian Shoming speaking to me from his home studio in the American state of Maryland. And Julian kindly wrote a piece for this edition of The Happy Pod. That's all from us for 2023. From all of us here, we wish you a warm and bright 2024. And as always, if you have a positive or uplifting story that you think we should hear, email us.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Chesney Fawkes-Porter. 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

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