Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: Saving Thailand's street dogs

Episode Date: April 5, 2025

Meet the man dedicating his life to helping thousands of stray dogs. Also: the childhood sweethearts who reunited after 85 years, and Baileigh Sinaman-Daniel, playing college basketball with only one arm.

This is the HappyPod from the BBC World Service. I'm Rachel Wright and in this edition... You're moving faster every day Tom Cruise. I can't keep up with you mister. You're a flying machine. You're a flying machine. Look at him go. I meet this man who's helped thousands of stray dogs in Thailand, two childhood sweethearts reunited after more than 85 years.

All these years have passed and then suddenly we got in touch again. And? I looked at the text and I thought to myself like, history, like what are you talking about? And then that's when it clicked in my head for a second. I was like, okay, maybe this is kind of a big deal. An historic moment in college basketball. Meet the first player with one arm to score

during a game. We begin with the story of a man in Thailand who's become an online celebrity after sharing his stories of the abandoned street dogs he's fed, re-homed and treated. Niall Harbison lives on the island of Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand. His story begins when he himself was in a bad place, recovering in hospital from alcohol poisoning. He decided to turn his life around and began to befriend some of the island's many stray dogs. That became his mission – to fix the global street dog problem. At his rehabilitation centre on the island he works tirelessly to

improve the dog's lives, feeding, grooming, treating and sterilising, which doesn't sound that pleasant but Niall says that will save many more dogs from being born on the street. While on holiday in Thailand myself last month, I went to visit him and met some of his four-legged friends. Oh here he is. Hello mister. His tail is wagging which is a good... that's my finger mister. You can see his back leg is really not doing fantastic. He's in a lot of pain. We can fix you, mister. You're going to go to the doggy spa, a full health check-up, nice food. What more could you want than that, mister? It's your lucky day. This is one of Niall Harbison's daily updates on his Instagram page about the trials and

tribulations of his dog rescue centre on Koh Samui. That dog he's just met, with very short legs and a big head, he's named Tom Cruise. When he was first found, he was covered in oil and blood-sucking ticks with a back leg just hanging off his body. Over the past three years, Niall has fed, treated and rehomed thousands of dogs. He picked me up from outside a supermarket in a truck emblazoned with his Happy Doggo logo and took me up Hope Avenue to what he calls the land. So down here we're just walking past the dogs, they'll probably start barking.

That's a bridge. I'm sure most people have been to a dog charity. It can be quite depressing. It can feel like a prison where the dogs are going crazy and it's noisy. I wanted it to be the opposite of that, if possible. The dogs are still, you know, they'll bark and they'll fight a little bit, but we wanted to make it nice for the dogs and for the people. So it feels happy?

Yeah, and it is. It's more like a rehabilitation centre where we can get the dogs back on their feet. I mean, the thing is they come in bad but dogs have unbelievable spirit as most people know that they might be sick but within a day or two we can turn their lives around. We rely really on you know medicines and doctors and vets but actually a nice safe place, food, love, just a little bit of attention that can fix an awful lot. It's not going to fix cancer or a broken leg, but it does help an awful lot with the street dogs. He's looking forward to us.

Look at that tail wagging. That's one happy doggo. Butterscotch is unbelievable. So Niall and I climbed into the pen with Big Mac and Butterscotch. Hang on a minute. Big Mac is chewing the wire, Big Mac. No, no, he's just rubbing, it's fine. I just needed to get you a light.

You can rub with the... OK, let's go. I was always an alcoholic and suffered from depression, but I moved to Thailand to get away really from the grey, cold, English-Irish winters to try and have my health, but that sort of backfired because I ended up in hospital here from nearly drinking myself to death but then I had a sort of epiphany I was like I have to do something meaningful in my life and that's when the street dogs came in so I just started feeding one

or two on my way home on the bike and then it's grown into this it's just more and more dogs and we sterilize dogs, we're building a hospital where we sterilise 7,000 dogs every month so I'm trying to make a difference for the street dog. You have built up an enormous following on social media on Instagram and Twitter. How does that make you feel that you've done that? Well actually people like a bit of good news you know and that's hopefully why they're starting their day with that because there's a quite a bombardment of bad news. So the yeah, it's a little bit of hope in their day.

What is your ultimate plan? The ultimate plan is ridiculous and I'll probably fail. There's 500 million street dogs in the world and in my lifetime I want to halve that. So that's 250 million street dogs. So it's it's bonkers to try and do that but we're going to try and do it through sterilisation, education and legislation. We need to get government support. We're on the way but there's just so much to do. Meanwhile, remember Tom Cruise who came in with a completely useless back leg?

He looks almost unrecognisable, clean, tick-free and dressed in a colourful bandana and what's more he's running. Oh boy Mr Tom Cruise, look at that leg go Mr. It's back in action today, it's back in action. You're moving faster every day Tom Cruise. I can't keep up with you Mr. You're a flying machine, you're a flying machine, look at him go.

If that's not the happiest dog in Thailand, I don't know who is. Look at that leg go. Niall Harbison of Happy Doggo on the island of Kursamui. To the Scottish borders for this next story. Back in the late 1930s, Jim Dougal and Betty Davidson walked to school together, hand in hand. But they lost touch after Jim's family moved away. These two childhood sweethearts have now been reunited after more than 85 years,

thanks to Jim's son Alastair and his efforts to trace all the children in his dad's old school photo. The pair met again recently and this is what Betty had to say about the encounter. I used to knock on the door for him in the morning or he knocked on mine. We used to walk up to school together. I was quite surprised actually and it was nice to get in touch after all these years. My childhood sweetheart. All these years have passed and then suddenly we got in touch again. And Jim was also thrilled to have reunited

after all those years. We lived on opposite sides of the road, you see, and we used to go to school together, we used to play together, yeah, something amazing, really. Something that, she's the last one standing, really, and so am I. It's just incredible, really.

Absolutely incredible. It was a tiring, really. Absolutely incredible. It was a tiring couple of days, but it was well worth it. And she was fantastic. And she still got that blink in her eye and a touch of the fair hair that I remember her by. She really was. She was terrific. Laura Maxwell spoke to Jim's son, Alastair Dougal. It was absolutely incredible to witness, I think without wanting to sound like a cliché, in the moment at the end before we left I took a photo of the two of them and they kind of

re-enacted a photo that Betty had had from 1936 of the two of them and her sister. You know, in that instant it was like those two children were back in the room 89 years later. So absolutely incredible. What inspired you to try and track down everybody in the old school photograph in the first place? Well, after my mother died about a year ago, and my brother Ian and I, we wanted to kind of give our dad things to look forward to. So the three of us went up to Ironmouth back in October last year.

And as part of that, I'd arranged for a copy of the school photo to be published in a local newspaper. Obviously given his age I kept joking about I reckon you're the last one standing dad and all the rest of it and we kind of had this joke. Then I rather than joking about it why don't I actually set out to find out. You're a briefer man than I am Alair, because you wanted to cheer your dad up. It could have gone really badly wrong. He could have been the last man standing. Well, he could have been. You know, he's 96, going on 97. He sounds great, by the way. He sounds really fit and strong, and so does Betty.

Yeah, they're incredible. It's hard to believe that they are 96 years old. Very hard to believe. Are they keeping in touch? Are they going to stay in touch? They are keeping in touch. I think, you know, they've spoken in the last couple of days, so they are going to keep in touch. They certainly are. Now to a man whose childhood love of Japanese anime cartoons led to the creation of Pakistan's first hand-drawn animation studio. Usman Riaz grew up in Karachi and never dreamed he could turn his passion into a career, so instead focused on music, winning a scholarship to Berkeley College in the US. But after being invited to visit the famous Studio Ghibli in Tokyo, he gave it all up

to make The Glassworker, a homage to the anime films of his childhood that was long listed for the 2025 Oscars. Ousmane's been speaking to Mobin Azar. I walked into the administration office with a signed paper saying I'm dropping out and I had a full scholarship. So I felt a little scared, but also this is what is meant by a leap of faith. And when I walked out, I felt all of this weight lift off of me and it felt like the universe saying, OK, now run. The Glassworker is a coming of age story

about two children from separate walks of life. One is an apprentice glassblower learning from his father in their artisan glass shop and the other is a gifted violinist struggling to find her own unique voice on the instrument. And the film follows both characters through their formative years as a growing threat of war strains their relationship. Be brave, my brave daughter. Don't leave me. I wrote the film when I was 23. So it's like a time capsule of the way I was thinking in

the early 2010s. Ultimately, what I'm trying to say with the film is, and it's a naive approach, but I believe that war is not the answer to anything. Ultimately, it's the people who are caught in the conflict that suffer regardless of not the answer to anything. Ultimately, it's the people who are caught in the conflict that suffer, regardless of whoever the victor is. Usman didn't know it would take 10 whole years to bring that idea to life. But before he could fully get to work on the film,

he had to set up a hand-drawn animation studio in Pakistan. I think in order to do something that has never been done, you need to have a very, very strong vision. video in Pakistan. made. Apart from storyboarding the film, which was a lot of fun, I would say the most fun I ever had was in the initial phases when I didn't know what it was when I was just sitting at my desk and I had my upright piano behind my desk. And as I would draw that while I would wait for the paint to dry, I would turn around and write a piece of music that was inspired by the painting I had just made. And actually, is it fair to say you drew every frame? brilliant team that we all trained ourselves. Nobody did animation in Pakistan, essentially apart from a few enthusiasts that were just as excited to come onto the project. But we kind of trained everybody else coming in.

It took six years really to train everyone and get everything up and going. Have you any idea if anyone at Studio Ghibli has ever seen it? Are you going to send it to them? I would love for them to see it, just to understand what I've tried to do and how much their work means to me. But also, I'm absolutely terrified of them watching it as well. I'm not scared of anything. I'm scared of that. And you can hear more of Usman's story on Outlook wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Now here's a question. What noise does a shark make?

Well that, recorded for what's known to be the very first time, is the sound of a shark. It was captured by scientists at the University of Auckland in New Zealand. The clicking is made by the shark's teeth. Dr Lauren Smith is a marine biologist and a shark scientist and told us more. Historically we've always thought that no, sharks don't make sounds and that's it. They don't actually have sort of mechanisms by which they would normally be able to make sounds. With bony fish, teleosts, what they tend to do is they have morphological adaptations whereby they use their swim bladders to actually create a vibratory sound for various

different reasons. But sharks don't have those kind of physiological characteristics and they don't have swim bladders and they don't have any kind of morphological differences around their gill area or anything like that that could make them be able to create a sound either. So the fact that they've actually been recorded to make sounds is really interesting. It sounds like they're literally making these sounds by sort of snapping their jaws together, but you know, absolutely just fascinating. And of course the question will be, you know, are we then going to be able to record the sounds being created by other shark species. To be honest this discovery just highlights the fact that

how little we do know and that there's plenty of surprises still out there in sharks and in the oceans. Shark scientist Dr. Lauren Smith. Warren Smith. Coming up, meet the women organising discos to help overcome grief. There's a lot of guilt around grief and shame and lots and lots of difficult emotions. So we take that and we leave that on the dance floor. We tell people to leave it on the dad's floor. We tell people to leave it on the dad's floor. You're listening to the HappyPod. Next to a determined athlete who's turned teenage rejection into a groundbreaking achievement, Bailey Cinnamon Daniel, who was born with one arm,

developed a love of basketball and played for her high school team for three years. Despite being dropped, she went on to play in college and has become the first player with one arm to score during a game in the third division of women's college basketball, the NCAA. Bailey, who's now 22, has been speaking to Shabnan Yunus-Jule. Getting cut, it not only knocked down my confidence, but it knocked down how I thought of myself as a person, like as a human being in society and everything.

Because, you know, having one arm, I've always wanted to find like my group, my community, my people who I can relate to. And I never could relate to anybody growing up because, you know, I was in a predominantly white area so you know being a black girl was a standout on his own and on top of that I also have one arm so nobody is really going to relate to me, you know so that when I started playing basketball. I have now

gotten the chance to have my group of people so when he cut me in the moment, I thought man like I'm so out of place right now. A lot of my time was taken up with basketball and I made most of my friends do basketball. And I felt safe when playing basketball because I never felt different because nobody ever treated me differently. I will say that it definitely did make me very upset, but I think I was more angry. So then that anger kind of built to, oh, like I have to prove this man wrong. Well fast forward three years and after sending her resume out to every university coach across

America, Bailey made history by scoring her first basket for Lesley University in a college game. In the game, I didn't realize how big of a deal the shot actually was because in my eyes, I just saw it as me shooting a basketball. I didn't see it as, you know, a one-arm basketball player shooting a basketball. So when the shot went in, my first thought was, okay, I just have to get back on defense now. Like I thought the game was still going to go on. And then that's when our coach called a timeout and everybody was super happy.

Everybody was thrilled. I was personally very happy as well. So I came back to my room and I got a text from my coach and he told me like, you know, I'm so proud of you. You overcame so much this season. And, you know, I'm happy that I got to witness history tonight. And I looked at the text and I thought to myself, like, history, like, what are you talking about? And then that's

when it clicked in my head for a second. I was like, okay, maybe this is kind of a big deal. I don't look at it in a sense of, oh, I'm going to be the first person to do this. I'm going to be the first. I was just doing it because that's something that I've loved. And that's something that I've always loved to do. And I love playing basketball. But it was, I guess, uncommon in the grand scheme of things to NCAA to, you know, have somebody with one arm be able to not only basketball, but it was, I guess, uncommon in the grand scheme of things to NCAA to have somebody with one arm be able to not only play,

but to also be able to make a basket in a game and do it twice. And Bailey, are you beginning to realize now that your impact and what you're doing right now is going beyond basketball and you're becoming a role model? Like you said, that you didn't see people like yourself doing what you're doing now when you were growing up,

but now there'll be other girls out there who are looking up to you. How does that make you feel? It's hard for me to still wrap my head around the whole concept of me being a role model. I am super happy that I am able to contribute to, not normalizing a concept that you have to look apart to play a sport. I think anybody who puts their mind to anything can really accomplish not just sports, but anything

they really do put their mind to. And I just hope that, you know, somebody who's going through somewhat of the same either like mindset or physical disadvantages that I'm going through right now sees, you know know me playing basketball. I hope that they take you know the time to look at it and tell themselves, you know if she's doing it to me the act to do it too and it doesn't have to be you know sports whatever you want to do I say do it because there are so many people who sat there and told me that I would not be able to make it as

far as I have now and if it wasn't for me betting on myself and betting on my future and what I wanted it to become, I think also the switching my anger to now having that anger displaced into something that was actually workable to get to and that I actually was able to accomplish. So I'm happy that my story is out there and I'm happy if anybody who looks like me

even watches me for a second, even, and tells himself, you know what, if she's doing it, then I can too. And Bailey is planning to become a forensic psychologist and coach disability sports, but hasn't ruled out playing in the elite WNBA. You can hear more inspiring athletes on Sports Hour, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. For many countries, water scarcity is a big problem and can impact farming and food supplies. But one small business in Tunisia believes it's found a solution. Omar Luzier and Aziz Kaush are the founders of the start-up Douda and have created an animal feed from a type of beetle. It's very high in protein

and has a low environmental footprint. Omar and Aziz have been speaking to our reporter Marion Straun about their hopes for the future and began with the meaning behind their company name. First one it means worm in Tunisia and that's what we're breeding. An easy pronunciation that everyone pretty much in the world can easily pronounce. How do you use the worms then? So we do the reproduction of the worms that later become beetles and you have either some dried meal worms, some protein powder, or even like hopefully having some pet food in

the future as well. Tell us what drove you to create this company? Important for our society to do something about climate change. Our home country Tunisia is one of the countries that suffers most from better scarcity. We could witness more and more difficulties for the agriculture sector. Hunger and malnutrition with climate change, they kind of work hand in hand, like they cannot be disconnected. If we look at agriculture and land use, they're responsible of like 15 to 20% of green gas emissions in the world. Especially cows and sheep produce a lot of methane through their digestion.

And so that has a big impact on the climate change and like the heating of the planet. If you look at Africa, a lot of people are starving because they cannot afford to buy these products. So we're presenting here an alternative source of protein. And if we look at soybeans, for example, that is being used as a big source of protein in the world, it represents six to 7% of global agricultural land. And we're trying to replace that. We're trying to free up more space. At the moment, this is for animal feed, but you hope it will also be for people in the future. Exactly. Globally, we have more than 2 billion people that already eat insects. Asia, parts

of Africa, even like in Latin America, a lot of people already eat insects. I will now ask Aziz then, what have been your highs and lows in this process? I'd say that trying to set up an innovative company is an adventure. It's full of challenges. You need to learn how to manage to bring innovation in a way that you advocate and promote for what's right and still make it happen with their current constraints. Really build a business that's sustainable from day one. That was probably the difficult part. For me the most important thing you make sure that you always put your values at the forefront.

People are quite curious about these new things and I think there is a willingness to learn about what's possible to do differently. Omar Luzier and Aziz Kaush, the founders of insect protein startup Doudar. We've heard of Dancing for Joy, but how about dancing through grief? Here in the UK, two women have set up a grief disco, which proved so popular it's onto its third event.

Georgina Jones found comfort through dancing after the death of her baby son,shan nearly two years ago and she came together with her friend Leah Shahn Davis who lost two of her siblings within weeks of each other 11 years ago. Through movement and dance music they found that there are others who also enjoy dancing through their grief. Georgina and Leah spoke to Emma Barnett. It came to me really from what I needed very soon after Alshan died. I just had this desire to dance. I had this need to be on a dance floor. I've always loved music, house music, I'm a regular to Ibiza. So I just had a desire to dance and me and Leah did that together.

So we would go out, we would dance and I would feel lighter, I would feel better and more human, more alive. And the idea, Leah, of bringing people together to do it, not just doing it with a friend, how's that been? And what was the first one like? Seeing people come together on the dance floor is a beautiful experience. The house music is about union and people connecting beyond words really, because sometimes people don't want to necessarily just talk about their grief. It's a really, you know, full-bodied experience grief. So

having somewhere with other people together, connected, dancing is how we're supposed to be really as humans. I mean, we've done it for centuries. That's where we belong. Georgina, tell us about the permission slip and the kind of structure of a grief disco that you've created. We open with an opening ceremony. So we welcome everyone into the space and we actually give people a physical permission slip. And on this permission slip it says you can be heartbroken and hopeful, joyful and sad, all is welcome on our dance floor. And we talk about this duality, this sense of feeling heavy with grief, but also the benefits of dancing and what that can do to us.

And we can have grief and joy. We invite people to not feel guilty around it because there's a lot of guilt around grief and shame and lots and lots of difficult emotions. So we take that and we leave that on the dance floor. We tell people to leave it on the dance floor and they do. And it's just such a wonderful, that tends to really hit people the most, that permission for joy.

And yeah, somebody said to me the other day, it's an event that I went to that I didn't know I needed because it helps us deal with all the heaviness and it's so difficult to maybe put into words as Leah said, but having that opportunity to be in a place that's joyful as well, to be in a place where there's music, you can speak to people that totally get it, that know how you feel, especially because when you are grieving, sometimes the answer to how are you today isn't pretty, but we haven't got the capacity sometimes to deal with that so you button up and you say yeah fine but when you come to the grief disco you're you're invited to just

say yeah this is how I feel. Georgina Jones and Leah Sean Davis. Before we go a couple of weeks ago we covered the story of the kindness of strangers. Well we've received some emails from the listeners. Here's one from Rebecca from Colorado in the US that says, I dropped my cell phone on the sidewalk one time. This was before smartphones existed. A stranger found it, dialed ICE in my contacts in case of emergency, and he offered to mail me my phone. I offered to pay him back for the postage but he said no. When I received the package he had his return address on it so I mailed him a cheque anyway. Thanks Rebecca. And that's all from the HappyPod for now. We'd love to hear from you. As ever the address is

globalpodcasts at bbc.co.uk and you can now watch some of our interviews on YouTube just search for the happy pod this edition was produced by Harry Bly and Rachel Bulkley it was mixed by Adrian Bargova the editor is Karen Martin I'm Rachel Wright until next time goodbye