Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: Tea for two - sharing a brew with a stranger

Episode Date: March 22, 2025

We meet the man behind A Mug of Life, who says chatting to strangers has made his life better, and everyone should try it. Also: why trusting the kindness of others makes you happier; and a retirement home for penguins.

This is the HappyPod from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway and in this edition, how approaching strangers for a chat could make us happier. When you do go up and ask someone and you start talking, you feel so much better and it's just so good for your mental health. I've loved it. This year's World Happiness Report highlights how people are more trustworthy than we think. I'm deliberately mislaying ten wallets across Belfast, each with a note asking to call my number if found. So how many of our ten wallets do you think will prompt a phone call? And once again, Finland is named the happiest country in the world. Also... I had never seen somebody live like a full and happy life, like with a speech impediment, like at the same time.

The woman helping millions of people make their voices heard. This week saw International Happiness Day and with it the release of a report showing strangers are much kinder than we think. Like this. Excuse me, I don't suppose you'd like a cup of tea would you? Sorry? I don't suppose you'd like a cup of tea would you? How do you like your tea? That's the big question to us. Milk and no sugar.

Milk and no sugar. Perfect. Excuse me, I don't suppose you want a cup of tea do you? Oh, milk and no sugar. Milk and no sugar, perfect. Excuse me. I'm sorry. I don't suppose you want a cup of tea, do you? Sorry? I don't suppose you want a cup of tea, do you? I don't understand what you mean.

So I'm a filmmaker. A filmmaker, yeah. And I make people cups of tea. Okay. And I go round London and I have teas with people and I make a little film about the tea that we have. Wow. Would you be down for a little film?

Of course. That's 28-year-old Will Shears who goes round parks in London handing out cups of tea. In return, people talk about their lives. Will has started posting the chats on social media in a project called A Mug of Life. The Happy Pod's Holly Gibbs spoke to him over, of course, a cuppa. I've got my tea here. I've gone for a peppermint today. I've already had my English breakfast. What flavour is your tea?

It is English breakfast. Great. So I just want to hear about your a mug of life. What made you want to start this? Basically, I was on holiday with my sister out in Morocco. People on the beach in Morocco offer you cups of tea. Through that, you end up having a really good chat with them and hearing all about their life.

And I was like flying back and I was like, is there a way to be able to go out to the parks in London and offer people a cup of tea? So one day I just got out of my flat and I went to the local park and I said to someone, I was like, excuse me, would you like a cup of tea? And the first person I went up to said, yeah. And I was petrified at the start.

I was like, is anyone actually going to say yes to this? The majority of times I go up and say, do you want a cup of tea? People say, yeah. And you don't know where the story is going to take you. And it's always surprising and it's always beautiful. And this project has been really about, like, realising that everyone's got a great story. It's just untapping that extraordinary story that everyone has.

And you get these amazing stories by just asking them something so simple as, would you like a cup of tea? Is that what you would encourage other people to go out and do? I have never felt better. And like, yeah, we obviously we need to be cautious about talking to strangers. But I do think we've built this world where we're like, we think it's weird to go and talk to a stranger or when a stranger tries to start talking to you, you go, oh, and your guard goes up. That's certainly for me. The nice thing about this project is it's made me realise that actually when you do go up and ask someone and you start talking, you feel so much better and it's just so good

for your mental health. I've loved it and the fact that it's gone incredibly viral online, right, with millions of views. And I think that's because it touches this nerve that the fact that we live in this world which is very celebrity conscious. And here's a project which is very much about going out to talk to the ordinary person

and then telling their story. And speaking of stories, what is the most memorable conversation that you've ever had with a stranger? It's really hard to have papers. I sort of take things from each chat. Some of the stories that stand out are, for instance, there's a guy called Raza who hadn't spoken to his dad for years after his mum and dad had divorced. And he was talking over the cup of tea about how he would love to one day rekindle that friendship. There was also another guy called Brian who I met in Finsbury Park who basically ended up being

friends with Robin Williams and that was just amazing. It's getting to know people and hearing their stories and still I think we leave like we're we're not strangers anymore and that there's a beauty in that. And on the reaction from social media and people that have watched your videos, has that surprised you that millions of people have watched it and millions of people are enjoying it? I have been blown away Holly by the response, by how many people have watched it, people from all around the world, all parts of the globe. And the messages that come in with so much positivity about how it's helped them with their day-to-day life, it's amazing to know that people watching it, it's inspiring other people, it's making people feel better. And how do you feel when

you walk away from one of these interactions of someone that you've just sat down and heard their life story? Sometimes like I'm so excited by what I've heard and it's like you'd like kick yourself. What an extraordinary story that went on and at the end of it you're just sort of in awe. The way to describe how I feel afterwards sometimes is like honoured. I couldn't recommend it enough. You should definitely go out and try it Holly. I'm going to after this. You'll be playing away with where that story will take you. If there was one life lesson that you could sum up that you have learnt throughout this project, what would it be? I think it's this has been don't put barriers up and I think that that would be my one bit of advice is like just strip any barriers that

are stopping you from doing that thing that you wanted to do in your life because when you like open your door and you get out the house that day and you start it, then you're going to feel so much better. Will Shears talking to Holly Gibbs. According to this year's World Happiness Report, our belief in the kindness of strangers is closely tied to how happy we feel. We also tend to underestimate the level of kindness. Trust in strangers was measured by looking at how many people returned wallets that had been deliberately misplaced. The number was almost twice as high as expected. The BBC's Mark Easton marked the day by carrying out an experiment of his own.

For years, researchers into happiness have been losing wallets on purpose. And today, here in Northern Ireland, I'm going to lose some too. Today is World Happiness Day and also sees the publication of the World Happiness Report, which this year says that places where people think strangers are generally kind, the sort of people who would return a lost wallet, well those places tend to be happier than places where they don't believe in the kindness of strangers. So I'm deliberately mislaying 10 wallets across Belfast, each with a note asking to call my number if found. So how many of our 10 wallets do you think will prompt a phone call? Are you more pessimistic than you need to be about the kindness of strangers?

The academic guru of lost wallets says most people are, and that seriously damages community wellbeing. So you drop wallets, see how many have returned, then you compare it to what people think is the case, and it turns out wallets are returned twice as often as people think, or more. And if we could make them believe that it really was all the time, they'd be much happier. Where did you find it? Wallet finders across Belfast have started calling me. Well, you're very kind. Why did you return it? You could have just taken the money. Because that would have been nice to do, so we just decided to phone you.

Just an honest person. It could be me, or could be my wallet, or any other change or anything. It's nice to be nice. It should inspire us all to believe in the kindness of strangers. Very kind of you. One finder, Al, insisted on delivering the wallet back to me in person. I'm only glad you're here to receive your wallet back again. So I dropped 10 wallets on the streets of Belfast. So how many do you think

were offered back to me by kind strangers? Well the answer is all 10. While our wallet experiment is not scientific, it does back up the evidence. Strangers are kinder than we think. So happy World Happiness Day everyone. Mark Easton and he was talking to the founding editor of the World Happiness Report, John F. Helliwell from the University of British Columbia. If you've ever been helped by the kindness of strangers or made friends just by chatting to someone we'd love to hear from you. Send an email or voice note to globalpodcastsatbbc.co.uk. The UN report also named Finland as the world's happiest country for the eighth year in a row as another of the authors, Lara Aknin, explains.

They're often topping the list with a lot of Nordic countries. It is hard to pinpoint exactly what Finland might have in terms of some secret sauce or perfect level of predictors, but it's been speculated there might be various factors including a strong social safety net that provides people a sense of financial support should they need to leave their work, if they need healthcare, also education covered all the way from very young ages through university, but also the fact that a strong social safety net provides not just these financial resources and basic necessities, but also represents the idea that your neighbors, that your fellow countrymen are there by your side

to support you. One important thing in the report is that we try to understand the global variations in these rankings. So what helps explain the happiness differences across these countries. Some of these factors are typically beyond the reach of the average individual like GDP per capita and healthy life expectancy,

which you might be able to shape with some healthy choices. But two of my favourites to underscore are the importance of social support, so that is having someone to count on in times of need and engaging in personal acts of generosity for other people. Both of those have been shown to be strong independent predictors of well-being and I think they're particularly powerful and potent because they're things that we can choose to engage in. Lara Aknin from the World Happiness Report. As well as all those positives, there's another side to Finland's happiness. The concept of sisu. The word is deeply ingrained in Finnish culture, but it has no direct translation in English.

It's along the lines of inner strength. But there's more to it than that, as Stephanie Prentice has been finding out. From jumping in freezing lakes right after a sauna with friends to going back to basics in nature. We've heard about the benefits of the Finnish culture for promoting mental wellbeing, but within those happy activities lies something else, difficulty. Alongside the 2025 happiness report, officials in Finland were quick to point out that one of the secrets to happiness is embracing Sisu. It's a word and a concept that doesn't translate, literally, but it's something we're told is important to every Finn. So we asked some

of them to explain. Magnus Appleberg is a cold exposure enthusiast and teaches courses in Finland encouraging foreigners to embrace Sisu. Every Finn is proud of the concept of Sisu. So it's an innate power of facing adversities. When you have guests that may come from countries, for example, without so much of a cold climate, how do they react when you initially put them in those situations when they're in the icy water? It's a sight for sore eyes.

Most people go into a state of shock and then they slowly people living in urban environments, he says start the day with a cold shower. You will feel the mental resistance stepping into an ice cold shower, turn the adversity into a relaxed situation. Everybody can learn that. Petri Kokkonen is a wilderness guide in Lapland. He gave up his easy city life to live off the grid in a remote cabin and he says despite the hardship, he's never been happier. For me the Sisu means more the lifestyle. I don't have a real electric system, I have solar panels and I can't actually even use electricity in a December

and it's our darkest month. But it's like, I really enjoy and I love that time. What would your advice be to someone who might say, I don't think I'm strong enough, I don't think I can do this. this? You just need to trust yourself and find the fight inside of your body and your mind. Go there and then relax your mind and be proud of you and the rest is history. Wilderness Guide Petri Kokkonen ending that report from Stephanie Prentis. And if you want to find out yet more about what makes Finland so happy, listen back to our special from last year, the happiest country in the world. And still to come in the podcast…

It's easier to climb on, have more matting on the island for comfort. Overall, it's just going to be hidden from the chaos. A retirement home with a difference. Next to a woman helping to inspire confidence among those who find it hard to make their voices heard. Jessie Yendle from South Wales is one of an estimated 80 million people around the world with speech impediments. After years building up the courage to speak to people, she now has millions of followers on TikTok and is campaigning for others to be given the time and space they

need to communicate. Gemma Dunstan has been to meet her. Excuse me, sorry to bother you. My name is Jessie and I have got a speech impediment. Jessie Endel has struggled with confidence due to her stoma. But in 2021, she started challenging herself to take part in everyday activities. I'm trying to say it.

I can't say it. Stoma. I can't say it, but I'd like to brighten up the people's day. I just want to hand you some flowers. I'd love to give you these sunflowers to make your day. You are an absolutely beautiful person. I'm shaking, I thank you for speaking to me. Oh my gosh, you're crying. Her videos have seen her attract

3.5 million followers online. Oh my goodness. One of them is 16 year old Kitty. Oh my goodness, you're shaking. Seeing or meeting other people with a speech impediment doesn't happen often, either for Jessie or Kitty. I don't think I ever met like another person with a speech impediment until I met or Kitty. Which was, which was like, literally because I had never seen somebody live like a full

and happy life, like with a speech impediment, like at the same time. Absolutely, like it makes me feel, like it makes me feel really emotional that you felt that way because I'm a growing up, I never thought I'd be able to achieve my dreams because of my speech and the fact that you have also felt the same way but then you saw my videos and that's exactly what I wanted to show people. Jesse has created a campaign to introduce a universal symbol for speech impediments with the hope that it would signify

that someone needs patience or more time to say their words. I decided to do the clock and then like the speaking symbol. So yeah, so hopefully, hopefully, I'm gonna get this passed. I just wanna hear like your thoughts on it. I think it's such an amazing idea, such an amazing initiative, because it would completely change my life and the lives of so many other people with speech impairments as well. Jessie and Kitty are clear. They want your patience, not your pity. And it just means to the world that we're having this conversation and we're going

to raise even more awareness of our special pandemics. Definitely. And it's exhausting. It's so exhausting. It's so exhausting. Jessie and Kitty ending that report from Gemma Dunstan. Microplastic pollution has been described by the UN as a growing threat to the health of humans and the planet. The tiny particles up to five millimetres in diameter enter rivers and oceans from rubbish, the plumbing system and factories among other sources.

They're taken in by plants and animals causing damage and entering the food chain. They've even been found in human organs but now researchers in China say they have found a low-cost sustainable way to filter microplastics out of water using a sponge made from cotton and squid cartilage. Our science reporter Esmée Stallard has been looking at the research. She spoke to Nick Miles. So microplastics can sort of enter our waterways, seas, rivers, general environment in kind of two ways. There's what we call primary microplastics. So this is where they're already

very small. So an example of this is when you wash your clothes, fibres can come off your clothes and enter your waterways and actually that's a really big source of it. There's also little bits of particles from your tyres, is another really major source that runs off roads. And then there's secondary microplastics, so this is when you a complete product like a plastic water bottle or a plastic bag gets thrown away and then the natural environment breaks that down to smaller and smaller particles. It's kind of difficult, I would say,

to overestimate the scale of the problem. At the moment, the evidence around the harm to humans is kind of incomplete. But there are serious concerns, and that's because a lot of plastics have harmful toxins or additives put into them to kind of enable them to form their function and we've seen, you know, plastic particles harming particularly marine wildlife. So that's why it's so concerning that it's being found within our bloodstreams and there's

sort of ongoing research around that. Now here's me, this potential solution uses an intriguing combination of substances, doesn't it? They're calling it fibrous foam but it's basically made out of two main materials one is cellulose which they've extracted from cotton and the other is something called chitin which they've taken from the skeleton or from the structure of a squid which seems very strange but chitin is actually very very common it's in various different organisms and insects insects, crustaceans, but also fungi.

Effectively, it's long chains of carbohydrates. So they're the two main materials that they've used. And it's actually really kind of crucial to the success of this solution that they've used these materials because they're so abundant, which makes it quite cheap to produce. And it effectively works as a filter. Is it 100% effective? It was 99.9% successful in the first use of it but what they found that was also really good is

that they could almost recycle it. So they used it four or five times in their experiments and even after five uses the effectiveness was still about 95% which is really significant and it really helps to kind of lower the cost again in the manufacturing process. You were saying that these substances are easy to get hold of so I imagine the idea of being able to scale this up is a real possibility. These are two really abundant materials in the natural environment. Chitin is actually the most abundant polysaccharide which is what it is and as I said it's found in many sources,

which is fantastic. But the other thing that's really, really good about this is one of the other main limitations to scaling up these types of solutions is that they can often involve very complex processes and sometimes the need to add toxic chemicals to that process. But actually, what's amazing

that the scientists have done here is something called self-assembly, which is basically these two materials have been forced together and is able to create this structure naturally. And that's really fantastic because it cuts down the production process and the complexity of it. And so the scientists in this case are hoping certainly that it can be scaled up quickly. They're currently applying for a patent for the material and they're searching for industrial partners to see if it can be produced as we say on a bigger scale. Esme Stallard talking to Nick Miles. Now to a rather unusual retirement home for African penguins.

It's been created at the New England Aquarium in Boston as part of efforts to protect the creature. In the wild, the African penguin population declined by more than a third between 2018 and 2023, leading to warnings that they could be extinct within 10 years. Harry Bly has this report. One of the many nicknames for the African penguin is beach donkey because they sound like donkeys when they're screaming. That's Mia Lusietti, one of the penguin trainers at the New England Aquarium. Six penguins, Harlequin, Durban, Balders, Isis, Lambert and Dyer, will join Island Zero. It's easier to climb on, it's more flat, we have more matting on the island for comfort

and overall it's just going to be hidden from the chaos that can be a large colony of some youngsters. On the retirement island, trainers like Mia will tend to the penguins' more complex health needs, such as liver and eyesight problems, arthritis and other mobility issues. And so a lot of those birds have had acupuncture, physical therapy, laser therapy even. Several of the birds on that island have gone through cataract procedures. Lambert gets daily eye drops multiple times a day. Five of these penguins are now around double the life expectancy of this species, which in the wild is 10-15 years. That's because as they age and slow down, they lose the ability

to hunt for fish and are more likely to themselves be eaten by a predator. Native to the coasts of South Africa and Namibia, there's been a sharp decline in numbers in recent years, in part due to human activity like overfishing, pollution and climate change. So how does the Penguin Retirement Village in Boston help with this? Mia says the aquarium is part of an international conservation effort. We're learning amazing things from these animals as they age. And basically we can take information that we are learning from our colonies and our animals here and directly apply that to their wild counterparts through that initiative.

One example is studying the penguins' optimal environment and the types of nest they live in. In their natural habitat, African penguin guano, or excrement, is harvested by humans to use as fertilizer. That's a big issue because they nest in their guano. Sounds a little gross but they make very good tunnels and burrows with it and so we could apply, okay, this type of material is preferred by them, this type of hut is preferred by them, and then those types of huts were actually planted out there. A court in South Africa has imposed six no-fishing zones around key penguin breeding colonies around the western Cape, preventing fishing boats from catching sardines and anchovies for the next 10 years. Meanwhile in Boston, staff plan to install more flat areas and shallow slopes to help

the older penguins climb on and off their new island. And that was Harry Bly. In our last episode, my colleague Alan Smith asked for your happy sounds and Helen, a truck driver from New Brunswick in Canada, sent us this message. I like the sound of skipping a rock on a frozen pond or river. I'm here in Canada and it sounds out of this world. Well, she didn't have her own recording, but we wanted to hear what was so special about it.

So we found some. Well Helen says she can just imagine a very primitive human doing this and being in awe of the extraordinary noise. And she said she was amazed when she first heard it herself. So if you have a sound that makes you happy send us an email or voice note to globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. And that is all from us for now but you can watch some of our interviews on YouTube by searching for The Happy Pot. This edition was mixed by Chris Hanson and produced by Holly Gibbs and Rachel Bulkley. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.