Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: The billion dollar gift of education

Episode Date: March 2, 2024

This week, a former professor donates $1 billion to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Also: the felines and felons providing mutual support in Chile, and do apes have a sense of humour?

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. The Global Story, with smart takes and fresh perspectives on one big news story, every Monday to Friday from the BBC World Service.

Search for The Global Story wherever you get your BBC Podcast podcasts to find out more. This is The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and in this edition uploaded on Saturday the 2nd of March... ...why these medical students are this happy. The felines and felons supporting each other in Chile. Some of them are here for years and the cats are an emotional support for them.

From being a driver to swinging one. The man hoping to swap grocery deliveries for professional golf after a breakthrough at the Kenya Open. At the end of the day, it's what I've been working hard for for probably the last 10 years so it's definitely a huge step in the right direction and hopefully more to come. Also in this podcast K-pop artists have YouTube series, reality TV shows all in an effort to extend that conversation that they have with their fans and draw them into their world. And it's working. We will hear about the rise and rise of K-pop.

And we begin with this remarkable moment at an auditorium in New York. I'm happy to share with you that starting in August this year, the Albert Einstein College of Medicine will be tuition free. Dr. Ruth Gottesman, a former professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, announcing that her gift of a billion dollars will mean that students there will get free tuition. I have watched that video a lot. Some of them are jumping to their feet. They all look astonished, stunned. Some are tearful. Genuinely an extraordinary moment. Harry Bly reports. The average medicine graduate in America can expect to be in around $250,000 of student debt when they finish,

and this can take decades to repay. I think when you're young and you're focused on what you want to do, the impact of that life term doesn't really become apparent at the time, so it's expensive. That's Dr. Ali Haider, a cardiologist in New York City and a former student of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. I was elated. I was extremely happy it was to my old institution. You know, immediately there was text threads and messages from all my old co-students, some of which I haven't talked to in like over 10 years, talking about how amazing this was. So, you know, it was really a big deal. None of the students knew what to expect when they were called into a mysterious assembly

at the school on Monday morning. The tuition fee was $59,000 a year. So this extraordinary donation will be transformative for roughly 1,000 students at the school, which is located in the Bronx, the poorest borough of New York City. A lot of people don't decide to go to medical school because, and more so these days, especially because of these financial hurdles. And hopefully this will set the stage to help offer these pathways to, you know, more individuals who want to do medicine for the right reasons, want to go into primary care to really help, you know, our aging communities.

A day after the announcement, we heard from first-year students Samuel Wu and Jade Andrade. For me, just relief and hope. One of the main impacts of this is how we'll have creative freedom or be able to really pursue things that are aligned with our personal goals. And I hope that it opens doors for individuals who wouldn't have dreamed of being in this position. So this is huge news for me. I don't have to work two jobs. And I can focus more on my academics. I can focus more on my passions, things like street medicine and addiction medicine, which doesn't pay that much,

having to actually focus on that. Now age 93, Dr. Gottesman was, for more than 50 years, a professor of developmental medicine, where she put together screening and literacy programs to diagnose and help children and adults with learning disabilities. She's also the widow of Wall Street investor David Gottesman, who left her a fortune in his will with one instruction, do whatever you think is right. She approached the head of the medical school, Dr Philip Azua, a man she had befriended during the COVID pandemic. She asked him to name three things she could do for the school. The first, he said, was to make education free. And she said,

that's it. That's what I want to do. And that's exactly what she did, with, it seems, universal approval. We'll be tuition free. Harry Bly. So imagine this. Your job is to deliver groceries for a supermarket and in your spare time you play golf. You are ranked 2,390th in the world, grinding away in the lower reaches of the professional game, hoping for that big breakthrough.

And then, at the end of a week which had started with grocery deliveries, there you are picking up a cheque for the equivalent of $215,000 for joint second place in the Kenya Open. The BBC's Rob Bonnet spoke to Joe Dean from Yorkshire in the north of England and asked him if it had been hard not to get overexcited as the round progressed. It is fair to say that yorkshire men rarely lose their cool if you know me well you know uh over excitement isn't isn't one of my qualities so um it was a great week and um yeah fantastic result i say big breakthrough is that how you see it um yeah i mean it's at the end the day, it's what I've been working hard for for probably the last 10 years coming up on my professional career.

So it's definitely a huge step in the right direction and hopefully more to come. At what point, I wonder, do you give up the day job and go to the other day job? I mean, I think I've got a few weeks off now, so I'll maybe try and pick a few shifts up before I finally say my farewells. But, no, it's been fantastic working for Morrisons and the people I've met along the way have been great. Yeah, I can't thank them enough as well. So we'll see how the next month goes,

but I feel I might be very busy with the golf. So, yeah, it might be time for me to have my noticing soon. Do you regard yourself as an ambitious person? I might be very busy with the golf. So, yeah, it might be time for me to have my noticing soon. Do you regard yourself as an ambitious person? Maybe behind closed doors, yes. I'd like to say I'm quite a humble person and I'm not very... You can be both ambitious and humble, can't you? Yeah, I suppose so, yeah. I've got big ambitions.

I want to be places, but there's a lot of stepping stones on the way to being in those places. So it's just stepping on those little stepping stones in the meantime and getting there slowly as i know only too well at my um very lowly level of golf the miserable thing about the game is that form comes and goes for no apparent reason do you think you have the and i suppose this is a serious question do you have the mentality to be a top 20 golfer yeah i believe so yeah um i mean it's again there's a lot of factors involved and probably lacking in the experience side but there's only one way to gain the experience so i'm i'm very open and i want i want to be on that stage so yeah it's just like i say it's getting those small goals ticked off in the meantime and

uh hopefully it will it will lead to being somewhere in the top, world's top 20, top 10. But for the time being, it's back to the van. Possibly. We'll see how, like I say, we'll see how the next few weeks pan out. Bravo to Joe Dean. The Pen, as it's called by locals, is the oldest prison in Chile. It's overcrowded, with around 5,600 prisoners all

serving time for a variety of reasons. It's also home to around 300 cats. At first they were useful for keeping down the rat population but over time guards and social workers have realised the positive effect that they have on the inmates who treat them as part of the family. Our reporter Jane Chambers went to meet some of them. This is downtown Santiago, the capital of Chile. Outside the prison, women wait with parcels of food and white bags for their loved ones. I'm taken through security and made to check in my phone. A guard takes me up to the third floor to get a bird's eye view of inmates playing football in the patio down below. For security reasons I'm not allowed into the cells but I can see them in the distance with brightly coloured washing, flapping from the

bars and some cats prowling along the walls and over the corrugated iron roofs. Prisoner Carlos Nunez is wandering through the patio, cradling his grey cat Plomo in his arms. I'm off to chat with him in an office down below. Plomo's a bit stressed to be away from his cell, but he soon calms down when he's fed some cat food, which he's eagerly licking off the table. I've had Palomo since he was little. To start with, it was hard to feed him and I had to give him my leftovers, things like chicken skin. Prison social worker Carla Contrero Sandoval is a big cat lover. She has a cat tattoo on her arm.

And even though coordinating the welfare of the cats isn't strictly in her job description, she happily works with various charities to make sure they have food, are well cared for and are sterilised to stop the population exploding. She's passionate about the positive effect the cats have had on the prisoners. It's interesting to see how their relationship with the cats has made them more humane. Some of them are here for years and the cats are an emotional support for them. They make them more responsible because they learn how to care for something else and to make sure they have food and are healthy and it's new for them to empathise and to think of others as many of them never did that when they were on the

outside. The prisoners know it's important for the cats to be sterilised, and around three times a year a team comes in to operate the cats and register them, so they can keep count of the population. Cristian Peña Muñoz says his cat, Chereja, is like a son for him. A specialist's family live far away, so he doesn't get many visitors. I asked them to neuter him because he was one of the few cats left which hadn't been neutered. He cried all night looking for female cats, and it made me sad.

Also, he was peeing everywhere to mark his territory, which annoyed the other inmates. Now he's been done, he's gone back to being like a kitten and is happy and plays all the time. A big issue for some prisoners is what will happen to their beloved cats when they finally get out. Neemias Echeverria Flores has been in prison for nearly nine years. He's convinced that his cat, Chino Wee, is better off on the outside so he persuaded the prison officers to let his sister take the cat. He's nearing the end of his sentence and makes

sure he's on his best behaviour so he can visit Chinowee on Sundays. First Chinowee was with me in Kala 8 and then we moved to Kala 11. He was with me all the time, keeping me company. And now, when I go and see him at the weekend, at my sister's, he still remembers me. I call him and he comes running to see me and acts all happy. He's a very clever cat. Naimia Echevede Flores and a very clever cat, ending that report by Jane Chambers in Chile. Now, if you have a daughter or you are one, you might be interested to know that the World Service podcast Dear Daughter is back for a third series.

Every episode features a letter from people around the world to their daughters and the goal of presenter Namolanta Kombo is to collect advice for daughters everywhere, including her own. Wisdom being passed to the next generation. This season will run for 15 episodes and we'll be talking to letter writers from all over the world about a whole range of themes. Everything from work-life balance to beauty standards to different types of families. And we'll be talking to celebrity baker Nadia Hussein, who's one of my personal heroes, And she's talking about the close relationship that she has with her own daughter.

We have our time. So we sit down and we sit down and talk to her. And it could be the most mundane, the most everyday stuff. And then somehow those conversations lead to bigger things. That might be me instilling confidence in her about something that she's worrying about. But sometimes the roles are completely reversed and she's instilling confidence in me. And she's like, mum, oh my goodness, you need to do that. You know, like she will tell me and I'm like, whoa, what's happened?

Tell us about the progression from series one to season three. Well, I don't think anything has changed in the sense of the fact that I'm having really relatable, universal conversations. People are thinking and feeling the same things about their daughters from all over the world. That hasn't changed. But for this season, what we're focusing on is the growth that our guests have had from their own experiences. And they're looking back at their situations with humour or with pride. And this season was inspired by my daughter Coco, who is now seven. She's ever growing, ever changing, you know.

She must be very proud of you. Does she understand what you're doing now? Yes, she's getting much better, but now she's critiquing. So we're doing that now. Everyone's a critic. Tell us a little bit more about the topics, the sorts of topics you want to feature in this series. So we're keen on getting some of the funniest stories in, because parenting can be very hard. And all you can do sometimes is laugh at the situation or, you know, what's going on. So we'd love some funny letters. We want to

hear more about raising teens. I need to hear more about raising teens as I get to that stage. Always be prepared is my motto. I'm nosy. I just want to know. I also want to know about different types of families. Or maybe there's just the one story that is something massive that's happened in your own life. What do you want to share about it? What do you want to tell us? And you know, you can by going to bbcworldservice.com slash dear daughter, or you can email us on deardoorter at bbc.co.uk. We've also got a brand new WhatsApp number where you can send a message or drop a voice note, which is plus 44 800 030 4404. So please send us your letters. I can't wait to hear them.

That was Namalanta Kombo and you can hear her podcast, Dear Daughter, wherever you found this one. Still to come in this podcast Humour is not something human so it can also be found in animals Another thing humans have in common with our great ape cousins If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening Thank you. 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. For just as long as Hollywood has been Tinseltown,

there have been suspicions about what lurks behind the glitz and glamour. And for a while, those suspicions grew into something much bigger and much darker. Are you a member of the Communist Party? Or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party? I'm Una Chaplin, and from CBC Podcasts and the BBC World Service, this is Hollywood Exiles. It's about a battle for the political soul of America, and the battlefield was Hollywood. Search for Hollywood Exiles wherever you get your podcasts.

Now, some of the other things that we have seen in the last few days. For the first time in 1,250 years, the Hadaka Matsuri, or Naked Festival, at the Konomiya Shrine in central Japan has included a group of women. They did keep their clothes on. The idea of the festival is to drive away evil spirits before praying for happiness. A priest at the shrine said there was never an actual ban as such on women's participation, but no one had ever asked. See, if you don't ask. Then there was the five-year-old autistic girl who got lost in a swamp in Florida this week. Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office threw everything they had at it, including thermal cameras, and they found her safe and sound. This is how that happened. Well done, everyone involved.

And you might have heard this this week. That is a very small fish, the Danonella cerebrum, transparent, just over a centimetre long, and it could just be the loudest for its size ever discovered. It apparently can produce 140 decibels, as loud as a gunshot or jackhammer. More about that on our science pages via bbc.com slash news. Now a good sense of humor is considered a very important thing by many of us and it seems that observing and understanding the mischievous behavior of our cousins, the ape kind, not your auntie's kids, could give us clues to the origins of humans' sense of fun. Isabel Laumer at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany told us more. So we were looking for sequences of playful teasing in the great apes and we looked at all four species, so chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and gorillas.

So we found evidence of playful teasing in all four great ape species and that is particularly interesting because this tells us about the evolution of humor in our species as well. Because we found it in all four species, it's likely that playful teasing and its cognitive prerequisites may have been present in our last common ancestor, which lived 13 million years ago. What does playful teasing entail? Playful teasing is a distinct behavior that lies between play and aggression. So it's playful, also irritating, annoying. So one is poking and hitting.

And I mean, always was usually accompanied by response looking. So seemingly carefully evaluating how far I can go. Then, for example, hindering movement when they would jump into the way of the other. And body slamming, which means to jump onto the other individual but they sometimes also showed body slamming in surprise so they would surprise another by actually jumping on the back of the other from the from behind and also but it was also very interesting it occurred between individuals with very different body size. And juveniles were teasing adults. That was the most common teasing partner we observed. And they are our cousins. Is humor where we look for some of

our great similarities? Playful teasing is definitely one of the similarities that we share with our closest relatives. So our results support the notion that humour is not something human, so it can also be found in animals. What do you get out of this research? What does it mean to you finding out more about these amazing creatures? For me as a scientist, it's not only important to just find out more about their fascinating cognitive abilities and behaviours, because they are in so many ways very much human-like. But it's also extremely important to me to raise awareness on their critically endangered status. So our next step would be to unravel the evolution of humor by also looking

not only at great apes, but even completely different animals, like for example, say birds. And we also have a website coming up so people can actually, in case they see some playful teasing or they think it's playful teasing in their pet, they can actually upload those videos and we can have a look at it. That was Isabel Lauma of the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behaviour. And the website she was talking about will be up in the next few weeks. And don't worry, we will remind you. Now for a musical interlude.

Specifically, let's look at the rise and rise of K-pop. Four of 2023's top ten best-selling acts came from South Korea. Our musical correspondent Mark Savage told us about the genre's dramatic ascent. Psy was definitely the first K-pop artist who had a global hit. And that's 12 years ago when Gangnam Style, as you remember, swept the globe with the YouTube dance. But that was kind of almost like a comedy song. You know, it was novelty. I think the bands that are coming through in his wake are much more serious about the music they make. And they're really trying to colonise the Western pop charts.

And why is it able to happen now? Is it because of social media and there's less gatekeeping by music stations in the West and people are exposed to more influences? What is it? You're absolutely right. I think social media but also streaming means that you can listen to any music and if you like it, you'll stick with it. And those streams count towards the charts and so the sales build up and build up and build up. You know, K-pop is very, very effort to extend that conversation that they have with their fans

and draw them into their world. And that's something that a lot of Western pop acts still haven't really caught on to. What are the secrets of K-pop artists' success? It's not just the social media. It's almost like a military, highly disciplined strategy to get everything 100% right. Yes, the K-pop industry is very, very tough on the people who make the music.

If you look at a band like Blackpink, they were taken away from their parents' homes when they were teenagers and put through six years of boot camp, learning different dance styles, ways to harmonise, rap cadences that they might use in their songs, and they were competing the whole time against other girls who might make it into this four-piece group. And so when they emerge on the stage,

after this hugely testing period of development, they are ready for anything. It's almost robotic how clean and precise their dance moves are and how good their live vocals are. And it's the same for BTS, it's the same for Seventeen and Stray Kids and all of those acts who come out of that industry. So they are obviously making a huge global impact on the music industry. Where do they go from here? So the figures that came out last week from the IFPI,

which is the trade body for the global music industry, showed that four of the top 10 best selling artists in the world last year were from South Korea. And Taylor Swift was the biggest seller, obviously, but Seventeen, who are a massive boy band, they were the second biggest sellers and Stray Kids were the third biggest sellers. So those are big numbers. They are selling millions of copies. And so I think it's only going to get bigger. And just finally, Mark, do you think that we're actually getting better globally at appreciating art and music from cultures that aren't our own? I mean, the Grammys this year had the Afrobeats category for the first time. Being as we all have access to streaming and social media and all of those things, are we getting more

open minded or are the acts becoming more homogenous? I mean, certainly some of the more popular K-pop artists have achieved success by using Western writers and producers. And so there is a homogeneity there. But I do think, like you say, people are opening up. I think particularly for the younger generation, they don't care where their music comes from. They don't even care if it's new or old. They just want something that they like. And I think what K-pop does really well is that it innovates. It's not making cookie-cutter radio fodder. It's not pandering to algorithms. So if you take a band like Stray Kids, who write all of their own songs, they almost make it a challenge to get as many different styles into one track as they can.

They've got a song called S-Class, which kind of starts off with this military beat. And then it goes into Eurodance EDM kind of drop with this huge thundering bass. Then there's a bit of rap. Then it goes into 1990s hip hop from New York. Let ends with this kind of crazy explosion of guitars. On paper, it shouldn't work. But when you listen to it and when your ears adjust to it, it's really, really clever. Stray Kids making us sound a lot more cool than usual, ending that report by Mark Savage. And that's it from us for now. If you would like to be part of the Happy Pod,

or you just want to say hello, really, the address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Alana Bold. The producers were Anna Murphy and Harry Bly. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard. Thanks for listening. 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.