Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: The cafe spreading the joy of dance

Episode Date: December 14, 2024

We hear from a cafe in Massachusetts that spreads joy by asking customers to dance as they enter. Also: the toys made from cigarette butts; a community library destroyed by fire reopens; and Italy's festive Krampus Run.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Hello, this is Roji from Sri Lanka and you're listening to the HappyPod from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway and in this edition, the cafe that's got a whole town moving. Let's get people dancing again and just be joyous because dancing is good for the soul and it makes people happy. By offering free coffee to anyone who's dancing. A novel way to reuse discarded cigarette butts. I've made cushions, keychains, stuffed toys,

and now we're learning to crochet to make these fruits. Why hundreds of people in Europe have been dressing as devilish creatures to celebrate the approach of Christmas and… I mean it's fantastic to hear the screams of joy and how much they enjoy it. Making the ballet more accessible to children from all backgrounds. We start in the US state of Massachusetts, where staff at a coffee shop have been spreading happiness by getting their small town dancing. It all began with an offer of a free drink for anyone who came in doing their favourite moves. A video of the first day went viral and it started a

movement across the whole town of Middleborough. Now the community has put on a day of dance with other businesses joining in. Stephanie Prentice spoke to Olivia from the Coffee Milano Cafe. We love interacting with our customers and knowing everybody's name and making everyone feel special. And at first it probably took about an hour for the first person to come in dancing. And then once, I think once one person did it, then other people were like, oh, what is what's going on? So I watched the initial TikTok with, is it 7.6 million? Yes, yes, yes, it's insane.

I, with my boss and I, I was, when I got 4,000 views that morning, I sent him a screenshot and I was like shocked that it had 4,000 views. So the fact now that it's now on TikTok, it's at I think 8.2 million and it's crazy. And I think that it's like people love things that are making other people happy and just spreading joy. And I don't think it's about three dollar coffee for free. I think it's just the fact that we are letting people express themselves. There we go. Hello, people, enjoy the party.

And I saw an array of dance moves, some pretty impressive ones. Oh yes. Some pretty impressive ones. Can you tell me what you saw and what your favorites were? Oh yes, so the first person in the video is actually my sister during the moonwalk, and she did not expect that this was going to go viral at all. And she's highly embarrassed that she took her shoes off the moonwalk. And now 8 million people saw that. And then a lot of the other ones wear regulars. But yeah, I love all the other, like the different moves that we can see and how different people from different generations dance as well.

I thought it was cool to see. People were inspiring other people to dance for sure like I know when the group of girls came in and they were all dancing one gentleman was saw them outside and was like come on in and start dancing and he got them going and then they came in dancing. Yeah the people's expressions in the video they actually look so joyful and so childlike. Oh, yeah. Like.

Woo! Woo! Yes, everyone is smiling. And that's all that we really wanted was to make our regulars happy and to keep spreading joy. So have you got any future plans to do maybe a different twist on this? Could people do it with their kids, with their pets?

Yeah, so we actually were talking about that. We were talking about maybe like bring your dogs in and dance with your dog, just how we could do various different things to kind of make it more niche and have its own twist on it. So it seems like you've made your regulars very happy. You've gained a lot of social media followers. What would you say to any other businesses thinking about doing this? I think that it's a great idea and today we have 15 other businesses in downtown Middle Borough also partaking in it. We have an axe store in place that's doing it and antique

stores and the eyeglass store, in the liquor store, everyone is doing their own little twist on it. And I think that whether it's something for free or a discount, let's get people dancing again and set this atmosphere where people are able to be themselves and express themselves and just be joyous because dancing is good for the soul and it makes people happy and it's worth it, for sure. Olivia from the Coffee Milano Cafe talking to Stephanie Prentice. Around the world more than a billion people smoke and discarded cigarettes are the most common type of litter on earth. The filters are made from toxic plastic that takes a long time to break down.

But an organisation in India has found a rather surprising way to recycle them and turn them into toys. Code Effort says it's recycled around five million cigarette butts since 2019. It now pays two and a half thousand people to pick them up and has installed 200,000 dedicated bins. people to pick them up and has installed 200,000 dedicated bins. Javi Sagitov went to their offices near Mumbai. So this is an open courtyard with a tin roof shed. I'm seeing sacks piled up on the left side. A poster that says what begins on our streets can end in our seas. The sacks, no surprise, are stuffed with cigarette butts, dirty and bent up from the trash bins and curbs of India. They have two main components, the paper that holds the whole cigarette together from the outside and the filter, which is this fibrous stuff. And when people don't finish the cigarette, sometimes the butt

also contains leftover bits of tobacco. My name is Ramanand Kumar. I'm from Bihar. Ramanand is one of the longest serving employees at Code Effort, and he's demonstrating the first step after collection, sorting. This is the waste. This is a stick. So he's picking out the matchsticks or the feathers, leaves. The paper wrapper is collected and recycled for use as mosquito repellent sticks. The tobacco is composted and distributed to local nurseries. But the focus here is the stuff inside the cigarette butt, the fiber in the filter,

and once it's separated into a big pile, it's chopped up into tinier bits. When you grate it into a big pile, it's chopped up into tinier bits. So I'm looking down a very, very large mixer grinder. It's got a four-wing blade in it, very large. After cutting, the shortened fibre is washed in a bacterial solution to rinse off and dissolve toxins, and the fluffy white mass that comes out is now white and clean. And this wet fibre is next dried in a spinning drum. All the water is disposed of sustainably. This is the last stage of the process.

In Hindi we call it dunai machine. So this is for carding and softening the fibre so that the fibre looks like the one that you saw there. The fluffy cotton type of... And from here it's loaded into bags and taken to the homes of the village women who work with it. We're in a big living room with a huge carpet and a small child who's playing with pom poms. And there's a basket next to her with the crocheted stuffed eggplants and oranges. The little girl's name is Tanishka, she's three.

Her seven-year-old brother Chirag is here too. And they're playing with toys and pom poms all made with the now cleaned and carded fibre. Their mother Barsha is crocheting a green yarn into what will be a stuffed pear. Before this, I was a security guard. When I had my first baby, I had to leave work, so then I joined this organization. Now, from home, I can both work and take care of my child.

I make these pieces, I do housework, drop the kids to school, get other stuff done. As she works, the lady of the house, Poonam, comes and sits cross-legged with her. Poonam is a code efforts pioneer. I've made cushions, keychains, paper bags, paper envelopes, stuffed toys. And now we're learning to crochet to make these fruits for an order. We finish our household chores by about 11, then we work until about 5 pm. The pears take time, but I can make three or four oranges or eggplants or apples in a day. By this time, Poonam and Barsha are joined by five more women from the neighborhood. I asked Poonam how she felt working with the fiber from cigarettes.

I asked Poonam how she felt working with the fiber from cigarettes. It's fine. It's safe. It's cleaned. I think it's a good thing. People smoke cigarettes and just throw the butts away and create litter. But our boss gets them collected and recycled. It cleans our environment. This is a good thing. So many people are just wasting time. We are sitting at home being productive, making something interesting and earning a little to take care of our expenses also. I mean that feels nice. What isn't used to make toys is turned into paper. And I saw some bookmarks and notebooks

made from it. It's highly fibrous and it's very nice for ink pens. They also supply their fibre to a company that makes tree-free paper for office stationery. Javi Sajderv in India, and you can hear more on that story on people fixing the world wherever you get your podcasts. At the end of the summer, the UK was hit by riots that were amplified by comments on social media. But the violence also brought communities together as people helped out with repairing the damage. On the HappyPod back then we heard about an amazing fundraising effort to restore

a public library in Liverpool that had been set on fire. $320,000 was raised and this week Spello Library reopened. The night before, public libraries across England were illuminated to quote share the light and in Liverpool children celebrated with a lantern parade. Katie Hazeldyne went along. Tell me about how you felt when you found out that the library had been burnt. Not very happy because it's somewhere that people like to go. I was very sad because that's a library I always go to and I love reading. Why are you so excited? Tell me what you enjoy about the library. I probably enjoy it the way that it's so calm, I get annoyed a lot easily by the noise. And they're off. A huge blue light up there accompanied by its cub leads this procession

from Goodison Park. The Stealing Sheep Marching Band, are who you can hear, bringing the party atmosphere with their light up instruments and hundreds of school children and their parents are joining them carrying lanterns to bring back the light to Speller Lane Library which was torched during those riots in the summer. Are you excited for the library to reopen? Yeah, I'm getting emotional. When I first went down I was being crying my eyes out.

That's the only library we go to. That report by Katie Hazeldyne will Alex McCormick, who he spoke to about her fundraising in August, said it was emotional to see the library reopen. I just think it's amazing that we've managed to get to this point in such a short amount of time. The initial target was £500 and the initial intention was just to replace the books that had been burned. So Never In Wildest Dreams I think it would go as far as it did. The level that it reached and it got so far and wise was just unbelievable. I think I'm feeling overwhelmed more than anything else but also so proud of

everyone who's been involved and who continues to be involved as Spello continues to grow on the back of this. I think everyone around the world has got a connection to a good story. Everyone's got a book that they love. And if all of this hasn't proved how much we need these spaces and how much we as a society value them, then I don't think anything will. Fundraiser extraordinaire Alex McCormick. And still to come on the happy podcast. Brad was calling out people that wasn't there. I was seeing patterns in rocks that weren't there. And I said, Brad, like I'm in a bad way. And he was like, okay, me too. Five minutes

leave. The ultimate relationship test, 53 hours of extreme cycling. Hello, Simon Jack here from Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast from the BBC World Service, exploring the minds, the motives and the money of some of the world's richest individuals. Did you know there's an easy way to get new episodes automatically? Whether it's Good Bad Billionaire or any of your other favourite BBC World Service podcasts, find the show on your podcast app and then just click follow or subscribe.

And if you switch on notifications, you'll get a reminder too. It's that easy. Follow or subscribe and never miss an episode. In countries that celebrate Christmas, children are often told they must be good if they want to receive presents from Father Christmas, Santa Claus or St Nicholas. In some parts of Europe, there's even a folklore character who is said to punish those who misbehave, the Krampus. In the central and eastern Alps the tradition is celebrated with the Krampus Run when crowds gather to watch hundreds of people dressed in grotesque demon-like costumes running through towns scaring children. Yousuf Kutaya went along to one

event in northern Italy. As the Sun brushes its last golden strokes on the dolomites and the colder creeps further into my windproof jacket, you think that chaos are approaching. But at a closer look I can see an army of grotesque figures, tractors and flames coming closer. It is the beginning of the Krampusnacht, or Krampus night. The Krampus is a grotesque creature of alpine folklore. According to legend, it is half goat and half demon.

The Krampus is believed to accompany St. Nicholas on his visits to children. According to legend, children who behave receive gifts, while those who misbehave are punished by the Krampus. In Dobbiaco, a town of 3,000 people in northern Italy, this night is taken seriously. 10,000 spectators descend to watch 600 of these Krampuses running through the town. At the end of the march there's a person dressed as half bishop half Santa Claus who's accompanied by young children representing angels, who hand out sweets to well-behaved spectators.

Participants dress in hairy black or white costumes that resemble the body of a gorilla. They wear bells the size of watermelon on their hips and hold either a flaming torch or birch sticks. Participants wear demonic masks with horns looking like ibexes and teeth like lines. Meinhard Fauster is the organizer of this ritual and makes these masks out of aluminium. Meinhard is also the brains behind the Dobiakokrampus run. He has performed as a Krampus for almost 20 years. I asked

him where he gets his inspiration for the masks. He said the influence is twofold. I get my ideas from old American films because these days movies are too computerised. In the older movies, ideas came from the head, not from artificial intelligence. The other perspective is my own imagination, which then is coupled with what I see in classic films. Managing 600 demonic creatures in a small town is no easy task. Meinhardt says that most of the participants are regulars. So they know the drill, know their limits and are mindful of their own safety and that of spectators. And he says there's one thing he enjoys every year.

I look forward to the malt wine because one part of the parade ends in the Christmas market. So after the parade everyone gathers around in the markets to enjoy malt wine. The tradition is mostly celebrated in Germany, in Austria, in Slovenia and in parts of Northern Italy. However, the tradition is now spreading to the UK and the United States. It was even brought to the big screen in the 2015 horror film Krampus. So whatever I do, I'll be good for goodness sake.

Youssef Kataia in Northern Italy. Many partners love sharing their hobbies with each other, but would your relationship survive spending more than two days together with just a few minutes sleep? Well, earlier this year, Dani Shrewsbury and Bradley Shenton entered the gruelling Badlands Ultra Cycle Race through the mountains of northern Spain, completing the nearly 800 kilometres in 53 and a half hours to win the pairs title. entered the gruelling Badlands Ultra Cycle Race through the mountains of Northern Spain, completing the nearly 800km in 53.5 hours to win the Pairs title. And despite hallucinations and a crash, they say it's brought them closer together. They've been speaking to my colleague Caroline Barker.

I did it the year before. I've already done it as a solo person and Danny was like, maybe we should do it together next year. I was like, uh, it's quite hard. It was quite funny in the run-ups to it because I like absolutely loved Danny's like optimism about everything and just like it was, I was like, I know what's coming. It's really hard for me to say. Danny, I'm getting the dynamic now. You're obviously competitive. Definitely.

I think that's the side of me that knew that I would get through this, whatever, because I wouldn't want to let Brad down, especially because I know that he'd already done it once and that I was putting him through it again. But also, yeah, the competitive mindset that I've got, I just knew that I'd keep going and even if I wasn't okay, I'd pretend I was okay. After three hours, we are going down this hill and it's like me then Danny, it's super bright, chalky, dusty and there was a huge dip. I hit it and just was like, whoa, but didn't shout it out properly. Danny hit it and fully went over her handlebars and broke the bike.

But knowing each other so well as you do, how do you like deal with potential tension points like that? Don't get me wrong. In the second day when you're like super tired, you just kind of like get angry but you're angry at the situation. You're not angry at each other. You're kind of just like, I'm so tired. And we would, fortunately, we didn't have like low points at the same time. I was like so close to quitting and just like, I'm so done with this. And Danny just goes, have a caffeine gel and shut up. Sometimes you have to get a bit sassy with each other.

One big thing is like what came with the crash, it meant that it snapped my light off. I'm like totally relying on following Brad in the dark. He might not have called out that dip but after that he called out everything. I can't call out the dips in the daylight but I can in the dark. He might not have called out that bit, but after that he called out everything. I can't call out the dips in the daylight, but I can in the night. The sleep thing though, was it 10 minutes in total over the whole time you had? It was actually crazy. We hallucinated like no tomorrow. But the thing is we're both so stubborn about giving up. Brad was calling out people that wasn't there. I was seeing patterns in rocks that weren't there. And I said, Brad, I'm in a bad way. And he was like, okay, me

too. Five minutes leave. But it took one of us to actually own up how tired we were. When you're sleep deprived, five minutes feels like a whole night, doesn't it? Full sleep on the side of the road as well. Yeah. I managed to snore and wake myself up within five minutes, so I think that's quite impressive. By the end of it, we both couldn't remember much, but doing it as a pair, you remember different things. You kind of like trigger each other to remember certain bits. So honestly, coming through something like that, you have a friendship or a partnership

like for life because you go through something special. I think even a lot of the solo writers, they ended up in little groups, didn't they? And they kind of end up getting through it together. And you can't explain in that moment what you've gone through. But like, especially doing it as a pair, you can just look at each other and be like, wow, we've actually done it. What do you do next? How do you top it? We're really competitive against each other. And we were like, should we just side up solo and just race each other?

Doing it again. This time I won't give him a caffeine gel, let's do it himself. Dani Shrewsbury and Bradley Shenton talking to Caroline Barker for Sports Hour. Ballet and opera are often seen as the domain of the wealthy or academic elites. But here in the UK efforts are underway to try to make them more open and accessible, especially for children from all backgrounds. The Royal Ballet and Opera House is opening its doors to schoolchildren who wouldn't normally get the chance to experience these creative arts. The Happy Pod's Lule Hassan has been

finding out more. This was a beautiful house. The normally serene and sophisticated Royal Ballet and Opera in the heart of London's Covent Garden was filled with the laughter and chatter of thousands of excited children from all over England. They'd come to see the first performance of the ballet version of Cinderella, the fairy tale about a downtrodden young woman who is suddenly blessed by fortune and ends up marrying a prince. And the young audience also got a glimpse behind the scenes, finding out how the enormous intricate sets are moved and changed during the intervals.

For many children, opportunities like this are not common. But thanks to money from donors, the theatre has hosted seven such schools events this year, including ballet and opera performances of Alice in Wonderland and Hansel and Gretel. These children, from a school in Wotherham in the north of England, spoke about what the experience meant to them. I think my favourite part was where the two sisters were fighting over the scarves and trying to put make-up on them. Mine was when the fairy godmother came out. I found it really difficult at the start but as it got to the fairy godmother bit I started

to understand it. I think it just shows how with all the costumes how dance can really just tell a story, it doesn't have to have any words or anything. Gillian Barker, Director of Learning and Participation, explained why it's important this tradition continues. These are extraordinary places, extraordinary experiences, and I believe everyone should have that opportunity. And I think it's particularly important for people

who don't live close to a local theatre, who can't experience the magic of a place like the Royal Ballet and Opera, to be able to come to London and see this quality of work. The reaction of the children spoke for itself. Kevin O'Hare is the director of the Royal Ballet. I mean it's fantastic to hear the screams of joy and how much they enjoy it. It's that immediacy of their reaction that's so brilliant

and that's what you miss when you're doing a normal show. Kevin O'Hare says opportunities like this can truly shape a child's life. What can seem like just a memory can actually be the moment someone decides what they want to spend their life doing. Every child should have the opportunity to come and see what theater can offer.

And that little spark, and it could be, yes, what they're seeing, the dance has been amazing, but they could be looking at the orchestra and seeing the instruments they're playing and thinking, gosh, I'd like to do that. Or how we put it all together and again, that can spark an interest. And I thought, oh, could I do that? Could I be involved in that?

So what did the children think of their first Royal Ballet experience? Rectacular. Interesting. Amazing. Brilliant. It was mesmerising. It was really nice. Interesting. Amazing. Brilliant. It was mesmerising. It was really nice. Fantastic. I feel like it was a magical experience. I've never really been interested in Braille, but then when I see them doing it, it actually looks fun. That report by Lule Hassan

In the last episode we asked for things that made you happiest or inspired you in 2024. One response really made us smile. An email from Roji in Sri Lanka saying how the happy pod had helped her through a tough year. She summed up exactly why we do what we do. So something that's made me really happy in 2024 is in fact this very podcast, the HappyPod. What I really like about the HappyPod is the fact that it doesn't shy away from people facing difficult situations and also from problems that feel so huge that they're beyond solutions. What it does focus on is how people keep going

in the face of these problems and how they persevere and the little things that people do to improve their lives and the lives of people around them. So that really reminds me to be grateful for everything that I have and it really motivates me to keep going as well. Personally, I feel like trying to change the world is a bit of an overwhelming thing for me, but I did realize that sometimes all it takes is just a little act of kindness and that can mean the world to someone even if it's just one person and at the end of the day that's worth doing. Thanks, Roji. And we'd love to hear what made you happiest or inspired in 2024 from everyday family things to stories from Send us an email or voice note to globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

And that's all from the HappyPod for now. This edition was mixed by Derek Clarke and produced by Holly Gibbs and Rachel Bulkley. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye. Couple Heart Warriors, the new time-bending drama series from the BBC World Service. Maybe the whole reason I was there was to change something. Listen now by searching for dramas wherever you get your BBC podcasts.