Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: The decades long wait for the World Cup

Episode Date: April 4, 2026

We now know the 48 nations that will be competing in the summer's FIFA World Cup. The final two sides to qualify - Iraq and the DRC - have each waited decades to return to the competition. We hear from jubilant fans of both teams.Also, a small rural village in South Korea, which is at risk of extinction, is celebrating the birth of a baby for the first time 17 years. A community in Washington DC has come together to rebuild a bookshop that was destroyed in a fire. An ancient abbey in the north of England is experiencing a tourism boost thanks to a Taiwanese pop star. A British schoolgirl has invented a pair of glasses designed to help people with dyslexia. In Japan, people have been taking part in a Grand Prix like no other: an office chair race. Our weekly collection of inspiring, uplifting and happy news from around the world.Presenter: Holly Gibbs. Music composed by Iona Hampson.

This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Holly Gibbs and in this edition, elation from football fans. So many years, 52 years. I never even got the chance to experience this. Same, bro. For us, it's 40 years. It's 40 years. I'm 33 in my life.

I've never been able to support a team in the World Cup, man. Iraq and the DRC have defied the odds to qualify for this summer's tournament. Plus, the first baby to be born in 17. years in a small South Korean village. A lot of the people in the village are quite old. From the story we read, they gathered in the town center to kind of celebrate the arrival of the baby. The bookstore in Washington, D.C. that rose from the ashes with thanks to the local community. Day after the fire, I go across the street to that business and I'm like, do you still have that open? When can I move in? And she was like tomorrow, like whenever. So it's honestly been awesome.

We like, we have a great community. The ancient abbey in the north. of England getting good publicity on the other side of the world. There's one Chinese celebrity who have the wedding blessing in here. So I flew from China and to here to have the weddings. And the schoolgirl on a mission to help people around the world with dyslexia. We start with two teams who have qualified for this summer's Football World Cup after decades of waiting. And the fans are elated.

We congratulate all the Iraqi people on this magnificent win, which has brought so much happiness to the nation. They've achieved a dream they've waited a long time for, from 1986 until now. Today was a great victory that brought joy to all levels of society. I'm very happy. We've qualified for the World Cup after more than 50 years. DRC has qualified and it's a source of pride for us. As entertainers, we'll support our Leopard's team at the World Cup.

Iraq and the Democratic Republic of the Congo were the final two teams to reach the tournament. Will Chalk has been finding out more. Jubilation on the streets of Monterey, Mexico, where Iraq had just beaten Bolivia 2-1 to qualify for their first World Cup since 1986. Also in Mexico, the Democratic Republic of the Congo secured their return to the competition for the first time in 52 years after beating. Jamaica 1-0. It meant, amidst instability in both countries, football fans back home had something to celebrate. These were the scenes in the DRC.

Iraq's preparations for the playoff have been disrupted by the war in the Middle East. Most of the squad reached Mexico after a grueling three-day journey from Baghdad that began with an overland crossing into Jordan. Iraq fan and podcast host. Hassanain Balal also travelled to Mexico for the game. There's no words to describe this. This is one of my biggest dreams in my life. Against all lots, recent events in the Middle East have been really, really tough. Players have had to go through a very tumultuous journey.

But it doesn't matter. We're going to the World Cup. I'm so happy for everyone back home, you know? Hassanane then celebrated with the players until 6am. And as you'll hear in a second, it took a slight toll on his energy levels. But before he finally went to bed, I convinced him to have a chat with Trezor Kubadika, a Congolese fan who'd watched their playoff final on TV here in London and also celebrated till the early hours.

What's up, guys? Hello, Hassan. How are you, man? Very good, my friend, are you? I'm very, very good, man. I'm currently in the hotel room with the players. So, yeah, man, it's been amazing. They'd never spoken before, but they did have one big thing in GERALD,

common. They were both very, very happy. How are you? Very good. Do you know what? We were trying to avoid you guys, you know, can you playoff? I'll be honest with you. That feeling is mutual. We were trying to avoid you guys. We know you're a good team. It's amazing. It's amazing feeling, I'm telling you. First time in so many years, 52 years. I never even got the chance to experience this. You're saying, bro. For us, it's 40 years. It's 40 years. I'm 33 in my life. I've never been able to to support a team in the World Cup, man. So it's an amazing experience, hopefully, for us this summer, bro.

I didn't realize how many Iraqis there are in North America. We've had loads of people coming all across the U.S., loads coming from Canada, and some coming from Europe. So we've been turning up in our tens of thousands to support their team in Monterey. The locals, the Mexicans have been so supportive. It was a beautiful atmosphere. Yeah, I managed to watch the... in London. Great atmosphere.

And you know what? This is the first time to play a country like Jamaica since I've been born. So usually we play African countries. But this is the first time Congo actually go and play this type of games outside Africa. That was one of the things that came to mind when I was watching the Bolivia game. I realized that I'd only ever really watched Iraq play against Asian teams. I've seen Iraq and the Olympics football play against Ukraine and Argentina. and Morocco. But the overwhelming majority of it has always been against Asian opposition.

It was just so nice to have a different competitor. So who's in your group? We have probably the hardest group in the whole tournament, to be honest with you. We have France, Norway, Senegal. So we have the best team in the world. The team in the best form in the world. And we have the Afcon champions will now runners up, given that they've been stripped of their title.

Realistically, we're not going into this. walk up to win it. I just want to be there to have their players experiences, the fans experience. Senegal's game was one is going to be the hardest game you're going to play there. I don't even think France. We'll see, man. I'm still, I'm still celebrating, bro. I've genuinely, I've been awake for more than 24 hours now. I wake up, went to the stadium, celebrated the players afterwards, and it's now the next morning, the sun's rising, literally as we speak. So I just want to enjoy this moment. I want to enjoy Mexico and I can worry about France and Senegal and Norway way down the line. For now it's party time, bro.

For fans of all 48 teams taking part, attention will now turn to where and how they're going to watch the games. But it turns out, Hassanin and Trezor only live a few kilometres away from each other in London. So is this the start of a football friendship? Thank you. See you in London, mate. Yeah, see your London soon. Will Chalk reporting.

to a small rural village in South Korea next, where a baby has been born there for the first time in 17 years. The news was announced in Yunnam Yong by a banner, calling the baby boy a special gift to the village. As well as this milestone, people there are also celebrating that their elementary school now has a grand total of 17 pupils. Our sole correspondent Jake Kwan told me more. This is a village, our south of where I am, in Seoul, South Korea. And this is mostly an agricultural, a farmland village where there were very few people have been born, and its population for the last years has been declining. So, I mean, there's a lot of fear that, you know, one day the village itself could be extinct.

And the good news here is that for the first time in 17 years, they had a baby. So the baby, a male child, he was born born. between a South Korean man and his wife who came from Cambodia. And, you know, a lot of the people in the village are quite old. There's very much that kind of aging population going on. And from the story we read, they gathered in the town center to kind of celebrate the arrival of the baby. What has the reaction been from the community? The community, of course, they're ecstatic.

I mean, look, this is a place where the elementary, the primary school has maybe a handful. I'm seeing that this year only four students entered the school. It isn't really a village that is at the edge of extinction. A lot of the people are villages like these. They are around the age of 50 or up. They are kind of barely making impossible. And the problem with these villages and the upper level when it goes to county level, there is an existential struggle to keep the population level up because the more population goes down, the more services started getting cut out, the subsidies coming from the central government starts dwindling. So, you know, a lot of these places have been introducing programs to encourage more marriages and more babies. And,

you know, I think they see this as a sign that perhaps some of these policies have been working. And across the country, birth rates are starting to go up, aren't they? I think there has been this idea that South Korea is really cratering towards extinction. It was the country with the lowest birth rate in the world. Its birth rate was around 0.72. This is the total number of child a South Korean woman is expected to have in our lifetime. And if a woman is not even expected to have a single child, you know, just think two generations later, the number would dwindle very, very quickly.

And what we saw was that the marriage rate and the baby rate start to actually go back up in the past two years. I think the demographers have pointed out that a lot of the couples may have held back the marriages because of the COVID pandemic. And now they're finally just getting married. And the thing about South Korean culture is that, you know, having kids outside of marriage is very much looked down upon. So a lot of the couples try to get married before they have children. And what we also have is what we call echo boomers. So these are children of the baby boomer generation who are now, who are, of course, a big kind of portion of the South Korean population.

And they're now reaching that age in their 30s or mid-30s to get into marriages and have children. So I think we're seeing that bump up. I think the jury is still out on whether this will be a continuing trend. I think the population itself had dwindled so much that there are just not enough couples to have more babies. But it is certainly a very encouraging indication. And of course, I think South Korean government is hoping that this trend will continue. That was Jake Kwan.

Next to a shop that has literally risen from the ashes, thanks to the local community. The first ever romance-only bookshop in the Washington, D.C. area initially opened in November last year. But just three days later, it was gutted by a late-night fire. Since then, the community has come together to help bring it back to life. Riley Farrell went along to Alexandria's Old Town to find out more. This is our section for a heated rivalry. As you can see, we're always sold out.

Jamie Fortin, the bookshop's owner, showed me around friends to lovers. one year after its reopening. They obviously got damage in the fire, so you can kind of see some of like the damage from the smoke and stuff, but one of our staff members, like, clean them all up as much as they could, and now they're just, like, permanent art. It tells a story. They're, like, gorgeous, right? I've had, like, kids come in here, like, a class of kids who are, like, on their D.C.

trip, and they're, like, an eighth or ninth grade, and they come in, and they're just, like, I can't believe somewhere like this exists. What convinced you to open a romance-only bookstore? So when I moved out here, I knew I. I wanted to start a business within two years. And one of the first ideas that came to me is like, we don't have anything like a romance bookstore in the D.C. area. And so I was like, okay, like, let's do it.

And by the time we opened, we had 200 people register for our grand opening, which was insane. The community really responded to it. We had our grand opening weekend. We had lines around the block. And essentially at the end of that weekend, I literally got a text from another one of the businesses in the building saying, in all caps, there's a fire. It was a very bizarre thing to which.

your business surrounded by like four fire trucks and a bunch of just random people. So we went in and I was like, everything is gone. We were able to salvage anything. Everything had smoke damage. So seeing that was obviously really jarring and just really sad. I talked to the fire department. I talked to the police and I remember walking away from the scene and just like sobbing and finally letting it out. And we went home and then next morning we just started getting to business. The community rallied around the bookshop staff who set up a fundraiser and rebuilt inventory. at speed. I think we raised $40,000 within a week. Day after the fire, I go across the street to that business and I'm like, do you still have that open? When can I move in? And she was like tomorrow, like whenever.

So it's honestly been awesome. We like, we have a great community. We have a great staff. You know, when I first went to open the store, a lot of people who do not understand the romance community, which is okay, we're like, are people going to bookstores? Like, are people coming in? And the reason you go to a bookstore is because of the community. Really, the reason I knew that, this concept would work is because the romance community and the, you know, Romantici community, all of this has been online, but there's been such a push from this community in different ways of having these brick and mortar spaces where people can gather. That is the reason people support us. It's not because we sell books. The book talk phenomenon has catapulted romance into one of the

fastest growing print categories. The global community of readers swapping recommendations on short-form video apps. On TikTok alone, the hashtag BookTalk has amassed more than 75 million posts. I spoke to customers about how the online romance readership translates in real life. I'm a big supporter of independent bookstores. They're really great for the local community. And yes, it's easy to, you know, just go online and buy books. But I always love going into an independent bookstore and supporting the local economy. And also, it's a really great space for building community. Romance can get written off. But like, there's so much. depth to romance books, I think for a lot of women, especially we're doing types of romance,

it's like sometimes it's aspirational. It's like what we wish we could see in the world. Really, romance is such a good way to learn about other people. Joyful stories are important too. Not just the ones where everybody is depressed. Riley Farrell reporting. Coming up on the Happy Pod, a different kind of Grand Prix. Personally, I really hope that this race, which was born here in Japan, will spread across the world, and the tournaments will be held in various places around the globe.

How a race on office chairs has taken Japan by storm. You're listening to The Happy Pod. Eleven years ago, the Taiwanese pop star J. Chu, who has a huge influence across Asia and the Chinese-speaking world, chose to have a wedding at an ancient abbey in the north of England. Now it seems that many of his fans are following suit. The BBC's James Graham has been along to find out more. I'm at the thousand-year-old Selby Abbey,

just 15 miles south of York in the north of England. It's a grand Gothic building that many might mistake for a cathedral, watching a bride in a huge white dress make her way up the aisle. A short time ago, I had a quick word with her. My name is Chin. And where have you come from? China. Yeah, it's quite far.

Whereabouts in China? Chengdu, southeast of China. Can you explain why you have come from there to Selby in Yorkshire to have your wedding? Personally, first I love York because I've been lived here before. And also another personal reason, because there's one Chinese celebrity who have the wedding blessing in here. So I flew from China and took. here to have the weddings. The star Qing mentioned is Jay Chow, known as the King of Mando Pop, or pop music sung in Mandarin.

Chow from Taiwan came here with his bride, Hannah Quinn Liven in 2015, and a video of the event on YouTube has 15 million views, and that's fuelled a steady stream of visitors. Hello, I'm John Wheatman. I'm the vicar of Selby Abbey. John thinks they chose Selby because Hannah had a family connection to Yorkshire. We were warned that it would probably lead to an interest in the abbey from Chinese visitors and certainly from the very next day we had people coming to visit Chinese students and residents in the UK and then people coming over from China on their holidays. York obviously gets a lot of Chinese visitors and a number of them were making a detour and coming here.

But as well as the visitors, we also had a number of young Chinese couples who were asking if they could come here for a wedding blessing as well. John didn't want to talk about the finances of all this, but the Abbey doesn't see it as a money-making venture and just charges the usual rate. Because we have quite a demand, we do restrict them to no more than one a week. I think last year we had about 25, and this year we have more than 30 booked in.

So that's a good idea of the number that we're able to do, but as I say, the demand is more than two or three times that. So if you've got 30, you might have had like 100 emails? Yes, I mean, it's certainly at the moment it's that sort of number. We get them every week and I'm having to say I'm sorry, but we are fully booked for 20, 26. In theory we could do more, but we have to obviously restrict them

simply because of the staff time and the availability of the Abbey for other things. While I was there, three generations of the same family from China arrived to look around. My name is Isabel and I came from Beijing. We came here because we are the fans of the J. Cho and we look, the video, that their wedding is so, you know, so splendid.

Yeah. And we want to have a look there. Is this part of a bigger holiday, or have you come just to come here? We came a few places from, you know, the London and Oxford, the bass and, I think, yeah, Windermere. and for the Peter Rabbit. Yes. And I think York is the last place we went. So Jay Chow's appearance here more than a decade ago

has put this small town of less than 20,000 people firmly on the international tourist trail for thousands of Chinese visitors. And there's no sign of that interest letting up. James Graham reporting. Here in the UK, a schoolgirl is on a mission to help millions of people around the world who, like her, have dyslexia. 11-year-old Millie won an engineering competition for inventing a special pair of glasses with coloured lenses that could help those with the condition read and write more easily.

The BBC's Rachel Bulkley has this report. How the book is, so if you press the buttons on the side, so this one's below. And the health, if you're reading off the board or, like, pages, but most like the borders you can, like, see, all the writing. Millie first had the idea of creating rainbow glasses when she was just eight years old, driven by her own experiences of dyslexia, a condition which can cause problems with reading, writing and spelling. She had headaches, nausea and felt as if words were moving around on the page. Like some people with the condition, she found that wearing colour-tinted glasses helped reduce some of these issues and make reading more comfortable. Different coloured lenses

can have different effects. But rather than having to carry around several pairs of glasses, she had the idea of creating one pair with interchangeable coloured lights and sent in a sketch of her prototype to an engineering competition. It was really good because, like, I drew it and I didn't think that will actually come to life, like something like what you draw. So I think it had, like, a lot of adults, children, just like a lot of people. Those behind the competition recognised that Millie's idea had potential.

Out of 70,000 entries, hers was one of a handful that won a gold medal. Dr Susan Scurlock is the founder of the organisation behind the competition, Primary Engineer, which works with schools and colleges to encourage more children to go into engineering. The idea was to bring engineering into classrooms so that children could enjoy learning more, to get more obsessed about things, I suppose, really. And it's always magical. It's always magical. And the hidden part of it is how it affects the young person.

Because you see them growing confidence. You see how that changes the dynamic. Millie's granddad was an engineer, and she'd always dreamed of following in his footsteps. She was delighted when her idea was chosen as the only competition entry to be made into a real working prototype. She collaborated with manufacturing firm sales to make the first ever pair of her rainbow glasses.

We asked you for a few suggestions and things like that and I remember you brought these nose pads kind of as one of your ideas. The engineers she worked with, Ben Butcher and Harry Topping, were impressed. I mean, I think it's a really, like, innovative idea. It's something a lot of people have not kind of thought of before and it's a real-world problem.

So it's been able to address something that's so common with people that people just tend to overlook a little bit. It's been impressive, to see the idea that Millie came up with, obviously. The communication has been really good. good as well. And to come up with an idea like that, hopefully in the future it can be something that's more popular. Millie is now hoping to get funding to make more pairs of her

rainbow glasses so they can become widely available for people with dyslexia. Her mum, Sarah, is understandably proud. It's been amazing because I've seen how it's really affected her, how really horrendous headaches, sickness, words are constantly moving around. I think it's going to change people's life if I'm on. honest, a lot for the better. Sarah, ending that report by Rachel Bulkley. We end with the way we started, with a story about sport. But this isn't any old sport.

In Japan, people have been taking part in a Grand Prix like no other, an office chair race. It is, as the name suggests, as Kou explains. For most of us, swiveling and sliding around in our office chairs are assigned. of bottom. For some in Japan, it's a highly technical, competitive sport. Office chair races are held across cities in Japan every year, including Tokyo and most recently in Kyoto-Nave, Kyoto. These are organized by the Japan Office Chair Racing Association and have attracted hundreds of participants. Naogi Nishikawa is one of them. We'd never been able to beat the team that came second, But this time, since Kyoto Nabe is actually where it all started, being able to come here and win, though it was a close race, really showed me how important it is to keep going without giving up.

It's become a source of confidence for me. In that sense, I feel it was a good experience. It's a proper test of physical endurance. Many of the winning teams cover more than 20 kilometres gliding down the street in their office chairs. But before things swivel out of control, competitors have to follow these rules. Firstly, the chairs they use must be commercially available and non-customised. Secondly, they have to put on protective gear, things like helmets, elbow pads, knee guards and gloves. The winners are the ones who can complete the most amount of laps on the circuit within two hours. And their price? 90 kilograms of rice, which they are awarded on a podium with a bottle of sparkling water

to imitate the famous champagne spray seen in Formula One. Competitor Yasunori Miyura hopes it's something that catches on. Personally, I really hope that this race, which was born here in Japan, will spread across the world, and the tournaments will be held in various places around the globe. Now, if you're setting sights on next year's races, you can set the wheels in motion, starting from that chair in your office. office.

CoU reporting. And that's all from the Happy Pod for now. We'd love to hear from you. As ever, the address is global podcast at BBC.co.uk. This edition was produced by Will Chalk. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Holly Gibbs. Until next time, goodbye.