Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: The giant Christmas 'tree' made of trees

Episode Date: December 9, 2023

Our weekly collection of the happiest stories in the world. This week, the Italian town of Gubbio lights its world record breaking Christmas Tree. Also: how a medical clinic in Borneo is helping to reduce deforestation. And the loneliest manatee, lonely no more.

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 lessse on Amazing Sports Stories from the BBC World Service. Search for Amazing Sports Stories wherever you get your BBC podcasts. This week in Italy, what's known as the world's largest Christmas tree that isn't technically a tree is unveiled.

Hello, I'm Harry Bly and in this edition, hear the story of Katie Taylor, the Irish boxing champion fighting from an early age. Girls weren't allowed to box, so she would get dressed in her dad's car, she'd put her head guard on, she'd put a gown on with a hood, and she'd walk to the ring. The clinic in Borneo helping to reduce deforestation. It's really closer to being a small hospital. We do inpatient care. We have, until very recently, been doing 24-hour emergency care as well.

And... You would say, oh, he's got real riz. Susie Dent joins us to discuss this year's Oxford Word of the Year. Hi, I'm Susie Dent Dent and I am going to be attempting to riz up the happy pod. That's right, this is the happy pod from the BBC World Service. For one whole month from December the 7th, the Italian town of Gubbio displays the world's largest Christmas tree. Although it's not just one massive tree, it's a Christmas tree shape made from lighting up trees on the slope of Mount Ingino.

This was the moment the lights were switched on. The tree is an impressive sight. Drone footage taken from above the town shows the very recognisable outline of a classic Christmas tree made from green lights. In the middle, there are dozens of red, yellow and blue lit trees that represent baubles. And at the top, the star, positioned on a hilltop Catholic church, the Basilica of Sant Ubaldo. Lights continue down, representing the tree's stump,

with lights weaving into the walls of the town at the bottom of the hill. The Christmas tree can be seen from ground level too, as it lights up the hillside. It's said to have taken around 1,300 hours, or 54 days, to make it. The man in charge of that is Giacomo Fumanti, the president of the Christmas Tree Committee. This year we started work on September 10th and finished on the last Sunday of November. Every Sunday morning we were on the hill working.

Our association has 63 members, and on average 30 to 35 of us were on the mount working on Sunday mornings. This tree entered the Guinness Book of World Records back in 1991. It has a base of 450 meters and a height of 750 meters. We placed a comet star with a surface area of a thousand square meters on the top of the hill. The sound of carol singers with jingle bells marking the lighting of the Christmas tree. And you can go back and watch the entire ceremony and see the tree for yourself on the town's Facebook page where it was live streamed. We'll be talking about more trees later on in the podcast, but for now, do you have riz?

It's a word that's used a lot on the internet, slang for romantic appeal or charm, and this week it became the Oxford Dictionary's Word of 2023. Susie Dent is a lexicographer and etymologist and author. In September, she came on the podcast and told us all about her book on happy words called Roots of Happiness. I'm just looking at the page for Lagom, which is Swedish, and that's just gorgeous. It essentially means not too much, not too little, but just right, which I think is gorgeous. And lots and lots of words from other languages that we haven't yet managed to translate. One that I absolutely love is the Japanese.

Again, it's another sort of aesthetic, really. It's Shibui, which is all about unobtrusive beauty. So it's a face that's wrinkled through smiles. It's just such a lovely idea. And then a lot of cultures also have words for being alone in a wood and feeling the power of the trees and the beauty of solitude. So German have Wald, Einsamkeit, but they are just not rendered in English. So I think we have to go then to the original. So who better to ask about Riz? I spoke to Susie and began asking what exactly Riz means.

The definition, you know, it may change. I mean, that's the really interesting thing about this word. You can tell it's a word on the move and you can tell it's a word that is embedding itself in the language because it's being used in different ways. It's being used as a verb. If you Riz someone up, you are attracting or seducing them or chatting them up.

You would say, oh, he's got real Riz. It's being used as part of the expression unspoken riz, which is what we all want. A kind of, you know, unspoken je ne sais quoi charisma that is effortless, really. And then you have riz-coloured glasses, I think was another one, whereby people on dating websites were prioritising riz over other aspects of people's personalities. So it's definitely being riffed off, if you like, or riffed on. And as I say, that shows that a word is really taking off. The Oxford Word of the Year. Susie, tell me, how is this chosen? It was very interesting this time, Harry, because normally the Oxford Word of the Year is chosen by a group of lexicographers who study empirical data, which involves billions of words of current language in these databases, which show which words are bubbling under, which words are fading away. And they study those and then they make a selection. And ultimately, the final decision is inevitably a little bit subjective. And last year, and now this year, what they've

done is they allowed the public to vote on various contenders, which they chose from a shortlist based on that data. And the public then voted and the lexicographers then in turn looked at the votes, looked again at the data and made a decision. So it's a really interesting way of doing it. And I think much more reflective of the way that English actually evolves, which is by democracy. Now, there is no authority saying this is the correct way to use this word or you cannot use this other word. And so to actually allow the people who are generating the popularity of these words to have a say, I think was really wonderful and quite unique. This word Riz very much comes from the internet, as does last year's Oxford word Goblin Mode, which I actually haven't heard for a long time. We had a good laugh about

this earlier because it's such a weird concept of Goblin Mode. Yes, but it was kind of it was unselfconscious scruffiness, wasn't it? It was just letting it all hang out really and I think it was a hangover probably from the pandemic but what was quite interesting this year I think is that on the short list were other words not just from the online communities but also from dating so there was a situationship that was another word on the list which is a relationship that isn't quite defined or committed yet and there was also a beige flag, which was a new one on me, but ask anyone under 30,

they know exactly what you're talking about. And a beige flag, I think this is something that is not quite a red flag. It's neither one thing nor another in terms of a signal within a relationship, but it's something possibly quite quirky about someone who you are dating and you're not quite sure where it sits. And finally, Susie, do you think the best word won?

I think actually, if you look at the percentages, I think Swifty was right up there as well. And I think all of us heard of Swifties this year with Taylor Swift's tour. It's a definition for a really big Taylor Swift fan. But in the end, yes, I think RIS is a really good choice for so many reasons. As I say, it's a wonderful example of how language evolves, given that it's on the move and how we use it. And also, it's a really good example of how online spaces are really shaping our language at the moment. So I think for all those reasons, it was an excellent choice. The Rizval Susie Dent. Back in May, the Irish boxer Katie Taylor was widely tipped to beat

her English opponent, Chantelle Cameron, in a highly anticipated fight. She hadn't lost since the 2016 Olympics and was the undisputed lightweight champion, but she was defeated on a majority decision, failing to deliver the dream for her supporters. Six months later, at the end of November, the wind changed. It was described as an epic rematch, and this time, Taylor came on top. This win means a lot for Katie Taylor and women's boxing in Ireland and beyond. I spoke to boxing commentator Steve Bunce about, in Katie Taylor's own words, the greatest night of her career. Taylor started boxing when she was about six or seven. When she first fought as a child amateur, 11 years of age, that's the legal age, she had to get dressed in her dad's car. And the reason for

that is simple. Girls weren't allowed to box, so she would get dressed in her dad's car. And the reason for that is simple. Girls weren't allowed the box. So she would get dressed in her dad's car. She'd put her head guard on. She'd put a gown on with a hood and she'd walk to the ring. And of course, she was 11 years of age. It's hard to tell the difference between an 11-year-old boy and an 11-year-old girl. And she'd fight. And it was only when she got to about 12 or 13 that people realized that Kay Taylor was actually Katie Taylor not Keith

Taylor so she at that point and that was close to girls and women being allowed to box officially all around the world actually all around the globe at that point but when she started she had to get changed in her dad's car an old junkie van as she called it and that's where she used to put her head guard on and disguise herself as Kay Dot taylor and of course taylor was born in a country in ireland where it was illegal for her to box and she's gone on to the fight in the olympics as well so she's quite a pioneer isn't she she's slightly more than the pioneer really i mean because anywhere you go in the world where there's an amateur tournament and i've been to them in about a dozen different places, either Olympics or major world events. Katie Taylor is the pin-up.

So when you are in Brazil, there are 12-year-old girls in boxing gyms with pictures of Katie Taylor taped to their school backpacks. I saw that in 2016 when I went to Brazil for the Olympics. She's a brand name. It's just Katie Taylor. Women's boxing is Katie Taylor. Women's boxing is Katie Taylor. Even the women that fight her and make a million dollars for fighting her, even the women that beat her, and the women who are her absolute enemies, her mad rivals, they still acknowledge, if you pin them down, that the reason they're boxing is because of

Katie Taylor. She was the woman you had pinned up, you know, in your bedroom at home when you were growing up. And that's the influence ofie taylor but what she does in ireland is she's stepped away from boxing so she's massive on various issues to do with women in ireland and hero doesn't quite cover it and pioneer doesn't quite cover you need to be with katie taylor you need to see the look of awe in the young girl's eyes you need to be there you need to see it you need to see the look of awe in the young girl's eyes. You need to be there. You need to see it. You need to sense it. Then you get a sense of what it really is. And six months ago, she lost to Chantelle Cameron.

Six months later, she won. Can you describe that moment for us? I don't know if I can. The original defeat back in May was hard to take. It was narrow, but she lost and she took it brilliantly. But she did some things wrong that week. She was loved and adored. She did too much.

She gave too much to the public during the six days in Dublin. This time she didn't. For instance, her ring walk in May lasted 11 minutes. Her ring walk in the rematch with Chantal Cameron in the same venue, the ring walk lasted 22 seconds. She meant business. And the crowd on the night in Dublin when she got revenge over Chantelle Cameron in a foul-filled and just quite gripping fight was unforgettable. And the new undisputed, super-likely champion of the world, Katie Taylor!

Boxing commentator Steve Bunce. Coming up in this podcast. It's an against all odds win, especially for the Manatees, of course. They're very, very, very old. So every day is a gift, but now it truly is. Romeo was said to be the world's loneliest manatee, but now he's found a friend. 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. The Global News Podcast brings you the world's latest breaking news and developments.

But some stories need a little more time. I'm Katya Adler, host of the brand new BBC World Service podcast, The Global Story. Every weekday, The Global Story peels back the layers on one major news story with insights from the BBC's worldwide network of experts. So find out all the latest news right here on The Global News Podcast and then dive into one big story with me on The Global Story.

Search for The Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Deforestation is a worldwide problem. Cutting down trees en masse has devastating impacts to wildlife and the environment, especially in a delicate and rich ecosystem like a rainforest. But how do you stop people chopping down trees? In the Indonesian part of Borneo, researchers for a conservation charity discovered that local people were chopping down the rainforest around them for an incredibly understandable reason. They needed to pay for medical treatments for themselves and their children. Now a medical clinic has been set up which offers a discount on medicines and treatments for people who don't partake in logging. Myra Anubi from the BBC's People Fixing

the World programme spoke to the woman behind this idea, Kinari Webb. You know it was this amazing and beautiful and exquisite thing to be in the rainforest but I could hear the chainsaws all around me. That's Kinari Webb, who happens to be both a medical doctor and an ecologist. At the time, she was on a student trip to study orangutans, and she didn't understand why the local people would want to destroy this beautiful place that they called home, the Gunung Palung National Park, which is a large area of tropical rainforest on the island's west coast. And it just broke my heart. And then I talked to many of these men and discovered that they were logging often crazily to pay for health care access. People were destroying their future in order to get their present.

And it was not only destroying their own future, but the future of the orangutans, the future of our planet. And so I really, I felt like we just can't have, we can't have a planet where this is happening and where people have to make those kinds of horrible choices. Kinari went back to the U. the US and finished medical school before returning to Borneo and setting up a charity called Alam Sehat Lestari, or ASRI, along with her co-founder, Hotlin Ompusungu. The aim was to preserve the forest and reduce illegal logging. So they started by sitting down with the local people to ask them what it would take for them to stop cutting down the trees and protect the rainforest around them. The ASRI team spent around 400 hours talking with local people

and over and over again, people said that the one thing they needed most was good, quality, affordable health care. We thought, OK, well, we'll just, you know, we can't build you a hospital right away, although we did eventually. But we will try our very best to build a clinic and to provide services. Kinari and her team started building their clinic and it opened back in 2007. However, Kinari knew that on its own, the clinic might not be enough of an incentive for people to stop cutting down the rainforest. So together with

community leaders, she came up with another big idea. What if people could get a large discount on their medical care if they stopped chopping down the trees? They saw it as a way that they could address people who were still logging. The clinic started off by offering basic care, so providing everything from consultations with doctors and contraception, right up to doing major surgeries, with patients getting a sizable discount if no logging had taken place in their village. 15 years later, the project has grown bigger than Kinari could ever have imagined. It's really closer to being a small hospital. We do inpatient care. We have until

very recently been doing 24-hour emergency care as well and minor surgeries. For major surgeries, we do have a fabulous surgeon and this was designed by the communities. They love it. Dr. Kinari Webb speaking to Myra Anubi. You can hear the full episode, just search BBC People Fixing the World. Now, an update to a story that was covered on the World Service last week. A manatee named Romeo was thought to be the loneliest in the world after a video was posted online that showed him swimming alone in what seemed to be an abandoned tank at the Miami Seaquarium in Florida. But this week, the 67-year-old mammal was removed from his

isolated and crumbling enclosure and is now being cared for across the state at Zoo Tampa. And as Nicky Cardwell reports, for the first time in six months, he has company. When footage emerged online two weeks ago of Romeo the manatee floating alone in a small concrete pool at Miami Sea Aquarium, it was viewed more than 20 million times and tens of thousands of people joined a campaign to free him. The attraction had been given until mid-December to improve conditions or lose its license. But on Tuesday night, the Florida authorities announced that Romeo and two other manatees who were being kept separately had been removed and taken to critical care centres elsewhere in Florida. Professor Cynthia

Springfield is the vet overseeing the care of Romeo and one of the other manatees at Zoo Tampa. She says despite their age and the trauma of a five-hour journey by road, both are doing well. They've both made it through their transport just fine. They're in pools right now with other manatees. That was a concern that Romeo was by himself and so we're able to get him with other manatees immediately and he's swimming around investigating his new environment and hanging out with other animals. So we're really, really pleased with how good they look so far. As soon as the vets are happy, Romeo will be moved to a more natural setting.

He may always need human help, but will live out his remaining days with other manatees, lonely no more. Philip Demers is from the group Urgent Seas, who published the viral footage. It's an against all odds win, especially for the manatees, of course. They're very, very, very old. So every day is a gift. But now it truly is. Now it can be said that their lives have improved so much that even if only in the interim and temporary, it certainly was worth the risk. He's now able to explore and think and feel. And that's the essence of life. Philip Demers from Urgent Seas ending that report by Nicky Cardwell. This week, we're remembering the writer and poet Benjamin Zephaniah, who died on Thursday. In 2012, he was one of the guest editors of BBC Radio 4's Today programme. He recognised the

importance of positive news stories. And on his programme, he commissioned a news bulletin containing only happy and uplifting stories. He felt it important to raise awareness for the good news in the world, when the news often seems bleak. I just think there could be more of it. Do you? There could be more of it. And, I mean, there is at a local level, sometimes on local radio and in local news,

you do hear these kind of good news stories. I think the problem is that we've actually just developed a culture of it over the years and so it feels odd now. But there's no reason why we can't have more... Good news is probably the wrong word. Positive news. The writer and poet Benjamin Zephaniah, who died this week at the age of 65. A rendition of Led Zeppelin's Stairway to Heaven, performed by schoolchildren in New Zealand, has become an unexpected online hit with hundreds of thousands of views. St Andrew's College in the city of Christchurch had its yearly prize-giving ceremony

and brought together more than 100 students from the school's choir, orchestra and rock band to perform at the ceremony. Its head of music, Duncan Ferguson, wanted to end the ceremony on a high note and he succeeded. The rock anthem became the main event. I spoke to Duncan and lead electric guitarist Mia Fraser from their school. The finale, it really did go up a level this year because I know that we wanted to do a rock show and our prize giving happens in what we call the Wolfbrook Arena here. So it's not in our school hall or anything like that because it wouldn't fit the three and a half thousand people that come.

So we have this arena where any big groups that are coming to town will play in. And so I thought we have an opportunity to do a big rock arena type show. But I knew that as part of that, we really had to bring it with the light show as well. So we have some really great lighting designers that help us with our school musicals. And the guy called Sean Hawkins,

who did our lighting design, I worked with him for a few months and said, Sean, I don't know what I want, but I want something epic. What can we do with lights? And so he put together a really great show and he ended up having 72 lighting cues in the five or six minutes. And we even got all the students into our school outdoor quad and moved people around

and figured out what's it going to look like if people stand there or stand there. And we played around with that one evening and we measured it all up and he went away and did a delighting show and sort of had it ready to go for us on the day. So really fortunate that we just worked with such great professional people that made it look so astounding. And Stairway to Heaven by Led Zeppelin, a very well-known rock song, possibly the most well-known rock song of all time. Why did you choose that piece? Well, it was suggested to me by a former board chair of our board of governors. And often I ignore those sorts of emails from slightly older people that love to have good advice for me about what I should do. But luckily, Brian Pearson came up with a really good link.

And it was to the heart performance of it as a tribute to Led Zeppelin as part of a company. I'm not actually sure what it was for, actually, a concert that Obama was hosting. And it sort of hit me like I think our video is hitting other people. It was an emotional response and it was so uplifting and inspiring. I thought, yeah, that's an amazing piece. And it's the perfect timing for our year group. Having students like Mia here, who I knew could pull off that guitar solo because she's just such a great musician. And I thought, yeah, this is the perfect choice for us to do this year. I perhaps maybe naively thought that, didn't think about the magnitude of the song and what a risk it was

because we never thought it was going to go, obviously, outside of our school community that anyone else would ever see it. So maybe it was quite good that I didn't sort of realise what a big challenge it would be at the time. And yeah, my naivety in that was probably worked to our favour a little bit. And let's talk about that guitar solo, because Mia, there's this moment that you walk into the centre of the stage and suddenly all the spotlights shine onto you. And you perform that very, very well-known, iconic electric guitar solo, originally by Jimmy Page.

What was that moment like for you? It was very nerve-wracking. Honestly, I can't remember too much of it. Apart from that, it was pitch black was all I could see. And I mean, I guess I could hear the crowd and it was very exciting. I hadn't experienced anything like that before. So when the song ends, it ends on this really lovely long note, and then this sudden big crash,

and then the crowd erupts in applause was that a an extra special applause given the magnitude of the performance was it more than you'd expect or are all your school assemblies like that not to this scale like it was just it was a very extraordinary experience and just hearing the crowd and feeling like on probably the last time I'd be with the school together it was just a really nice feeling yeah but luckily we had so many parents sending footage to us from their iPhones and things like that and we got to see what it was all like up in the rafters and at the back of the auditorium how people were just cheering for me as she came up it was just one of those moments that you know make the hair stand up

in the back of your neck and think, oh, that's why we do music. That's why we want to feel those kinds of things. And so it was just a special moment and one I'll certainly remember from my career as well, I think. Ooh, and it makes me wonder Music teacher Duncan Ferguson and guitarist Mia Fraser from St Andrews College in Christchurch

on their spectacular rendition of a rock classic. I am for the wind In my thoughts I have seen Prince of smoke through the trees And that's all from us for now. Remember, if you'd like to be part of the Happy Pod, you can email us. The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Paul Mason.

The producer was Anna Murphy. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Harry Bly. Until next time, goodbye. Yeah, yeah Your head is humming and it won't go In case you don't know The piper's calling you, join him Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow? And did you know? Your stairway lies on the whispering wind.

Oh, yeah, yeah. 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.