Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: The 'privilege' of helping brain tumour patients

Episode Date: September 26, 2026

A rapid new test for brain tumours is taking diagnosis time from weeks to hours. It means patients are spared weeks of uncertainty and can start treatment sooner. The Happy Pod speaks to the doctors behind this breakthrough, who say it's a "privilege" to be developing something that can help people. Also, a baby has been born on one of the most remote and northernly Scottish islands for the first time since 1992. An entrepreneur in Ghana has worked out a way to turn plastic packaging waste into school desks. Plus, a woman in Wales has received a life saving kidney transplant, after her plea on social media found a donor match and, the six year old breaking records in China with a Rubik's Cube.Our weekly collection of inspiring, uplifting and happy news from around the world.Presenter: Holly Gibbs. Music composed by Iona Hampson

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Growing businesses deal with the same problem. Too many tools, too much back and forth and not enough time. Odu helps bring it all together. It's an all-in-one business management platform, fully integrated from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing, so your team can spend less time chasing information and focus on growth. Whether you're in retail, manufacturing or service,

Odu gives you one place to manage your business. Visit Odu.com to book a demo. It's OD-O-O.com. It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else. And the investigation led by students, he's trying to silence.

If this is leaked to the media, I'll be. destroyed. This is World of Secrets, Catching My Teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app, or wherever you get your BBC podcast. This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Holly Gibbs and in this edition, the new rapid test that's transforming brain tumour diagnosis. I'm really excited. I think when the first time we ran this test and we got it to work in-house and we got it to work really quickly.

It felt completely unreal. I will never tire of seeing this approach work. We speak to some of the doctors behind it. Also on this podcast, how one island is celebrating its first baby in more than three decades. We have this beautiful home, that's my family home, that's steeped in our history and ancestry. So to be surrounded and supported by that felt very special. Plus, meet Gary. I thought if I was my daughter, I would be searching eye-in-law if we had exhausted all avenues through the family and friends.

And I just thought, this lady needs one of my kidneys more than I need two of them. He responded to a social media appeal of a woman who needed a life-saving transplant. And the six-year-old breaking records with a Rubik's Cube. We start with a story of a medical breakthrough in the diagnosis and treatment of brain tumours. We recently reported this on the Global News News. podcast and in this edition I'm going to bring you a different interview so we can explore this scientific advancement a bit more. It's a rapid test that can reduce the time it takes to get an accurate diagnosis from up to eight weeks to just two hours. It's already been

used on some patients and it was developed by a team here in England at Nottingham University Hospital. Dr Stuart Smith, a consultant neurosurgeon and Dr Simon Payne, a consultant neuropathologist. I spoke to them both for this edition of the House. Happy Pod and started by asking Simon to explain the test. It's an amazing test and I think to understand why it's an amazing test you need to know a little bit about brain tumours and how they're diagnosed. They're really complex things as you might guess. They are really difficult to diagnose with confidence. You really need quite in-depth, comprehensive molecular testing to make a diagnosis these days and that takes a long time. It can be weeks and it's certainly not something you can do

within the time period of the operation. And what this test that we've developed building on work of colleagues, frankly, all over the world, but particularly with colleagues here in the university, Professor Matt Luce, principal amongst them, and a PhD student called Simon Deakin, what we've developed is a test that allows you to condense all of those weeks of waiting into about an hour and a half, two hours for an initial result, and then all the other data that you need after 24 hours. It's taking really complex genetic tests and putting them all in one test and speeding it all up. That's amazing. How is this going to help patients? I assume it means that quicker diagnosis means you can catch the tumour early?

Yeah, I think, as Simon correctly said, there are many, many different types of brain tumour and some of them are more invasive into the brain than others. And we know that the extent and how sort of aggressive we are with the operation in terms of how much we try and remove varies between tumour type. So that information in the operation, I think, will help surgeons make better decisions and to tailor the surgery much more specifically to an individual patient. Well, Stuart, you've actually already used this on a patient, haven't you? Yeah, I mean, we've actually used the technique on quite a few patients in the process of checking it. We've run this technique alongside the standard technique, and it's pretty much always given us the same answer,

so we're confident in it, it's accuracy. It's also important to say that there's an added benefit beyond the surgery and that the standard techniques that we use, as Simon described, to diagnose the genetics, the DNA and brain tumors are very good and very powerful. But they can be quite slow and it can take six to eight weeks to get a full result back for a patient, whereas this new technique will speed that up to a few days, and that will allow hopefully patients to progress onto the correct treatment more quickly. And Stuart, what's the feedback been from the patients that have already benefited from this test? I think definitely people like answers quickly, whether that's good news or bad news. I think people do appreciate hearing certainty quickly, being able to move on and come to terms with that knowledge

is the weight that can be very corrosive for patients' mental health. I want to ask you both this one, but Simon, maybe let's start with you. How excited are you by this test? I'm really excited. I think when the first time we ran this test and we got it to work in-house and we got it to work, really quickly. It felt completely unreal. As a pathologist who's used to waiting a long time or having to go through lots of hoops to get an answer, to see the answer come up on the screen, thanks to the software that Professor Luce's has written, was just remarkable. I will never tire of seeing this

approach work. But I think the real excitement will come when I see it being used routinely. And we can have this really fantastic service much quicker, much more accurate. than certainly are microscopy methods. And it's making such an impact for all of our patients, not just one or two who are in our trial. Yeah, absolutely. You're saying from the surgical side, I mean, I remember, you know,

colleagues coming into theatre to see the process, you know, going around to the laboratory, you know, going to see the data just appearing on the computer in seconds or minutes, you know, and it's incredible. As you've said, this has been developed in England. Is this something that could be rolled out across the world? Yeah, there are certainly other hospitals in the, around the world doing it in limited numbers.

I mean, I think certainly this is the sort of most advanced phase, it actually being sort of rolled out into, you know, more routine or aiming to move to routine clinical practice on a sort of health care-wide system. We had inquiries from around the world. Many countries have contacted us and Professor Luce to see demonstrations of the system. So even as far as filled as New Zealand, I think people have made inquiries and we've given them demonstrations of what it can do.

And so I think, yes, absolutely. of excitement, but I've been surprised if it wasn't taken up by other countries and other healthcare systems, yeah. I think this is a sort of test that even in middle to lower income countries, perhaps, because it provides all of those answers that we need in one test, and bypasses a lot of the standard testing that we're doing, which in itself is very expensive. I think, yes, not just in the developed world, the economy is similar to ours, but elsewhere, this is exactly the sort of technology that has got enormous potential for them. is next for this test? So there's an initial rollout into centres in the UK in a couple of waves.

And what we're really trying to do is to get the evidence that this test really does work as well as it does, which we have no doubts about, but that's the sort of hoop that you've got to go through. Get those other centres using the test as we've been using it in Nottingham. My final question is a personal one because this is the happy pod, so we talk about feelings on the happy pod. My final question is, how does it feel personal? for both of you to be working on something that can change people's lives. Stuart, let's start with you. It's massively, it's massively positive thing for me.

You know, as a surgeon, I obviously deal with an individual patient and, you know, being able to do this project at a much more sort of system-wide scale and hopefully make a real improvement across the system and hopefully a lasting improvement in care for brain tumours. You know, that's a real privilege and it's a real positivity. and, you know, it certainly gives you a sense that you hopefully may change for the better, which I think is, you know, a good thing positively for me as an individual, and I get a great deal of that satisfaction from that.

I think it's a real sense of privilege, actually, to work with such a great bunch of people who all pull together for a common good and to feel that you've, you know, had a couple of colleagues say to me, you've made a real difference here. And yes, as doctors, we all will make a difference for individual patients, hopefully, but I think it's quite unusual when you can be part of something like this, which is going to make a step change difference in the way that patients are treated. And to see people working together for that common good and it all working is just fantastic.

That was Dr Stuart Smith and Dr Simon Payne. A baby has been born on one of the most remote and northerly Scottish islands for the first time since 1992. David Deldey has been to the Orkney Isles to meet Little Duncan. Less than a week old, but already a history maker. You're so good, Duncan. You're so good. Far from the bright lights of a maternity ward,

baby Duncan entered the world with an outlook of green fields, cows, and the sea at North Ronald's South Bay. For mum Alice Trailford, whose first two children were born in a hospital, the remote location just seemed like the right choice. At that stage in my life, I felt safer being in the hospital with all of the machines strapped to me and being told what was happening. And then 10 years later, I now feel safer,

being more in tune with my body and being able to listen intuitively and navigate birth instinctually as opposed to outsourcing what was happening. So it felt really right and it was just such a blessing that that was supported here as well. We have this beautiful home that's my family home that's steeped in our history and ancestry. So to be surrounded and supported by that felt very special, a very special introduction for him to come to earth.

So Duncan, this is Duncan. This is your great-grandfather who is the most amazingly kind, brave man in the world. Alice's family, the trails once owned the island, with their connection stretching back hundreds of years. Duncan takes his name from his great-granddad, once the layer of the island. I didn't know that I was going to name him after Duncan when we arrived, but I was sitting on the sofa in the other room, and right in front of me was a collage of his pictures with my grandmother, and so he's been very present with us.

He was an incredible man, so kind and really strong. and parents have praised the maternity team in Orkney for their support. He came a bit earlier than anticipated, so two midwives were flown out shortly afterwards on the Coast Guard helicopter. With the last baby born here in August, 1992, it has been quite the weight. Historically, when the Laird was in the island, a flag was raised to let folk know, so there seemed an obvious way to inform residents of the birth. all of the islanders a little bottle of whiskey. We found lots of magical four-leaf clovers over the

years and have kept them in a book here and I decided that this was the time to use them. So we stuck a four-leaf clover onto a bottle, a glass bottle and also taped, glued a groatie bucky to the lid and filled it with whiskey and we gave them to each of the islanders. So when the baby was born, we raised the flag and then everybody opened their whiskey and shared a dram and celebratory drink together. Oh yes, I was born on the island here myself many years ago in a box bed. That's Billy Muir, a friend of the family and fellow North Ronald C-man. In the old days it was just a regular thing and we would hear of stories when the birth became a bit difficult to take a boat and go to Sandy for the doctor and get help and I think in that days,

with a pair of both in the sale. While Duncan will be here till November, the few months after that will be, well, a bit different. Alice and partner Jorge will then head back to the Costa Rican jungle, where they run a school. David Deldei reporting. Now let's turn to Ghana, where an entrepreneur has worked out a way

to turn plastic packaging waste into school desks. Justice Beidu has been to the capital to meet McCaffee Awuku in his work. workshop. Well, so this is Makintosh Africa. Welcome to Makintosh Africa. So let's walk around and let me show you some of them. Yeah. A big guy with a big smile. Macafi Auku has an infectious passion for recycling plastic. He shows me his current stockpile. So it's a huge heap of plastic bottles, sachet rubbers that have been collected together. How much, how much plastics do we have here? So what you see here looks like?

like about 400 kilograms. Wow, that's a lot. We generate about 1.1 million metric tons of plastic waste in Ghana every year. In Ghana, it is thought that just around 5% of plastic is collected for recycling. McCaffey's latest project addresses another problem here in Ghana, a shortage of school desks. We have a lot of debt deficit in our schools. We have a debt deficit of close to 2 million.

McCaffee makes desktops from the plastic sachets that are commonly used for drinking water here in Ghana. He has 300 drop-off point for the sachets around the country. And he supplements these by buying more that have been gathered by waste pickers. So when the dry shreds come here, we have this heat transfer equipment. And then we have hydraulic press that we used to press it. Okay. So we set it and then we wait. So this looks to me like a big sandwich-making machine,

but instead of sandwich, this is plastic materials that have been put into this machine and then being pressed together. Yes, that's close enough. These sandwich machines can create a range of materials from a leather-like fabric to these deskboards that are just like plywood. They are sundered and drilled to the same. the desk frames. So far, McCaffrey has supplied 600 desks to 12 schools around the country. They cost about 60 US dollars each, but they are not paid for by the schools, but with grants

and corporate donations. I travel to a nearby school to see them for myself. So this is a classroom of about 60 pupils, and as I enter here, I can see Maccafrey's desk lined up with the students sitting on them and using on them. I'm just going to go have a chat. When we are writing exams, you know, the wooden decks are not that smooth for the paper. So when we are writing, the writing don't look smooth, but too fun is good quality. So it's really helpful. The wooden decks is they break easily, but these plastic decks, they don't decay and they don't break easily.

They are very hard. Well, I can't resist asking the students to test the strength of the desks. Okay, so three, two... That report was from Justice Beidu, and for more on this story, just search for people fixing the world wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Coming up on the Happy Pod,

the rising popularity of the Afghur Sona. You have all the amazing health benefits have been in the sauna, but you have that entertainment factor as well, so you kind of, it takes the mind off the heat as well. Your sales order says one thing, your inventory,

says another. Your spreadsheet says, good luck. Odu brings your business together on a single platform, from sales and accounting to inventory and marketing. Visit Odu.com to book a demo. It's O'Dbolo.com. It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret, of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else and the investigation led by students he's trying to silence. If this is leaked to the media, I'll be destroyed.

This is World of Secrets, Catching My Teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app or wherever you get your BBC podcasts. You're listening to The Happy Pod. A woman in Wales has received a life-saving kidney transplant after her plea on social media found a donor match. In her post, 41-year-old Karen Davy said that she didn't want to leave her family without a mother. But to her luck, a man called Gary Summerfield contacted her and turned out to be a match. Matt Murray has been to meet them.

They were strangers, but now they'll forever have a bond. Gary Summerfield meets Karen for the first time since the transplant. Gary saw Karen's emotional Facebook plea for a living kidney donor and immediately volunteered to be tested after she posted she did not want to leave her family without a mother. My main thing is the kids. I want to be around for the kids. The fact that somebody came forward and has gone through all the testing

because it's a lot of testing. I was just amazed. And Gary, it was the Facebook posts which really struck home with you, didn't it? That's right, Tarram being a very similar age to my daughter, and she mentioned the children. and I thought if I was my daughter, I would be searching eye-in-law if we had exhausted all avenues through the family and friends. And I just thought, this lady needs one of my kidneys more than I need two of them. Ten years ago, the mother of four from Brinner underwent a heart transplant after having a heart attack at 31 years of age.

Patients must take anti-rejection drugs daily following the operation, so their bodies do not attack the new organ, but they can damage the kidneys, and Karen always knew she'd need another life-saving transplant. They've been deteriorating for a few years, probably about three years ago now. They said I was in stage three kidney failure, and it just gradually went from there. Gary underwent extensive assessments for over a year, and at 60 years of age, he underwent the six-hour procedure in July.

So I thought, I'm going to go for this. Like, it would be selfish of me, to want someone to... to come forward for my family, yet I'm not going to think about it for Karen. It's something with getting married and having my children. Seeing Karen like this, yeah, yeah. You know, we've donated my kidney to her, yeah. It's something with the top three for me. A very deserving lady, deserving family.

I would go through it to get no hesitation. No hesitation. With the average weight for a kidney transplant around three years, Karen felt she didn't have that time. mentally to be able to handle the stresses that transplant brings. Karen's husband Matthew and her 17-year-old son, Brandon, say they will always be grateful to Gary. Everyone knows what's going on in the world at the moment.

It's a horrible place at times, but it really does give you hope that there is kindness in the world and you just got to look and the kindness will come to you and it is just mind-blowing. And we'll never ever be able to repay Gary. and the family for what they've done and, you know, and it's just given Karen another chance. It can be scary, obviously, when she's going into surgeries and stuff like that,

but have hope. Well, it's just an amazing feeling. Like, you just know there's still good people out there. It'll be surprised hours coming from the post. Gary shows Karen the pin badge he's been presented with for being a living donor, but it's the gift of life, which is the real reward for both. That report was from Matt Murray. Our next story is about a sauna with a difference.

An Afghus sauna is a multi-sensory ritual that uses sound, heat, lights and even towel-based choreography. It's all designed to take the sweaty participants on a journey. The Afghus World Championships has just taken place in Germany. And my colleague Celia Hatton has been speaking to one of the jury, Deborah Carr. It's growing globally and grown through. super, super fast. It's gone something that we never even heard of sort of four or five years ago to something that's being embraced really well. Amazing. I mean, the first thought that came to mind when I started understanding what it was is, isn't it uncomfortable for the performers to have to pull off something in a really hot, essentially very hot, sweaty box? Yeah, it is a hot sweaty box. No, it's not uncomfortable at all. It's part of their,

their job and they're rolling. It's something that they do on a daily basis. So it's a little bit like a sport in that you build an endurance and your tolerance to the heat. So tell me about some of the performances that did really well this over this past weekend. It's amazing because it really allows the creative juices, if you like, to flow from the Alfgust Masters because what we want to see is that them creating their own stories and something that they've made themselves. So it makes it really interesting because we've had stories from childhood to the team story this year was about an orphan who had an imaginary friend to stories about Savannah to adaptations of movies and books. So it's very wide, very varied and very creative. So how do the participants

use the elements inside a sauna, the heat, the steam to build on the stories that they trying to tell. So what they do is they try to make the story really immersive. So one of the things is obviously the heat, but also is smell. So they use a lot of essential oils and aromas that help take us on that journey so they can kind of smell the journey as well. It's very theatrical. So the sauna masters will wear a costume. There'll be sounds and lights. Sometimes there's a screen in these big sonnas as well. So there's almost like a movie backdrop to it as well. So it becomes like almost like a 360 experience. Wow.

I mean, some people might say they just want to relax when they go to a sauna. Why do you think this is so popular? Because it is quite relaxing. Because you have all the amazing health benefits of being in the sauna, but you have that entertainment factor as well. So it takes the mind off the heat as well. Deborah Carr speaking to Celia Hatton. We end in China where a six-year-old girl has made history with a Rubik's Cube.

Kerry Allen has the details. Early this week, a six-year-old girl from China made international headlines for breaking a world record twice in the space of three days. Look how big my trophy is you can hear her saying. This is Lian Yun-Zhe, who's from Chengdu in China's southwest to Chuan province, as she's now broken the women's world record for solving a standard Rubik's cube with average times of 4.52 seconds and 4.27 seconds. These took place at two different World Cube Association events in China.

Liena's become the only female competitor in the world with an average time of solving the cube in under 4.5 seconds and she has mastered more than 1,300 different solving algorithms. She first began learning how to use the Rubik's cube when she was four years old after her parents bought her one as a gift. Her mum told local media that around this time, she enrolled little zh-j-j-j-as-a-daughter is known in lots of different activities, seeing if she was interested in dancing or musical instruments. But the Rubik's Cube soon became a favourite toy, and she started spending two to three hours a day playing with one.

By the time she had turned five, she was able to solve the Rubik's Cube in under 10 seconds. Her skills have gone down a storm with her classmates. Lien has been competing in speed-cubing events across China since 2024, and her wish, this month are the third and fourth time she has broken the world record. So she's definitely become one to watch in the world of Rubik's Cube's solving prodigies. But she's amongst fierce competition in China. If you're a long-term listener of the global news podcast and the happy pod, you might remember back in 2003 the story of Cao Shi Shien, who at the time was age six, and she set the women's world record then at 5.97 seconds. A Chinese boy also holds the

world record for the fastest overall average, which is recorded from five different attempts. An average time of 3.51 seconds has become the speed to beat. And this was set early this year by 12-year-old Wong-e-Hung. Kerry Allen 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. The editor of this edition is Karen Martin. I'm Holly Gibbs. Until next time, goodbye. It felt like everything I believed in was suddenly collapsing. This is the story of an Islamic boarding school in Indonesia with a dark secret of the school's head teacher. This was someone I respected above anyone else. And the investigation led by students, he's trying to silence. If this is leaked to the media, I'll be destroyed.

This is World of Secrets, Catching My Teacher. Listen on BBC.com, the BBC app or wherever you get your BBC podcasts.