Global News Podcast - The Happy Pod: The sky is no limit at 102

Episode Date: August 31, 2024

We meet Manette, the 102 year old who has become the Britain's oldest skydiver. Also: as the Paralympics get underway, we hear the stories of inspiring athletes including USA swimmer, Ali Truwit, who was attacked by a shark.Presenter: Rachel Wright. Music composed by Iona Hampson.

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. If you're hearing this, you're probably already listening to BBC's award-winning news podcasts. But did you know that you can listen to them without ads? Get current affairs podcasts like Thank you. Amazon Music with a Prime membership. Spend less time on ads and more time with BBC Podcasts. This is The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Rachel Wright and in this edition... I was called a cucumber sitting between his knees in the face of a plane.

But it's a bit different when you come out the plane. We meet the woman who's over 100 but still jumped out of a plane for charity. I relied on 15 years of competitive swimming to give me any advantage in a situation where I had none. The Paralympian who got back in the water after being attacked by a shark. And a modern composer takes up a historic position within the British monarchy. What drives me is an unquenchable love of music and the thirst for knowledge for music. We start here in the UK where Manette Bailey became the nation's oldest skydiver. At the age of 102 years young, Manette did the dive to raise money for three charities whilst also attempting to break records. Nabiha Ahmed caught up with Manette and started by asking her what it felt

like to jump out of the plane. As you fall out the plane, the shock of the cold and the wind, and you don't know in what position you're in. I thought I was sort of horizontal all the time. And then I thought, no, I couldn't have been because I started twisting around. And I'm afraid I was too cowardly to open my eyes straight away. I thought that would give me a double shock. So I kept my eyes closed until I got kind of used to it. And you are travelling at 130 miles an hour. So if you're not keen on speed, it's not a sport for you. I was reading about what your tandem for the skydive said

and he said you were cool as a cucumber. I was cool as a cucumber sitting between his knees in the face of a plane. But it's a bit different when you come out the plane. Or you can say I was called as a cucumber when I landed gently on the ground. And that was perfect. And I did feel perfectly calm. I thought, now I get up. I got two men to help me get up.

And we walked together to the lovely crowd that were cheering me on and waving and singing and goodness knows what it was lovely oh i mean who wouldn't enjoy that i mean it's so nice to kind of have that welcome after you've done the skydive look at half the village it turned up before you jumped out how did you overcome those fears well i've been through some nerve-wracking experiences in 102 years. And I think positively all the time that I want everyone else to do the same. I don't want you to be like me, but I do. I want everyone to realize that how you're thinking really affects your whole life.

And don't give up anything until you're forced to. I want that message to go through to all the people who are going into their 80s and their 90s and are feeling slightly depressed about the whole affair. Just think of something positive to do and think and enjoy your life. As one man in the village said, simplicity and fun gets you to enjoy your old age. What's the secret to living a happy life? Lots of things that go towards this getting to 100. You've got to make lots of friends wherever you are to keep changing where you live. Keep making friends and you do that by listening to them,

inviting them to your house and your life will go along like mine. I know your husband was a paratrooper, your friend's 85-year-old dad did a skydive himself. Just tell me more about kind of seeing that fearlessness or that kind of thrill for adventure around you and how has that inspired you? Well, neither of my husbands ever were patient with anyone who started their sentence, I can't. That was,

you just don't say you can't do something. You can. Put your mind to it. You can do it. And this is entertainment. I'm a great one for entertainment. And of course, I admired my first husband for being quite the bravest person. But I'm not given to nerves and I like thrills. What do you say to others about stepping out of your comfort zone? I'm thinking I've got to really make the point that how you think is very important, is very much more important than you imagine. It affects your health and it affects how you live. I reckon I was born with it. I really do.

Manette Bailey speaking to Nabiha Ahmed. The Paralympics got underway this week and the games are not short of inspirational stories from all over the world. One of them is from the athlete Ali Truitt, who's competing in the swimming competition for Team USA. Two days after Ali graduated from university last year, she was attacked by a shark while swimming in the sea and had to have her leg amputated below the knee as a result of her injuries. Ali had competed in swimming for many years before the attack and was determined to get back into the sport she loved so much. The Happy Pod's Holly Gibbs has been finding out about Ali Truitt's journey to Paris.

We were snorkelling in the ocean and seemingly out of nowhere a shark came up and started attacking us and we fought back but pretty quickly it had my leg in its mouth and the next thing I knew it had bitten off on my foot and part of my leg. Ali describing the moment she was attacked by a shark whilst swimming in the sea on a trip to the Turks and Caicos Islands, an area not known for sharks. Ali had just graduated from Yale University and competed in the swim team there. She had just run a marathon with her mother

and was getting ready to start a consulting job in the following months. It was a life or death situation. So we screamed for help and when no help came, we made the split second decision to swim for our lives. So we swam roughly 75 yards back to the boat in the open ocean water. The shark actually came back a second time during that swim to the boat, but thankfully didn't bite either of us that time. You know I relied on 15 years of competitive swimming to give me any advantage in a situation where I had none. Ali was airlifted to a hospital in Miami for two bouts of surgery. After that she was airlifted again to a hospital in New York where she underwent a below the knee amputation on her 23rd birthday. Ali was determined to get her life back and to get back in water. She started in her family's pool in the back garden. Initially,

I realised I was feeling really fearful of the water because at that point, the last time I had heard the sound of water, I was swimming for my life. But it was important for me to fight for the things that I could reclaim because some of what I lost, I'm never getting back. And so I wanted to fight for what I could get back, and my love of the water was included in that. It wasn't all, you know, rainbows and butterflies. It took a while to get back to that love of the water. But I had glimmers of hope, moments where I felt like I was back to that peaceful and joyful feeling in the water that I've had my whole life. And enough glimmers of hope that I relied on hope to keep me going. And the more I worked at it, the flashbacks reduced, the pain lessened,

and I think I realized I could fight for that love again. Now, Ali is representing Team USA at the Paralympics, after getting back into competitive swimming just three and a half months after her attack. In Paris, she will be supported by around 50 of her family members who are making the trip to see her compete, including her mother, Jodie. She has those teary hard days and then she just pushes the reset button and stays focused on her values, which are getting happy, getting healthy and trying to be a, you know, contributing member of society who puts good in the world. That's her main, I think, goal and purpose and value in life. And the attack hasn't stopped her from

trying to do that and makes us all really proud. For Ali, swimming has been her lifeline. I think that's the beautiful thing about swimming for me. And it's been a fight to get that love back. But it saved my life in the moment. And it's continued to save my life as I work to rebuild it and given me strength and confidence and hope. And it's truly been one of the big things that's carried me through my recovery this year and expedited my recovery in terms of self-acceptance and my ability to feel strong again. Ali Truitt ending that report by Holly Gibbs. A woman born in Belize in Central America and then raised in a deprived part of the UK

has been appointed to one of the most coveted cultural positions within the royal household, Master of the most coveted cultural positions within the royal household, master of the king's music. Composer and singer-songwriter Errolyn Wallen has already created some of the most performed pieces of music among living composers, including 22 operas. She's also written compositions for the Golden and Diamond Jubilees of the late Queen Elizabeth II. But she says it's her boundless

enthusiasm for making music that won her the new role at the heart of her work there. Stephanie Prentice caught up with Errolyn Wallen and asked her about the day she was told she had a new job. Well, I was in shock, but it didn't take me long to say yes, very enthusiastically. And, in fact, it's still sinking in. It's an extremely grand title, Master of the King's Music. How would you describe it to somebody listening

who might not know what that means? Well, I would say it's a historic title, which sort of derives from the early days where the monarch, and we go back to the 17th century, appointed a musician. So it's evolved over the years till, I suppose, in the last hundred years, the master can have an advisory role as well. We can be on hand to write for special state occasions. And I'm yet to have an audience with the king.

But why I'm so excited is that he is truly musical. He plays the cello and I believe he might even compose. How do you think you might feel when you do come face to face with the King? I'm hoping that my natural sort of bubbly enthusiasm will come out. But what I love about music, the moment you start talking about something that you love, it's as if all the nervousness goes away. When I'm talking about music, I love, it's as if all the nervousness goes away. When I'm talking about music, I feel always very happy. So as I understand it, you're the second woman and the first person of colour in this role.

How does it feel to be advancing representation in two areas at once? Well, I mean, I've been doing it since I was a little girl. Once I showed a strong interest in classical music, certainly there were some people who, you know, teachers included, who felt this music wasn't for me. So I quickly got used to being maybe the only person in the room, maybe out of hundreds of people in the room. What drives me is an unquenchable love of music and the thirst for knowledge for music.

And that's, I think, to be honest, that's why I've probably been selected. You have spoken in the past about wanting children to learn to write music, which you did when you were at school. Why do you think it really benefits children? I think to be human is to make music, to be around music. And I feel that I have been privileged to get to where I am because I started off with free access to music. Many of us from quite poor backgrounds. We had this marvellous teacher, Miss Beale,

who taught us to read and write music. You have mentioned that music is where you feel the happiest, but could you give us a song or a piece of music you'd recommend if people really want to just get a little happy hit well at the moment at the moment i can't stop listening to stevie wonder's sign seal delivered and that's that's a very popular tune, but the thing is, I, as a composer, I keep listening to sort of see what the bass,

electric bass, is doing. Over the top of that, there's a push and pull in Stevie Wonder's voice, and that's what gives the song its real, its laid back, but at the same time makes you want to dance. So we could get a reworked, signed, sealed, but at the same time makes you want to dance so we could get a reworked signed seal delivered at the next major royal event well don't put it past me Marilyn Wallen speaking to Stephanie Prentice

coming up in this podcast. It took me four months of physical therapy to be able to touch the palm with my fingers. It's not 100% healed, but I can still use it. I feel a little tingling, but I'm happy. A man buried under an avalanche in northern Italy for almost 24 hours has made an incredible recovery, both emotionally and physically. Life and death were two very realistic coexisting possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was.

Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference. It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care. To hear more stories of recovery, visit CAMH.ca. 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.

To Stockholm now, where next month players from around the world will be gathering for the second annual GeoGuessr World Cup. It's an online game based on Google Street View, where players have to use visual clues to work out where in the world they are. But players have also been finding other uses for their geoguessing skills, as Harry Bly has been finding out.

GeoGuessr began in 2012, and the concept is simple. You're dropped in a random location and have to work out where you are just by using geographical clues in the surroundings. And your goal is to use whatever picture you see and guess where you are. This is GeoGuessr player Gavin Atack. Or better known as Chicago Geographer. That's my GeoGuessr username. I've been playing the game for about seven years now and I'm going to be participating in the GeoGuessr World Cup this September. I've been playing the game for about seven years now, and I'm going to be participating

in the GeoGuessr World Cup this September. I played in the one last year as well. Take a closer look at this match now. It's going to be between the storied players, Jake Lyons and Chicago Geographer. CG taking the advice and just going center here, and we might see a similar thing here by Jake. Gavin is one of 24 players in this year's World Cup. And here's how it works. Two players will see the same location and have 60 seconds to guess where they are. If one player guesses early, the opponent has 15 seconds to submit their guess. Whoever's closest wins the most points.

It's Jake! Oh! And Jake now! Tapping the head, looking into lens, saying, The competition is always so fierce, and I think this year it's even stronger. You know, people have discovered the game more from watching it last year. I'm going to just fight my hardest, and that's all I can do. One of this year's commentators is a man who's made an entire career from playing and mastering GeoGuessr.

All right, it's another day to play the game of GeoGuessr. And it's another day. This is Trevor Rainbolt, and we'll be what's known as a caster at this year's competition. Known online as just Rainbolt, Trevor is originally from Arkansas, and has no formal background in geography. But that hasn't stopped him becoming one of the world's most popular geoguessers, with more than 2 million subscribers across his two YouTube channels and just under 3 million followers on TikTok. The art of geoguessing, Rainbolt says, is memorisation. Each country has unique features. It could be something niche, the colour or shape of the road signs or telephone

poles, the distinctive look of road markings, or a species of tree commonly found somewhere, or if you're lucky, something more obvious like a shop front with the name of the town on it. And with his online fame, Trevor has found another purpose using the knowledge and skills he's acquired from playing GeoGuessr, helping people work out the location in which old photos were taken. I got sent this DM once and I was like, wait a second, I know where that is. It was like someone that like really needed help finding a photo of their biological mother. And I was like, wait, this has like real life impact. Like the skill that I learned to be competitive against other

players in my free time has a transferable skill that actually is able to help people. Trevor receives messages from fans all over the world asking for his help to track down where old photos of their loved ones were taken. Sometimes it's hours and days and weeks and months and sometimes even years. There's one I'm working on right now that I've had since 2022. Wow. It's all fun though. The hours you find, you spend trying to find something become all worth it in one single moment. In a sense, it still is a game, but it's a game with a bigger reward at the end. It's like you actually have an impact in someone and like their life. And

that's probably better than getting some internet points. Harryry bly reporting back to the paralympics now and we've been diving into the sporting archives and this week we've chosen a woman who's won medals at both the summer and winter games in cross-country skiing biathlon rowing and hand cycling in which she took two golds in Tokyo. Oksana Masters was born in Ukraine three years after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the radiation is thought to have contributed to what she describes as significant birth defects to her limbs and some of her organs. She was adopted by her American mother, Gay Masters, and moved to the US, where she had her legs amputated to improve her quality of life. Speaking to Scout Bassett and Ed Harry before the 2020 Tokyo Games, she explained how she managed to win her first winter Paralympic gold with a broken elbow.

Honestly, it's the first time I actually believed in myself going into a Games. I wasn't going to let my elbow determine all four years of training. I'm already missing two legs. What's another arm at the end of the day? And I definitely think everything we go through in life, we don't know at that moment, but we have no idea every good experience, bad experience, the moments where it's the end of the world. it's truly preparing you for something you just don't know yet. But when that moment comes, you're going to be ready for it and instinctively know what to do. For people who aren't familiar, what was life like

in the orphanage? So when my mom adopted me when I was turning eight, I was 36 inches tall and weighed 34 pounds. I lived in three different orphanages before I was adopted. I won't bore you with the details, but yeah, there was, yeah, it was not good. And I think it's why I love sports. It became, I was such an angry, angry, explosive child and didn't have anywhere to release that energy. It became my outlet. It became like even when I ski or ride a bike, like I will sometimes zone into those moments of flashback into Ukraine a little bit. When did your mum first talk to you? And I'm wondering what the process was like from her side, whether

she met other barriers and resistance that she had to overcome to make this whole happen. Oh my gosh, my mum went through, my mum adopted me single parent. She was questioned, why was she single? What mental disorder did she have? Why is she not married? What is wrong with her? I mean, I owe my whole entire life and everything to her because I think it takes special people to choose to adopt. And I got very lucky that my mom had the heart that she had and the fight that she had. We could not be any more different. Like she's not an athlete. She does not like sports. It's my mom's determination that fight that taught me how to fight as an athlete and apply it in so many different areas, I feel like.

When I had my leg amputated and was forced to amputate my legs, I didn't know what was next for me because I never saw anyone like me. So I didn't know sports was even out there that I could have this outlet or something for me to get excited and look forward to. And you have to make it more visible to make it more normal because you're never going to know like what little boy is going to look at that picture and like, oh my gosh, she has the same leg as I do. Oh, they have the same wheelchair. I have crutches. She has crutches. And they can be it when you see it. And this took me every single minute of my 31 years to be able to smile without my prosthetics on and to post it publicly. And my favorite quote is by Coco Chanel. And it's to be irreplaceable, one must always be different. And I'll be honest, I still struggle with this.

I still there are days where I'm like, why can I be this? But you can't truly love the world and embrace every opportunity that comes to you if you don't love yourself. Embrace what sets you apart because it's making you irreplaceable at the end of the day. You know, I think this is something people struggle with, you know, body image. What helped you to get to a place of acceptance, of self-love? So what helped you to sort of cross that bridge? It's going to be different for everybody because for me, that bridge was sports, but it can be whatever, wherever their passion is. Instead of getting defeated by your failure, it just motivates me to be like, I know I can do it. There's moments of doubt. There's a fine line of doubting yourself, but doubting it too much,

because a little bit of doubt is that little spark of fire that's going to light the flame. But then you going and putting in those hours and believing in yourself, that's what's going to make the flame come alive. And you can hear more from Oksana and many other Olympic and Paralympic champions in On the Podium, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Now to a remarkable story of survival and recovery. In January last year, Carluccio Santori was buried under an avalanche while skiing in the Dolomite Mountains in northern Italy. He spent almost 24 hours under the snow in the valley of Alta Badia before being

rescued. But he's now made such a good recovery, physically and emotionally, that he's been able to go skiing again. Joseph Kotajar has been hearing his story. Rescuers hovered over the mountains in a helicopter for hours, hoping to locate the 53-year-old from Rovigo, a city in the Veneto region. After 23 hours, at an altitude of 2,300 metres above sea level, they spotted an ungloved hand jutting out of the snow. Rescuers meticulously dug out the snow around Carluccio and found him alive but unconscious, severely hypothermic and suffering from life-threatening frostbite. Carluccio was flown to a hospital in nearby Bolzano

and rushed to intensive care. Miraculously, Carluccio recovered and was even spared amputation of his ungloved hand. Eighteen months since the ordeal, Carluccio has been reflecting on his long road to recovery. It took me four months of physical therapy to be able to touch the palm with my fingers. After four months of exercises, I was able to close my hand. Carluccio says that he's happy how his health has progressed, but his hand hasn't completely recovered.

My damaged hand is not 100% healed, but I can still use it. I can no longer close it completely. I have a strong sensitivity to cold, so I suffer a lot from the cold. I feel a little tingling, but I'm happy. He recalled his psychological battle in overcoming this bad experience. I won't deny that for six or seven months after the accident, it almost bothered me to see images of mountains with snow. It was something that made me immediately go back to that moment of trauma. And for almost a year, there wasn't a day,

especially when I went to bed, that I didn't think back to that moment. But Carluccio doesn't want fear to beat him, and he's determined to go back on the slopes. I'll return to the mountains soon, but unfortunately there are certain things I won't be able to do anymore. Maybe it's better this way. The doctors who treated Carlo Cian said they had never seen a patient who had been trapped under the snow for that long,

but are delighted with his recovery. Dr Luca Moroder, part of the team who treated Carlo Cian. It's a good feeling. It's a good feeling because you see that the treatment you choose was the correct one and that you had the possibility to save the extremity of a patient which had this problem but also other severe problems. For Carluccio, who even went skiing with one of the rescuers,

the rescuers are his angels. I will never forget them. We talk and they were very kind. They took care of me. I couldn't ask for better. They were truly my angels. I think I will never forget them. Carluccio Santori ending that report from Joseph Cutajar. And that's all from the Happy Pod for now. This edition was mixed by Philip Ball and the producer was Holly Gibbs. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Rachel Wright. Until next time, goodbye. Life and death were two very realistic coexisting possibilities in my life. I didn't even think I'd make it to like my 16th birthday, to be honest. I grew up being scared of who I was.

Any one of us at any time can be affected by mental health and addictions. Just taking that first step makes a big difference. It's the hardest step. But CAMH was there from the beginning. Everyone deserves better mental health care to hear more stories of recovery visit camh.ca 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 Thank you.