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This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk. It is Ryan here and I have a question for you. What do you do when you win? Like, are you a fist pumper, A Woo Hooer, A hand clapper, a high fiver? If you want to hone in on those winning moves, check out Chumba Casino. Choose from hundreds of social casino style games for your chance to redeem serious cash prizes. There are new game releases weekly, plus free daily bonuses. So don't wait. Start having the most fun ever@shambacasino.com sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary VGW Group Void where prohibited by law. 18 plus terms and conditions apply. This is the Happy Pod 2024 news review from the BBC World Service. I'm Jackie Leonard and in this edition we look back at the most positive things that happened this year. And yes, there were actually quite a lot of them from a space story that made our science correspondent positively giddy. Oh, my goodness. They've done it. They've done it. First time. That was absolutely astonishing. To the rebuilding of a cultural icon in Paris. I didn't think that in five years they'd have managed to work so many wonders on the reconstruction. It's heartwarming to see it again. A celebration of sporting achievements, world records and a star is born in a zoo in Thailand. Every news outlet's talking about her. This is Mu Ding's world and we are all just living in it. And our brilliant health and science correspondent explains an excellent new treatment for asthma. Oi. Eosinophils. Knock it off and let's start big with what could be a breakthrough in space travel. In October, the giant starship rocket built by SpaceX performed a remarkable feat, nicknamed the Chopsticks manoeuvre by taking off from its launch pad in Texas before landing its first stage booster back on the very same spot, caught by huge robotic arms. The SpaceX team hope the successful recovery will take them one step closer to a fully reusable spacecraft capable of carrying humans to the moon and perhaps even Mars. Our science correspondent, Palab Ghosh was on TV talking to Niki Schiller when it happened. Palab, we've just witnessed history. Oh, my goodness. They've done it. They've done it. First time. That was absolutely astonishing. So, Palab, please explain exactly what was going on there and why it was a big deal. You know, when there are rocket launches, you need a big booster to do the heavy lifting, literally to get the main spacecraft into space. The booster is called the super heavy booster. So it is absolutely huge, incredible, 70 meters high. And once it's done that, about two minutes or so into the flight, it jettisons, and then normally it just kind of falls into the sea. But SpaceX wants to reduce the cost of space travel and so they want to reuse it. Previously, they've got it to land on platforms in the sea, but this time it was actually quite astonishing. What the booster did was a little backflip in the air and then it was piloting back to the launch pad. And then the launch pad had two arms, hence the name, the chopsticks manoeuvre. You saw it gently sail towards these chopsticks, which then shut just at the right moment. And I was convinced that it would blow up on the launch pad. And I just couldn't believe that they actually succeeded. And not only had they succeeded, they succeeded in the very first time they actually tried it. It was just, as I said, quite astonishing. Now, you have been a science correspondent for quite a long time. You are an expert, highly esteemed colleague. I. I have never heard you sound quite so giddy. I'm giddy quite often. It's just. No one captured it on air. Well, that's a wonderful thing about this job. There are so many exciting things, maybe, you know, I suppose I was just so astonished because I didn't think it would happen. But, you know, science is just full of fascinating things. Maybe you don't get quite as, you know, lose control in quite that way, but science is fun, it's fascinating, it's interesting, and I got the best job in the world. And that was Palab Ghosh. Now to Paris, which has had quite a year to celebrate the extraordinary achievement of an estimated 2,000 Masons, carpenters, restorers, roofers, foundry workers, art experts, sculptors and engineers whose work on rebuilding Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris was unveiled this year. The magnificent building suffered a catastrophic fire in 2019. Now, five and a half years and $740 million later, it is reopened to the public. Our reporter Chantal Hartle looks at how this feat was made possible. In the aftermath of the fire, the French President, Emmanuel Macron declared that Notre Dame Cathedral would be restored, more beautiful than ever, and opened within five years. Few believed that a project of this scale could be achieved in that time frame, but his promise was seen through thanks to millions of dollars in donations and thousands of dedicated workers. At the cathedral's reopening ceremony earlier this month, the firefighters who saved the Gothic masterpiece were given a standing ovation. And Notre Dame's organ, with its 800 pipes was blessed and awakened after years of silence. 1500 trees were needed to rebuild the wooden lattice structure supporting the new roof. The cathedral's stained glass windows, paintings and the religious relic known as the Crown of Thorns escaped the worst of the damage. All have now been carefully restored. As Danny Saintron from Sorbonne University in Paris explains, the building is now much brighter too. Before the fire, the cathedral was very dark. It was the result of dirty environment pollution, and now it's very light and closer to the original state. One of the most devastating moments of the fire was when the cathedral spire toppled to the ground after becoming engulfed in flames. It was rebuilt through a mix of traditional and computerized methods. And at the top of the structure, a new gilded cockerel has been fitted to replace the original that was lost. These people in Paris are impressed. It's an extremely impressive monument in terms of its architecture and history. And I didn't think that in five years they'd have managed to work so many wonders on the reconstruction. It's heartwarming to see it again. I think it's an incredible event. I'm sorry. Thrilled to see this cathedral which is the most beautiful in the world. This enormous task could not have been possible without the thousands of craftspeople working around the clock to rebuild Notre Dame. So, donations aside, how did France manage to pull this off so quickly? Didier Reichner is the chief editor of the French art magazine La Tribune de l'arte. In France, we have a very good restorer, very good architects, and we know how to restore historical monuments. And we have a law, you know, heritage law. It's one of the conditions of the success. But the success story doesn't end there. Several trades in France, including stone carving, carpentry and roofing, have seen an increase in apprenticeships as a result of what experts have called the Notre Dame effect. That was. Chantal Hartle, 2024, has seen some potentially far reaching developments in the field of medicine. James Gallagher is our health and science correspondent and he talked us some of the year's more eye catching stories, starting with some excellent news on cervical cancer treatment. Now, I really like this story as well, because it's also really cheap. So many of these new pioneering pieces of medicine are so expensive that you go, well, most of the world's not going to get access to that for 50 years. Whereas this is something that is so cheap, lots of places could do it straight away. So the whole idea here was instead of just giving chemotherapy and radiotherapy at the same time, what you do is you give six weeks of chemotherapy first. That starts to shrink the tumor, and then you go for that combined chemotherapy and radiotherapy after that. And that sounds so simple. It sounds like it shouldn't really make any difference, and yet it does. Reduces deaths by 40%. The risk of the cancer coming back by more than a third over the following five years after doing it. It's been described as the biggest advance in cervical cancer for four decades. It's the big, kind of like gold standard piece of medical research took place over more than a decade in the UK Mexico, India, Italy and Brazil. So it's truly representative. We think this should work in everybody that has cervical cancer around the world. So really important piece of research, and I think what's going to be really interesting is not just cervical cancer, but every other type of cancer too. If something this simple can nudge the dial in terms of the number of lives you can save and it works here, there's no real reason it wouldn't work in other cancers too. And there's a lot of excitement about that. Okay, that is fantastic. We also have some developments in the treatment of diabetes, particularly using reprogrammed stem cells. Please explain. So this is the first woman in the world, China. She's 25 years old and has had her type 1 diabetes completely reversed by this therapy. So the headline is outstanding. It's really interesting. The type 1 diabetes is caused by the immune system destroying what are known as your islet cells. They're the cells in the pancreas in the body that release insulin into the blood. And that's how you control your blood sugar levels. But they're basically wiped out in type 1 diabetes. This was a way of bringing them back. So you take cells from the patient, you genetically tinker with them to turn them into what are known as stem cells. A stem cell is just a cell that can become any other type of cell in the body. And then they coax that into becoming a beta cell. And then in this case, they injected one and a half million of them back into this woman. She's completely off her insulin injections. Now she is having to take some immunosuppressants, presumably to try to stop her immune system destroying those reprogrammed cells. But nobody's gon for type 1 diabetes until they've seen much longer data. So something going like five years or beyond and seeing that that benefit is still there. Very exciting stuff. Very expensive, Very expensive. Very exciting. Another very exciting development. Now, the WHO says 339 million people around the world have asthma. And in November, we heard about the first new treatment in a very long time. 50 years. That's a very long time, Jackie. Yeah, so this is for asthma attacks. So, you know, most of the time you'll be controlling your asthma, just your regular inhalers, but sometimes that's not enough and you might end up needing to go to a hospital. And at the moment, what would happen is they will prescribe you a steroid. This is a new drug, this one. Got a word for you, Eosinophil, Jackie. That's a very good word, James. Thank you. Please explain. Eosinophils are a white blood cell and they are responsible for about half of asthma attacks and a third of cases of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. So it's these eosinophils that are wrong. So this is a drug called benri, and the only thing it does in the body is go, oy. Eosinophils, knock it off. And basically gets rid of them. And so you give this really targeted drug in these particular people and it just gets rid of the cause of their asthma attack, brings them back down to baseline, and that is way more effective than steroids are. Has this been an exciting year for medicine, James? Every year's an exciting year for medicine. You know, I'm contractually obliged to say that, Jackie. For me personally, the cervical cancer, the fact that it's cheap and you can just do it straight away, I mean, that's like your gold star breakthrough. For me, that was James Gallagher. And should you be interested, eosinophils is also a 16 point word in Scrabble. I looked it up. Now, this year saw a lot of firsts, not all of them earthbound. Sarah Gillis is an astronaut and musician. And in September, she gave the first violin performance in orbit. She played Ray's Theme by the composer John Williams on her custom made violin aboard the Dragon Dragon spacecraft. And she was accompanied by young musicians From Haiti, the U.S. venezuela, Brazil, Uganda and Sweden. I think for me personally, one of my favorite moments was just seeing a wooden violin floating in this 21st century spacecraft. I think all of us were pretty emotional the first time we unpacked it and pulled it out. I think my brain will permanently be rewired with just the image of floating. My body keeps wanting to go back and just experience that true weightlessness again. Sarah Gillis, the first person to play a violin in space. And we're back in Paris again. Now to celebrate a summer of sporting excellence. Exactly 100 years since last the French capital hosted the Games. Nigel Adderley was there for the Olympics and Paralympics, and it's fair to say he rather enjoyed it. Despite the teeming rain which poured throughout the innovative opening ceremony on the River Seine, both the Olympics and Paralympics were an undoubted tour de force. Everyone loves a redemption story, and few have been achieved under more pressure than that of Simone Biles. Her exit from the Tokyo Games in tears following a bout of the twisties seemed to signal the end of her career. But she took time out to prioritize her mental health and produced a stunning comeback with three gold medals and a silver to cement her place as an Olympic legend. I like Simone because she makes a lot of unique skills that no one else can even attempt to do. So I feel like that's really cool. She has taken breaks, but she has came back and she's really good. Like she's so strong and I just think she just has accomplished so much and helped this Sport progress. Over 200 nations gather for the Games. Winning a medal is a distant dream for some. But on a remarkable night, two Caribbean islands captured their first ever medals and both of them golds. Dominika's tail, Lafond Gadson in the triple jump and St. Lucia, thanks to sprinter Julian Alfred, who beat favorite Sha'Carri Richardson in the women's 100 meters. In the men's sprints, Botswana's Letsile Tobogo won an incredible 200 meters race to strike gold for his country for the first time. It wasn't easy. I didn't think my body would push me through it all, you know, So I still believe there's still a lot of me to do and with the team that's riding behind me, I'm grateful for it. His homecoming was incredible. There was also a first ever medal for the Olympic refugee team. History was made by female middleweight boxer Cameroon born UK based Cindy Ngamba, who won a bronze to inspire way beyond sport. The Paralympics were magical too. There was the outpouring of national pride when the host blind football team overcame Argentina on penalties under the Eiffel Tower team. GP para archer Jody Grinham won gold while seven months pregnant. And Italy sprinter Alessandro Osola run over to the crowd during his heats and asked his partner Arellano Mandaradoni, one of 40,000 people at the Stade de France, if she'd marry him. She said yes. But these huge global events often rely on the people both to support and inspire. And residents of Paris even got their own chance to compete. When I returned to my hotel. After the penultimate night of the Games, the streets were thronged with runners and well wishers. 40,000 people took the opportunity to run the Olympic Marathon course at midnight a few hours before the main race. A stream of humanity snaked around Paris all night to epitomise the People's Games. That was Nigel Adderley. And it wasn't just the Olympics that got sports fans excited in 2024. It's been a great year for Caitlin Clark who back in March broke a 54 year old record to become the all time leading scorer in either men's or women's major US College basketball. She now plays in the professional league for the Indiana Fever. Her star power is drawing a multitude of new fans to the women's game, a phenomenon as the Caitlin Clark Effect. We must also salute Takeru Fuji, who in March made history in the ancient Japanese sport of Sumo wrestling by becoming the first wrestler in 110 years to win a top division tournament on his debut. And let us not forget the achievement of another Japanese athlete, Shohei Ohtani. The Los Angeles Dodgers Superstar became the first player in baseball history to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a single season during his side's match against the Miami Marlins, and the ball he hit for his 50th home run of the Major League Baseball season sold for a record $4.4 million at auction. Bravo. All still to come in this podcast. It's about a celebration of nationhood, identity, cultural connection, just a real unifying force how thousands of New Zealanders claimed back a very significant record. Foreign hey guys, it is Ryan. I'm not sure if you know this about me, but I'm a bit of a fun fanatic when I can. I like to work, but I like fun too. And now I can tell you about my favorite place to have fun. Chumba Casino. They have hundreds of social casino style games to choose from, with new games released each week you can play for free and each day brings a new chance to collect daily bonuses. So join me in the fun. Sign up now@chumbacasino.com sponsored by Chumba Casino. No purchase necessary. VGW Group voidware prohibited by law. 18/plus terms and conditions apply. How much do you love your phone? If you were hiking in the Australian wilderness, say, and you dropped it, how far would you go to try and get it? Back in October, we heard about one woman who ended up wedged upside down for seven hours between two boulders. And from the resourceful team who got her out, our reporter Anna Aslam has The details Matilda Campbell was taking photos on a hike in New South Wales Hunter Valley region when her phone slipped out of her hands as she tried to get it, she fell head first into a thin 3 meters deep crevice and almost disappeared. Only the bottom of her feet could be seen poking out of the crack between the rocks. Her friend called the emergency services who said they'd never seen anything like it. We had to bring her out essentially the same way she went in and it wasn't a straight up and down. She went in in a bit of an S shape, so we had to manip to get her out but at the same time not allowing her to slip back down the hole. It was an out of the box rescue for us, that's for sure, Peter Watts told abc. The team used a winch and a frame made from wood found at a nearby property to move the boulders without cracking them and create a gap big enough to rescue the woman. We ended up moving seven boulders all up, so ranging anywhere from I think the smallest was maybe 80 kilos up to probably 500 is what we were thinking. The last big one was that gave me access. I was just lucky enough to be one person with some longer limbs and so I got allocated down. The hole between my back and my chest was maybe 10 centimeters in front of me, that's all. I couldn't turn to the side. It was pretty tight down there. Eventually, seven long hours after she was trapped between a rock and a hard place, Matilda Campbell was freed. The rescuer said she remained cheerful throughout the ordeal. She was such a trooper. Like I would have been beside myself stuck in that sort of situation. But when we were there she was calm, she was collected. Amazing, amazing. Ms. Campbell suffered minor scratches and bruises, but her cool demeanor escaped unscathed. The 23 year old, who described herself as the most accident prone person ever, thanked the emergency services for saving her life and swore off rock exploration for a while. But she added, too bad about the phone though. That was Anna Aslan now. This next story had to be included, not least because several members of the team have been playing it pretty much on a loop since May. Cabin Crew and Liz Dunwarna Crew, energetic preteen rappers based in Cork and Clare in Ireland, went massively viral with the Spark, a techno rap track described more than once as the banger of the year. This is some of them. We decided to do some lyrics and we made a music video and we posted it and it ended up going viral. It feels amazing and it's great to have these Opportunities, being creative, being you and well, finding your spark. And I found it. Everybody in the crowd. It even made the Grammys long list. Well done to all of them. Now some of the other people who earnt celebration this year. How about the new chess world champion? The youngest ever, 18 year old Gukesh Domaraju from Chennai in India, who became a grandmaster aged 12, beat defending champion Ding Liren from China in a dramatic match staged in Singapore. We don't often champion the opposition, but Bob Van Dillon of Fox Weather was out in Atlanta in September reporting on flash flooding after Hurricane Helene when he heard a woman screaming from her car that was stuck in rapidly rising flood waters. So he interrupted his broadcast and went and rescued her. Northside drives, pretty big populated area right here. She is still screaming. But we got you. We got you. 91 1. They're coming. Oh man, it's, it, it's, it's a situation. We will get back to you in a little bit. I'm gonna go see if I can help this lady out a little bit more, you guys. I'll be back. And he was. Now there are good teachers and great teachers and then there's this. A round of applause please for Carissa Fisher in New York who stepped up and donated part of her own liver to her former preschool pupil, five year old Ezra Toschek. Both are said to be doing well after surgery. And you might remember what was described as an emotional roller coaster from February this year. Richard Plot spent eight years of his life constructing a matchstick model of the Eiffel Tower, 7.19 meters tall. He was then told that it was ruled out of claiming the Guinness World Record for the tallest matchstick building because it used the wrong type of matches. Fortunately, the next day the adjudicators agreed they'd been too harsh. And the record was indeed his. Now prepare to feel stirred and uplifted because in September, New Zealand reclaimed the world record for the largest hacker. The traditional Maori dance made globally famous by the All Blacks and indeed Black Fern's rugby teams. The record had been held for 10 years by France. No idea why. That's not really the point here. 6,531 people heeded the call from Dame Hinawi Mohi to turnout. So why does the haka matter so much? It's about a celebration of nationhood, identity, cultural connection. Just a real unifying force through the haka. Be that on the night was everything I hoped it would be. It was such a celebration of who we are, our unique cultural heritage. But Also our connection through this icon, this cultural icon that we all share. But I did get an absolute sense of adrenaline and excitement and exhilaration to see that spectacle right in the moment where we all started in unison to perform kamate Kamate kaora kaora. Which means it is death, but it is life. Dame hinoehi mohi. And if you are one of the 6,000, 531, well done. Now, over the past year, we have heard a lot of very clever solutions to problems from our colleagues at People Fixing the World. Myra Anubi told us about developments designed to tackle violent crime. This year, I have to admit, guns and weapons, it's not the kind of thing you'd expect to hear any positive news about. But on People Fixing the World, we've come across clever ideas that are trying to reduce gun crime in countries like America. Just to give you an example, a group called biofire claimed to have developed the world's first smart gun, which can only be fired by its licensed owner. The aim is to stop guns from being stolen to commit a crime or from being accidentally fired. Now, almost like a smartphone, this gun has two ways to authenticate. With a fingerprint sensor on the trigger and facial recognition when someone is registered as its owner. Now, Kai Klopfer, one of the brains behind this project, described how it all started and how the gun works. I've already enrolled as the owner, and so you'll see as I pick this up, it locks. It'll then stay unlocked for as long as I have control of it with my primary hand. Right. I can, you know, manipulate things, adjust it, do whatever I want. Right. But it also immediately locks as soon as you lose control of it. There's a reason why the vast majority of, like, big innovations come from people in their garages. It's not because garages are magic. It's because most people in their garages fail. But the ones who succeed succeed because they have a lot less of the preconceived notions about, like, what the right way to do things. And so the benefit for me is, you know, I'd never had a job before this, right? I definitely had never run a gun manufacturing company from one innovation that started in a garage to an idea that's happening in a prison. The United States has the largest prison population on Earth, with over a million people behind bars. It also has one of the highest rates of reoffending, with two thirds of former prisoners engaging in crime within three years after getting out. But in the state of Pennsylvania, one prison is Testing a very unusual model that they hope will eventually bring down these numbers and reduce violent acts within prison. Prisoners are given privileges like keeping pets, TVs, air conditioning, all to try and set them up for success. Our reporter Ben Wyatt went to the prison to find out if it's working. Remember, this is a beautiful black and white cat, has his platform and his little tunnels to play with, with. What's the cat's name? Wodie. Wodie. And I suppose that's not something you'd see that I would imagine, being in a prison like pets, I would have never thought. Yeah. What did you think when you first started working on this ward and you saw some of the ideas that were being put into practice? The guys seem to thrive on it. It gives them a sense of purpose. You've seen changed behavior in guys, you know, when they get animals. So the calmer temperament for me is better from traditional corrections. Crucially, according to the academics behind the scheme, residency on the wing is not a reward for good behaviour. Inmates are chosen at random, which is why murderers are serving time alongside minor offenders. Unlike in the rest of the prison, inmates are called residents here, while those serving life sentences are called mentors. In a bid to reframe identities, that was Ben Wyatt. We also heard from Myra Anubi, and you'll hear more solutions from people fixing the world, wherever you found this podcast. Right, are we ready for an animal story or two? Because Anna Murphy has corralled all the most newsworthy Beasts of 2024 together for us. There is one animal who I think it's fair to say, became a celebrity this year. And at only two months old, she's the hottest new it girl on the planet. Every news outlet's talking about her. This is Mu Ding's world and we are all just living in it. We are, of course, talking about the pygmy hippo from Thailand known as Mu Daeng. With her stumpy little legs, podgy body and gappy teeth, she wasn't exactly an obvious social media sensation. But when a zookeeper started posting videos of her wobbling adorably around her enclosure, he never expected what was to come. Mu Daeng gained a vast online fan base, got her own Wikipedia page and was held by Time magazine as an icon and a legend. She is the moment it said she attracted huge cues at Khalkio Open Zoo, doubling visitor numbers and bringing attention to her species, which is endangered. BBC Thai reporter Penisa Imouche witnessed her fame close up the shui sales. They actually officially launched 24 hour live stream that you can watch Mu Ding from everywhere in the world. So she still super, super famous. Another strong competitor for animal celebrity status this year rose to fame during the Olympics. In recent years, there's been a growing focus on athletes, mental health and well being, especially in sports with lots of young competitors. Well, the USA Gymnastics team found a novel way to help ease stress and anxiety. Enter Beacon, the therapy dog. His owner and handler, Tracy Callahan Molner, worked alongside him. He's very intuitive with people. He will scoot a little closer or he might put a paw on their leg. He's wanting to get their attention to say, focus on me, pet me. And it is such a wonderful feeling. Beacon loves it. I love it. For Beacon, the gymnasts love it. The coaches love it. For their gymnasts to know that Beacon is making a difference, I could not be happier. The golden retriever was given the official title of the team's Goodest Boy. Well deserved. Moving south now, four new colonies of emperor penguins have been identified in Antarctica. And scientists believe that means they now know the whereabouts of all the world's remaining breeding pairs. So how did they find them? I'll let our science correspondent Jonathan Amos explain. So from several hundred kilometres up, you can't see the individual penguin, but if a large group of them huddled together and they start defecating on the white ice, then that brown patch will become apparent to a satellite. And that's what the scientists have done. They'd been looking and looking and looking and they found a further four, which brings the total to 66. Now it's likely, if you look at the distribution of those colonies, that they found pretty much all of them around the Antarctic. Our final story is the tale of a cat from Utah who traveled hundreds of kilometres from home after unwittingly climbing into an Amazon parcel, Galena survived seven days stuck in the box before she was reunited with her owner, Carrie Clark. I started to lose hope and then miraculously, I got a phone call from a mysterious caller who told me that they had my cat Galena and she was in California, which is 650 miles away from my home in Utah. There were so many miracles that led up to her surviving. Being able to be reunited with Galena is something that I will never forget. Carrie Clarke ending that report by Anna Murphy. And we cannot wrap up 2024 without the adventures of Honshu, a Japanese snow monkey who escaped from a wildlife park in the Scottish Highlands and became the subject of a major search operation involving drones and monkey catching rangers. Honshu was safely found but his story didn't end there. My colleague Callum Leslie was moved by his story to bring us this. Oh, and William Wallace was a Scottish national hero, which is information that might help. At the Highland Wildlife park up near Kincraig, an adventurous monkey had an exciting few days. His name was Honshu, a Japanese macaque. And this is the story of how he escaped and came back. It all got too much when one fateful night, he got fed up of his troop after a really big fight. So he hopped a fence and channeled William Wallace, yelling freedom him as he ran off to the forest. As he explored, his fame grew and grew. People loved the story of the Scottish monkey on the loose from the zoo. After five days, they found him in a garden eating Yorkshire puds. And the adventure was over, but not quite for good. He went back to the park, but things stayed the same. The other macaques didn't let him join in in their monkey games. They asked him if he'd like to go to Edinburgh Zoo. He thought for a moment. Edinburgh seemed far big and new. But then he remembers how he felt on that fateful night. And how things that seem at first scary can still be alright. And as it turns out, everyone was excited to see him too. And people came from all around to visit him at the zoo. So this is a story for anyone who thinks they don't fit in. Maybe you're just waiting for your adventure to begin. There are people out there who will appreciate you for you, just like there were for the Scottish macaque, the famous Honshu. Callum Leslie with the story of Honshu, who is fine. I rang Edinburgh Zoo to check. They say he's thriving and he has some new friends over from Amsterdam Zoo. So, good news. And that's all from the Happy News review of 2024. There is a weekly burst of cheerful stuff in the happy pod every weekend. If you'd like to get in touch. As ever, the address is globalpodcastbc.co.uk. this edition was mixed by Stephen Bailey. The producer was Anna Murphy. Our editor is Karen Martin. I'm Jackie Leonard. And from all of us, we wish you peace, health and joy and inspiration for the year ahead. Thanks for listening. Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017, Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation. It felt a really safe and, well, welcoming space. After the yoga classes, I felt amazing. But soon that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker. A journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders. I don't have my passport. I don't have my phone. I don't have my bank cards. I have nothing. The passport being taken, the being in a house and not feeling like they can leave. World of Secrets Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series, we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry, where the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually and it's done so skillfully that you don't realize. And it's like this. The secret that's there. I wanted to believe that, you know, that whatever they were doing, even if it seemed gross to me, was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't yet understand. Revealing the hidden secrets of a global yoga network. I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this and to put my reputation and everything else on the line. I want truth and justice and for other people to not be hurt, for things to be different in the future, to bring it into the light and almost alchemize some of that evil stuff that went on and take back the power. World of secrets. Season 6 the Bad Guru Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.