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Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The decades long wait for the World Cup
00:26:35
Fans in Iraq and the DRC are celebrating being back in football's biggest competition.
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- [00:00]
Narrator
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
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Reporter
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery, so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-granger. Click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. It's 2009 and we're in the German mountains. A man straps himself into a car on the world's most dangerous racetrack. He whispers to himself, it's time to
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Host Holly Gibbs
put my balls on the dashboard as
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Reporter
he starts the engine. In 15 minutes, he's in an ambulance, unconscious.
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Reporter James Graham
In 15 years, he's a billionaire.
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Reporter
This is Toto Wolff, Formula One's most powerful team boss and the breakout star of Drive to Survive.
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Reporter James Graham
This week on Good Bad Billionaire. How Toto Wolff made his billions. Listen wherever you get your BBC podcasts,
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Host Holly Gibbs
this is the Happy pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Holly Gibbs, and in this edition, elation from football fans.
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Iraqi Fan Hassanein Bilal
So many years, 52 years. I never even got the chance to experience this same bro.
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Congolese Fan Tresor Kubadica
For us, it's 40 years. It's 40 years. I'm 33 in my life, I've never been able to support a team in the World Cup. Man.
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Host Holly Gibbs
Iraq and the DRC have defied the odds to qualify for this summer's tournament. Plus, the first baby to be born in 17 years in a small South Korean village.
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Reporter Jake Won
A lot of the people in the village are quite old. From the story we read, they gathered in the town center to kind of celebrate the arrival of the baby.
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Host Holly Gibbs
The bookstore in Washington, D.C. that rose from the ashes with thanks to the local community.
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Bookshop Owner Riley Farrell
Day after the fire, I go across the street to that business and I'm like, do you still have that open? When can I move in? And she was like, tomorrow, like whenever. So it's honestly been awesome. We have a great community.
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Host Holly Gibbs
The ancient Abbey in the north of England getting good publicity. On the other side of the world,
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Reporter
there's one Chinese celebrity who have the wedding blessing in here. So I flew from China and to
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Host Holly Gibbs
here to have the weddings and the schoolgirl on a mission to help people around the world with dyslexia. We start with two teams who have qualified for this summer's Football World Cup. After decades of waiting and the fans are elated,
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Narrator
we congratulate all the Iraqi
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Reporter Jake Won
people on this magnificent win which has
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Narrator
brought so much happiness to the nation.
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Reporter James Graham
They've achieved a dream they've waited a long time for from 1986 until now.
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Narrator
Today was a great victory that brought
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Reporter James Graham
joy to all levels of society.
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Narrator
I'm very happy we've qualified for the World Cup.
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Reporter
After more than 50 years, DRC is
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Narrator
qualified and it's a source of pride
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Reporter Jake Won
for us as entertainers will support our
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Narrator
Leopards team at the World Cup.
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Host Holly Gibbs
Iraq and the Democratic Republic of the Congo were the final two teams to reach the tournament. Wil Chalk has been finding out more
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Narrator
jubilation on the streets of Monterrey, Mexico, where Iraq had just beaten Bolivia 21 to qualify for their first World cup since 1986. Also in Mexico, the Democratic Republic of the Congo secured their return to the competition for the first time in 52 years after beating Jamaica 1 0. It meant, amidst instability in both countries, football fans back home had something to celebrate. These were the scenes in the drc. Iraq's preparations for the playoffs have been disrupted by the war in the Middle East. Most of the squad reached Mexico after a gruelling three day journey from Baghdad that began with an overland crossing into Jordan. Iraq fan and podcast host Hassanein Bilal also traveled to Mexico for the game.
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Congolese Fan Tresor Kubadica
There's no words to describe this. This is one of my biggest dreams in my life. Against all odds, recent events in the Middle east have been really, really tough. Players have had to go through a very tumultuous journey, but it doesn't matter. We're going to the World Cup. I'm so happy for everyone back home, you know.
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Narrator
Hassanein then celebrated with the players until 6am and as you'll hear in a second, it took a slight toll on his energy levels. But before he finally went to bed, I convinced him to have a chat with Tresor Kubadica, a Congolese fan who'd watched their playoff final on TV here in London and also celebrated till the early hours.
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Congolese Fan Tresor Kubadica
What's up, guys?
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Iraqi Fan Hassanein Bilal
Hello, Hassan.
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Congolese Fan Tresor Kubadica
How are you, man?
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Iraqi Fan Hassanein Bilal
Very good, my friend. How are you?
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Congolese Fan Tresor Kubadica
I'm very, very good, man. I'm currently in the hotel room with the players. So yeah, man, it's been amazing.
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Narrator
They'd never spoken before, but they did have one big thing in common. They were both very, very happy.
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Congolese Fan Tresor Kubadica
How are you?
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Iraqi Fan Hassanein Bilal
Very good. Do you know what? We were trying to avoid you guys, you know, playoff.
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Congolese Fan Tresor Kubadica
I'll be honest with you, that feeling is mutual. We were trying to avoid you guys when we know you're a good team.
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Iraqi Fan Hassanein Bilal
It's, it's Amazing. It's amazing feeling, I'm telling you. First time in so many years, 52 years, I never even get the chance to experience this. We.
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Congolese Fan Tresor Kubadica
40 years. It's 40 years. I'm 33 in my life. I've never been able to. To support a team in the World cup, man. So.
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Iraqi Fan Hassanein Bilal
Oh, my. It's.
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Congolese Fan Tresor Kubadica
It's an amazing experience. Hopefully for us this summer, bro. I didn't realize how many Iraqis there are in North America. We've had loads of people coming all across the the us Loads coming from Canada and some coming from Europe. So we've been turning up in our tens of thousands to support the team in Monterey. The locals, the Mexicans, have been so supportive. It was a beautiful atmosphere.
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Iraqi Fan Hassanein Bilal
Yeah, I managed to watch the in London. Great atmosphere. And you know what? This is the first time to play a country like Jamaica since I've been born. So usually we play African countries, but this is the first time Congo actually go and play these type of games outside Africa.
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Congolese Fan Tresor Kubadica
That was one of the things that came to mind when I was watching the Bolivia game. I realized that I'd only ever really watched Iraq play against Asian teams. I've seen Iraq in the Olympics football play against Ukraine and Argentina and Morocco, but the overwhelming majority of it has always been against Asian opposition. It was just so nice to have a different competitor.
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Iraqi Fan Hassanein Bilal
So who's in your group?
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Congolese Fan Tresor Kubadica
We have probably the. The hardest group in the whole tournament, to be honest with you.
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Iraqi Fan Hassanein Bilal
We have.
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Congolese Fan Tresor Kubadica
We have France, Norway, Senegal. So we have the best team in the world, the. The team in the best form in the world, and we have the AFCON champions or now runners up, given that they've been stripped of their title. Realistically, we're not going into this World cup to win it. I just want to be there to have the players experience this, the fans experience it.
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Iraqi Fan Hassanein Bilal
Senegal's game was one. Is going to be the hardest game you're going to play there. I don't even think France.
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Congolese Fan Tresor Kubadica
We'll see, man. I'm still. I'm still celebrating, bro. I've genuinely. I've been awake for more than 24 hours now. I wake, woke up, went to the stadium, celebrated the players afterwards, and it's now the next morning. The sun's rising, literally as we speak. So I just want to enjoy this moment. I want to enjoy Mexico and I can worry about France and Senegal and Norway way down the line. For now. It's party time, bro.
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Narrator
For Fans of all 48 teams taking part, attention will now turn to where and how they're going to watch the games. But it turns out Hassanein and Tresor only live a few kilometers away from each other in London. So is this the start of a football friendship?
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Congolese Fan Tresor Kubadica
Thank you. See you in London, mate.
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Host Holly Gibbs
Will Chalk reporting to a small rural village in South Korea. Next, where a baby has been born there for the first time 17 years. The news was announced in Yunnan by a banner calling the baby boy a special gift to the village. As well as this milestone, people there are also celebrating that their elementary school now has a grand total of 17 pupils. Our Seoul correspondent Jake Won told me more.
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Reporter Jake Won
This is a village hours south of where I am in Seoul, South Korea. And this is mostly an agricultural farmland village where there were have been born and its population for the last years has been declining. So I mean, there's a lot of fear that, you know, one day the village itself could be extinct. And the good news here is that for the first time in 17 years they had a baby. So the baby, a male child, he was born between a South Korean man and his wife who came from Cambodia. And you know, a lot of the people in the village are quite old. There is very much that kind of aging population going on. And from the story we read, they gathered in the town center to kind of celebrate the arrival of the baby.
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Host Holly Gibbs
What has the reaction been from the community?
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Reporter Jake Won
The community, of course they're ecstatic. I mean, look, this is a place where the elementary, the primary school has maybe a handful. I'm seeing that this year only four students entered the school. It is really a village that is at the edge of extinction. A lot of the people are villages like these, they are around the age of 50 or up. They are kind of barely making impossible. And the problem with these villages and the upper level, when it goes to county level, there is an existential struggle to keep the population level up because the more population goes down, the more services start getting cut out. The subsidies coming from the central government starts dwindling. So, you know, a lot of these places have been introducing programs to encourage more marriages and more babies. And you know, I think they see this as a sign that perhaps some of these policies have been working.
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Host Holly Gibbs
And across the country birth rates are starting to go up, aren't they?
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Reporter Jake Won
I think there has been this idea that South Korea is really cratering towards extinction. It was the country with the lowest birth rate in, in the world. Its birth rate was around 0.72. This is the total number of child a South Korean woman is expected to have in her lifetime. And If a woman is not even expected to have a single child, you know, just think two generations later, the number would dwindle very, very quickly. And what we saw was that the marriage rate and the baby rate start to actually go back up. In the past two years. I think the demographers have pointed out that a lot of the couples may have held back the marriages because of the COVID pandemic, and now they're finally just getting married. And the thing about South Korean culture is that, you know, having kids outside of marriage is very much looked down upon. So a lot of the couples try to get married before they have children. And what we also have is what we call echo boomers. So these are children of the baby boomer generation who, who are, of course, a big kind of portion of the South Korean population. They're now reaching that age in their 30s or mid-30s to get into marriages and have children. So I think we're seeing that bump up. I think the jury is still out on whether this will be a continuing trend. I think the population itself had dwindled so much that there are just not enough couples to have more babies. But it is certainly a very encouraging indication. And of course, I think South Korean government is hoping that this trend will continue.
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Host Holly Gibbs
That was Jake Kwon next to a shop that has literally risen from the ashes thanks to the local community. The first ever romance only bookshop in the Washington, D.C. area initially opened in November last year, but just three days later, it was gutted by a late night fire. Since then, the community has come together to help bring it back to life. Riley Farrell went along to Alexandria's Oldtown to find out more.
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Bookshop Owner Riley Farrell
This is our section for heated rivalry. As you can see, we're always sold out.
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Reporter
Jamie Foron, the bookshop's owner, showed me around. Friends to lovers one year after its reopening.
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Bookshop Owner Riley Farrell
They obviously got damaged in the fire, so you can kind of see some of like the damage from the smoke and stuff. But one of our staff members, like, cleaned them all up as much as they could, and now they're just like permanent arc.
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Reporter
It tells us story.
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Bookshop Owner Riley Farrell
They're like, gorgeous, right? I've had like, kids come in here, like a class of kids who are like, on their DC trip, and they're like in eighth or ninth grade, and they come in and they're just like, I can't believe somewhere like this exists.
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Reporter
What convinced you to open a romance only bookstore?
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Bookshop Owner Riley Farrell
So when I moved out here, I knew I wanted to start a business within two years. And one of the first ideas that came to me is like, we don't have anything like a romance book so store in the D.C. area. And so I was like, okay, like let's do it. And by the time we opened, we had 200 people register for our grand opening, which was insane. The community really responded to it. We had our grand opening weekend. We had lines around the block and essentially at the end of that weekend, I, I literally got a text from another one of the businesses in the building saying in all caps, there's a fire. It was a very bizarre thing to witness your business surrounded by like four fire trucks and a bunch of just random people. So we went in and I was like, everything is gone. We weren't able to salvage anything. Everything had smoke damage. So seeing that was obviously really jarring and just really sad. I talked to the fire department, I talked to the police. And I remember walking away from the scene and just like sobbing and finally letting it out. And we went home. And then next morning we just started getting to business.
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Reporter
The community rallied around the bookshop staff who set up a fundraiser and rebuilt inventory at Stake Speed.
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Bookshop Owner Riley Farrell
I think we raised $40,000 within a week. Day after the fire, I go across the street to that business and I'm like, do you still have that open? When can I move in? And she was like, tomorrow, like whenever. So it's honestly been awesome. We, like, we have a great community, we have a great staff. You know, when I first went to open the store, a lot of people who do not understand the romance community, which is okay, were like, are people going to bookstores? Like, are people coming in? And the reason you go to a bookstore store is because of the community. Really the reason I knew this concept would work is because the romance community and the, you know, romantasy community, all of this has been online. But there's been such a push from this community in different ways of having these brick and mortar spaces where people can gather. That is the reason people support us. It's not because we sell books.
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Reporter
The Booktok phenomenon has catapulted romance into one of the fastest growing print categories. The global community of readers swapping recommendations on short form video apps. On TikTok alone, the hashtag BookTok has amassed more than 75 million posts. I spoke to customers about how the online romance readership translates in real life. I'm a big supporter of independent bookstores. They're really great for the local community. And yes, it's easy to, you know, just go online and buy books, but I always love going into an independent bookstore and supporting the local economy. And also it's a really great space for building community. Romance can get written off, but like,
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Bookshop Owner Riley Farrell
there's so much depth to romance books.
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Reporter
And I think for a lot of women, especially in different types of romance,
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Bookshop Owner Riley Farrell
it's like sometimes it's aspirational.
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Reporter
It's like what we wish we could see in the world, really.
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Bookshop Owner Riley Farrell
Romance is such a good way to learn about other people. Joyful stories are important too, not just the ones where everybody's depressed.
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Host Holly Gibbs
Riley Farrell reporting. Coming up on the Happy Pod, a different kind of Grand Prix.
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Reporter
Personally, I really hope that this race, which was born here in Japan, will spread across the world and that tournaments
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Narrator
will be held in various places around the globe.
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Host Holly Gibbs
How a race on office chairs has taken Japan by storm.
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Reporter
It's 2009 and we're in the German mountains. A man straps himself into a car on the world's most dangerous racetrack. He whispers to himself, it's time to
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Host Holly Gibbs
put my balls on the dashboard as
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Reporter
he starts the engine. In 15 minutes, he's in an ambulance, unconscious.
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Reporter James Graham
In 15 years, he's a billionaire.
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Reporter
This is Toto Wolff, Formula One's most powerful team boss and the breakout star of Drive to Survive.
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Reporter James Graham
This week on Good Bad Billionaire. How Toto Wolff made his billions.
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Reporter
Listen.
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Reporter James Graham
Wherever you get your BBC podcasts, at
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Reporter
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Host Holly Gibbs
You're listening to the Happy Pod. Eleven years ago, the Taiwanese pop star J. Choo, who has a huge influen across Asia and the Chinese speaking world, chose to have a wedding at an ancient abbey in the north of England. Now it seems that many of his fans are following suit. The BBC's James Graham has been along to find out more.
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Reporter James Graham
I'm at the thousand year old selby Abbey, just 15 miles south of York in the north of England. It's a grand gothic building that many might mistake for a cathedral. Watching a bride in a huge white dress make her way up the aisle A short time ago I had a quick word with her.
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Reporter
My name is Ching.
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Reporter James Graham
And where have you come from?
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Reporter
China. Yeah.
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Reporter James Graham
Whereabouts in China?
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Reporter
Chengdu, southeast of China.
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Reporter James Graham
Can you explain why you have come from there to Selby in Yorkshire to have your wedding?
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Reporter
Personally, first, I love New York and because I've been live here before and also another personal reason because there's one Chinese celebrity who have the wedding blessing in here. So I flew from China and to here to have the weddings.
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Reporter James Graham
The star Ching mentioned is J Chow, known as the King of Mando pop or pop music sung in Mandarin. Chow from Taiwan came here with his bride Hannah Quinn Livin in 2015. A video of the event on YouTube has 15 million views and that's fuelled a steady stream of visitors.
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John Wheatman, Vicar of Selby Abbey
Hello, I'm John Wheatman, I'm the vicar of Selby Abbey.
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Reporter James Graham
John thinks they chose Selby because Hannah had a family connection to Yorkshire.
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John Wheatman, Vicar of Selby Abbey
We were warned that it would probably lead to an interest in the Abbey from Chinese visitors. And certainly from the very next day we had people coming to visit Chinese students and residents in the UK and then people coming over from China on their holidays. York obviously gets a lot of Chinese visitors and a number of them were making a detour and coming here. But as well as the visitors, we also had a number of young Chinese couples who were asking if they could come here for a wedding blessing as well.
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Reporter James Graham
John didn't want to talk about the finances of all this, but the Abbey doesn't see it as a money making venture and just charges the usual rate
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John Wheatman, Vicar of Selby Abbey
because we have quite a demand. We do restrict them to no more than one a week. I think last year we had about 25 and this year we have more than 30 booked in. So that's to give you an idea of the number that we're able to do. But as I say, the demand is more than two or three times that.
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Reporter James Graham
So if you've got 30, you might have had like 100 emails.
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John Wheatman, Vicar of Selby Abbey
Yes, I mean, certainly at the moment it's that sort of number. We get them every week and I'm having to say I'm sorry, but we are fully booked for 20, 26. In theory we could do more, but we have to obviously restrict them simply because of the, you know, staff time and the availability Abbey for other things.
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Reporter James Graham
While I was there, three generations of the same family from China arrived to look around.
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Reporter
My name is Isabelle and I came from Beijing. We came here because we are the fans of the J Cho and we looked video that their wedding is. So you know, so. Splendid. Yeah. And we want to have a look there.
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Reporter James Graham
Is this part of a bigger holiday or have you come just to come here?
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Reporter
We came a few place from, you know, the London and Oxford, the Bath and I think, I think, yeah, Windmill and for the Peter Rabbit. Yes. And it's. I think the York is the last place we went.
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John Wheatman, Vicar of Selby Abbey
So.
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Reporter James Graham
Jay Chow's appearance here more than a decade ago has put this small town of less than 20,000 people firmly on the international tourist trail for thousands of Chinese visitors. And there's no sign of that interest letting up.
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Host Holly Gibbs
James Graham reporting. Here in the uk, a schoolgirl is on a mission to help millions of people around the world who, like her, have dyslexia. 11 year old Millie won an engineering competition for inventing a special pair of glasses with coloured lenses that could help those with the condition read and write more easily. The BBC's Rachel Bulkley has this report.
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Reporter
How they work is if you press the buttons on the side, so this one's blue and the health, if you like reading off the board or like pages, but most like the border so you can like see like all the writing.
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Millie, Dyslexia Glasses Inventor
Millie first had the idea of creating rainbow glasses when she was just 8 years old. Driven by her own experiences of dyslexia, a condition which can cause problems with reading, writing and spelling. She had headaches, nausea and felt as if words were moving around on the page. Like some people with the condition, she found that wearing colour tinted glasses helped reduce some of these issues and make reading more comfortable. Different coloured lenses can have different effects, but rather than having to carry around several pairs of glasses, she had the idea of creating one pair with interchangeable coloured lights and sent in a sketch of her prototype to an engineering competition.
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Reporter
It's really good because like I drew it and I didn't think that will actually come to life like something like what you draw. So I think it helped a lot of adults, children, just like a lot of people.
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Millie, Dyslexia Glasses Inventor
Those behind the competition recognised that Millie's idea had potential. Out of 70,000 entries, hers was one of a handful that won a gold medal. Dr. Susan Scurlock is the founder of the organisation behind the competition, Primary Engineer, which works with schools and colleges to encourage more children to go into engineering.
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Reporter
The idea was to bring engineering into classrooms so that children could enjoy learning more, to get more obsessed about things, I suppose, really. And it's always magical. It's always magical and the hidden part of it is how it affects the young person because you see them grow in confidence, you see how that changes the dynamic.
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Millie, Dyslexia Glasses Inventor
Millie's granddad was an engineer and she'd always dreamed of following in his footsteps. She was delighted when her idea was chosen as the only competition entry to be made into a real working prototype. She collaborated with manufacturing firm Sales to make the first ever pair of her rainbow glasses.
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Reporter
We asked you for a few suggestions and things like that and I remember you brought these nose pads kind of as one of your ideas.
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Millie, Dyslexia Glasses Inventor
The engineers she worked with, Ben Butcher and Harry Topping, were impressed.
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Reporter James Graham
I mean, I think it's a really innovative idea.
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Reporter
It's something a lot of people have not kind of thought of before and
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Reporter Jake Won
it's a real, like, it's a real world problem.
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Reporter
So it's been able to address something that's so common with people that people just tend to overlook a little bit. It's been impressive to see the idea that Millie came up with. Obviously the communication has been really good as well to come up with an idea like that. Hopefully in the future it can be something that's more popular.
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Millie, Dyslexia Glasses Inventor
Millie is now hoping to get funding to make more pairs of her rainbow glasses so they can become widely available for people with dyslexia. Her mum, Sarah, is understandably proud.
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Reporter
It's been amazing because I've seen how
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Millie, Dyslexia Glasses Inventor
it's really affected her, how really horrendous headaches, sickness words are constantly moving around.
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Reporter
I think it's going to change people's life, if I'm honest, A lot for the better.
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Host Holly Gibbs
Sarah. Ending that report by Rachel Bulkley. We end with the way we started, with a story about sport. But this isn't any old sport in Japan, people have been taking part in a Grand Prix like no other, an office chair race. It is, as the name suggests, as Ko Yu explains,
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Reporter
For most of us, swiveling and sliding around in our office chairs are a sign of boredom. For some in Japan, it's a highly technical, competitive sport. Office chair races are held across cities in Japan every year, including Tokyo and most recently in Kyotanabe, Kyoto. These are organised by the Japan Office Chair Racing association and have attracted hundreds of participants. Naogi Nishikawa is one of them.
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Reporter James Graham
We'd never been able to beat the team that came second, but this time, since Kyotanabe is actually where it all started. Being able to come here and win, though it was a close race, really showed me how important it is to keep going without giving up. It's become a source of confidence for me in that sense. I feel it was a good experience.
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Reporter
It's a proper test of physical endurance. Many of the winning teams cover more than 20 kilometers, gliding down the street in their office chairs. But before things swivel out of control, competitors have to follow these rules. Firstly, the chairs they use must be commercially available and non customized. Secondly, they have to put on protective gear, things like helmets and elbow pads, knee guards and gloves. The winners are the ones who can complete the most amount of laps on the circuit within two hours. And their price? 90kg of rice, which they are awarded on a podium with a bottle of sparkling water to imitate the famous champagne spray seen in Formula One. Competitor Yasunori Miura hopes it's something that catches on. Personally, I really hope that this race, which was born here in Japan, will spread across the world and the tournaments
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Narrator
will be held in various places around the globe.
- [28:07]
Reporter
Now, if you're setting sights on next year's races, you can set the wheels in motion, starting from that chair in your office.
- [28:17]
Host Holly Gibbs
Kouyou reporting. And that's all from the happy pod for now. We'd love to hear from you. As ever, the address is globalpodcastbc.co.uk. this edition was produced by Will Chalk. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Holly Gibbs. Until next time. Goodbye.
- [28:51]
Reporter
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