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Global News Podcast
The Happy Pod: The dolphins who 'smile' at their friends
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Happy stories and positive news from around the world - our weekly collection
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Nico Evans
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk. A search for the truth behind an international drug smuggling plot. How are we going to unravel this all from the BBC World Service. This is World of Secrets season five, Finding Mr. Fox. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts. I'm Nico Evans, currently living in Bavaria in Germany. You're listening to the HappyPod from the BBC World Service. I'm Janet Jaleel. And in this edition we hear about a surprising similarity between us and dolphins. When the first dolphins start smiling, the other dolphins most of the time respond with the same facial expression. A medical breakthrough with the world's first fully robotic double lung transplant. It's amazing what it's done for me. Thank you is not a good enough word. This has gave me my life back. And the more stressed you get about not being able to talk, you get even more dysregulated, which makes it even harder to talk. Our clothes are making it easier for autistic people to communicate. Researchers have found that just as we smile at friends, dolphins change their expressions too. When they're interacting, they can often be observed playing with objects and chasing each other, seemingly just for the fun of it. Now, researchers have found that bottlenose dolphins have an open mouth expression that they use to communicate with each other during play, like a human smile. The research published in the journal eyesight, looked at 22 bottlenose dolphins and found that when they opened their mouths at their friends, they would often mimic the facial expressions back. Dr. Elisabetta Pelagi from the University of Pisa described the findings to the HappyPod's Isabella Jewell. The main conclusion is that animals that usually play a lot like dolphins seem to use visual cues while working together. When we went for the first time to gather data collection on dolphins, we had not in mind any hypothesis about the use of visual cue and facial cue in the species, because as many scholars and people know, these species strongly rely on acoustic cues to communicate. So we were really surprised to see and observe opening the mouth while playing together. And what we discover is that they very, very rarely open their mouth during solitary play. But they open their mouth when they have the opportunity to play with individual of the same species. It seems that while opening the mouth, dolphins were attentive to the others faces in order to be sure or to increase the probability to be seen by the playmate. We know that humans smile generally to communicate friendliness or happiness. Do we know anything about what the dolphins are trying to communicate with their open mouthed expressions? Yes, Also when we laugh and we laugh together with other people, we tend to interact in a face to face interaction. And when we engage the other gaze, our laughter is much more looking each other in the eyes. It seems to be extremely important to advocate the similar facial expression and it is exactly what occurs also in dolphins. So when the first dolphin starts smiling, the other dolphin most of the time respond with the same facial expression within one second, which, which is the same criteria used for humans for rapid facial mimicry. Since our facial expressions are the same, the emotions underlying this facial expression are probably the same too. So if I smile and you smile, probably we are in the same mood of pleasure. Of course, it is difficult to say if this facial expression of dolphins is a smile, is a true smile, but the similarities in which they use their open mouth, it is incredibly similar and seems to have the same function that has been found in other species. Dr. Elizabeth Palaghi talking to Isabella Jewell. Now to an exciting medical achievement. The first fully robotic double lung transplant. Cheryl Merkar, who's 57, had the operation in New York last month and is already able to walk around unaided. This way of carrying out surgery builds on minimally invasive procedures and aims to shorten hospital stays as well as speeding up the healing process. Stephanie Zakreson reports in an operating room on Manhattan surrounded by monitoring doctors. It is a robot that is the star of the show. The da Vinci chi's multiple wide tall arms are slowly performing a double lung transplant on 57 year old Cheryl Merkur. Cheryl, a paramedic, had suffered with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for a decade. Becoming even more fatigued after a bout of COVID She needed at home oxygen therapy and her husband retired to become her carer before she became eligible for a transplant. Once they put me on the list, I figured, okay, I have a couple more months to go. And five days later I got the call. They said they have a 98% match and how soon can you get here? And my first reaction was holy, you know what? And I'll be there in two hours. The team at NYU Langone Health Centre had already broken medical ground earlier this year when they performed the country's first ever fully robotic single lung transplant. Now Dr. Stephanie H. Chung was taking on the challenge of conducting the operation with two lungs. We've made lots of advances with robotic technology for lung cancer surgery, lots of other thoracic surgery and even heart surgery. And so this is really the first major step towards moving it towards lung transplantation. Robot assisted surgery has been in development for decades, with the first recorded use of a surgical robot in 1985. Then a Puma 560 was used in a brain biopsy procedure to reduce movement due to hand tremors. As the technology has progressed, robots have been put to use in more and more types of surgery, ranging from orthopaedic to gynecological procedures. Earlier this year, the world's first fully robotic heart transplant was performed in Saudi Arabia. During Cheryl's procedure, the team of doctors worked in tandem with the robot as it entered the body, removed the diseased lungs, and then implanted the donor lungs all through a small cut on each side. As a result, compared with typical lung transplant surgeries, the use of a robot minimizes blood loss and the incisions are significantly smaller. As Dr. Stephanie H. Chang explains, instead of something that is probably 8 inches in terms of an incision, we can get it down to a 2 inch incision. So there's significantly less trauma on the chest wall, so better healing for the patient and less postoperative pain. Roughly a month after going under the knife, Sharon Mercur is already up and walking around the hospital where she's convalescing. When I walk around, I don't need oxygen to do that and I can breathe. Sometimes my legs get a little tired, but at least I can still breathe. It's amazing what it's done for me. Thank you is not a good enough word. I don't know what word to use. This is huge. This has gave me my life back. Sheryl Mirka ending that report by Stephanie Sacrison. Now to an innovative way of helping autistic people to express their emotions, something many of them often struggle with. May found it difficult to be at school and gave UP College at 16 because of mental health issues. Then a couple of years ago, May, who uses the pronouns they and them, hit on the idea of what's become known as communication clothing. William Kramer has been finding out more and spoke to Myra Anubi. So it's a black hoodie or sweater and it has baby bats with different facial expressions. What's going on here? So, yeah, on the front of the sweater, there's five super cute pictures of. They are really cute. They're cute, aren't they? Of bats doing different things. So the one on the left is flapping its wings in a sort of excited way, sort of a bit buzzy. Then the next one is maybe looking a bit sad. The next one is happy. Happy, yeah. The idea is that if somebody's wearing that jumper and they find that they can't talk. They can point at one of these pictures and the person they're with will understand how they're feeling. There's also, if you look on the sleeves, it says yes on one sleeve, no on the other, no on the other. So they can answer questions. Explained to me that when they get really overwhelmed without a way to communicate, things can actually spiral out of control. The more stressed you get about not being able to talk, you get even more dysregulated, which makes it even harder to talk. I used to get a lot of panic attacks or it causes full meltdowns or something like that. So it's like a negative cycle of non communication and stress. And I met a young boy who lives near London who, just like May, is really affected by this. Hi, I'm Astin. I'm 10 and I like playing video games. I also like animals. Now, like a lot of autistic people, Aston suffers from anxiety. When I'm meeting new people, when I'm going places that I haven't gone before, sometimes I can lose my words. And when you're tired as well? Yeah, when I'm tired, I lose my words. Now in that clip you can also hear Aston's grandma Gloria. Now, recently, for Aston's birthday, she gave him a communication jumper. Now, Astin's jumper wasn't designed by Mae, but by Kian Lorne, who started a company recently called My Best Interest Myra. I've got one just like Astin's. Here, take a look. Okay, so it's another hooded jumper, but I'm noticing this one has little animals on the sleeves. We have an overwhelmed owl with ear defender. We also have a hungry fox and a very sick hedgehog. Also on the other sleeve we have, let's see, this is a bird that wants to fly home, a happy frog and a sad badger. My gosh, he was so excited it had to be put on straight away. We were going to go out for an evening meal. So I'm wearing this, I'm not changing. Mummy, bring me a posh shirt. I'm wearing this. And in actual fact, it came in very handy walking to the pub, didn't it? Because he suddenly got very quiet and he looked at me and he tapped my arm and I went, are you alright, darling? And he went, overwhelmed. Just to be clear, Aston wasn't saying the word overwhelmed, but he was pointing at the picture of the overwhelmed owl on his new jumper. So we had a little chat and I said, well, it's been a long day, it should be your birthday. You don't usually go out in the evening to eat, so you're probably also. Where's the hungry one? Hungry. You're also probably hungry. And he went, yes, I am, I am. I'm very hungry. I find it really interesting in that Aston's grandma worked with him using the jumper to work out what his emotion was and figure out that he was hungry. And actually with this clothing, although it was designed really for autistic people, a lot of professionals have been buying them. So for example, special needs teachers at school have been buying them and using them in the class to help them communicate with their children. And May, who we heard from earlier, has sold 10,000 sweaters with their company Inside My Head and they ship them all around the world. May says that this has completely transformed their own life. It's given them a sense of purpose. Growing up, I had very, very, very low self esteem. When I think about my 15 year old self who just believed the world was better off without them, and now I think about my 21 year old self who helps 10,000 people, that's like such a big full circle moment. I'm so happy that I stayed and did this and tried and now I actually help myself and so many other people, which is just wonderful. And you can hear more on people fixing the world wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Coming up in this podcast. My mom was staying with me that night and she kind of knew that I was down, which isn't typically me. And she was like, what's wrong? And I was like, well, Mom, I don't think I'll ever be able to play baseball again. The man who turned a life changing accident into a major sporting achievement. Hello, I'm Simon Jack. And I'm Sing Sing. And together we host Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast exploring the minds, the motives and the money of some of the world's richest individuals. Every episode we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money and then we judge them. Are they good, bad or just another billionaire? Good, bad billionaire from the BBC World Service. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts, you may remember the story of four children, one of them a baby, who were lost for 40 days in the Amazon rainforest after surviving a plane crash which killed their mother and two other adults. The search and rescue mission that followed caught the world's attention in 2023 and has now been made into a Netflix documentary. For several days, there has been no evidence that the children are alive. Brothers, have faith. Children, please, if you can hear this Stay where you are. We are going to bring those four kids back. The ages of the four Indigenous children were 13, nine, four and nearly one year old. The documentary shows how the children managed to survive thanks to the 13 year old's knowledge of the jungle's many dangers. And it also depicts the grueling search by the Colombian military and indigenous volunteers to try to locate the children and bring them home safely. The film's director, Orlando von Einsiedel, spoke to Krupapati. I suppose, like tens of millions of other people around the world, the moment I heard about this operation playing out, I was completely gripped. And I followed it until the children were found. But it was really when I learned about the actual search and rescue operation that I became interested. This story of two groups of people, the Colombian special forces and these indigenous volunteers, who historically have had a lot of mistrust and animosity between each other and how they had to come together and work together for this shared goal. You know, we live in a very polarized world, and this felt like a story that we could all draw inspiration from. When I was watching it, I found that there were so many themes in the documentary. Human instinct, survival, culture, trust. And you show how the Colombian military and indigenous people work together to overcome their mistrust. Exactly. And it was unbelievable how deep that mistrust lies. There'd been decades of war in Colombia, so, you know, everyone went into this with enormous amounts of apprehension and resentment. And actually watching how they ended up coming together to achieve something extraordinary was quite beautiful. Explain to us what we've learned since about how these children survived. Part of the reason, really, is testament to Leslie, who was the eldest girl. She's an indigenous child. She's from the Witotto community in Colombia, and she had some skills. She knew about what fruits that the children could eat while in the forest, and she knew about gathering water. But ultimately, the fact that they could survive 40 days with no, you know, no medical supplies and, you know, they'd survived the plane crash as well, is extraordinary. I mean, you know, I guess the story ends happily in some way, but it's a story with a lot of tragedy at its heart. Not just the children's family, but also, you know, what we tried to do in the film is tell the wider story about Colombia and Columbia's history. And that's been a very difficult history. But I'd like to think that overall, this story, this is almost a parable, is about the best things about humanity, the things that bring us together rather than divide us. The Strength of the human spirit, human resilience. And that's the film that I've tried to make. Orlando von Einsiedel, who directed the documentary the Lost Children now to San Marino, where the tiny landlocked countries football team have made history. Despite being the world's lowest ranked, they've been promoted in the Nations League after their first ever win away from home against Liechtenstein. It was also the first time they scored more than once in a competitive game. Going on to win 3 1. Matthew Mwaliwala caught up with San Marino's team manager, Michele Raschi. They are all happy. They maybe still have to realize what they did, but they wrote an historical page of football in San Marino and for European football. Because half of our team is made by workers that during the daily life, at the end of the work they go to the pitches to train with their club, while the other half of the team is composed by people that is playing in Italian championship. And the group is made of young people and young professional players that are growing up all together and they did something extraordinary and we hope to do even better in the future even by the way, we join the moment and we enjoy their party. And so they're still celebrating, but it is still sinking in just what they've actually achieved. Yeah, maybe in two or three days when they will show all the newspapers, they will realize they did something great. Yeah. Tell me as a manager, look, you won that first game a couple of months ago at home. Now you've won away. What have you done differently? Because it's been 20 years since you've had any sort of win. I'm team manager since this January 24th and the people who were before me in this role, I made a great job to create a group that did something great in the last nations leagues. I think the technical staff made the difference in this year workers, because in 11 months our head coach and technical staff changed the mind of the players. That's incredible. San Marino going to actually play in the qualifiers for the World Cup. I just want to ask you a word about the supporters, because what do you make of them? They for years have followed you around Europe watching the team get absolutely thumped. So what is it like now when they actually get to see you win? It's incredible because even the group of supporters are growing better and better and more and more. And we beat the record of we traveling supporters since there were around 50 supporters in Liechtenstein. In Gibraltar October they were around 40. So their group is growing and they are involving more and more people from all the World, not only Europe is fascinated by the San Marino national football team and they love our romantic history of local football that play internationally. San Marino's team manager, Michele Raschi. In today's hyper connected world, telephone scams have evolved into sophisticated operations, catching even some of the most vigilant off guard. Well, one telecom operator in the UK has come up with a way to use artificial intelligence to reduce the number of suspect calls received by its customers. Daisy, the AI granny, works around the clock answering calls that have been marked as spam, wasting the scammer's time. Our reporter, Will Chalk, has been speaking to Daisy. Oh, my dear, I'm not too comfortable sharing that. I'm a bit cautious with personal information. This is Daisy, a lovable old lady with a passion for knitting and I'm trying in an admittedly cack handed way to scam her. You couldn't just give us your bank details, could you? Oh, bless your heart, that's very kind of you, but I don't think I should be giving out my bank details to anyone. Except Daisy isn't really an old lady and I'm not really trying to scam her. She's an AI chatbot designed to waste the time of fraudsters and she's been developed by the British telecoms giant Virgin Media 02. As part of a launch event. They've allowed journalists like me to talk to her. Hello, is that Daisy? Oh, bless. Yes dear, it's Daisy here. How can I help? Are you today, what was the name of the street you grew up on? Daisy? Oh dear, that's a lovely question. I grew up on Willow Lane in Malmesbury. Such fond memories there. We had the most beautiful gardens. Do you have a favourite street from your. The company is clearly proud of Daisy and says she's indistinguishable from a real person. But is she? As well as the very noticeable delay, she also garbles some of her sentences, but then again over a bad line, these could probably pass as connection issues. And given Daisy's design to waste people's time, it's not necessarily a bad thing. According to her creators, she really does work. They've posted her phone number on forums known to be used by scammers and say since then she's taken 1,000 calls and has kept some of them on the phone for up to 40 minutes. Hi, I'm Murray McKenzie, I'm director of fraud for Virgin Media 02. I think the key thing that we've got to remember here is we're not talking about one Fraudster in a basement making a lot of phone calls. There's huge numbers of people involved in these criminal gangs. There are teams that are professional call centers targeting people. And for them to all be educated about what one scambot sounds like is incredibly tricky for fraudsters to manage. This is a great example of us doing what we can to make the life of a criminal significantly harder. Can you please come to the homepage in your computer? Oh, I'm so sorry, dear. I'm doing my best. For now, AI bots like Daisy are relatively small fry in the global battle against scams. But as the tech improves and becomes more widely available, AI could become an increasingly useful tool for both the people looking to fight scammers and the scammers themselves. Will chalk. Two years ago, after a boating accident which led to one of his legs being amputated, 18 year old Parker Bird, a talented baseball player, thought his dreams of sporting glory were over. But in a remarkable comeback, he has become one of the first, possibly only the second man to play in a Division 1 college baseball game with a prosthetic leg. Now Parker is dreaming of making it to the major leagues. He spoke to Caroline Barker 10 yards or so from the boat. The driver put the boat in reverse or got knocked into reverse somehow and essentially ended up sucking me under the boat, which led to the propellers in both of my legs and my left hand as well. All the guys started tying tourniquets around my legs the best they could with a shirt while trying to wave down other boats for help because our boat wasn't able to move due to the rope being called the propeller. The second boat stopped and on that boat were two couples. One of the lays with actually a nurse. So she knew more what to do. I stayed in the hospital for a total of four weeks and had 22 surgeries in a matter of 45 days. It was, it was definitely a long. Too much for sure. Gosh, your whole dream, you know, baseball was, was everything. The minute you know you're going to lose your leg, what's going through your head then? A lot of questions, a lot of not only baseball related, but just life in general. Like maybe a week or so, like the baseball factor definitely kicked in. I was like, my mom was staying with me that night and I was just talking to her and she kind of knew that I was down, which isn't typically me, and, and she was like, what's wrong? And I was like, well, mom, I don't think I'll ever be able to play baseball again. What was it like that first moment then when you were back in your uniform, ready to just throw a ball about? I mean, the emotions were really unreal and so kind of a moment that I'll never forget because, I mean, the crowd, the atmosphere, just the milestone was awesome. Your family there? They were. Yeah, they captured a great video of them and I mean, that makes me emotional every time I see it, just because of how emotional they are. I mean, they were there every step of the way and they know that how hard it was. So it was a cool moment. What was the reaction from your teammates? They were pumped. They were there all the way to. Some of the guys that were on the boat were in the dugout watching. So I think it was a really cool moment, like just a full circle moment that I was back and I think it was just as special as them as it was with me, just because they're my brothers and they, they're there every step of the way. Just finally you talked about wanting to change and be an inspiration for so many people. Have there been kids that have reached out to you and said thanks for what you're talking about? I've seen kids start playing baseball that were missing some form of limb that they never thought they would be able to just because they thought it was impossible. Because, I mean, like I said, not many people do it. But now I've seen probably 10amputees start playing baseball just from my story, which is awesome. And those are the only ones that have reached out, so Lord knows how many he's actually started or not only baseball, just another sport in general or just facing some form of adversity that I never thought they'd be able to do. So it's really cool to see those moments because it's so easy to get caught up in the day to day life and the ground of things. But when you see stuff like that, it really allows you to step back and kind of see the bigger picture and understand like, hey, I'm doing this for more than just just myself. Inspirational baseball star Parker Bird. And you can hear the full interview on Sports World wherever you get your BBC podcasts. And that's all from the Happy Pod for now. If you'd like to introduce a future episode, you can send us a voice note saying your name where you are and the words you're listening to. The happy Pod from the BBC World Service. And you can add a bit more about why you listen. Like Nicole, listening whilst commuting 40 minutes by bike each day ensures a dose of positivity and an insight into some of the incredible things being achieved by people from all walks of life across the globe. It definitely starts each day with a smile. As ever, the address is Global Podcast at BBC. This edition was mixed by Callum Maclean. The producers were Holly Gibbs and Rachel Bulkley. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janet Jaleel. Until next time. Goodbye. Hello, I'm Simon Jack. And I'm Sing Sing. And together we host Good Bad Billionaire, the podcast exploring the minds, the motives and the money of some of the world's richest individuals. Every episode, we pick a billionaire and we find out how they made their money. And then we judge them. Are they good, bad or just another billionaire? Good Bad Billionaire. From the BBC World Service. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.