Global News Podcast: The Happy Pod: Striking gold

Hallo, das ist der Global News Podcast aus der BBC World Service

mit Rapporten und Analysen von across the world.

Die letzten News, 7 Tage per Woche.

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Das ist wie auf Twitter. Es ist ein sehr, sehr schlechtes Habit. Und um mich selbst zu brechen, habe ich den Podcast auflöschen, die ein bisschen mehr aufgeliefert sind. Und deinem Habit war so eine große Hilfe in den vergangenen Wochen.

Ich bin sehr stolz auf deine Worte zu benutzen, aber eine wirklich gute Vibe.

Dank von Bonny, Roy und allen, die hier sind.

This week we'll hear from Melbourne, Shanghai, Stockholm und Wellington. There's news of secret messages in your body odor.

We know that if a person is in a state of fear, their sweat can be perceived by another person through the chemo signals in the sweat.

A taxi for dogs in China.

I've been looking at comments on Suna Weibo, which is China's equivalent of a platform like Facebook or Twitter.

And people have been saying they think it's a fantastic idea and they're hoping to see similar services in their cities.

And a world record breaker in a tent.

I've had a brilliant three years. We're in the best three years of my life. I thought come in now whilst we finish on a high and we can focus on adventures for the future.

All on the way in the happy pot.

You're out with your metal detector in the gold fields of Victoria in Australia, wondering what you can find.

The metal detector goes off and you think you found a gold nugget, but how much will it be worth?

You take it to the only prospecting shop in Geelong, southwest of Melbourne, where you're about to give Darren a big surprise.

A chap bought in a backpack and he said, I've got something to show you and look, normally prospectors come into the shop and they'll show me a rock that looks like gold or a rock with a bit of Fulds gold in it, which tricks a lot of people.

And he said, I've got something to show you.

And out of his backpack, he pulled this rock about probably three quarters the size of a brick and he dropped it into my hand and as he dropped it into my hand, he said, do you think there's $10,000 worth of gold in it?

And my wife said that when my hand dropped with the weight, so did me Jor, I just couldn't believe it.

Because obviously you deal with this stuff all the time, someone comes in and says, when you have a look at this, so far so good, and then puts a lump in your hand that's so heavy, it's clearly going to be worth a lot more than $10,000.

Yeah, I've been detecting for 43 years and you know that there's more than $10,000 in that rock.

And I said, oh look, there's $100,000 probably in that rock. He looked at me and he said, oh, that's only half the rock. And I said, what do you mean?

And he said, oh, I've got the other half at home. I got the sound with the metal detector.

I dug up the rock and I couldn't see any gold, so I broke it in half expecting to find a nugget inside.

So there was two halves, not the one. So about two weeks later he bought the two halves of the rock into me.

And I just knew that there was going to be loaded with gold and he dropped it off to me.

And I done a test on the rock to find out how much gold was in it. And he called back and I said, I've got some good news for you.

There's 83 ounces of gold in that rock, which today equates to about $240,000 Australian.

So what's happened now? He's taken his two halves of rock away. Is he going to sell them? I suppose he must do.

Yeah, look, when I told him the price of it, he said, are you interested in buying it?

And I sort of, yeah, but I better check with the wife first because it's a lot of money.

And I put in an offer. He went home and I presumed that he's rang up other gold buyers and that.

And he just rang me up. He said, I'm happy with the price. It's yours. So I had to scramble and clean out three bank accounts.

Yes.

And it bought it. Like I said, in my 43 years of prospecting, I've never seen something of this size in a rock with that amount of gold in it.

It's just very unique.

And what about the guy who found it? What's he done with the money?

Is he still going out with his metal detector to try and find some more?

Well, the detector he found it with, it's a mine lab equinox 800.

Now, they're only about a $1,200 machine here in Australia, but they're a coin and treasure machine.

And there's dedicated gold machines, but he found it with one of these $1,200 machines.

Now, to get a reasonable gold machine, you're looking at, you know, between four and $10,000.

So he is going to buy a proper machine off me that goes down a lot deeper.

And who knows, I could be talking to you in a few months again.

I was Darren Gamp with me from Geelong, just southwest of Melbourne.

Many of us love camping, but would you choose to camp out in your own garden every night for three years?

Max did. He set a new world record for the most money raised by camping in doing so.

It all started in 2020 when he was 10 years old and it ended this week when the boy in the tent raised $900,000 for charity.

Max took me back to the beginning in the early days of the COVID pandemic.

So my neighbour Rick unfortunately started cancer.

But before he died, he gave me a tent and said, Max, I want you to have an adventure in it.

And I said, I promise you I will.

How have you ended up sleeping in a tent for three years?

I kind of fell in love with it really.

I've always loved the outdoors, I've always been a scout.

I've always loved it.

I've gone out camping with my friends loads.

My dad's a Royal Marine.

So of course the outdoors is what he loves.

And every little minute we love going outside, doing sports, going camping, going kayaking, surfing.

And I think the outdoors is just one of the best places for me.

Tell me what it's like at night.

I mean, you're perfectly safe obviously, but tell me what the experience is like.

Sometimes it's brilliant, sometimes it's lovely.

Some nights it's absolutely horrific.

Tell me about the good nights first of all.

When it's lovely, what's that like?

Well, it depends. It can either be you're listening to the rain and you're listening to the wind.

And that's always quite nice to fall asleep to.

And it's just quite calming.

And sometimes when you wake up you hear the birds and they're always the nights,

but you feel quite peaceful.

And what about the nights when it's horrible?

Listening to the rain, watching the rain creep into the tent.

Watching the wind blow your tent to your face.

So basically it's just the weather.

Sorry, but the weather's really nice to you.

And you love it.

Or the weather's really horrible to you.

And you're stuck in the tent and you find it really grim.

And it becomes a challenge.

So I guess the next question is, you're doing this for enjoyment, you love being outside.

On the days where the rain's hammering down, the water's coming into the tent,

why don't you go in the house?

I've always said to myself, I don't want to come in,

because I went, you know what, I don't want to sleep out here because it's cold or it's wet.

That was always not an option for me.

The options were, coming in was, if I wasn't finding it fun anymore,

if I wasn't enjoying it anymore, they were the only way to come in.

And I mean, another key motivation is trying to get away from the parents.

Of course, understandably.

Tell me about your decision then to bring this to an end.

We always knew how to come to an end at some point.

Of course, this all started because I was going to do the first lockdown

and try and do it through Covid.

And I wanted to make sure that I could raise money for the Northern Hospice

whilst all their fundraising was shut.

I thought, you know what, I've had a brilliant three years.

We're in the best three years of my life.

I thought, what's not a better idea to come in now whilst we finish on a high

and we can focus on adventures for the future.

Because for someone of your age, a huge amount has changed in three years.

I mean, that's a significant chunk of your life, isn't it?

Yeah, and I'm just thankful for the last three years.

They've been ups and downs, but I think they're moments

I'm going to remember from the rest of my life.

Tell me about going to Downing Street.

That'll be a day I'll always remember.

I thought it was going to be a lot more formal,

but I think I spent most of the time at Downing Street chasing after Boris Johnson's dog.

The boy in the tent, Max Woosie, now 13 years old.

There's a new taxi firm in Shanghai.

Only this taxi firm is for dogs.

So say you'd like to take your dog for a walk in your lunch break at work,

but your lunch break isn't long enough to go all the way home to collect your animal.

Well, the taxi service will do it for you.

Meet you in the park.

Our China media analyst, Carrie Allen, takes up this shaggy dog story.

So this is a woman who's in her 30s

und she's basically set up a job that's a weekend job

and she decided that she wanted to become a dog taxi driver.

So a taxi driver specifically for dogs

because she said that she felt there was a hole in the market

where people were trying to arrange it, you know, just go to the park

and get a taxi and take their pets with them

and they were finding that they were constantly being refused.

Right, so lots of taxi drivers don't want to have dogs.

So is this about taking the dog and their owner

to a park to go for a walk or just the dog?

It can be just the dog.

There is a recognition that because sometimes,

especially post COVID, people are working weekends,

it's a way for them to get their dogs to them straight after work

so that they can just enjoy the most time as possible.

And there's a lovely video that's been appearing in Chinese media today

showing basically all of these dogs just hopping in

and much like you'd see a normal passenger,

it's the dog that's sat in the seat

and is quite happy just to be taken to its owner.

It makes it look like some kind of school minibus,

where one dog hops in, another dog hops in

and they're all happily in there together.

I don't suppose it can really be like that,

but it's certainly been told into a lovely story in the social media video.

Oh, definitely, yes.

This woman, Miss Lille, said that she's been giving the nickname

the dog bus driver and she has proven very successful.

So far, she said that she's been earning lots of money from this

and yeah, it's still a very new business,

but this is nowadays, it's a trend post COVID

that a lot of young people in China,

I mean, I've seen statistics suggesting that one in five

have really struggled to find employment.

And people love dogs, people love pets

and she's recognized that this is a good idea,

saying that some people she's spoken to,

they've told her that for every five or six calls

they've made to taxis, they've just been refused.

And this is a way that she can spend time with dogs,

earn a bit of money and drive around the city.

Absolutely.

In the world over, people will know of dog walking businesses,

where someone will walk your dog for you,

but I can't say I've ever heard of this anywhere,

where someone will go and pick your dog up

and bring it to you in your lunch break

or when you finish work, so you don't have to do the transport part,

you can just have the fun walking part.

I think it's a lovely story and it's definitely a sign

now that China's come out of its long three year zero COVID policy

that people are getting back on their feet,

that they're starting to get out and spend more time outdoors again.

What reaction has there been in China

to this lovely video appearing from Shanghai on social media?

What have people been saying?

Oh, people love it.

I've been looking at comments on Suna Weibo,

which is China's equivalent of a platform like Facebook or Twitter.

And people have been saying they think it's a fantastic idea

and they're hoping to see similar services in their cities.

They think it's a lovely heartwarming idea

and it's a side business for this woman.

It could be a side business for many people who like animals.

Our China Media Analyst, Kerry Allen.

We love hearing your happy news.

Email globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

This is 6-year-old Mario in Spain telling us about his first goal.

I want to send you my messages

because at the beginning I didn't like football

and then I went to practice and I made a lot of friends

and I have a lot of fun.

I was playing in a game

and one player of my team passed the ball to me

and I shot so hard

that they go keep a touch of the ball

and he went inside and I was very happy.

When I saw that he was goal

and all the people shouting on my friends

came to me to help me

and I was so happy and a little bit nervous.

Congratulations Mario, lovely hearing from you.

Thanks to Dan Gerardo and Mum Isabel

who you heard during their forgetting in touch.

We found that our listener Andrea in Italy loves to hear.

Andrea says the sound of his 1958 125 Vespa

makes him happy while he rides the streets of Rome.

And in New Zealand

Andrew in Wellington says he likes the noise his dog makes

drinking water after he's had a play.

He's been on broadcast at bbc.co.uk.

This is Andrew Peacht, Still to Come,

stories from Kenya, Namibia and the US

where we'll meet the college lecturer

lifting the spirits of his students.

As an artist I spend so much time looking at the shadow side of life

which is necessary.

But in my public life I really like to give people a little bit of positivity

as much as I can.

Now we usually try to avoid other people's body odor

but what if sweat contained hidden messages

that could make us feel calmer, happier even.

Researchers in Sweden think sweat could offer therapy

for social anxiety.

One of them is Vladimir Carly.

For example we know that if a person is in a state of fear

their sweat can be perceived by another person

through the chemo signals in the sweat.

There is research around this and it makes sense

from the evolutionary perspective because if you think about it

if someone is in a state of danger

then communicating this state of fear and danger

to other people would set also the other people

to be able to act on it.

And more recently there have been some research findings

that are a bit weaker that also states of happiness

can be messaged through these chemo signals.

If you're feeling elated, if you're feeling happy

other people can tell without you needing to tell them

or show it on your face, their bodies just know.

Yeah of course, exactly as we can see cues

of somebody being happy by visual cues

by looking at their faces or for example auditory cues

listening to their tone of voice

we can perceive that also through their smell.

Is it catching, is happiness catching

if people around you are transmitting happy vibes

through their perspiration

does that have an effect on the mood of people around them?

We found this in a group of people with social anxiety

this was a very exploratory study

so we were investigating if the emotional component of the order

so being an order collected from a person in a happy state

in a fear state would have different effects

on people with social anxiety

and actually we didn't find differences

so we found that both the orders had the same effect

they increased the effectiveness of treatment for social anxiety

in comparison with a control group

that was exposed only to clean air

and not to above the order

so our hypothesis here is that

it's more of a human presence effect

also because the treatment was delivered through a mobile app

it was not delivered by a human

so one possibility that now we're testing in further studies

is that it's the idea of human presence

that was given by the order actually augmented

increased the effectiveness of this mobile app for mine

I was just thinking about building on the research you've got

you now know about some of the secret messages

that are being communicated from one person to another

is there anywhere we can use that in order to help people with social anxiety

those kind of things

yeah absolutely

we see that the effects of an existing treatment for social anxiety

it's significantly increased

it's 40% more effective

that's a lot

and that means that especially in a world

where we lack healthcare personnel

and we're moving to these digital treatments

and enhancing these treatments with an order

who would be very valuable

Flanmer Carly in Sweden

my next guest is a great teacher

you can tell that by listening to him

you can tell because when he left his job

lecturing students in New York about poetry

they got him the sort of leaving gift

only a really great teacher would get

it's a book of the craziest things

that Joseph Fasano has said in class

which they'd carefully noted down

the book is 152 pages long

it was quite a thing to be presented with

and of course I was mortified as I was going through them

they have a wonderful sense of humor

my students

and took things out of context

certainly captured just about every expletive

I might have said in passing

in every word you ever said I should think

I suppose

I'm very passionate when I teach

and at least I hope that came across to them

now I'm just looking at some of the extracts

that I've been reading on social media

some of my favourites

what led you to say

leave my mother out of it

that one is an eternal mystery to me

I think perhaps we might have been talking about Hamlet

my favourite play

and I might have said something about

mothers and Gertrude

and somebody in their wonderfully creative way

wanted to psychoanalyse me

and I think I probably dashed off that comment

but I don't know for sure

when did Joseph Fasano say

who taught you that love or learning was supposed to be easy

you know that's something that I'm so passionate about

with my students because

I actually find that students these days

really do want to be challenged

they don't want to be as infantilized

as maybe some of the public narrative

tells them they're supposed to be

and so we have a great ongoing conversation about that

and I think it's really wonderful to discover

that students really do want to be challenged

I can't remember the exact context

but I'm sure in reference to that conversation

and at one stage you talked about spending years and years

destroying your life

which we should be alarmed by

but actually you're just describing your career as a writer

exactly, I often get that question

not just from my students

but when I'm giving a reading

session afterwards

invariably, much as I would

when I was in that position

someone will ask me, how do you write

just particularly how do you write your first book

I sort of always have a somewhat humorous way of saying

well you really just need to lock yourself in a room

and risk poverty

and risk doing some damage to your personal life

of course I don't think making art has to come with suffering

but my students certainly know what I mean by that

I mean listening to you, people listening to us now

will be able to tell

that you must be the lecturer everybody wants to have

because you're not weary about the whole thing

you're witty about it

and passionate about it

and all those things that students I'm sure can really buy into

I hope so, I've been doing it now for 15 years

and it really is a passion of mine

I think it's important to meet students where they are

and to not view the world apocalypticly

but rather to try to learn from them

learn about the ways that they think

the way that they speak

that can help us as people

it can help me as a writer

so I do, I have a good time with them

the whole idea of this podcast

is that the world is not full of doom and gloom entirely

there are all sorts of positive things going on in it

and I can tell that spiritually you're with us

I am with you on that, I think it's so important

as an artist I spend so much time looking at the shadow side of life

which is necessary

but in my public life I really like to show that light

to give people a little bit of positivity

as much as I can

the writer and lecturer Joseph Fasano

with me from New York

now let's celebrate the work of Dr Helena Ndume

Helena is an ophthalmologist

who's made it her mission to eradicate the epidemic

of preventable blindness in Namibia

and other underprivileged communities

she's helped tens of thousands of people

and has now been recognized in the Forbes 50 over 50 list

it is very humbling

it gives us energy

to move on to eradicate preventable blindness

especially in the African continent

no money in this world can pay for the happiness

of someone who was once blind

and then after the surgery that takes for 15 minutes

and then they say

Doctor, I've been blind for 10 years

thank you very much my daughter that I can see

there are so many people who are involved

in helping me to fight this blindness

especially surgical expedition C international

we have started with me this project in 1997

and together involving also the Ministry of Health in Namibia

we have operated on more than 38,000 people

in the neighboring countries also

Congo, Angola, Zimbabwe

congratulations to Dr Helena Ndume

we are over a week into Ramadan now

and Bonnie, who listens to us in Dubai, send us this

it is of course the sound of the call to prayer

I spoke to Bonnie, who told me why she likes it in Dubai

I'm actually standing on my balcony right now

it's very quiet because the call to prayer has just sounded

about 15 minutes ago

and people are inside having their dinner

the iftar and being with their families

I can just barely hear two people

rollerblading down the sidewalk

just outside, there's leaves rustling in the wind

sometimes a cat fighting nearby

sometimes it's my cat, sometimes it's not

people walk by, the sidewalk goes beneath my balcony

and so I can hear their voices

the doppler effect of their voices

in many different languages

but not frequently, it's a very quiet place

it's just close enough to people to remember

that there are other people on the planet

but secluded and beautiful enough

to feel like it really is a haven

tell me about Ramadan in Dubai

we're a few days into it

tell me a little bit more about how you see

that being observed around you

there's kind of a hush about the place during Ramadan

depending on where you live in the city

you may or may not even notice that it's Ramadan

to be honest with you where I am here

if it weren't for the call to prayer

that's almost the only thing that really tells me

but I also lived in Jamera for a while

which is a place where there are lots

and lots of locals who live

and the decorations on the homes

and the big cars parked outside

where the families gathered every single evening

you can really feel the spirit of it

and the charity, there's so much charity

that goes on during Ramadan time

it's just a nice feeling time

it's a long and beautiful story

I think to how I came to travel

to Kenya and record music

but when I heard Masai music

which is almost purely vocal

it just struck a chord with me

no pun intended

recently I've been working with some singers

to specifically collaborate on some music

I'm so grateful to them for sharing the music

and I think the music speaks to something

that you necessarily can't write down on paper

but through music we can express emotions

and feelings

that maybe can't be written down

this music brings me so much joy

so I thought

why not share with your listeners

the beautiful beautiful sounds

Masai singing

today's episode was brought to you by studio director

Philipp Ball, producers Olivia Noon

and Tracy Gordon

and the editor Karin Martin

my name's Andrew Peach

thanks for listening

and we're back next week

in einer unserer 2300 Vertrauensleute ist auch in deiner Nähe

und regelt deine kleinen und großen Schäden

schnell und unkompliziert

geh jetzt auf lvm.de-slash-jungeleute

und erfahre mir über die LVM-Versicherung

wir lieben

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.