Global News Podcast: The Happy Pod: The smiling cow

Hello, this is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service with reports and analysis

from across the world, the latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are

supported by advertising. This is Andrew Peach with the Happy Pod where we talk to the people at

the heart of the world's positive news stories. First, Tamara in Puerto Rico has an idea. She

writes, I love listening to the Feel Good stories and the sounds that make people happy,

but what if we had the opportunity to guess what they are? Good plan, Tamara.

So what is that the sound of? Stay with us.

Also on the way in the Happy Pod, we'll hear from Costa Rica, the Philippines, Thailand and

France. There's an unusual recipe for cheesecake. Our machine can pick up one of these ingredients,

which we will load into a food cartridge and then it will just carefully deposit it into a shape

that we tell it to. The happiest place to live. Half of the year, we are surrounded by a dark

slush and we're okay with that because the other half, it's great. And the unexpected sound that

listener Paige loves to hear. When I heard the call for recordings of our favorite sounds, I thought

mine is perhaps a bit ASMR, but I knew instantly what it is. All on the way in the Happy Pod.

Let's start though in Australia with Meghan. Meghan breeds hundreds of cows every year at

her stud farm at Ripplesbrook in West Gippsland in the state of Victoria, but she's never had one

with black and white markings that look like a smiley face. Here she is on ABC Australia.

And we've seen some number sevens or love hearts on the head and, you know, a few strange markings

so we've never seen anything that resembles a smiley face before. I actually zoomed in at first

to make sure that none of our work is anything, you know, added some extra lines or anything.

I wonder if you've seen the image that's been shared around the world of the calf,

now called Happy. Just like Meghan, my first reaction was that it must have been photoshopped.

Well, Happy's now been sold to the nearby Lardner Park Farm where he's going to be its mascot.

I've been talking to the chief executive Craig Deben. The reality of the situation was Meghan

and Barry breed lots of calves. When they posted a very simple photo of the happy face that Happy

has on him, the photo went viral and as farmers it was quite overwhelming for them. They had this

wonderful idea that because he's so unique that they might be able to use it as a fundraising

opportunity for our local hospital and we got wind of that in some of the posts that we saw on social.

We're about to launch our big agfield day called Farmworld and we sat with our board very quickly

and made the decision that he would be the great poster child, a magnificent mascot for

Farmworld for many years to come. Farmworld has literally been running for about 60 years so

at the average age of a cow of Happy's type is about 20-25 years so we've got a mascot for the

next 20 or 25 years and he's got 300 acres of beautiful green Gipsley and pastures to munch

on which we have available to us and it's just a great outcome for everybody I think.

Of course yeah well but particularly for Happy the calf and I mean how do you put a price on it

because you have to decide you know what is this worth to us I suppose and you ended up

with a figure of 7,000 US dollars or 10,000 Australian dollars.

We sort of sat with the board and the chairman and said what do we think he might have gone for

if he were auctioned. I think he might have gone for somewhere between 2,000 and 5,000 Australian

dollars and it would be hard to tell because you know he would have been in a live auction situation

but Lartner Park just wanted to sort of well one surprise Megan and Barry but as much as anything

to see over the local hospital damn weeks so we just doubled it you know we were about to run our

big field day we're in a position where we could make a solid donation to the hospital so you know

to blow their socks off we thought you know what we'll throw 10,000 Australian dollars and as you say 7,000

US dollars and we'll buy him he'll have a happy life because he'll be very well cared for at Lartner

Park and he'll become the mascot for Farmworld we'll have somewhere in the vicinity of 40 or 50

thousand people through the gates over the next three days and they'll be admiring him.

Every single one of them is going to have a photo in front of Happy the calf aren't they?

100% so if he's gone if he hasn't gone viral now mate he'll go viral definitely at Farmworld.

Is he happy? I mean does he have a happy temperament? He's a wonderful calf he really does have a

quite calm and happy and happy temperament he's a he's a ripper and just tell me a little bit

about Ripple Brook it's a part of Australia I've not been to I've been to some of the agricultural

bits around Sydney but tell me a little bit about agriculture in Victoria what's it like?

A lot of the dairy industry in Australia exists in Gippsland so beautiful green rolling hills if

you can imagine obviously in the summer Australia gets hot but we still have what we call green

drought so we don't get as dry as the rest of the parts of the country but it's a beautiful part

of the world and Gippsland it's just a wonderful place to live. Craig Devon with me now if you're

in Victoria and you get a selfie with Happy the calf global podcast at bbc.co.uk same email

address to share the happy news from your part of the world or tell us what you think global

podcast at bbc.co.uk New York is home of the cheesecake and now it's home of the 3d printed

cheesecake as scientists at Columbia University map out the future of printed food Jonathan

Blutinger is the head chef at their creative machines lab he told me how it works in the same

way that you put mustard or ketchup onto a burger or frosting on a cake it follows a similar type

thing where instead of a hand you know depositing these pastes onto these different materials

we have a machine doing it so our machine can pick up one of these ingredients which we will load

into a food cartridge and then it will just basically carefully deposit it into a shape that

we tell it to so we will hand it a recipe file and then it will just follow layer by layer drop

off an ingredient pick up another one and do this over and over again until it finishes fully

multi-material print which is incredibly clever i'm now beginning to see why you've made a cheesecake

though because everything has to be in a paste form for it to work exactly so a cheesecake was

kind of a jumping off point because it's a pretty familiar dessert it's typically layered and generally

has some positive associations for most people i'd say so granted we realized after the fact that

we didn't have cheese anywhere in the structure so perhaps that was an oversight but um but yeah

that's kind of the idea but at the moment the technology will only enable you to make a dish

where everything other starts off as a paste or can be ground down into a sort of paste which

that the cartridges can cope with right now the machine is a little limited in the sense that it

works best with pastes and liquids basically anything that can flow through a nozzle can be

printed on this machine i mean obviously 3d printing technology is being used for so many

things people are building rockets they're building houses they're building all sorts so

it's perhaps surprising in a way that we haven't heard more about food being created using this

sort of thing printing is good for for two main things it's good for uber customization and kind

of you know in careful complexity and also small batch manufacturing and if you think about what

you make and what you do on a daily basis that involves any making really it's in our kitchen

when we're making food at home so if this were to pervade our lives in a really big way it would be

in our kitchen making us food and kind of you know being a nutritionist and a personal chef all in

one what flavor cheesecake did you go for we use graham cracker as a base so it was graham cracker

we had you know peanut butter dutella jam dutella was probably my favorite piece in there but really

it's about combining these ingredients in a unique way that you can localize the flavor and get

different flavor sensations which is really nice i can tell i'm talking to an engineer you see you've

told me how it's constructed you've told me it looks precise but what does it taste like

it tastes good i mean what i say is you get out what you put in so if you start with good ingredients

you're going to get the same kind of quality for the output and when does this technology go next i

think where this is going is it's it's going to happen in multiple waves initially i'm starting

to see this kind of pervade more with companies that are making specific products so for example

plant-based meat manufacturers who are using this technology to customize the texture the flavor

in order to mimic animal meat proteins and then i'm starting to see this also start to

move into restaurants for you know michelin chefs and foodies and tinkers who want to

kind of spice up their dish a little bit until people get more comfortable with it and then

it'll start to be in our kitchens jonathan blutinger at columbia university in new york

the world happiness report is out for the sixth year in a row the happiest place to live is

finland it's a slam dunk for northern europe actually with denmark and iceland in second

and third place they look to things like income life expectancy generosity and perceptions of

government corruption thomas in finland told us why he thinks the fins came out on top we're the

most equal country like our presidents or central bankers they shop at the same stores we normal

people do there's no class really women they have as much or even more say than us men like our

current prime minister she's perhaps the most famous fin of all time known for both her tough

stance on russia and her dance moves we have problems obviously but we don't really have that much

poverty or homelessness that's why there aren't many people some but not many who feel they need

to take something from others by crime or corruption lots of companies in the tech sector in particular

are moving their staff to cities like Helsinki but thomas told us we shouldn't imagine that fins

spend their days jumping for joy fins aren't really happy not in the way the english word happy is

meant it's not elation it's not joy at living here in the middle of what's basically a large

frozen swamp it's not happiness it's contentment with our lot half of the year we are surrounded by

a dark slush and we're okay with that because the other half it's great now you know we love

hearing your favorite sounds email globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk send us a voice note if you can

esther in Costa Rica says walking over dry crispy leaves reminds her of her childhood

hi i'm page an american living in Bangkok when i heard the call for recordings of our favorite

sounds i thought mine is perhaps a bit asmr but i knew instantly what it is i've loved it ever since

i was a child when it was more common to hear i love the sound of cutting paper especially when the

paper is a little on the thick side like cardstock and especially when in the 1980s at least that

sound was on tv when i was young and watched children's tv shows i'd always hoped that they

would be making a craft that required them to cut paper and michelle from michigan in the us

likes the sound of her workplace which is an automotive assembly plant

michelle says she imagines that she's helping to create a better future because the cars that she

makes there are fully electric global podcast at bbc.co.uk i'm andrew peach and still to come

some people will be telling me like i wouldn't make it to paris opera because i was a mixed race

or because my feet were flat we'll hear more about the new star of french ballet and his roots in

senegal doctors on the front line in ukraine say thousands of lives are being saved by bandages

that can stop heavy bleeding in less than a minute they're coated with an extract which

is taken from shrimps and crabs ross madly is the chief executive of med trade who invented it

he was watching a rugby match when he got a call from the ukrainian ministry of health

he told me a bit more about how this works the technology has a base material called kitesan

kitesan is a derivative of shrimps or crab so it's from the skeleton of crustaceans it's a

biocompatible and biodegradable non-toxic product that is used actually in a lot of different medical

applications anti microbial wound dealing we buy that product in large quantities from the food

industry it's only the outer shell and then we we mix that technology with some of our patented

salts and acid compounds to create the salox technology which are either granules or their

granules coated onto a gauze and they are extremely good at hemostasis better known as

stopping bleeding right so the kitesan which comes from shrimps and crabs can stop your wound

bleeding which obviously could be useful in in many situations but in a war zone you can see

how that's going to save lives you know how does it do that the product works extremely quickly

it works independently of the patient's own clotting cascade and basically what it does it

attracts negatively charged blood cells so where the bleed site is occurring so just imagine there's

been some sort of gunshot wound or what have you the product will be applied directly to the site

of bleed the product will then then create what's called a pseudo clot by attracting these negatively

charged blood cells with a positive charge product which is salox and create this clot so our product

creates that pseudo clot and the pressure within 60 seconds so you can imagine every second counts

in a military setting where they're going to be bleeding could be ephemeral also bleed is a gel

called a very high-pressured bleed we will apply our salox rapid product very very quickly

and then stop that bleed I'm just thinking about the applications it might have you know

that we still get a lot of bleeding leading to death in childbirth those kind of things around

the world has it got applications there this is our next let's say a move we have repurposed

this technology to focus on postpartum hemorrhage as you say it's strange and crazy to think that

postpartum hemorrhage still is a leading cause of maternal mortality in the world and there was

some publications showing that it's even rising in some of the developed nations the us being one

of the worst postpartum hemorrhage for those who don't know is a failure of the uterus to contract

after childbirth and it affects over 14 million mums a year and unfortunately over 80 000 mums

actually die because of postpartum hemorrhage and that's around one mum in every two minutes

and we have now followed up doing a clinical evaluation of the product and have found this

to be remarkable in stopping bleeding those instances so we're we're seeing about a 95

plus percent success rate with all all mums where we're stopping bleeding in minutes which is

remarkable and just finally Russ tell me how does it feel when you get the call from a country that's

been invaded saying we really need tens of thousands of your bandages to stop people

bleeding on the battlefield basically and you're able to to mobilize and do that and

make that happen how does that feel as as someone who's behind this technology that is the job it's

there to save lives i'm just proud of the team and everybody's supported us and getting that

product to the people and i'm very proud and you know it's great to go to bed night knowing that

we can help ross manly from med trade in last week's happy pod we heard about the historic

appointment of the son of an immigrant from senegal as dancer etual or principal dancer

at the paris opera at the end of a performance in south korea this week let's get more on that

story from the man himself geome diop the first person of african heritage to reach this coveted

position he told james cutnell about his journey to the top we kind of start working for this since

we are like eight or like 12 when we get into the paris opera ballet school but it takes yeah lots of

work and dedication and and a lot of determination too did you come from a family where doing ballet

was a perfectly natural thing that kind of thing that a child was likely to do no not really i mean

my parents weren't like dancers or working in any kind of art it wasn't easy for them to understand

why i would i wanted to be a professional dancer because i feel like they were a bit scared for

me that it would be very hard and that you wouldn't be like a real job so yeah they kind of discovered

the ballet world through me and they tried to trust me even though they were scared but yeah

they didn't know the ballet world they were clearly right to trust you seeing the success you've had

the glorious reviews i've just been looking at online were they right too though that it was hard

yeah ballet is really hard it takes a lot of work like physically and also mentally you have to be

really like strong to get through all the exams and to work on your body this hard so yeah they

were kind of right and what about as a young mixed race ballet dancer did that add an extra

complication in the minds of some yeah before i got into paris opera ballet school some people

would be telling me like i wouldn't make it to paris opera because i was a mixed race or because

my feet were flat or some things like that but then when i got into paris opera but it's good

it was actually better because i made it to the school of paris opera so it means it would be fine

there isn't a lot of people of color in paris opera and so there weren't a lot of representation for

me to project myself and to see myself in this company so there was a lot like of thinking for

me wondering if i will be able to make it to paris opera even though i'm not white so it was a lot

of personal thoughts. Guillaume Diop with James Coppnell at the start of today's episode we played

you this sound but did you guess it's the sound of a cash machine or an ATM drew email from the

Spanish island of Tenerife to tell us why it's the sound that makes him feel good. I think you know

years ago having gone through university in Bristol that noise was always a sign that it was going

to be a good night you've promised yourself a week that you're going to be good and then Friday

night comes everybody's going out and you think can i afford this has that direct debit left the

account already or you know has the overdraft been approved and just going to the cash point and

asking for that cash and then hearing that sound that it's about to cash out to you is just pure

joy i mean you may have to pay for it next week but certainly when it pays out you know you're

going to have a great time. And as someone who's who's traveled all over do cash machines sound

the same everywhere? Yeah they sound the same i mean i was in the Philippines for 15 years and there

was a time where where money was tied and my parents would maybe help me out now and again

and just hearing that sound would say okay there's a bit of love coming from the UK because mom and

dad have put 20 quid or 30 quid into my account but yeah that sound is is the same the world over.

And tell me a bit about the the story of your travels because you've talked about being a

student living in the UK living in the Philippines living in Spain tell us the the journey you've

been on. You know i finished university got a great job in London i was doing very well

i suppose i got to a point where it just became a bit stagnant i suppose so on my 30th birthday i

said right i'm going to go for a two week holiday in in the Philippines two weeks later i woke up

with a bit of a hangover and i said you know what i'm not going to do it i'm not going to go home

and that's kind of that was it 15 years in the Philippines finding a great job building a life

i suppose and then covid happened and asia was just just hard hit by covid there was a very very

strict lockdown in philippines and it was just too much so my husband and i decided okay once

this covid is over let's move to europe and and start something where we can kind of breathe again

and why why the spanish island of tenorif why there is that really a question why not it's

tenorif you know it's a beautiful place to be if you can send us a voice note of the sound that

makes you happy like drew global podcast at bbc.co.uk learning to play a musical instrument is well

worth the effort according to scientists because it can lift your mood and boost your brain power

and if you can't play one already it's never too late as tim McSweeney's been finding out right

so if we can do this in one take if you've ever tried to learn a musical instrument

you'll know it can be frustrating at times

really frustrating

but if you persevere eventually you're rewarded

hey yes and now a new study from the university of bath has shown that learning to play a musical

instrument could lift your mood as well as help train your brain to process sights and sounds

an essential skill for survival hello everyone i'm dr karim petrini from the department of psychology

a university of bath karin and her colleagues set up an experiment where one group of complete

beginners started learning the piano for one hour a week another group listened to the same kind of

music but didn't play and another control group that did homework or read a book for the same amount

of time what we saw is that you know the cognitive ability to use all these sensory information was

much better significantly better for only for the group that played the piano so if you think about

what happens when you play the piano for example you're using your fingers to play the notes obviously

at the same time you're reading the music on the page listening to how it sounds and using that feedback

to change what you're doing with those fingers it's a full-on multi-sensory experience and it's

something our brain needs to process and deal with every single day even just when we talk like i'm

talking to you now like your uh you know mouth movement and your facial expression are helping me

understanding but also what you are feeling so for example are you happy so far or what what you're

saying it's going really well so far so don't worry but you know you know what i mean so that

is just one example and one of that is when you cross a road and that is really a kind of survival

you know it could be dangerous if you process these information in the wrong way understanding

which information needs to be used together to make a better performer to make you more aware

when it's okay to cross that road is fundamental you can imagine how good it is to train with the

music instrument and how fun it is rather than having to do really boring tasks right that thing

enhance your cognitive abilities on the computer and repeating it 100 times playing an instrument

can be so much fun but as the same results and it's not just the multi-sensory training for

your brain learning to play an instrument could also help reduce depression anxiety and stress

still not got the hang of this bit

told you

so should we all be taking up a musical instrument then is that what you're saying is there's a

good way of just feeling better about yourself and training your brain any instrument is going

to really benefit you in the long term you might be attracted to the saxophone or to the drums like

i am and so on just go for it because it's not the instrument in itself but is what the instrument

trains for you i don't see any negative side of taking up a music instrument later in life

unless you're the neighbor next door yeah and someone's banging a drum yeah yeah four am or

something no to self to find a bit more time to play the piano

if you are with us for last week's happy pod we talked about words that don't easily translate

into other languages hello to the people at the happy pod my name is jiggy and i'm from the philippines

my favorite word in my language is killing k i l i g it means that sensation of butterflies in your

stomach or that tingly feeling in your spine when something romantic or idealistic happens for example

the teenager was killing when the boy asked her to dance or i'm so killing the bbc published my

recording that's what we're here for thanks to jiggy thanks also to tomara thomas ester page

michelle and drew for being with us this week we'd love you to get involved too so do tell us what

you think of this new podcast or send us a voice note of the sound you love to hear the email

addresses global podcast at bbc.co.uk today's episode was brought to you by studio director

ethan connelly forster produces olivia noon and tracy gordon and the editor caron martin my name is

andrew pitch thanks for listening see you next week you

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.