The Happy Pod: Donating my kidney transformed a child's life

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts. This is the Happy Pod for the BBC World Service.

0:49I'm Vanessa Heaney and in this edition... I was crying, his mum was crying. It was just lovely to see him so happy and healthy. My tears could not stop. I could not stop giving her a hug. Yeah, he is an angel. A woman who donated a kidney to a stranger has met the young boy whose life she saved. A new technology could dramatically increase the number of available organ transplants. The impact of this product is typically increasing the number of organs that are being transplanted, something between 20 and 30 percent. Also, a media platform run by and for young people with disabilities that's hoping to challenge misconceptions.

1:32Plus, a Grand Prix for cows and an unusual group of knitters. It genuinely makes it easier to go through life having that thing to do with my hands. And it has made it so much easier for me to connect with a society.

1:56We start the programme with a rare meeting between an organ donor and the young boy whose life she saved. Ali Coyle had agreed to donate one of her kidneys to a stranger, and she was matched with five-year-old Xavier. It's unusual for living donors to meet those who receive their organs, as very little information is shared. But Ali, who's 40 and from Northern Ireland, wrote to the boy's family and included a toy plane from the airline she works for as a pilot. They used that information to track her down and got in touch via social media. Xavier's parents, Hira Zaheer and Uma Saeed, who live in London, explained why it was important for them to meet her.

2:36It was a rollercoaster ride for us, to be honest. Xavier, previously, I remember he used to not eat well. It was a struggle for me, giving him medicines, giving him food. He was not growing properly. but after the transplant life changed he is here all healthy happy running around no one can tell by looking at him that he got his kidney transplant just this year yeah luckily he's like very energetic after the transplant surgery even after the transplant a couple of months he had like a sports day and he won first prize in throwing and he said that i can run really fast after that surgery. I really wanted to meet in person and thank that person.

3:24When she sent a card, literally, my tears could not stop. It was a beautiful moment to receive a card from her and then finally we were lucky enough to meet her. She's part of our family now. She was an angel to us, to be honest. Literally, when I met her, my tears could not stop. I could not stop giving her a hug instantly it felt like i'm meeting a sister yeah he is an angel and she is very very nice person to be honest she is very nice you know when we were not finding a match we were hopeless we were helpless and i believe um it is very very important to spread this awareness that one kind gesture of a person how it can change lives of so many people to be honest literally She just donated the kidney to my son, but it changed our whole family, to be honest.

4:18I cannot thank her enough for her kind gesture and for the kindness she did. She changed our life. Ali was inspired to donate her kidney after failing to match with a friend who needed a transplant. And Xavier's father, Umar, also donated a kidney to another patient. Ali spoke to the BBC's Stephen Watson. I just thought, you know, if it was someone in my family who needed a kidney and someone could donate to them, then I would want them to do that. So I just thought, well, if I was going to donate to one person, I might as well donate to another. And how did you feel when the family got in touch?

4:55To be honest with you, I was delighted because I was very curious about them. Obviously, it's a part of my body. It's one of my organs. And I was really curious to see where it had gone to. so when they reached out and I was able to see that the little boy was really healthy and that my kidney had started working for him and that it had really changed his life and I was really delighted and of course I wrote back to them and we we talked back and forward and then that's when the idea of meeting up came about it was very emotional I was crying his mom was crying and I think he was a little bit bewildered by all the emotion but it was just lovely to see him so happy and healthy and it was lovely to see how much of an impact and a difference it made for their life and for them.

5:41An emotional meeting as you say, how did it feel seeing a young boy whose life you have helped save? It was a little bit strange, myself and my partner were both saying that it was it was strange to think that part of me is inside that little boy, he was just sitting playing with his toys and it was just strange to think that my kidney is inside him but yeah it was wonderful to see him just living a normal life and you know he he doesn't appear any different from any other little he's six now any other six-year-old boy he just he loves dinosaurs and computer games what i mean what a an amazing advert for organ donation as well yeah to be honest with you it has had such a minimal impact on my life compared to the huge impact that it's had on his life and his family's life.

6:28Yes, there was a few weeks of downtime after the operation, but my life has gone back to normal completely. I have no limitations on my life whatsoever now, and he gets to live a normal life which he didn't have before. Do you think you'll stay in touch with the family and watch how he grows up? Oh yeah, absolutely. I plan to be there for every birthday going forward, and his family have actually invited me to a family wedding next year as well. So, yeah, it's been wonderful to connect with them and it's great now to have that relationship with them going forward as well. Ali Coyle. Around the world, more than 100 ,000 people receive organ transplants every year, but tens of thousands of others die while waiting for these life-saving operations.

7:17Even in countries that have the right medical facilities, a lack of donors combined with problems storing and transporting organs mean there simply aren't enough available. But a medical technology company based here in the UK has developed a way to preserve donated organs for longer, which can dramatically increase the number of transplants. Claire Bowes has been finding out more. This machine keeps the liver at a normal body temperature and it feeds it blood and nutrients. The company is called Organox and I spoke to the CEO Craig Marshall and Dan Fowler, the head of the laboratory. Craig, can you describe this machine for us?

7:58This machine essentially mimics our own bodies in many respects to keep it healthy and ready for that all-important life-saving transplant. Well, here we go. Press start. Obviously that organ has been stored at fridge temperature for some time now, so it is going to take a little bit of time for it to warm back up and come back to life, but you can see it's kind of filling with this nice... It's actually moving. It's moving ever so slightly as it takes on volume, absolutely, yes. So this is what our clinical team has experienced every day using the machine, that kind of thrill of a liver coming back to life.

8:34Obviously everything we're looking at is the result of years and years of research. Where did this begin, Craig? The founders of this company, they were compelled by the need to very much improve the way organs are preserved whilst they're outside the body. So what we're looking at here is the gift of time. So if an organ arrives at 6 o 'clock at night and the team have been busy all day, they can now go home, rest, and then they can come back fresh the next day. And that's a game changer for a surgical team. so the impact of this product is typically increasing the number of organs that are being transplanted at the centres that are deploying this as the standard of care something between 20 and 30 percent so 20 to 30 percent more transplants are happening thanks to this thanks to this product yeah there are a few benefits first as we've just heard the surgical teams have more time to prepare for an operation knowing that the machine is keeping the organ going and second potentially more livers can be used because the machine has a screen which shows the surgeons just how well the organ is actually performing.

9:50David Nasrallah is a liver transplant surgeon who took part in the first clinical trial back in 2013. Right now the decision as to whether to accept or decline a liver for transplantation is not scientific. It's based on lots of very soft characteristics related to the donor's history, related to just how the liver looks and feels. And it's not uncommon for on the basis of these very subjective characteristics for surgeons to make the decision that they don't feel a liver is safe to transplant. So what normothermic machine perfusion allows you to do is to put much more hard objective numbers into that decision making.

10:28So it keeps it alive, we can measure it and it improves it too? It probably improves the liver. Okay, it's difficult to say definitively that it does, but what we see after the liver has been transplanted is that the way the recipients behave is as if they have received a better liver. David put me in touch with one of his patients, Lisa Pengeli. Because the liver was put on this machine, it meant he could then monitor it, engage how well it was performing and really be sure of it before he did the operation. And the operation went well. I remember waking up in intensive care, just feeling very sleepy, but really well.

11:12My husband commented on the colour of my eyes, which were no longer jaundice. They didn't have that yellowy tinge. Yeah, no yellowy tinge. I didn't look ill. So 100 machines are currently being used in Europe, North America and Australia. And the company is also developing a machine which can work on kidneys too. Claire Bowes reporting and you can hear more on People Fixing the World wherever you get your BBC podcasts. We're going to take you to a village in the Swiss Alps now for our next story. Flimseburg is 1300 metres up in the mountains above the picturesque Wallensy Lake, close to the borders with Liechtenstein.

11:52It's home to a rather unusual race, which takes place every year. The annual Cow Grand Prix. I've been finding out more. Nine female jockeys are saddled up and at the start line. And they're off. The cows and their riders hurtle past the crowds of excited onlookers. The cows are wearing bridles decorated with feathers and flowers. The latter are put on at the last minute as the cows love to eat them. 22-year-old Selina owns and trains Cobra the cow. Riding a cow is completely different from riding a horse. It's far more unpredictable and you really have to hold on tight. You can't steer a cow, that's the big difference.

12:35And it's not nearly as comfortable a seat, which makes it quite an effort. Cobra is eight years old and already a seasoned racer. She trained beautifully, flying through the laps in practice. Now we're hoping she'll have a good run today. The race began over 20 years ago. The original idea was to put on an event for people coming to the cheese market. A few of the farmer's wives suggested a cow race with actual riders. The men weren't keen on the idea, saying it would be too difficult. That's Remo Roof. He's the organiser of the Cow Grand Prix. So the women secretly trained their own. That's why to this day only women are allowed to ride.

13:17The race is now an annual highlight, attracting around 5 ,000 visitors. It takes place before the snow comes. The local vets have given their blessing, and the cows do two laps, hoping to win the prize, a 40-kilo bag of feed, a traditional alpine cowbell and flowers. The cows look like they're having a good time. Every cow really takes part voluntarily. Beforehand, we select only the cows that generally seem willing to join in. For them, it's fun. Sometimes, during training, they can actually run very fast. But on race day, some of them don't feel like it at all, and that's fine. If a cow doesn't want to run, she doesn't.

14:00She simply stops and stays where she is. Cobra sped up on the first lap, but slowed down on the second, as last year's winner Viola charged through on the inside to take the crown once again. Her owner Lia raised her fist in celebration as she crossed the finish line. The most important thing isn't to win but to take part.

14:28An unusual Grand Prix indeed.

14:36Coming up in this podcast.

14:45Music by one of the greatest ever composers performed for the first time in over 300 years.

14:57If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

15:49disabled people. It's one of a few of its kind. She's been speaking to the Happy Pod's Holly Gibbs about the platform and why she chose what some might see as a controversial name. It's all about putting young people at the centre. And I think Cripple Media in particular is all about putting young disabled people in specific in the centre. So Cripple Media is the first ever media platform that's run by and for young disabled people. So I grew up as a wheelchair user. I'm a full-time wheelchair user. And I noticed that growing up, there was a lot of unspoken misconceptions about disability. There's a disability writer that said it best.

16:26It's almost like when you meet people, it's like they're kind of reading tea leaves about your future. Like, oh, it's so sad that, you know, you're going to have such a sad future, but there's really nothing sad about it. And I think that's part of the problem culturally is that disability is not seen as a cultural identity. And the reason why we named it Cripple Media was 90 % of it was a straight up value from our generation, which is that Gen Z is unafraid to kind of change narratives and confront hard realities. What would you say to the people who don't get it? I think it's okay to, you know, initially be maybe a little confused, maybe a little put off.

17:07But honestly, what I would want to invite is curiosity. It's also totally normal to be scared or to be uncomfortable when meeting a disabled person for the first time, because I think it's totally natural for somebody to be scared of something that they've never, of something different. But I think what follows after that, it's important to foster curiosity, to kind of lead with questions rather than assumptions. Representation is so important. It changes the way that we think. It changes the way we treat each other. And I think when we see different types of bodies, different communities, different identities on TV, it really changes the way that we think of other people.

17:52Why journalism and what barriers did you overcome to get into the position that you're in? I actually came through journalism through One Direction. So it all started from the boy band One Direction. I was about like probably 11 years old and my hyper fixation was them. You know I loved reading and writing that's all I knew. I actually started a fan page. I had like 20k followers. Throughout that era I started to learn about like you know running and building a community, like what that meant. So when I was like 14, I was like, honestly, that's all the experience I have. But I want a job. And I just started to look up maybe like writing jobs for young people or teens.

18:39I found one posting that they were looking for writers. And I applied, I said that that was my experience. And I got it. As far as for what barriers I overcame, I think it was really all about trying to get people to understand why disability was an important point of view and why was, you know, something important to be said. You know, a lot of people also were struggling to understand, you know, what were the types of stories that I wanted to tell about disability. It wasn't that I wanted to say it's so sad and it's, you know, this story of like this family that has a disabled child, like, oh, look how cute.

19:16That's not the stories that I wanted to pitch. And so really trying to kind of, you know, make other people understand that and therefore also have that come through through my reporting and storytelling was something to be learned. This is the happy pod. What makes you happy? Young people and hope. Not one direction. Yes, but it's complicated. Emily Flores speaking to Holly Gibbs. Johann Sebastian Bach is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in musical history. To many, he's the single greatest composer of all time. So imagine the excitement when two recently rediscovered works were confirmed as having been written by a young Bach at the start of the 18th century in Germany.

20:03Earlier this week, the two pieces for organ were performed for the first time in more than 300 years at St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where the composer is buried. Peter Wolny is the director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig and authenticated the works.

20:29I was very surprised to hear these pieces for the first time also. These are very early pieces. Bach wrote them when he was 17 or 18 years old. but still you could feel that there was a young musician who was trying to find his own personal voice in music.

20:57I saw the manuscripts actually in the summer of 1992 for the first time and somehow they attracted my attention So I ordered photocopies in the library in Brussels, actually, took them home. And since then, I have been trying to find out more about the pieces, about the manuscripts. And it took more than 30 years before I was able to say these pieces were written down by Bach's first student in Arnstadt around 1705. and when I was certain about this, I could also say the certain musical or formal anomalies in these pieces, that they are not mainstream, they are very special, and that these special elements must come from J.S.

21:54Bach.

21:59I think we understand better now that the young J.S. Bach was trying to accumulate as much musical knowledge as he could by studying the pieces of other composers. And at the same time, he was trying to use the elements that he saw in other composers' works to create his unique language. When we listen to the D minor toccata that you played first, we have this language right there. We know from the first note that this can only be J.S. Bach.

22:42Peter Walney. To the far north of Scotland next, and the Shetlands, which recently hosted a group of men from America on a knitting trip. They were among thousands of people who flocked to the islands every year to learn about their knitting heritage. Andrea Rasikova has been speaking to some of the men who joined the trip. Quick knit reminders with Yarn Dragon. This is purl through the back loop. Starting first with the yarn in our right hand to purl through the back loop. This is Jonathan Berner, a content creator from Seattle, better known as the Yarn Dragon. He says that knitting has introduced him to something spectacular.

23:21I was relatively newly sober. I was going to lots of 12-step meetings and painfully listening to the same guy tell his story for the 72nd time. you know, and thought that knitting would be a good way to occupy myself in those meetings. But man, I fell in love with the engineering and the history and certainly that fidget spinner aspect. I mean, it genuinely makes it easier to go through life having that thing to do with my hands. And it has made it so much easier for me to connect with a society.

24:02Jonathan joined 24 other men from different states in the US on a journey to Shetland, more than 8 ,000 kilometers away from their home. It's a place renowned for its wool, knitting patterns and techniques, and somewhere the group described as the holy place for knitters. We talk about wool being part of a culture, but in Shetland, wool is the people, and the people are wool and the land is made for yarn and the people have merged with this land in an incredibly beautiful way that man it got into my blood it's just an incredible place

24:45the group were treated to a traditional fair isle knitting class learned about chitlin's history and even visited local crofters to see how raw wool is turned into yarn. Friends Michael Wade and Chuck Wilmisher Jr., who organized the trip, had been inspired by smaller knitting retreats set up in the U.S. Men felt kind of separated and a bit tokenized or marginalized because they were the only guy in their knitting circle. And so the retreats were a great way for men from various kind of walks of life to come together and talk about why they love knitting and why it's soothing and why it's creative and inspiring.

25:29Like Michael said, I used to be the token guy at my local yarn shop. And just going to a retreat or on a trip with 25 other guys who love what you love and enjoy what you enjoy is just magical. And then take it to somewhere like Shetland and it is just, it's just beyond. They both have noticed that more and more men are picking up fiber crafts, mainly during the coronavirus pandemic and thanks to video tutorials on social media. But Micah believes this popularity boom should go even further. I think more men should knit because it makes you slow down. It builds patience. It makes you think about the world in different ways.