The Happy Pod: From rescue to romance

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 Port from the BBC World Service.

0:49I'm Bernadette Keogh and in this edition... I'm going to try to get through this without crying too much. Please watch this whole video. How a cry for help on social media led to love and marriage. I got a man who's completely obsessed with me. I love it. And a wife who's the same way. Yes. Also saving your dad's life twice. I want to live now having my dad around and life is not promised so I'm not going to worry about what could or couldn't happen. I need to live for now. Joshua gave stem cells when he was 12 and has now donated a kidney. how learning to cook at home is saving people money and improving their health and a chance encounter that led to a project using tennis to help homeless people.

1:35He kind of said to me, hey, I've seen you on telly. Would you play tennis with me? He played like Ken Rosewall and Rod Laver. He was amazing.

1:49As couples around the world have just been celebrating Valentine's Day, we're starting with a truly modern transatlantic love story. It has everything. An American with a broken heart, an elderly dog, a German pilot in shining armour and a happily ever after in Switzerland. And as Nicky Cardwell reports, It all began with a tearful plea for help on social media. I'm going to try to get through this without crying too much. Please watch this whole video. In November 2023, in utter desperation, Adri Pendleton went on TikTok to ask for help. Originally from California, she'd been living in the Netherlands with her boyfriend for six years, but they'd broken up.

2:32All I want is to go back home. But my dog is now 15 years old and she has had epilepsy for a few years. so I will not even consider putting her in the cargo hold of an airplane. And I'm not leaving her behind. I have had her since I was 15 years old. Her border collie was too sick to fly in the cargo hold, but according to the airlines, too big for the cabin. This is how Adri Pendleton met Niklas Druteval. I did not think that I had any options. So I thought maybe someone on TikTok would have ideas. Maybe an airline would make an exception for us, something. I certainly was not expecting to end up on a private jet.

3:12Good chance that I saw that video. Yeah. I was just scrolling on TikTok, to be honest, and I came across the video. I guess the algorithm was saying, oh, there's something with airplanes in it. You must like that. And dogs. You have a lot of dogs on your feet. Airplanes and dogs. So, yeah, the video came up on my page and just left a comment. Yeah, like message me on Instagram. You know, maybe we can make something happen there. even though it was not to California, but at least it was, you know, across the Atlantic. Over the ocean. Yeah, which is arguably the most difficult part of that journey, I think.

3:48Yeah, I was getting so many messages. I almost missed it. I didn't see it until like a day after he had left the comment. And at first I thought it was something worth looking into. I didn't get my hopes up because, you know, a lot of people have a lot of ideas and I was just pursuing any avenue that I could. Once it started to seem more like it was actually going to be a real thing that could work out, I was slightly nervous, but we checked him out. We looked him up. I was sleuth. Yeah, you were very thoroughly investigated by both myself and my friends and family. I mean, we were chatting on Instagram pretty much right away and very quickly noticed that we sort of had a few interests in common.

4:37and just, you know, vibed well, I guess, over text. Like almost a couple months that we were just chatting before the flight. Month and a half, almost two months, I think. Yeah. We both kind of, I think, thought that, you know, once we went our separate ways, that was kind of going to be it. But then it wasn't. Yeah. I made the first move on January 5th, so that would have been like two days. Yeah, that was two days after. Yeah, I invited him out to California for a date. Yeah, it was exciting. It's definitely feeling like, yeah, that is something worth pursuing, I think. I am quite outgoing. I was like, I like this guy.

5:18I'm not, I don't play games though. So I'm just going to let him know that I like him. And if he likes me back, great. If not, well, I, you know, I tried. So time we were talking, we started video calling every day. I got a job offer here in Switzerland. due to that yeah it was pretty clear for us that we wanted to to live together as well um so we decided to talk to an immigration lawyer and she basically said if you want to live together here your best bet is to get married so we decided okay well if that's you know what what we got to do to to be together then that's what we're going to do we're going to get married um some friends they said yeah but if you talk to yourself a year and a half ago you definitely wouldn't expect your current self to be living in Switzerland.

6:02Married. Married with a dog. Yeah, it feels great. He is currently looking at me as if I hung every single star in the sky. I've got a man who's completely obsessed with me. I love it. I've got a wife who's the same way. Yes, it's mutual. Adri Pendleton and Niklas Druteval. And if you have an unusual or dramatic story about how you met your other half, we'd love to hear about it. Send us an email or a voice note to globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. Now to love of a different kind that's led to a son saving his dad's life twice. When David Andrew developed non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, his 12-year-old son Joshua donated bone marrow that helped him beat the disease.

6:50Now, 10 years later, Joshua has also given his father one of his kidneys. Joshua and David, who are from London, are both recovering well and spoke to Stephen Nolan, starting with that first life-saving donation when Joshua was a child. Definitely looking back at it now, it was quite an ordeal to go through, but I think that's only because I'm aware of what it was now, whereas when I was younger I was a bit naive to all the machines that were going on and you're just not as privy to life, so you don't really understand what's going on as much. I was also used to dad being hooked up to stuff so, so much.

7:25And it wasn't too scary in that sense. I think the scary part was if it didn't work, because this was the last chance. And if this didn't work, I was going to lose my dad. So I think that was kind of the tough part was being able to stomach the fact that if it doesn't work, it's not my fault. And what did it feel like, David, back then, your 12 year old son helping to try to save your life it was daunting because you know like josh said you just didn't know if that was going to work and i always said to him if it doesn't work it's not your fault it's um it's just you know one of those um bad luck stories in life um on the flip side is you know we come out the other side and it worked he saved your life not just once but twice so tell me what's happened more recently unfortunately one of the side effects of chemotherapy and the stem cell transplant that i had that failed was that it caused um damage to my kidneys yeah so we so we always knew that it was gonna kind of come to the point of me having to give or somebody having to give him a kidney i i'd said from from the start kind of three or three or four years ago i'll i'll do it i've already done one i'll i'll do another one for you like that that wouldn't be a problem i'll happily do that for my dad so i always knew i wanted to give him the kidney but it was just what could happen later on down the line.

8:46One of the risks is high blood pressure. I mean, I've got high blood pressure in the family, but it's not something that I'm bothered about because I want to live now. So living now means having my dad around and having my mum around with me and being able to have takeaways and watch a film together and mess about and listen to music and just do what we normally do. So I'm not bothered about what could happen in the future because we already know ourselves from his first diagnosis that life is not promised. So I'm not going to worry about what could or couldn't happen. I need to live for now. And right now I wanted to give him a kidney and have a good time with him.

9:26David, what a beautiful thing your son is doing for you. The obvious question is, were you ever in any doubt of taking it from your son in case he needed both kidneys in later life? yes that was definitely a concern of mine and you know if push comes to sub i think at the end of the day i was probably more apprehensive about him giving me the kidney knowing that he already had saved my life once before i mean according to the consultants and the nurses you can live um a normal life with one kidney um but you're right i was a bit more apprehensive but you know Josh wanted to do it. How do you say thank you in this situation?

10:10He tells me fiends a day. Does he? Well, yeah, I mean, you know, I've always said to my son, he knows how much I love him. I always tell him that anyway. You know, I can't ever put into words. It's just not possible. I think he just knows about the way I am with him. You know, this gift he's given me is just immense. And thank you will never be enough. As long as I can be, you know, being there for him, in his older years, that's probably the thank you he's going to get really. He knows how I feel. He's just, you know, an incredible sacrifice he's made. But I think this is probably the last sacrifice he'll need to make.

10:47So there's a lot that's been happening other than just the kidney transplant. And I think the last year has taught us that, you know, there's so much more to life than, you know, work or money or any of these external things that you stress and worry about. And I think we've slowed down a lot as a family and just gone, you know what we're just going to enjoy our time together and if that means sitting on the sofa and having a boring Sunday then we're going to do that because you know that's the time that we'd rather spend with each other. I've always had like my parents luckily to be there and steer me and teach me and tell me when I'm wrong tell me when I'm doing something right and encourage me and I'm grateful in that sense just as much as dad's grateful that you know he's had a second chance alive.

11:31Joshua Andrew and his dad, David. We all know that eating the right foods and avoiding the wrong ones can make a huge difference to our well-being. But with food prices rising around the world, it can be difficult to maintain a healthy diet, especially if you don't know how to cook nutritious meals from low-cost ingredients. So a project here in the UK is teaching people to do just that and organisers say those taking part can save around$1 ,200 a year. Myra Anubi spoke to Alicia Weston who started Bags of Taste. People in poverty are eating the worst diets and they are getting sicker younger and we know that diets are the single largest cause of health inequalities in the UK.

12:17Alicia had originally run cooking workshops for a charity to try and encourage people to prepare their own meals. They were great lessons, really great and social, and people were benefiting in many social ways, but they were not changing what they ate at home. Alicia found out that people didn't know how to cook the kinds of meals that they'd like to eat, and they also couldn't afford to experiment. And takeaways, while more expensive, were convenient and reliable. So what we do now is we deliver all the ingredients to their door, because ultimately behaviour change starts with actually changing your behaviour at home.

12:51Now, a key part of the programme includes being part of a WhatsApp group that has a nutritionist as a mentor. In the group, participants connect and motivate each other to cook. I was invited to join the programme to see how all this works. Hi, sorry. Yes. Thank you. I got a box filled with free groceries. I also got stuff like new measuring spoons, a nice sharpener and crucially three simple recipes to try at home. My daughter and I had a go at cooking these meals together. Let's read. The first thing we're going to have to do is? Chop the onions. OK. Do you want me to do that? Because I know you don't like chopping onions.

13:32Yeah, sometimes cramp. We made a chickpea and mushroom pilaf and a pasta dish. and for two weeks we stayed in touch with other participants on our WhatsApp group and shared pictures of our meals. My nine-year-old was also able to follow all the cooking instructions. I was keen to speak to someone who had gone through the whole programme before to see if it had made a difference. Errol is in his 50s and he lives in East London, a place called Hackney. Errol graduated from the course last November. I was more addicted to the microwave, dealing with ready meals and stuff like that. It was very expensive.

14:07if you get one little meal and you see how small they are and you eat that meal and you're still hungry. So I've got to make a choice, is either pay the bills or starve yourself. I always wanted to know about this cooking. I've always watched food shows, but obviously with my dyslexia, I had problems reading the ingredients or understanding the ingredients. And so I thought, let me take a chance and try to do these recipes. I had little short videos that showed you what to do. And did you get any other support, like from a mentor? Well, you had a mentor on there who's running the course, so you always knew that you've got someone to reach out to if you felt stuck.

14:43So when I made my first spaghetti sauce and stuff with the carrots and all the herbs and spices and all, I was like, oh, my goodness me, I made this? So I was enjoying myself. Every time I came on the group and I showed a picture of my meals, I was like, yeah, this one tickled my taste buds. This is the one. I can hear it in your voice. I can tell you now I really enjoy it. When I was just testing the food out of my partner, how I cooked and stuff, she's like, oh, wow, this is like restaurant food. You're cooking like a restaurant. It does kind of boost your confidence, doesn't it? Yeah, it does.

15:13It does. I feel more comfortable in the kitchen and you start doing your own thing and you think, ah. So if I'm coming to your kitchen now, what is your, you know, your signature dish? I would go for the masala, chickpea masala. I'm sold. I like a little bit of spice, you know. Errol is just one of the 14 ,000 people who've taken part in the programme so far. And Alicia says that their short-term intervention has an important long-term outcome. So when they graduate the programme, we post them more recipes. We did a long-term follow-up six months after doing the course. And what we saw was that 86 % of participants who had not been cooking regularly before were cooking more.

15:55We had one woman, she was about 90 years old, and when she received her certificate, she told us that she'd never had a certificate before in her life and she was going to frame it. Alicia Weston. And you can hear more about this and other schemes helping those on low incomes on People Fixing the World wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

16:19Coming up in this podcast... It's the soul of the country. So in five years from now, it'll be massive. It'll be huge. It's already gaining so much traction. So I'm excited to see what the next five years holds. Why Gaelic is growing increasingly popular in Ireland.

16:43If 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.

17:21Now to a chance meeting that led to an unlikely friendship and ended up changing hundreds of people's lives. Australian Louise Plemming played tennis professionally in the 1990s and still travels the globe as a commentator and elite coach. But during Covid she volunteered at a soup kitchen where she met a homeless man called Brian Turton. Brian had always dreamt of a professional tennis career and even played on the circuit in Australia in his late teens. But after developing mental health problems, he found himself living on the streets. Their friendship led to Louise setting up the charity Rally Forever, which uses tennis to help people get back on their feet and gave Brian work as a coach.

18:07Their friendship featured in an ABC documentary. First time we hit together, I don't know whether she was surprised I hit the ball so well or we hit well together and enjoyed each other's company. I'm too excited. There was something about him. He was homeless and had his sleeping bag there and yet here he was on the tennis court and his passion for tennis just blew me away. Louise spoke to my colleague, Katie Smith. He kind of said to me, hey, I've seen you on telly commentating and he said, what are you doing here and would you come and have a coffee with me? after lunch and I sat down with him and Brian opened up this little black bag of two 1970s Jimmy Connors, you know, tennis racket.

18:55And there were three balls in that racket bag. And he said, would you play tennis with me? And I said, of course I would. No problem. He said, I've got no one to play with me. He said, I play against the wall every day. He said, I hit 200 balls against the wall. What if we play next week, Monday, 6am? He played like Ken Rosewell and Rod Laver. He was amazing. He was chipping and slicing and I had the best time. And I think I had more fun than he did, but I could see he just was so passionate about his tennis. We kept playing tennis for quite a few months and then the journey just became kind of incredible.

19:34He became my very first Rally Forever certified tennis coach and it just changed his life because he'd spent many years in mental homes, hospitals, jails and now he felt really special. He felt like he was doing something he loved but he could be something other than that homeless guy. So a truly life-changing moment actually. I think even some of your family members were slightly worried that you were going to meet this guy that you didn't know. And there is those kind of, I suppose, stigmas and barriers that need to be broken down. Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, my family were conscious and worried.

20:16And I had a lot of friends that were saying, well, hang on a minute, you know, through our friendship and our time together, and he's definitely had his challenges. And in some days he came to the courts and he was angry and we always tried to talk it through. And I think, you know, the most important thing is that they have someone that will listen. For someone like Brian that has been, had his challenges, his family really don't talk to him. There's no one there. Yeah, there's so much turmoil around them that they lose everyone. And for someone like Brian Louise, have you seen complete, meaningful change now for his life.

20:53We got him into social housing. He was really going to many of our programs. We have about 11 or 12 programs now in Sydney. So he was able to go to different programs and really feel like he had a sense of purpose. He was being introduced to different people in the community. On a Monday, he started playing tennis with some doctors and lawyers and these guys loved him because he was better than them. You know, then they'd have a tea or a coffee after and he just felt like he was Brian, the tennis player and not Brian, the homeless guy. And I just love to see him smile and have fun and just absolutely love tennis and love what he did.

21:33And he was cheeky as ever. Like he's such a cheeky character. He's funny. Everybody loved him. But not to say he really has had his challenges. He's going through a little bit of a challenge at the moment. He got injured. And when people stop exercising and they just stay in their room, that's when the issues start coming back. So we really hope that we can get him back being active again and building that self-confidence again, because it's all about that social connection. It's all about getting out in the sunshine and experiencing, you know, exercising, the endorphins, just the interactions, you know, and him saying, great shot.

22:11His encouragement just lifted him so much. And I just love to see that. And, you know, so many people knew his journey and they loved the fact that he was on the court and he was their coach. And you can hear more inspiring sports stories on Sports Hour, wherever you get your podcasts. Over the last few decades, the number of people living in Ireland who can speak Gaelic has almost doubled. In fact, the language app Duolingo says roughly one million are actively learning Irish at any given time. As well as technological advances, there's been a big change in attitudes towards the language. Belfast-based graphic designer Rachel Brady runs Ascalaga, a small independent business selling colourful designs adorned with Irish phrases.

22:59She's been speaking to the Happy Pod's Ella Bicknell. I'd done it a wee bit when I was in school and it wasn't until I was like my second or third year uni I started getting really interested in Irish culture and thought you know I'm gonna go and give it a go and start learning it. I wanted to be a graphic designer And so when I was learning the language, you know, typical me, love stationery. When I went to go get things, there was nothing out there that I thought was like modern. It was all, you know, your stereotypical shamrocks and leprechauns. And it just didn't scream out to me. So, yeah, I just started picking stuff and started the business Ask Eiliga.

23:35And Ask Eiliga translates to in Irish. Yeah, it's been four years now. And yeah, I've just been learning, learning as I go. I think some people would be surprised to know that Irish is an endangered language, yet you've had this massive reception from other people from your products and from this business that you started. Yeah, yeah, it's massive. And particularly in the north, the Irish language movement up here is huge and it's growing day by day. and especially among young people. Since I even opened the business, I've noticed there's, you know, like a surge of other Irish language businesses and Irish language influencers, you know, on TikTok, Instagram, like you're talking hundreds of thousands of followers.

24:17It really does show that, you know, the revival is here and people want to see the Irish language out and about. What's the joy of learning a new language, particularly one that you personally have a connection to, a history with? You know, that's just so good about it. And with Irish, Irish is so poetic. And as I say, every day is a learning day. You know, you're always finding these new ways of expressing yourself, I suppose. In your early 20s, a lot of people would just write off, you know, your ability to learn a language. But you'd be surprised through just wee small antidotes every day or, you know, picking up a mug or putting a nice print on your wall, how much you actually learn.

24:53Part of this is having a better connection to your ancestors, your family. And I know that you've been getting your family involved in the business. Yeah, absolutely. You grow up in Belfast, you don't see yourself as a city girl. So sometimes you can be a bit removed from your heritage and your culture without even realising it. Learning the languages definitely brought me back to that. And I suppose now I'm kind of bringing everybody along with me, like my wee granny. And she is my number one go-to for everything. She's helped me so much in the business. And you've got her packing boxes. And I've got her packing boxes.

25:26I know it sounds terrible, but she loves it. She really does. Yeah, we always joke, I'm like, right now you can't go off on sick on me. Some people might be listening to this. Very interested in the Irish language. So are there any choice phrases, your favourite phrases that you've learnt over the last few years that you'd like to share with our listeners? Definitely toga bogey, which means take it easy. It's definitely something I've had to learn just to have my first baby, wee baby boy. And the Irish culture at all is very like slow living. And I just love that phrase, you know, toga bogey. it just reminds you to just take that wee step back.

26:00I'm going to try and bring some talker boogie into my own life as well. Absolutely. What's your hopes and dreams for the Irish language over the next few years? It sounds like a tide is really turning. Definitely, definitely, yeah. Our phrase is unlock the Irish language, embrace the journey, because that's what it is. You know, learning the Irish language is a journey. And I would hope that through my products and other businesses, you know, in five years from now, everybody knows one word of Irish. And that's ultimately just the goal. It's about including people in the language that live in Ireland that might necessarily have had access to the language.