The Happy Pod: Saving a drowning man changed me

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 from the BBC World Service.

0:49I'm Oliver Conway and in this edition... And I just embraced him and hugged him. I just sobbed and I was just really grateful that he was alive. The woman who saved a man from drowning and then watched him walk down the aisle. A return to the international stage for Afghanistan's women footballers. It is fantastic. We are making a history. And I'm so grateful for FIFA for investing and trusting us and believing in women's empowerment. We meet the team saving the black-footed albatross from extinction. Also. My dad passed away last year. So if he's on here, that would be quite special just to see him at that time.

1:31The festival bringing old family videos back to life. And after Fat Bears of Alaska, we hear about the Fat Squirrels of Texas.

1:46We begin on the Snake River in the US state of Idaho. Five years ago, while out paddleboarding, Rochelle Ruffing came across a man who was drowning. Rochelle worked tirelessly with onlookers to give the man multiple rounds of CPR, and eventually they managed to restart his heart. Half a decade on, Rochelle attended the man's wedding, a joyful celebration that may never have happened if she and the others hadn't stepped in to save his life that day. To respect the man's privacy, we're referring to him as the kayaker. Rochelle spoke to Harry Bly about how the day unfolded, and as she put it, the miracle of what happened next.

2:24Right as we were turning to go back to shore, I saw the empty kayak. And then I saw a life jacket. His head was suspended under the water. We pulled the kayaker out of the water, got him onto a paddleboard and maneuvered him over to a pontoon boat. I think I did about 12 rounds of chest compressions. I was extremely tired. And then out of the blue, this really strong man that has a lot of experience, he was a kayaker or a guide. He did the last couple rounds and he was able to really get the heart started. When he came on board, the kayaker was starting to take some breaths. I was starting to feel a pulse, but this gentleman just came on and did the last couple rounds.

3:13Then about that same time, the county sheriff showed up with his boat and was able to transport the kayaker to the speedboat and take him back to shore to get on the ambulance. But I laid awake that night with visions of the kayaker in a wheelchair or ventilated or I know too much as a medical provider, right? And I kept thinking about this poor boy's mom and where is she and how do I get a hold of her? Because he was clear across the United States from his mom. And I was told that she was en route trying to get there. But my heart just, I didn't sleep a wink. You left him in the care of medics.

3:55Tell me about the moment you realized the kayaker had not only survived, but he was doing okay. So he was traveling with three friends. and they text me, I believe it was about 11 a.m. the next morning on Saturday. And they said, he's walking and talking and he pulled his tube out. So they had invented and I didn't, honestly, I didn't believe him. So I called him, I said, are you sure? And they said, yeah, he's talking and they are going to discharge him. Would you like to go to dinner? And I said, of course. And I just embraced him and hugged him. I just sobbed and I was just really grateful that he was alive.

4:38It's hard to put into words. And I told him, I said, seeing you dead was haunting and it was scary. This was five years ago, but that's not the end of the story. Tell me about meeting the kayaker again at his wedding. What was this reunion like? His dad approached me and he said, are you the one that saved him? And I said, yes, I did. I I said, I think I did 12 rounds of chest compressions on him and he just embraced me and he just sobbed and hugged me. I was really emotional that whole weekend. And I don't know why. I just feel kind of like he's kind of like one of my children. I have four children and he could easily be one of them.

5:22And I still get emotional thinking about it. It was really a privilege to be there. And also, sometimes I can't believe this happened. And, you know, sometimes it's still good for me to see like he's walking and talking and normal and living a normal life. And he's purchased a home and he's proposed and I think he'll become a father. In many ways, you saved his life, but he's changed your life. Yeah, yeah. There are lessons from this entire story here, not only for people to be safe when swimming or around water, but for everyday people to know what to do if something goes wrong, how to resuscitate, how to do CPR.

6:08You know, when the accident happened, there were probably 25 people gathered and I was the only one that raised my hand when the gentleman says, does anybody know CPR? Wow. And these are people that are outdoors. They're kayaking. They're rafting. They need to know CPR. You never, ever know when the opportunity is going to arise. And it is really important to be prepared because you can make a miracle. CPR made a miracle. And the kayaker is proof of that. And I would want people in my path to know CPR and just be prepared. Rochelle Ruffing talking to Harry Bly. Now it's a comeback four years in the making.

6:54When the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan, the country's women's football team was banned. But the Afghan players, who live in several different countries as refugees, have recently returned to international football, taking part in the FIFA Unites Women's Series. They played Tunisia, Libya and eventual winners Chad. And although they only managed one victory, their participation was seen as an act of defiance against the ban on women's sport in Afghanistan. Marion Straughan has the details. There were cheers for the FIFA president Gianni Infantino as he greeted the Afghan Women United football team and they gave him a named shirt.

7:34FIFA recognised the team in an unprecedented move against the wishes of a national football federation. For the players, also a significant act of defiance against the Taliban's ban on women's sports. Here's the team's former captain, Khalida Popal. It is fantastic. We are making a history. And I'm so grateful for FIFA for investing and trusting us and believing in women's empowerment. In fact, FIFA changed the venue for the tournament to allow the team to take part. It was originally due to be held in the United Arab Emirates, but the Afghan players were denied visas. Goalkeeper Aliyah Sabdari explained what it meant to her.

8:17It was an amazing opportunity for us to be as a team after four years of hardworking and advocacy. Seeing my teammates reunited and playing once again in exile, it just hits the friends and it was so emotional and feeling proud at the same time. The team had a tough task, though, with the players travelling from countries like Australia, England, Italy, Portugal. They had just two training sessions before the games began, but they did improve, winning their last match 7-0. For the final game against Libya, we were quite organised because we had some trainings together and we were playing as a team.

8:58And it was a really good game, we really enjoyed it. The women say they're using football to raise their voices for the voiceless. The women back in Afghanistan. Here's Khalida Popal again. We have never given up on the women of Afghanistan. We have never given up the hope. And we are their voices. We are sending out the message. And I'm so proud of each one of these players standing there with all the challenges that they have gone through. They have not given up. And they are celebrating unity. And that's the most beautiful thing. Kalida Popal ending that report by Marion Straughan. Now to a scheme that's using birds from one species as foster parents for others under threat.

9:42The black-footed albatross nests mainly on low-lying islands in Hawaii. These islands are now facing more hurricanes as a result of climate change and could eventually disappear because of rising sea levels. So scientists have been moving black-footed albatross eggs from Midway Atoll in the North Pacific to the nests of another type of albatross on a Mexican island off the west coast of Baja California. My colleague Mayra Anubi has been finding out more. My name is Julio Cesar Hernandez Montoya. I lead the albatross conservation project involving lysan and black-footed albatrosses in Guadalupe Island.

10:21It's a spectacular species. The wingspan is over two metres wide and they have the ability to stay in the air for months, only landing to feed. Some of them can live up to 40 or 50 years and they form very close social bonds with each other. So what's the plan? Well, the simple answer is to encourage them to move and set up a new colony somewhere safer. And they do have the perfect place for them to go, Guadalupe Island off the western coast of Mexico. Guadalupe Island is more than 1 ,200 metres above sea level and experiences far fewer storms and hurricanes than Midway. Dr Montoya has worked in conservation on Guadalupe Island for 20 years.

11:09He's part of an organisation called Grupo de Ecología y Conservación de Islas. Now they've made their island a haven for seabirds by removing 50 ,000 goats and 1 ,000 cats. The residents are very proud of their work, even creating a song about the birds, sung here by Natalia Arroyo. First, they tried to get black-footed adult albatrosses to nest on Guadalupe by setting up replica statues known as decoys on the cliffs and playing recorded courtship sounds.

11:46But that didn't work. They decided to move their eggs instead, taking them from the nests in Midway to new homes in Guadalupe. This precious cargo was taken to the nests of another albatross species called the leysan. Dr Montoya and the team had been watching the colony for some time and were able to identify adult leysan that had lost their own young. We were worried whether the eggs would be accepted by the leysan foster parents. But we were grateful that they were well received and they raised the chicks as if they were their own. The truth is you're actually taking eggs away from another albatross.

12:28Do you feel bad about doing this? Yes, definitely. When you take an egg from an albatross on Midway, you feel the sadness of taking them from the parents. But if you don't, then the next day that egg could be washed away and die. So while you feel uncomfortable, you know it's the best thing you can do for that egg. Every year they moved more eggs and by 2024, 127 black-footed chicks had successfully hatched and flown the nest. You have so many albatross chicks and eggs that are growing. How does it make you feel to see the success of this project? You feel two different emotions. You feel joy because they've survived and will continue their life on the ocean.

13:18But you also feel sadness as you're not sure of their future and if you will see them again. Usually, albatrosses spend their first few years out at sea before returning to the nest. Bruno was the first albatross to return to Guadalupe three years after he left the island. It was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. I don't have children, but I compare it to the day you see your child born. More have been returning every year. And what's really exciting is that some of the young black-footed albatrosses have been observed practicing courtship dances. In Mexico, there is a saying, el papá de los pollitos, which means the father of the chicks.

14:03And I am happy to feel that way. Julio, says Hernandez Montoya, speaking to Mayra Anubi for People Fixing the World, which you can find wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

14:21And still to come on the Happy Pod...

14:28So I usually choose love songs because I feel like the intent is very important, that the animals can feel it somehow. The man charming animals with his music.

14:46If 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.

15:25In the days before smartphones and digital cameras, if you wanted to record moving footage of your loved ones, you had to use cameras with reel-to-reel film or videotape. Decades later, much of this footage is gathering dust in attics, with the machines needed to play it becoming increasingly rare. Back in 2002, a group of archivists decided to start running home movie days, inviting people to dig out old films and have them restored and screened at events around the world. Will Chalk went to one in London to witness the excitement of seeing family footage for the first time in years. Hi, I'm Michael.

16:03I have got some reels that my grandfather shot, mostly of my older brother, because this was before I was born. So I think it's footage of my mom pushing my brother around in a pram, playing on a playground. You think, but you don't know. I've seen some, I've held it up to the light and seen through, so I can definitely spot my mom. And so we'll see if my dad shows up as well, or possibly even my grandfather. I mean, everything is so well preserved, because I've still even got the boxes that have my grandfather's name on them. And I can see that he actually processed them in Texas. So the post date on them is April 21st, 1976.

16:42Is everyone that you're expecting to see today still with us? My dad passed away last year. So if he's on here, that would be quite sort of special just to sort of see him at that time. Well, I think the guy's waiting to look at your film. So I'll leave you to it. My name's Thomason. I'm from Huntley Film Archives. Amand to Home Movies have been about for 100 years now, so we've got this extraordinary breadth of social history, complete unique documents, brings those photo album pictures to life and you see people moving about again and, yeah, it's just magical. I'm Louise Pankhurst. I'm a film archivist and I run London's Home Movie Day, which I hold every year, and it's an international day.

17:22It was started by archivists in the United States back in 2002 when they realised that no-one was giving people advice about the home movies and no-one was really collecting home movies at that time. Well, I think we're going to get to see the first reel of the little stack of reels that I brought with me. Oh, of artistic footsteps. We've got a bit of horror film, this one. Yeah. Oh, there's my mum. Oh, there's my dad. So we're watching footage of your dad, your brother and your mum from just before you were born. Obviously so much has changed. Especially because my dad passed away last year, I reflect a lot on the journey that he went on moving to the States at that time.

18:12This is also really hilarious. Looking at my sibling in the buff in Texas. because, you know, what my dad, you know, he built a family and supported us, and I'm watching him at the beginning of that journey. It's amazing. My name's Shona. I'm watching my dad's old home videos, filmed probably in early 80s in Zimbabwe. I don't even know what to say, because it's good to see my dad. And then, obviously, old family that died ages ago. And this is my husband, obviously. He's not me. He never met my dad. He didn't meet most of my uncles. So now I can actually have to tell him, oh, that's Uncle Solomon there.

19:00So I've heard all the stories, so to see them live in pictures just brings it all to reality. So has your dad passed away then? Yes, he's been gone now 20 years. So what's it like seeing him in his element, moving around, laughing, joking with people? Yeah, young. It's great. It's great. It's weird seeing your parents as young people, isn't it? Yes, like I saw one with my mum and I was like, oh, my mum. Yeah, she was a hottie there. Shona, ending that report by Will Chalk. Do you have any idea how many grapes it takes to make a bottle of wine? Well, it is apparently several hundred. But for each grape, there's also waste, most of which is sent to landfill.

19:44but in the rolling vineyards of the Champagne region of France, Celia Roussin is trying to change that. Jacob Evans has been speaking to her. My company is called Pépis Traisin. It means golden grapes because we're looking at what is golden in the grapes and what we do, we value the waste from the wine streams. So what sort of waste is there from wines? Is it like excess grapes from when they make the wine or is it the skin of the grapes, what is it? So we're talking about the peeps, the seeds, the skin, and sometimes the little wooden parts, leftovers, after pressing the grapes to make wine. And how big an issue is this?

20:24And where is your research focused, or where does your company work? So the issue is actually kind of big, and the opportunity is massive, because this biomass, this vegetal waste, represents 20 % of the overall grape. And to give you perspective, we're talking hundreds of tons in France. And if we had to put all of the wine waste in one city in the world, it would cover the entire city of Rome in Italy. That's incredible, isn't it? There's a huge problem. So what normally happens to this waste? So today this waste is valued for cosmetics or biofuel. It goes to landfills and it can pollute the lands.

21:07and that's a pity because actually this waste has superpowers. It has amazing molecules into it and this is what we're doing. We're using these molecules as superfood for the vineyards as a substitution to pesticides. So you get the waste. What do you do with it then? We work with partners directly in the vineyards and we extract the grapeseed extract that we are using for application on the vineyards to prevent fungal disease or to prevent issues when the crops are going to grow. And has there been big uptake recently? Do the vineyards appreciate it? Yeah, so the company was created two years ago and we started experimentation with more than five domains next year.

21:58it got a major positive answer because there is increasing pressure on regulation. And also we all need solutions, you know, to go out of pesticides. So yeah, the answer is good. So we can help vineyards to grow better and grow in the future. Celia Roussin talking to Jacob Evans. A few weeks ago, we reported on Alaska's Fat Bear Week, which celebrates the brown bears bulking up for hibernation. But it's not only in the frozen north that animals are getting ready for winter. Down in Texas, they just hosted their first Fat Squirrel Week, and Riley Farrell has been finding out more. Everything's bigger in Texas, and that includes squirrels.

22:42Down in the Lone Star State, 16 squirrels squared off for the inaugural Fat Squirrel Week, courtesy of Texas Parks and Wildlife. The goal? Crown the chunkiest champion of hibernation prep. I spoke to park ranger Carol Ann Brannan, who came up with the idea and revealed the result. This year's winner of Fat Squirrel Week was Chunkasaurus Rex from Dinosaur Valley State Park. And how is Chunkasaurus Rex basking in his victory? Chunkasaurus is living his best life these days, post-winning and crowning of being the fattest squirrel, especially now that the cold front has hit Texas. How do contests like these impact visitors' connection with nature?

23:25I grew up in the outdoors. I grew up camping and hiking. It wasn't until I went to college and was exposed to people of more different backgrounds that I realized it's a privilege to be exposed to nature in a way that I don't feel uncomfortable in the outdoors. And I say all that because it's been more apparent since becoming a park ranger that, you know, anything from a simple squirrel can scare a visitor. And so I think these kind of campaigns that show the silliness and expose people to the fact that these critters are just existing out here, just like we exist at home and that we can all exist together.

24:07I have to know, will this competition occur again next year? I think it has to. This year's runners-up? Chunk Norris and Stanley, the Texas tank. Better bulk up next year, fellas, because Fat Squirrel Week is officially a thing. Riley Farrell reporting. Throughout history, there have been stories of people who can talk to the animals, from St Francis of Assisi to Dr Doolittle, but our next tale may have more in common with the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The French singer-songwriter Plume is in demand at zoos and animal sanctuaries around the world for his ability to charm creatures using nothing more than a guitar and his voice.

24:47He's been talking to Nicky Cardwell.

24:54In the corner of the paddock, Plume sits on a chair and starts serenading the elephants. Almost instantly, the entire herd, including a baby, rushes over. He doesn't flinch at the sudden charge, just carries on singing as the huge creatures stop in front of him, swaying and making sounds.

25:16They're completely captivated. But how did Plume discover that he had this very unusual talent? This whole thing began when I read that cows like music, that music is soothing for them. So at the time I was living in the countryside with my grandma, so I thought, why not try it? There are lots of cows around. And so yeah, I did, and it was a very magical experience because they all came running to listen to me and they were like grabbing their heads against me and it was very special.