--:-- Alex Ritson: This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Saks Off 5th is your secret to fashion's most wanted deals at up to 70% off.
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--:-- Alex Ritson: In the shadows and flames, primals will fall and from the blood and ash, new gods will rise. Poppy was never meant to awaken and consequences are devastating. Stirring ancient powers from their slumber, transforming Castile and Kirin in ways the fates couldn't foresee. The great conspirator has returned to stop the primal of death. The gods have awakened, harboring blood-soaked secrets, and every choice can undo everything. The primal of Blood and Bone, perfect for fans of Sarah J Maas and Rebecca Yaros. Available in print, e-book and audio book.
--:-- Alex Ritson: This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Says. I'm Alex Ritson and in this edition...
--:-- Alex Ritson: No, not food and water throughout the day. It's just adrenaline and passion. As the holy month of Ramadan draws to a close, street football tournaments take over streets across Egypt.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: We also hear how a routine sweep with a metal detector led to one of the UK's biggest archaeological discoveries.
--:-- Alex Ritson: It will inspire people, it will kind of generate interest, it will generate enthusiasm and hopefully it will make people say, you know, I've always wanted to go on a dig, I'll go and do it now.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: A family of beavers in the Czech Republic saved the government millions of dollars, building a dam exactly where authorities planned.
--:-- Alex Ritson: And I'm Gary O'Donoghue. Normally you hear me reporting from Washington. This week I'm on the Happy Pod with my own story of perseverance.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: Ramadan is a time of prayer and reflection for Muslims worldwide. In Egypt, they also market using one of their nationwide passions, football.
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: Since the 1960s, street tournaments have spread to nearly every town, involving everyone from children to old men. Some professional footballers take breaks from the training schedules to take part in the communities that first taught them to love the sport, often undeterred by heavy fines imposed by their clubs.
--:-- El-Sayed Mohammed: It's been a lifelong passion for 70-year-old El-Sayed Mohammed, who used to play with a ball made out of old socks.
--:-- El-Sayed Mohammed: I started playing when I was 15 years maybe. Even in 60 I played football with the same age of people in Ramadan, which is very interesting.
--:-- El-Sayed Mohammed: We used to buy a trophy and then we'd go around other districts and then here the people started to participate. We played in the street. You can imagine how wide is the street. Very competitive.
--:-- El-Sayed Mohammed: You cannot feel that you are fasting when you are playing. No water, no food, but it's still very exciting. Every Ramadan, we know that we are going to be fasting. We are going to play the tournament in this Ramadan.
--:-- El-Sayed Mohammed: I got more from the sports journalist Mohamed Khudbar.
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: Whether it's in a small alley, whether it's in a five-a-side pop-a-pitch, you would find it somewhere, and you would find some of it even broadcasted on the live television.
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: It's just a cultural phenomenon that showcases how obsessed Egyptians are with football. decades-long tradition now and it's still going stronger I have to say.
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: And some professional footballers get involved too, risking the anger of their clubs.
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: Yes, let me tell you that some of the professional players for the elite clubs, we're talking about clubs that won the African Champions League multiple times, try and get away with the cheeky game of street football in Ramadan and if they get caught they get heavily fined.
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: And there are special Ramadan football tournaments for former professionals so You would see players who have been all over European football, who won Africa Cup of Nations several times.
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: They would compete against each other and it would be as heated as what they used to have back in the days.
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: It just rekindles their passion towards where they've come through because most Egyptian professional footballers have come through the youth systems.
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: And before that, it was just street football that introduced them to proper clubs, actually.
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: Yeah. And as you say, this happens during the holy month of Ramadan. Ramadan is when Muslims fast.
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: So they're playing these games of street football. Well, you'd have thought when they least wanted to be playing football, when they've not had anything to eat.
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: Yeah, but it's just fashion and adrenaline they feed on, basically.
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: And it starts right after midday. It goes on all the way until midnight or even after midnight.
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: So some of it actually gets played after breaking the fast. Some of it gets played before breaking the fast.
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: But when football is there, when the cheering, the crowds, the attention they get from everyone in the block, I think just makes up for the lack of food and drink for the specific couple of hours they play before breaking their fast.
--:-- El-Sayed Mohammed: Yeah, I can hear the emotion in your voice as you tell me about it.
--:-- El-Sayed Mohammed: Give me your happiest memory of street football.
--:-- El-Sayed Mohammed: My happiest moment in street football is that I shared the five-and-side team with my dad.
--:-- El-Sayed Mohammed: My dad played for decades at street football, especially in Ramadan. And when I started to come through, he was pushing me to play on his 5-5 side team.
--:-- El-Sayed Mohammed: So we shared a couple of these tournaments together. Not that I was as good as him, I have to say, if he's listening to this show.
--:-- El-Sayed Mohammed: Modest team. I have to be honest. Yeah, I have to be honest.
--:-- El-Sayed Mohammed: He was better than me. But it was a happy memory. Sharing it with my friends from the block, friends from uni as well, was a pleasant memory.
--:-- El-Sayed Mohammed: and yeah the sheer amount of competitiveness we've we've shared over this and then we stopped to break our fast and go on again was just phenomenal
--:-- El-Sayed Mohammed: I wish there was more time on my hand now to do more of that but yeah as you get older you get more busy kudos to everyone who enjoyed it up until the age of 50s and 60s massive respect to them because it just shows how passionate they are about the game
--:-- Mohamed Khudbar: Now a story of how a humble beep unearthed 2,000 years of human history.
--:-- Rob Cameron: For many Metro detectorists, the thrill of walking through a field comes from the sheer excitement of discovering treasure not seen by the human eye for many years.
--:-- Rob Cameron: So, imagine the excitement when a man in Yorkshire, northern England, stumbled across an ancient burial site.
--:-- Rob Cameron: From horse harnesses to ornate cauldrons, The artefacts date back around 2,000 years.
--:-- Dr. Keith Emmerich: Archaeologists who've been excavating and studying the items describe it as one of the most significant Iron Age hordes ever found.
--:-- Dr. Keith Emmerich: It will go down in history as one of the most impressive, most spectacular finds of Iron Age material that's ever been found in Britain.
--:-- Dr. Keith Emmerich: It will inspire people, it will kind of generate interest, It'll generate enthusiasm and hopefully it'll make people say, you know, I've always wanted to go on a dig. I'll go and do it now.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: It's really thrilling. In terms of the scale, it's over 800 items, which is a huge number.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: But it's the diversity in the finds. That's 28 tires. There's a cauldron. There a vessel for mixing wine a mirror a lot of horse equipment things like bridal bits the decorations from harnesses beers and lances
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: And there are probably things that we have yet to identify, little tiny fragments. And it really is a treasure trove, one that was found by a metal detectorist.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: Yes, Peter Hedges. And Peter was very involved with the project the whole time.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: He visited the site almost daily during the excavation. He came to the lab often and had lots of great insight and just a huge amount of enthusiasm for everything that was being done and being learned.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: And I understand you also had an enthusiastic team of people helping with this long excavation because of the sheer scale of the project.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: And you yourself, you were digging away in North Yorkshire.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: Yes. So I'm a conservator. So my role is really to help ensure that objects are kept stable, that they don't deteriorate once they're excavated.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: So I was on site, particularly when there needed to be some help with lifting. And then I was also receiving a lot of the objects in the lab and immediately looking at what kinds of environments we needed to put them into to stop corrosion.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: Some of them were so encased in mud that we couldn't tell what they were. So doing x-rays, doing small amounts of cleaning to help give us information to do analysis of the materials.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: Why is the ancient world so fascinating? And what about this discovery and this excavation can really contribute to our knowledge of it?
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: I think probably the ancient world fascinates people for lots of different reasons.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: Speaking for myself, it's the sense of connection through the past, seeing the ways in which our forebearers were similar to us and also the ways that they were different from us.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: I find that just so enchanting and exciting in the same way that modern humans are interested in vehicles and cars and there's an element of conspicuous consumption around that.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: We see that in the past. We see how you would express your wealth in the forms of these wagons and vehicles and the trappings of the ponies.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: And that's just really neat to see those connections that stretch over 2000 years.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: It's like the modern day Lamborghini or the modern day Tesla.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: Absolutely.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: And Emily, as an American living in the UK researching what is proving to be a cornerstone of British history, why is this interesting to someone of another nationality or another culture?
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: Well, we're always drawn to the richness of archaeology, these big spectacular finds, Tutankhamen's tomb.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: And in this case, it is again that richness.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: And then for me, being an American and having moved to England relatively recently before this find, it's been an opportunity to grow, to increase my knowledge base.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: And there's been such an amazing team and everybody's been so generous and so collaborative.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: What I'm also really excited about now is we've been able to share the news.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: You know, for two years, we were somewhat working in secrecy because of the whole process.
--:-- Professor Emily Williams: Now that we can share it with the broader world, the insights others will have and the questions that they will ask that will inform the research and take it in new directions is going to be really wonderful as well.
--:-- Bohumil Fisher: This is lodge, beaver lodge.
--:-- Bohumil Fisher: Oh, OK. Yeah? You see? Oh, I see. You call this a beaver lodge.
--:-- Bohumil Fisher: So the beavers have made this? Yeah. Why? What do they use it for?
--:-- Bohumil Fisher: It's their house. Oh, so this is where they live? Yeah. Aha.
--:-- Bohumil Fisher: This is safe because the entrance is under the water.
--:-- Bohumil Fisher: I see, OK. And is that also why they make the dams as well, to protect their areas where they live? Yeah, it is.
--:-- Bohumil Fisher: This is the channel, and here is the dam. And this is the first beaver dam. I think it's more than one metre.
--:-- Bohumil Fisher: Yeah, that's quite a lot of work.
--:-- Rob Cameron: The meadows here are now waterlogged. There are little freshwater pools which will soon be home to hundreds of frogs and the stream is now pure and free of sediment, creating a haven for the endangered stone crayfish which Bohemil soon expects to see in these wetlands.
--:-- Rob Cameron: In fact, these were the three main goals of a project first conceived in 2018 but that got, well, bogged down in a dispute between two state enterprises over which one of them would own the land.
--:-- Rob Cameron: Then, two years later, came the beavers and solved the problem for them, saving the Czech taxpayer about a million pounds.
--:-- Rob Cameron: I think this is a beautiful example of what happens when man leaves nature to its own devices.
--:-- Rob Cameron: Naturally, people had a lot of fun with it. the idea of beavers bypassing bureaucrats and so on.
--:-- Rob Cameron: And of course, that's partly down to the way the story was spiced up by journalists.
--:-- Rob Cameron: But ultimately, in the end, anyone who read it could see how beavers were able to create something so perfect, so brilliant, so positive.
--:-- Bohumil Fisher: Bohemil Fisher appears unfazed by the creative embellishments in some of the reporting.
--:-- Bohumil Fisher: One paper claims the beavers had built these 20 dams overnight.
--:-- Bohumil Fisher: For him, the story of the Burdi beavers has been fantastic PR, both for this wild area of forest and rolling hills and for this industrious nocturnal animal, which many wrongly assume is a pest.
--:-- Rob Cameron: Rob Cameron reporting from the Burdi Protected Nature Reserve.
--:-- Alex Ritson: Coming up in this podcast...
--:-- Alex Ritson: Bringing that to the front and bringing it into the classroom. A lot of people then understand and they learn with practical engagement. And a dartboard is exactly that.
--:-- Devin Peterson: A former darts world champion in South Africa is taking aim at improving math skills.
--:-- Katie Smith: We'll be right back.
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--:-- Dr. Whitney Brown: According to a nationwide survey conducted by GeneSight, nearly 9 in 10 Americans who've been diagnosed with depression or anxiety believe that mental health medications are somewhat or very effective.
--:-- Dr. Whitney Brown: However, despite that belief, more than half of those individuals say they have avoided taking medication due to concerns about potential side effects.
--:-- Dr. Whitney Brown: That's why Dr. Whitney Brown, a family and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner based in Alabama, often recommends genetic testing to our patients as part of their treatment journey.
--:-- Dr. Whitney Brown: Dr. Brown explains.
--:-- Dr. Whitney Brown: As part of my treatment plan, I offer the GeneSight test, which analyzes how a patient's genes may influence how they metabolize or respond to certain mental health medications.
--:-- Dr. Whitney Brown: It gives me insights and takes out some of the guesswork that can be associated with prescribing them.
--:-- Kerry Allen: The idea of casting off to sea can be quite exciting, tapping into that call for freedom and adventure.
--:-- Kerry Allen: In China, the story of a 10-year-old boy swept out into the ocean has captivated social media after he was rescued by local fishermen.
--:-- Kerry Allen: His incredible ordeal is sparking comparisons to The Life of Pi, the fictional tale of a young Indian boy who survives 227 days stranded on a lifeboat in the vast Pacific Ocean.
--:-- Kerry Allen: Our China media analyst Kerry Allen has the story.
--:-- Kerry Allen: the shouts you can hear in this clip are from a 10 year old boy who's been on quite an adventure
--:-- Kerry Allen: A little boy known as a liang had gone fishing last friday in chiling which is a coastal village in south china's hainan province
--:-- Kerry Allen: he'd been hoping to catch some squid and not telling his parents had taken out a little green rowing boat in the hope of being able to catch some
--:-- Kerry Allen: only he'd fallen and sleep and had drifted out to sea with no food, water or protective clothing.
--:-- Kerry Allen: Fortunately, this is a story with a happy ending.
--:-- Kerry Allen: Last Saturday, nearly 24 hours after Al-Yang had gone missing, he was spotted at sea by a fisherman called Little Yang.
--:-- Kerry Allen: Yang was 10 nautical miles out from the city of Sanya, which is roughly 30 kilometres from Al-Yang's home village, and he spotted the little green rowing boat.
--:-- Kerry Allen: At first he thought it was an extreme sports enthusiast until he heard the boy crying.
--:-- Kerry Allen: He told media when we could hear each other clearly he burst into tears.
--:-- Kerry Allen: He said that he'd gone out to play and fish but had accidentally been washed away by the waves.
--:-- Kerry Allen: He drifted at sea all night and couldn't find his way home.
--:-- Kerry Allen: Fortunately he was okay.
--:-- Kerry Allen: He had some sunburn from prolonged sun exposure and was obviously very hungry when he was rescued but otherwise has managed to survive unscathed.
--:-- Kerry Allen: His father Mr Huang has said that he's relieved to have his son home.
--:-- Kerry Allen: Local rescuers have said that if he had been out at sea much longer, he might have suffered sunstroke and been dehydrated.
--:-- Kerry Allen: One rescuer told the Global Times newspaper that the sea had been windy and rough on Friday night, and even an adult would have struggled to survive in such conditions, let alone a child.
--:-- Kerry Allen: People have called the story a real-life version of the life of Pi, referring to the 2001 novel by Yan Martel.
--:-- Kerry Allen: Some on Chinese social media have attributed Al-Yang's survival to his being a member of the Tanker People.
--:-- Kerry Allen: They're an ethnic group in South China that are also known as boat people because they traditionally lived on junks in coastal parts of China.
--:-- Kerry Allen: They're good at swimming and often involved with fishing and breeding.
--:-- Kerry Allen: Media have warned though that Al-Yang's story is a cautionary tale.
--:-- Kerry Allen: The People's Daily newspaper says that it's a reminder that parents need to keep a close eye on their children.
--:-- Kerry Allen: But other papers have noted that Al-Yang was well known for being mischievous and it had not been his first time taking a boat out to sea by himself.
--:-- Kerry Allen: He's told media that he's just disappointed that he didn't catch any fish.
--:-- Kerry Allen: Our China media analyst, Kerry Allen.
--:-- Devin Peterson: These days, darts is earning serious recognition as a global sport, thanks in recent years to the teenager Luke Littler, who recently won the World Championships, aged just 17.
--:-- Devin Peterson: The sport is now expanding worldwide, with official tours in Australia, Scandinavia, North America, Asia and Africa.
--:-- Devin Peterson: And in South Africa, it's even being used as a tool to teach young people maths.
--:-- Devin Peterson: That initiative was started by Devin Peterson, a nine-time world championship player from South Africa.
--:-- Devin Peterson: He spoke to Katie Smith about his mission to grow the sport across the continent.
--:-- Devin Peterson: It's still in its infancy if you compare it to the UK and obviously Europe as well as US.
--:-- Devin Peterson: But I think that the ability and having almost a blueprint of what they've achieved globally, we can quickly adopt that into our system.
--:-- Devin Peterson: And you realize and understand exactly what is needed.
--:-- Devin Peterson: And I don't feel as though from a performance perspective that we're that far away.
--:-- Devin Peterson: I have the Devin Peterson Darts Academy.
--:-- Devin Peterson: We're launching the International School Darts League this year as well.
--:-- Devin Peterson: We're closer, closer to that.
--:-- Devin Peterson: And then obviously also with the education side.
--:-- Devin Peterson: So the myth has always been darts is great for maths.
--:-- Devin Peterson: We're bringing that forward now by creating dartboard maths, bringing that to the front and bringing it into the classroom because a lot of people then understand and they learn with practical engagement.
--:-- Devin Peterson: And a dartboard is exactly that.
--:-- Devin Peterson: We've now created one that fits on your desk with a magnetized movement.
--:-- Devin Peterson: So now you're literally creating a fun engagement tool that centers around the sport but teaches you maths.
--:-- Devin Peterson: So how do you make maths fun?
--:-- Devin Peterson: numbers is all about memory mathematics is all about memory but what if i told you that we could teach maths through a movement and that movement is on a dartboard
--:-- Devin Peterson: so when you you're showing a pattern for example if i asked you what was your per number you'd almost remember it as a pattern rather than the number sequence which is exactly what dartboard maths is in general
--:-- Devin Peterson: because when you're asking a dart player uh finish one six seven for me they'll tell you it's treble treble 20, triple 19 bullseye
--:-- Devin Peterson: We don't even need to tell you what the answer, the numbers are, because we know that by pattern.
--:-- Devin Peterson: Now if I can teach a kid from the age of let say four to the age of nine and create a champion math through the dartboard math by the time they get to the age of 10 and 11 we literally looking at Luke Littler coming through at the age of 12 13, which will change the way of the sport.
--:-- Devin Peterson: Number one, number two is confidence breeds competence.
--:-- Devin Peterson: So they'll go into the, into the classroom, not being shy, not being fearful and have number anxiety that cripples most of, of the world right now.
--:-- Devin Peterson: So we need to remove that number anxiety through our sport.
--:-- Devin Peterson: and what better sport to do it than having it as dartboard maths.
--:-- Devin Peterson: I mean, I'm sold. I'm learning so much from you right now.
--:-- Devin Peterson: So we've talked about the maths side of it.
--:-- Devin Peterson: I think the other thing that a lot of people really engage with when watching darts and enjoying the darts is, of course, the atmosphere, isn't it?
--:-- Devin Peterson: And that's something that I think any venue or any competition wants to bring that.
--:-- Devin Peterson: And I'm sure you saw a couple of months ago, there was an African qualifier in Kenya where Vuvuzelas were brought out and the crowds were brilliant.
--:-- Devin Peterson: So in terms of that being translatable to African audiences, that feels like a no brainer.
--:-- Devin Peterson: Yeah, 100 percent.
--:-- Devin Peterson: And that that specific event that you were talking about, that's one that we hosted.
--:-- Devin Peterson: And when we hosted it there, it was well received.
--:-- Devin Peterson: I mean, like you said, it's the first time we ever had a Vuvuzela at a Dart event, which is fantastic.
--:-- Devin Peterson: But the crowd itself, they've welcomed it in such a big way.
--:-- Devin Peterson: And I mean, the finalists, which was Cameron Keraleson, who won, but Peter Washuri, he's from the Kenyan mountains.
--:-- Devin Peterson: So he's a villager that got to the finals and the money that he made that weekend certainly set him up for the year as well.
--:-- Devin Peterson: So we kind of make sure that the sport, obviously the theme continues that we always talk about.
--:-- Devin Peterson: There's no barriers in the sport, developing a platform and getting all of these things ready.
--:-- Devin Peterson: But I think that when you actually implement it and you see the people that it affects and the lives that it changes, the sport itself is almost as the sport of the people.
--:-- Devin Peterson: I can't see it ever slowing down.
--:-- Devin Peterson: And I think that the next five, ten years, we're going to see loads more people from different parts.
--:-- Devin Peterson: I mean, I think that it's going to open up more doors.
--:-- Devin Peterson: It's going to introduce more rock stars to the sport and just bring cultures together and show how united the sport is.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: Each year, the Royal Television Society hosts the Television Journalism Awards, celebrating the most prestigious and changemakers in the British journalism space.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: The BBC's Gary O'Donoghue won in the Breaking News category this year for his reporting on the Trump assassination attempt for BBC News.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: In his acceptance speech, he said that his disability hasn't held him back.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: You know, when I started out in this business, it was a pretty tough thing for disabled people.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: I was told by the head of journalism that a blind person couldn't be a reporter, simply couldn't do it.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: Not on.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: And that has been a difficult journey.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: And I want to say just this one last thing.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: All those parents out there with disabled children, all those disabled students at journalism schools up and down the country, it can be done even when the naysayers and they still exist are around it can be done don't let them stand in the way never take no for an answer
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: Thank you to the judges thank you to the this is fantastic thank you very much
--:-- Alex Ritson: I spoke to gary who this week has been made the bbc's chief North America correspondent after reporting on the US for the past decade.
--:-- Alex Ritson: He was the first disabled person to be posted as a foreign correspondent and throughout his career has overcome many barriers to get to where he is today.
--:-- Alex Ritson: Here on The Happy Pod we thought his accomplishments were well worth celebrating.
--:-- Alex Ritson: We all know there's a bit of luck in these sorts of things and you've got to take that moment and make sure that you you maximize it.
--:-- Alex Ritson: Lynn my heart was absolutely thudding, I've got to tell you, all night in my chest.
--:-- Alex Ritson: And we were on air for five or six hours.
--:-- Alex Ritson: And I think, you know, I mean, that interview was shared 300 million times.
--:-- Alex Ritson: And so you kind of know you're having an impact when the numbers look like that.
--:-- Alex Ritson: I think the other thing I was very glad about, and you know, and this was just a consequence of it, is that getting an accurate account out of what had sort of happened, porting those facts quickly, sounds It was very grand, I know, but I do think we helped the way the country processed that at the time.
--:-- Alex Ritson: We don't often refer to your blindness on air.
--:-- Alex Ritson: Most people would think of being blind, particularly the situations you face on a daily basis, as a disadvantage.
--:-- Alex Ritson: I've known you for many years.
--:-- Alex Ritson: You have this incredible way of seeing the positive side.
--:-- Alex Ritson: And you've talked about how actually sometimes you even regard your blindness as an advantage, as a positive.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: Yeah, I think so.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: I mean, look, most of the time, my blindness I regard as an inconvenience, frantically trying to keep up reading stuff, you know, processing information.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: That all takes a little bit of extra time and a little bit of extra effort and a little bit of extra help.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: But there are also times, I think, when, you know, as a blind person, you, you know, for whatever reasons, you're a bit less threatening.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: It means sometimes you get more of a hearing when you're talking to quote-unquote ordinary people.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: Now, even in most developed countries, can I say, 70% of blind people of working age are out of work.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: They don't have a job.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: So I'm one of the very, very lucky ones, which I remind myself of each morning when I get up.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: And if you take the global south and less developed countries, the position of blind people is incredibly difficult.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: You know, they are often hidden away, seen sometimes by their villages, communities, societies as a burden, as not really able to contribute.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: The one thing really, really, is those emails, those text messages, those comments from people all over the world who say, you know, that it matters that they can see someone in my position.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: And I hear that all the time.
--:-- Gary O'Donoghue: And that is what really keeps me going, that I can reflect to some degree these things are possible for the three, four hundred million blind people around this planet.
--:-- Alex Ritson: Our new chief North America correspondent, Gary O'Donoghue.
--:-- Alex Ritson: And that's all from The Happy Pod for now.
--:-- Alex Ritson: We'd love to hear from you about any acts of kindness you've received from a stranger.
--:-- Alex Ritson: As ever, the address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.
--:-- Alex Ritson: And remember, you can now watch some of our interviews on YouTube.
--:-- Alex Ritson: Just search for The Happy Pod.
--:-- Alex Ritson: This edition was produced by Harry Bly and Ella Bicknell.
--:-- Alex Ritson: It was mixed by Sharmini Ashton Griffiths.
--:-- Alex Ritson: The editor is Karen Martin.
--:-- Alex Ritson: I'm Alex Ritson.
--:-- Alex Ritson: Until next time, goodbye.
--:-- Tristan Redman: I'm Tristan Redman in London and this is The Global Story
--:-- Tristan Redman: Every weekday we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet
--:-- Tristan Redman: Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts