--:-- Moira Alderson: This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
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--:-- 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.
--:-- Moira Alderson: This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Moira Alderson and in this edition...
--:-- [Audio transitions to a conversation]
--:-- Moira Alderson: B-bag, you're finally back. We've missed you so much.
--:-- Kerry Allen: Joy in China as a much-loved giant rodent is found after months on the run. How a tiny plant is breathing new life into cities by turning buildings from grey to green. Well, it's a very special tiny little plant. But it does so much for the world. It's called the pioneer, the pioneer of life.
--:-- Moira Alderson: The woman who's become a world champion of building flat pack furniture. It's the end result. It's something I've been proud of, really, when you've done it. A lot of people, they struggle with it. But I never let nothing defeat me.
--:-- Kerry Allen: And a taxi driver who became a star of The Lion King reveals he succeeded in musicals by hiding the fact he's partially deaf. Since I decided that I'm going to speak about it, the weight of my shoulder has been amazing. As Mufasa says, I remember who I am.
--:-- Moira Alderson: We start with a happy ending to a runaway drama that's gripped animal lovers in China. At the start of April, three capybaras broke out of Juyubei Nature Reserve in Yangzhou.
--:-- Kerry Allen: If you've never seen one, they're the world's largest rodents, with adults growing to over a metre long and 50 centimetres tall, and are often said to resemble giant guinea pigs.
--:-- Moira Alderson: And while two were soon found, Doubao, or beanbag, remained on the run, sparking wanted posters and mounting fears for her safety. But as Kerry Allen explains, she's finally made it home.
--:-- Kerry Allen: Beanbag, you're finally back. We've missed you so much. This is a message that was posted on Tuesday by the Zhuyubei Nature Reserve in the East China city of Yangzhou.
--:-- Moira Alderson: Beanbag, or Doubao as the female capybara is known in Chinese, had gone missing on the 3rd of April, and people in China have been captivated online over whether she would eventually be found.
--:-- Kerry Allen: Local media have even shared wanted posters with a mugshot of bean bag, encouraging people to carry out search parties. She's a one-year-old capybara, weighing roughly 21 kilograms, and had last been seen on security camera at the reserve staging an on-foot escape with two of her friends, Bazong and Dordor, whose English names are Overlord and Dodge.
--:-- Moira Alderson: Overlord, the leader of the pack, had smashed a wooden window in their enclosure and had led the great escape. He was caught first, casually swimming in the swamp next to the park. And Dodge was found shortly after, having played hide and seek with members of animal control at a nearby canal.
--:-- Kerry Allen: But beanbag had been nowhere to be found, and so people had feared the worst. But in the middle of May, about 50 days after she'd gone missing, droppings were found.
--:-- Moira Alderson: And so staff at the Nature Reserve put out pleas for locals to help find her. We've had a runaway capybara. She literally ran off by herself, but she's also amphibious. She's a protected animal. If you see her, take a picture, tell us where you were and at what time you remember seeing her.
--:-- Kerry Allen: We know that beanbag is in the swamp area and the surrounding reserve, but because there are a lot of reeds, we've still not been able to capture her. She's easily scared. We've tried using food to lure her and unmanned machines. If you try to grab her, she's easily startled and will run in the direction of the river.
--:-- Moira Alderson: On Tuesday, two whole months after Beanbag went missing, she was finally found and there was huge delight on Chinese social media.
--:-- Kerry Allen: Beanbag had walked into a humane trap set by searchers and activated a gate which had closed behind her. Media report that rather than showing signs of distress, she appeared slightly chubbier from her two-month wander in the wilderness and had gained over a kilo in weight during her adventures.
--:-- Moira Alderson: Capybaras, part of the Cavey family, are highly sociable animals. I should know, I own guinea pigs. And so media have reported that there's been a happy reunion among beanbag, bazong and doodoo.
--:-- Kerry Allen: The zoo has now added secure mesh to prevent the three friends from escaping again and it's hoping that they can go back to enjoying the docile and slow-paced lifestyle they had before.
--:-- Moira Alderson: I mean, adventures are one thing, but that lifestyle doesn't sound too bad to me. Our China media analyst and guinea pig owner, Kerry Allen.
--:-- Kerry Allen: Now to an amazing invention that can make cities greener, cleaner and healthier to live in, all by using a tiny, often overlooked plant. When we think of urban green spaces, we usually think of parks or gardens filled with trees, grasses and sometimes flowers.
--:-- Moira Alderson: But now two entrepreneurs in the Netherlands have found a way to make the buildings themselves green, literally, using a special type of concrete that grows moss.
--:-- Kerry Allen: Our reporter Katie Soloveld spoke to the founders of Respire, Alkeble and Ardil Arus.
--:-- Ardil Arus: So why moss? I think moss is overlooked. Moss is a very special tiny little plant, but it does so much for the world. It's a very special drought resilient species that can basically enable other lives to flourish and to contribute. It's called a pioneer, the pioneer of life.
--:-- Kerry Allen: So why moss in general? That would be my answer. Why moss for us? It's because it's very easily grown on a vertical surface, which makes it very special. And for us, greening vertically is very important because the horizontal square meters in cities, they are too expensive and too scarce to actually make green.
--:-- Ardil Arus: And all those vertical surfaces, we can just grow mosses on top of it and make them contribute and actually live and breathe. I mean, the question really is why not moss at the end of the day.
--:-- Kerry Allen: No moss, exactly. I should have started with that. Yeah. So what is moss concrete? How does it work? Basically, it's a concrete recipe which invites mosses to come and live on it.
--:-- Ardil Arus: So if you take regular concrete, it's basically a dead static material. It's quite polluting. There's a lot of CO2 emissions going with it. So what we strive to do is to actually reverse that, make concrete not static, make it alive.
--:-- Kerry Allen: And now we grow mosses on top of it, which allows us to actually make buildings live, make buildings breathe, and eventually cities. Make cities breathe. It's a good tagline. And so obviously this is to do with breathing What are the benefits that it brings to an urban area We specifically focus on breathing And this is something cities have actually forgot But it also super hot and air polluted And this air, it's air that we breathe in 20,000 times a day.
--:-- Ardil Arus: And the reason for this air pollution, you can go two routes, but it's probably the combination of a lot of traffic and a total lack of nature. and we're trying to actually prevent or solve that second problem. So we're cleaning the air. Does it bring any other benefits? Yeah, a lot. Too many to name now.
--:-- Kerry Allen: There's a lot more going on with moss. Of course, I think one of the first things that we should note is the amount of biodiversity it increases. So having a piece of moss, not only having a piece of moss, but it's around 20,000 other species that will live in it. And those are microorganisms which are just as important as the bees living around it.
--:-- Ardil Arus: And then, of course, cooling down cities. And then, of course, there are things like noise reduction and reducing runoff of rainwater. Are there actually any drawbacks apart from general maintenance that you need to do for these walls? I think if you compare it with grey alternatives like brick and mortar or steel constructions, then it is a little bit more complex than the materials that have been used for hundreds of years by now.
--:-- Kerry Allen: That said, if you relate it to other urban greenery alternatives, then it's actually extremely simple compared to those. I think the other huge advantage is the fact that you can basically use this material when building the thing that you want to build. So like a tree having leaves, you could actually create a building having moss. You know, it's a living building. So it's entirely different from any other systems, which is always exterior.
--:-- Ardil Arus: How does it feel to see your project being used on so many different areas, buildings, countries now? Yeah, it feels great. I don't know what to say. It's being able to go from a small lab skill to something that is bigger than that is already like ecstasy.
--:-- Kerry Allen: In our case, there was this common denominator that we like to solve this entrepreneurial puzzle with something that's actually beneficial to the world and to the environment that we live in. Keeping that sustainability mindset whenever you go and do entrepreneurship, I think that's the way to actually naturally contribute to the world because then it means that it will never run out.
--:-- Moira Alderson: Coming up in this podcast. Holly Gibbs has been finding out more about the world champion of flat packing.
--:-- Holly Gibbs: We all know the pain of putting together flat pack furniture but have you ever put a bedside table together in nine minutes and 33 seconds hayley mccauley has i just opened the toolbox i tipped it upside down and when i'd finished there was nothing left over i'd done it that quick i managed to pack my toolbox away as well in my my business i use a pink drill so i could have done it probably in about five minutes if I'd have used my drill, but I had to use a screwdriver.
--:-- Hayley McCauley: Hayley, who is 33, from Wigan in the north of England, has become the first person to be crowned the Flatpak World Champion at the inaugural Flatpak World Championships in London.
--:-- Holly Gibbs: The contest saw eight competitors take part in two rounds, making a bookshelf and a bedside table. So we did, It was the first four building a Billy Buck case. I was in the second round of four. And from them two, the quickest in them two, went to the final and we built a two-draw side unit.
--:-- Hayley McCauley: I put all the bits in first and then just throw it together. At the odd time, I will have to glance at instructions if it's a new build. But more often than not, I don't need them.
--:-- Holly Gibbs: There was a lot of spectators as well. On the day, everybody was. They were really good. For Hayley, she loves the sense of achievement. It's the end result. It's something that I'm proud of, really, when you've done it. A lot of people, they struggle with it, but a few of my friends, I've said to them, I said, I'll show you how to do it. I said, you'll be so chuffed with the end result.
--:-- Hayley McCauley: And for me, it's what you build in the end. I never let nothing defeat me. So what's the secret? Hayley, who runs a small business building flat pack furniture, explains.
--:-- Holly Gibbs: Separate all your screws, separate your screws and make sure you read things twice. Because once you put a big screw through something, what's not supposed to be, it's done with.
--:-- Moira Alderson: Coming up in this podcast. The refugees helping themselves and their host country by turning rubbish into new products.
--:-- Myra Anubi: I've come into the workshop and I'm just standing at the centre. I can see probably about 20 people and lots of sewing machines. Everybody's hard at work. One of the artisans, Claudine, is enthusiastically sewing away.
--:-- Claudine: Now, already I can see there's plastic spread out on her table that would have been used to package milk, long-life milk, actually. So she says she's going to use these, and she's going to make mfuko, your supermarkets, a bag that you would use at the supermarket.
--:-- Myra Anubi: I watch as she neatly attaches 10 used plastic milk bags together to form the inner waterproof lining of the bag. She will then use a brightly colored African fabric called kitenge to make the outer part of the bag.
--:-- Claudine: Claudine was born to refugee parents from Burundi. Now she's had to move many times to many different countries before eventually ending up in Malawi with her husband back in 2002.
--:-- Myra Anubi: So she says she's here with her family and four children. When you moved here, how easy was it to get work or money? So she says when they moved here, it was hard to find work and they relied a lot on what the UNHCR was providing them, but they would give them enough for maybe two months, maybe three months, so life was really hard.
--:-- Claudine: Claudine tells me that what she got wasn't enough to sustain her and her family but things started to shape up when she joined Kibebe back in 2013.
--:-- Myra Anubi: What kind of impact has this made on your life She says all her children have been able to go to school they didn have school clothes They now can you know get clothes that they need And it made a difference in her life
--:-- Maria Chiponde: Maria Chiponde, the manager, who's right here. Now tell me more about Kibebe.
--:-- Maria Chiponde: When we started recycling, it started off as a creative idea. How can we make things unique? What can we use to replace high-cost materials, right? And then it became into this thing by repurposing, by reusing, by practicing zero waste, that it's become part of who we are.
--:-- Myra Anubi: On average, in a good month, one of our artisans is able to earn at least 80,000 Malawi kwata. 80,000, so that's almost $50. Yeah. Currently, we are working with about 26 artisans. This is both male and female, 90% of whom are refugee.
--:-- Maria Chiponde: We teach them our products and they start to generate a decent income. I wander around the workshop meeting other artisans. A cheerful man called Nahimana from Burundi catches my attention.
--:-- Nahimana: Now, it's interesting because I've seen one of these rattles in a shop somewhere in Nelongwe. Yes. And you're telling me you're the one who made this. Yeah.
--:-- Myra Anubi: Just to describe. So the powdered coffee tin is what he's using. He's also placing inside them to make that noise the bottle caps that you would find on water bottles. and that's what makes this sound.
--:-- Nahimana: There is now a face of... It's a pig. It's a pig. Oh, wow, look at that. Lovely. Do your children play with these? What's it? One a cheza now. One a penda kapsa, they like it.
--:-- Myra Anubi: Oh, this is nice. Nahimana says Kibebe has given him much more than just financial security. Yes, himini badirishia. When he was just staying in the camp, his thoughts, you know, it really affected his mental health and he was low.
--:-- Nahimana: And he says being at Kibebe, they took him with open arms and they've helped to teach him how he can change his own life by the things he's doing.
--:-- Moira Alderson: Philip Brown has had quite the career change. He went from driving buses in London's West End to starring in some of its biggest musicals.
--:-- Philip Brown: I just decided I'm going to have to learn to work with this disability at any cost because I really want to sing and I want to do this. And I just decided if I don't talk about it ever again, it's not going to control me. So I never, ever spoke about my deafness to anybody.
--:-- Moira Alderson: If I panic, my ear, my bad ear goes crazy. It makes a lot of noise. But if I'm calm, my ear is really quiet. and I just had to compose myself, let the pianist play, and I just had to make it work.
--:-- Philip Brown: And then eventually I had my final audition. There was no comeback next week, so I was really disappointed. I went back thinking, I think I'm done. I think that's it. I think it's over. Anyway, two days later, I'm in the garage. I'm just about to drive out of the garage, and my phone rings. I answered the phone and I said, hello, Philip. It's Disney.
--:-- Moira Alderson: And I said, yes. He says, we're going to offer you the job in The Lion King. and I went, yes! Well, thank you very much. It was absolutely lovely. Thank you. So I've got the part as first cover to King Mufasa.
--:-- Philip Brown: I remember going to work on the first day. There was a joy that I've never felt in any musical I've ever done since that day. And I remember sitting there for a little while. All I was thinking about is, I should be at work. And I thought, Phil, you've got to let it go.
--:-- Moira Alderson: And then they started singing the song. from the day we arrived and my head was exploding and the woman was there i'm there my hair was standing on my i was like oh my lord this is like the movie this is insane and then finally the day comes i'm sitting there at home phone call comes in philip the guy who plays Mufasa, he's away for about three weeks, you're going to be taking the role of King Mufasa for three weeks
--:-- Philip Brown: Mufasa is the father of Simba and he is the king of the Lion King one of the things all I was thinking about is I pray to God that I can hear the music that was one thing that was always in the back of my head the deathless never leaves you and I was thinking I can do this, I can do this and I put in all the uniform and I literally felt like the king and I started to walk up Pride Rock as Mufasa and I thought, I'm going to own this.
--:-- Moira Alderson: And then at the end of the song, it goes, In the circle, the circle of life. And then it goes, And everyone goes, And for me, it was like a flashback of the school gates, church, everything. all this stuff just started flashing and I thought, I'm deaf, I'm dyslexic, and I heard that doctor going, you'll never sing again, and now I'm Mufasa.
--:-- Philip Brown: It is almost like you sort of got your life back, all these rejections, all the times where you didn't fit in, and here you are at the top of Pride Rock.
--:-- Moira Alderson: Do you still question yourself now? I do, and to be honest, this is the first time I ever spoke. I've never spoken about being deaf in one ear in the entire 24 years I've been in musical theatre, because I always felt like I wouldn't get the job or they're going to feel like I'm going to let them down because I'm not going to be able to hear the music.
--:-- Philip Brown: But it's only recently I decided to own it. And I think some of my friends will hear this story and be like, no way. I've known Phil for years. There's no way he's deaf in one ear. But since I decided that I'm going to speak about it, the weight of my shoulder has been amazing. But now, as Mufasa says, I remember who I am.
--:-- Moira Alderson: Philip Brown. And that's all from the Happy Pod for now. But if, like Debbie, you have a story you think we should cover, please do get in touch. The address, as ever, is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. And you can now watch some of our interviews on YouTube. Just search for The Happy Pod.
--:-- Asma Khalid: America is changing. And so is the world. But what's happening in America isn't just a cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
--:-- Tristan Redman: I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. I'm Tristan Redman in London. And this is The Global Story. Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection, where the world and America meet. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
