The Happy Pod: The joy of chasing a giant cheese

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Oliver Conway: You're listening to The Happy Part from the BBC World Service. Hello, I'm Oliver Conway. And in this edition, it's legendary it's about life about life in a as a whole you know cheese is life i find out why the ancient sport of cheese rolling is so popular the man who saved a stranger's life gets a special visit when an email popped in it was just it was like all my christmases quite seriously had come at once it was a beautiful moment and it said dear donor thank you so much for the gift of your stem The creator of a therapy project which has spread across the globe. And... The nun who's taken the internet by storm with her beatboxing. We start in south-west England, where I went to watch the ancient sport of cheese rolling.

Oliver Conway: The annual event sees people throw themselves down an incredibly steep hill after a three-kilogram wheel of double Gloucester. The cheese, which can reach speeds of up to 100 kilometres an hour, is won by whoever gets to the bottom first. The tradition dates back centuries, taking place even in wartime when a wooden replica was used because of rationing. And today it's more popular than ever.

Oliver Conway: Well it certainly looks steep. I'm at the top of Cooper's Hill where the first cheese is about to be rolled down and a couple of dozen competitors are getting ready to chase after it. This has been going on for at least 200 years, possibly much longer. It's thought to have started as a pagan ritual, a way to protect grazing rights, or even just a chance for young men to show off. And once again, it's attracted a huge crowd. Thousands of people are lining the hill.

Ariana: I am called Ariana, and I'm from Barcelona, Spain. Why have you come here today?

Ariana: Well, we love cheese. But yeah, I don't know, it seemed like something really British. We don't have that in Spain, so we really wanted to experience this.

Oliver Conway: What country are you from?

Ariana: China.

Oliver Conway: When you see an event like this, people running down a hill after cheese, what do you think?

Simon Mende: It's great fun to be part of it although personally i wouldn't like encourage anyone to do it we are from erding close to munich yeah we came to see the cheese rolling because our friend sam he's having his bachelor's party here but why cheese rolling it's legendary it's about life about life in a as a whole you know because it's you're so close to death But at the same time, not. Cheese is life. Cheese is life.

Oliver Conway: Simon Mende from Texas. What do you think looking down?

Simon Mende: Craziness. It is steeper than I thought. Steeper than I thought.

Oliver Conway: I've always wanted to do it. It's risky for sure, but that's what life is about.

Ben: I'm Ben. I'm from Cleveland, Ohio. I'm here to roll and win some cheese.

Oliver Conway: My name is Martin. I'm from Latvia. Two days ago, I heard about this. And I just think, yeah, I need to try this. I don't know why, but I need to try.

Oliver Conway: So you're going to do it?

Martin: Yeah, I'm going to do it now.

Gem Wakeman: One to be ready, two to be steady, three for the cheese, four you go.

Oliver Conway: My name's Gem Wakeman, master of salmon as a Cuba's Hill cheese roll. Why do you think people come from all over the world to watch a cheese being rolled down a hill?

Gem Wakeman: I think they come to see this mad English tradition we got going, because a lot of our old traditions are a bit mad, but they reckon this is the worst one, the most dangerous one, the maddest one, so I don't really know.

Oliver Conway: It's been going at least 200 years. Plus. Like, through Covid, I still had to roll the cheese in the morning. As long as the cheese's rolled every year, the tradition keeps going, so the tradition's never been broken, so it just keeps going and going.

Gem Wakeman: You've run it. I'm not going to run it. Describe for me what it's like.

Gem Wakeman: It's a very thrilling experience. I've done quite a few races over the years. I've done my first one at 14. It does hurt. You can get hurt, but the thrill and the excitement of doing it is out of this world whilst it's going on. but only last a few seconds.

Joshua Ravenscroft: Hey, my name's Joshua Ravenscroft. How was it?

Joshua Ravenscroft: It was absolutely horrendous. It felt like being in a washing machine full of rocks. I started sliding, and then all I knew was I was tumbling, and then I tried to stop tumbling, but I couldn't. And I got to near the bottom, and I realised I was, like, first. So I ran and launched myself and just smashed the ground so hard. Some guy peeled me off the floor, and I said, Did I win? Did I win? He went, Sorry, mate, you just came second. No! I'm giving everything. But I'm so happy to have been here. It's epic, you know. So, yeah, what a day.

Oliver Conway: I'm from Morocco. Did you just run down?

Joshua Ravenscroft: Yeah. Doesn't it look like I just ran down?

Oliver Conway: How was it on the way down?

Joshua Ravenscroft: Brutal, because there was no rain, so the hill was very solid. Each collision with the ground was very brutal. But it was fun.

Oliver Conway: So I'm here with Chris Anderson. He's won it 23 times. What is the importance of this event to this area?

Chris Anderson: For us mostly we just want to keep the tradition rolling. One or two injuries but that's to be expected. Why stop it now? Because the world's going half and safety crazy. If you want to come up here and throw yourself down a big hill that should be your decision.

Oliver Conway: I'm Kyla Hill. I'm part of Team Cheese that help organise the cheese roll. What is it that attracts so many people?

Kyla Hill: I don't know what it is. Just the craziness I presume. They just want to come and watch people hurt themselves I suppose. or get down there in one piece. Weird, wonderful, worrying, great, I suppose.

Oliver Conway: Here at the top of the hill looking down... It's a lot steeper than you think. And I was told that a lot and I still didn't believe it.

Kyla Hill: Think you might do it next year?

Kyla Hill: I think I might. Well, having seen how steep it is, I don't think I'll risk it, but you can see my attempt at the uphill race on the BBC World Service Instagram page in the coming days.

Oliver Conway: and in the meantime if you have a weird and wonderful tradition in your part of the world we'd love to hear about it please send an email or voice note to global podcast at bbc.co.uk now to a story about a life stranger three years ago luke melling from melbourne was close to dying from a rare form of blood cancer he desperately needed a bone marrow transplant but nobody in Australia was a match so doctors widened their search Now, as Helena Burke reports, Luke has travelled tens of thousands of kilometres to meet his donor.

Helena Burke: Hey, Luke. How's it going, mate?

Luke Melling: Jeez, I'm going to cry. Bloody hell. Oh, come here, buddy. It's so good to see you.

Helena Burke: I know, I've got to try not to cry. This is the moment Luke Melling and Alistair Hawken met for the first time in Lincolnshire in central England. Three years earlier and more than 16,000 kilometres away, Luke was desperately ill in hospital with Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.

Luke Melling: I had a lump in my neck and over the years I haven't had an awful lot of trouble getting into remission through treatments like chemotherapy, radiotherapies, immunotherapies. but in 2022 I relapsed for the fifth time that the cancer had come back and I just didn't know what to do where this time it was yeah actually like staring death in the face in that sense.

Helena Burke: At just 28 years old Luke was told that without a bone marrow stem cell transplant he would die. So for the donor part the first thing they do is try immediate family so my sister she wasn't a match. So then we got told that I was going to go on to the international register and from there it's not guaranteed to have a match.

Alistair Hawken: Well I've been a blood donor for nearly 30 years now but I went to donate and there was a simple harmless leaflet explaining about bone marrow and the bone marrow registry in the UK and I just picked it up and read it and thought I'd like to be on that register and I was plugged up to a machine for nine hours so they were immediately frozen within hours of them being taken to keep them as fresh as they could be and then they were flown over to Australia.

Helena Burke: I felt absolutely amazing afterwards because I guess my body was then full of amazing young stem cells that had been generated in the four days prior and then my stem cells went on their journey and I heard nothing more.

Alistair Hawken: Because of low survival rates stoners like Alistair can't be contacted by recipients until two years have passed and the treatment is deemed successful. In December of last year, Alistair said he received a surprise message from Luke.

Alistair Hawken: In honesty, I didn't know whether he'd survived the treatment. I just hoped. I hoped and prayed that he had done. So when an email popped in, it was just, it was like all my Christmases quite seriously had come at once. It was a beautiful moment. And it said, dear donor, thank you so much for the gift of your stem cells and it went into a couple of paragraphs Luke just explaining I think you even explained in that email that you'd run a marathon or something didn't you and that was just like you know amazing it's just been such a long journey first over 15 years and this is really the final step for me and the fact that it looks like it's been a success is just I feel like I've put the last 15 years behind me and now I'm ready to start afresh I've But the new cells start a new life in a sense. I just feel blessed on a day like this here with you guys at SAF.

Oliver Conway: Luke Melling ending that report from Helena Burke. Next to some more people helping strangers. The Friendship Benches project began in Zimbabwe back in 2006. It is a simple concept, specially trained volunteers, mostly older women, who are available to chat to anyone suffering from mental health issues. It spread to several countries, including the US, Kenya, Vietnam and the UK and reached hundreds of thousands of people.

Dixon Chibanda: The Friendship Bench is a brief psychological therapy delivered by community grandmothers who are trained in the basics of, I guess, what you could call cognitive behavioural therapy. After each grandma is trained, she is allocated a wooden bench in her community and our team then facilitates referrals to those benches.

Oliver Conway: Most of the people that come to Friendship Bench, when you ask them what they really get out of it, is hope, you know, in life.

Dixon Chibanda: There was a quote from your book, which we'll touch on in just a moment, but you said the grandmothers weave together the fabric of community so that people's fears, their shame and their loneliness might be alleviated so that they can realise the burdens of life are never meant to be carried alone.

Oliver Conway: What about the grandmothers themselves? What do they get out of it?

Dixon Chibanda: The work that we do at Friendship Bench is rooted in rigorous research. And some of our studies actually show the benefits of being involved in this work. The grandmothers report a better quality of life by doing this work. It gives them a sense of purpose and a sense of belonging. And ultimately, it's also contributing to addressing loneliness, which is something that we are seeing in a lot of people across the world, particularly elderly people.

Oliver Conway: When Friendship Age started, it was actually in response to a tragedy, the loss of a patient of mind suicide. And the first people that I actually opened up to about the death of Erica were the grandmothers. And that really made me realise the power of feeling vulnerable, because only then does healing become possible. Secondly, the power of storytelling and how all of that can bring people together and communities together. And that's very much a theme of your book, isn't it? Looking at those early days of the project and the first 14 grandmothers to be involved.

Dixon Chibanda: So the book really captures the characters of the first 14 grandmothers and how they influenced my direction as a psychiatrist, how I began to understand that as professionals, we are partly responsible for fueling stigma. And we are partly responsible for some of the challenges we see within communities in our failure to embrace some of the community beliefs about well-being.

Oliver Conway: I've really learned, you know, the power of immersing yourself in local culture and wisdom and using that to address the challenges that communities and societies are facing.

Dixon Chibanda: This project has since expanded to other countries and by the sounds of it, there are more coming on board all the time. That must be really quite rewarding for you that this has taken off in such a big way.

Oliver Conway: It is extremely rewarding. Recently as well, we've done this in El Salvador. And one of our biggest success stories is actually from Washington, D.C. and New Orleans. And so the demand for Friendship Bench is growing. And you know with each replication each iteration we become better at what we do and we reach more and more people You know last year over 300 people sat on a friendship bench to talk to one of our grandmothers and 80% of them found it meaningful and got an improvement in their mental well-being.

Oliver Conway: And still to come on this podcast...

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Oliver Conway: 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. However, despite that belief, more than half of those individuals say they have avoided taking medication due to concerns about potential side effects. 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: As part of my treatment plan, I offer the GeneSightTest, which analyzes how a patient's genes may influence how they metabolize or respond to certain mental health medications. It gives me insights and takes out some of the guesswork that can be associated with prescribing them.

Oliver Conway: If you or someone you love is facing challenges with depression or anxiety, Talk to your doctor about how genetic testing may help. To learn more, visit genesight.com.

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Oliver Conway: That's prolonlife.com slash iHeart. Giles Abbott is a British storyteller who performs and teaches all over the world. His career has been shaped by an extraordinary event nearly 30 years ago that could have shattered his life. Instead, he sees it as a gift and has written a book to encourage more people to value the art of telling stories. Giles spoke to Richard Hamilton about his personal journey from darkness to light.

Giles Abbott: It was in February 1998 and I was visiting a girl who I'd very recently fallen in love with and I woke up in the morning and realised that I'd lost a portion of my sight in my right eye and within five days I'd lost most of the sight in that eye. Obviously I went to hospitals and they said that it was quite possibly the first symptom of multiple sclerosis which might begin to present itself at any time within the next ten years. Actually it was five months later. I lost the sight in my left eye. That took four hours. That was kind of it. I effectively lost the ability to read books, see faces, recognise people across the table in four hours.

Oliver Conway: So in a way, that was your literally darkest moment. But after that, fate stepped in and you got into storytelling.

Giles Abbott: I had to find something I could do for what I realised was likely to be the rest of my life because there's no cure. I was living in West Yorkshire and in a pub in Hebden Bridge, a village down the valley, we were told there were some storytellers performing. I thought, storytellers? You're pulling my leg. Do people still do that? We went to this pub. In a room above the pub, I heard four storytellers telling 10-minute folk stories and I was smitten. And all the way through, I was thinking, how could I do this? I'd love to do this. Thinking maybe I could get my girlfriend to read me a book about how to create a story, how to craft a story. She did better than that. When the open spot came, she got up. She told a story about her father's childhood in Jamaica. And by the time she sat down, I knew how I could tell a story because the reason she could tell the story that night is the day before I'd told it to her because the day before that, her mother had told it to me. So the following month, I thought, OK, that's how you do it. You know how it goes. Just get up and open your mouth. And I did. And it flew.

Oliver Conway: So that was your first exposure to storytelling. And what happened next? How did you become a professional storyteller?

Giles Abbott: And the group from the pub in Hebden Bridge, the Shaggy Dog Storytellers, they began to encourage me. They began to give me feedback and coach me and teach me. And I would prepare and perform a new story every month. Little by little, they began to take me to performances they were doing and to trick me on stage and encourage me. And then they recommended me to be an up-and-coming talent at a festival called Festival at the Edge. So I did. And as a result of that performance, the Festival at the Edge booked me the following year to be a featured storyteller. So that was it. I was a professional. I began working around the country in schools and began learning my craft and applying my trade.

Oliver Conway: So was it the experience with school children that inspired you to write this book that's just come out?

Giles Abbott: Yes, it was in the noughties. I was hired to spend five days working with children in school in West London. These children had been excluded from class, though not yet from school because of their challenging behaviour. I remember their teacher saying, I'll tell you something often. These children have got a fave minute attention span. So I told them stories for 45 minutes. That's not me. That's stories. And at the end of the five days, I wasn't telling stories. They were. This is the beginning of the work which I've been doing now for 20 years, where I use simple, structured prompts to get people to guide their imagination and create new stories. These children created amazing stories. And I've since done this with schoolchildren all over the country and internationally, with grown-ups, with business people. And now this is fed into this book I've written, Storymaker, because children are spending so much time now interacting not with other human beings. And AI has hoovered up all world literature and can already do what this book has done, which is to analyse the structures of stories in ways that you can use to guide your imagination. But this book is about teaching people to do it Parents grandparents teachers carers So these children get some face contact with another human being because we need them to have that

Oliver Conway: Giles Abbott talking to Richard Hamilton Next to an adventurer who loves proving people wrong and inspiring others to be true to themselves. Myrna Valerio is an ultra-marathon runner, a cross-country coach and in her own word, fat. The African-American former teacher took up the sport after a health scare in 2008. She started a blog, Fat Girl Running, exposing herself to online trolls, but also helping to tackle fitness stereotypes. She's been speaking to Katie Smith.

Myrna Valerio: I have a bigger frame. I do have more fat on my body than a lot of other people. And I really want us to see the word fat as a descriptor and not, you know, with all of the negative connotation it carries with it. that will not happen in my lifetime, I don't think. But that is the work that I'm doing. So that's how I see my body. That's how others perceive me anyway. I don't see it negatively. But when I go out and do things, people are always surprised. And what that means to me is that they haven't had a wide range of experience in their lives. And I just do the things that I need to do. And the secondary benefit of that is that people see me doing those things. And so it's frustrating when people are when people do or they're very condescending or like overly patronizing when they see a fat person achieving something and then they also know they assume that you're doing it to lose weight well that was that was what i was going to say because often there's this misconception maybe is the right word that eventually you if you start as a fat person as you say you begin training you do some running the idea is you are going to become a skinny person And that doesn't necessarily happen. And that's not necessarily the goal. No. In 2008, when I had this health scare where I thought I was having a heart attack and that sort of really changed the trajectory of my life. When that happened and I started running, I did lose weight. I lost weight, but then I plateaued. But I still kept doing the running, the swimming, the playing tennis and walking and hiking and doing all of those things. but my body continued to get stronger and stronger and more fit meaning that I was able to do the things that I asked of my body my answer is to just show them what I can do and hopefully inspire them to think differently about what it means to be fit and what to say and what not to say to a person in a fat body

Oliver Conway: I just wanted to touch on on social media you've talked about it you've built such a community and it's so supportive in so many ways but there are still those negative voices right that you have to deal with folks really try to exert power over other people power and influence over other people when it comes to the way that their bodies look and it's it's really hard to swim against that tide there always is going to be a negative voice or a chorus of a greek chorus of negative voices in real life or online unfortunately that's just a reality But as I've gotten older, I'm nearing 50. I am more willing to just be myself all the time. And it is so freeing. And I hope that other people can feel the freedom to be themselves as much as possible because it is emotionally and physically taxing when you cannot. And so I just this past weekend, I was in a restaurant with a friend and a fan sat next to me. And I'm really awkward. I'm like sort of caught off guard. And I'm like, and I told the woman, I said, I'm just going to let you know that I'm going to be really awkward to me. And surprising that people recognize me and they thank me for my work. And they say, I follow you and I think what you do is great. It's so cool to meet you. I'm fangirling. I'm like, why would you be fangirling? I'm just a normal person. But I live in those awkward moments.

Oliver Conway: Myrna Valerio.

Oliver Conway: And you can hear more inspiring sports stories on Not By The Playbook, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Harry Bly: Vocação Vocação Vocação Vocação Vocação Sisters Marizeli Cassiano and Marisa de Paula appeared on the Brazilian television channel Pai Eterno, Eternal Father. They're singing Vocação, or Vocation, their own song promoting a vocational retreat for people wanting to pursue a religious career. Sister Marizelli is singing into the microphone while Sister Mariza is dancing with very intricate footwork. Sat next to the sisters, a priest, he stands up and starts to sing. And then Sister Marizelli drops the beat. Once the clip was shared online, it went viral, with commenters praising the nuns, describing them as hype women. One user said, as a Brazilian, I can confirm that all our nuns know how to beatbox. Another added, someone needs to sample this. And that's exactly what happened. The group Timbufun made this remix. and even added a rap verse. The sisters say music has been a powerful tool for them to help those in need.

Oliver Conway: Harry Bly reporting. And you can see the video on the BBC News website, bbc.com slash news.

Oliver Conway: And that's all from The Happy Pod for now. But if you have a tradition like cheese rolling in your area, we'd love to hear from you. Send an email or voice note to globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also see some of our interviews on YouTube by searching for The Happy Pod. This edition was mixed by Craig Kingham and produced by Holly Gibbs and Rachel Balkley. Our editors, Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.

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. 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.