The Happy Pod: The joy of chasing a giant cheese
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Hello, I'm Oliver Conway and in this edition... It's legendary. It's about life, about life 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 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.

The creator of a therapy project which has spread across the globe. Over 300,000 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. And... The nun who's taken the internet by storm with her beatboxing.

We start in southwest England, where I went to watch the ancient sport of cheese rolling. 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 kilometers 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. 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. I'm called Arianna and I'm from Barcelona, Spain. Why have you come here today? 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. What country are you from? China. When you see an event like this, people running down a hill after cheese, what do you think?

It's great fun to be part of it. Although personally, I wouldn't 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 as a whole, you know. Because you're so close to death, but at the same time not. Cheese is life. Cheese is life. Simon Mende from Texas. What do you think looking down? Craziness. It is steeper than I thought.

steeper than I thought. I've always wanted to do it. It's risky for sure, but that's what life is about. I'm Ben. I'm from Cleveland, Ohio. I'm here to roll and win some cheese. 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. So you're going to do it? Yeah, I'm going to do it now. Thank you.

One to be ready, two to be steady, three for the cheese, four you go. My name's Jem Wakeman, master of salmon and Cuba's old cheese roll. Why do you think people come from all over the world to watch a cheese being rolled down a hill? I think they come to see this mad English tradition we've 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.

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 rolled every year, the tradition keeps going. So the tradition's never been broken, so it just keeps going and going. You've run it. I'm not going to run it. Describe for me what it's like. 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 it only lasts a few seconds. LAUGHTER

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

I'd give it everything. But I'm so happy to have been here. It's epic, you know? So, yeah, what a day. I'm from Morocco. Did you just run down? Yeah. Doesn't that look like I've just run down? How was it on the way down, like?

brutal because there was no rain so the hill was very solid each collision with the ground was very brutal but it was fun so I'm here with Chris Anderson he's won it 23 times what is the importance of this event to this area 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 I'm Kyla Hill

I'm part of Team Cheese that help organise the cheese roll. What is it that attracts so many people? 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. Here at the top of the hill looking down... It's a lot steeper than you'd think. And I was told that a lot and I still didn't believe it. Think you might do it next year? 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. 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 globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. Now to a story about a life-saving stranger. Three.

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. Hey, Luke. How's it going, mate? Jeez, I'm going to cry. Bloody hell. Oh, come here, buddy.

It's so good to see you. I know, I better 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. 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 actually like staring death.

in the face in that sense. 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. After an anxious six-month wait, Luke received a perfect match from a perfect stranger. 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. 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. 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, Alastair said he received a surprise message from Luke. 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 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 go.

Start afresh. I've got the new cells. Start a new life, in a sense. I just feel blessed on a day like this here with you guys. The two men are now encouraging other people to register as stem cell donors. It's my legacy. If I achieve nothing more than just seeing that smile on your face now in my life, then I've achieved everything I need to achieve. Oh, mate. I just can't explain enough how grateful I am, in a weird way. A part of you is inside me in that sense, and that makes me feel even better for it. I can't thank you enough.

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.

The man behind the original project, psychiatrist Dixon Chibanda, has now written a book about his experience. He told Chantal Hartle how he came up with the idea.

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 behavioral therapy. After each grandma is trained, she is allocated a wooden bench in her community, and our team then facilitates referrals to those benches.

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. 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."

What about the grandmothers themselves? What do they get out of it? 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. When Friendship Bank started, it was actually in response to a tragedy, the loss of a patient of mine to suicide.

And the first people that I actually opened up to about the death of Erica were the grandmothers. And that really made me realize the power of feeling vulnerable because I

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. So the book really captures that.

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 today.

in our failure to embrace some of the community beliefs about well-being. 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.

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. 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 300,000 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. Dixon Chibanda from the University of Zimbabwe.

And still to come on this podcast... 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. The ultra marathon runner busting stereotypes on what fit people look like.

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Again, genesight.com for more information and to move forward on your journey to mental wellness. 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.

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 realized 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 10 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, recognize people across the table in four hours.

So in a way, that was your literally darkest moment. But after that, fate stepped in and you got into storytelling. Tell us how that happened. 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 told it to her, because the day before that, her mother had told it to me. So the following month, I thought, okay, that's how you do it. You know how it goes. Just get up and open your mouth. And I did. I

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

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

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. So was it the experience with schoolchildren that inspired you to write this book that's just come out? 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 five-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 has 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 analyze 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-to-face contact with another human being because we need them to have that. 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.

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...

people see me doing those things. And so it's frustrating when people do, when 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 what I was going to say, because often there's this misconception, maybe is the right word, that

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, that doesn't necessarily happen. And that's not necessarily the goal. No. In terms of,

2008, when I had this health scare, 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 those things.

Yeah.

I just wanted to touch 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 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 everywhere.

in real life or online. Unfortunately, that's just the 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. Yeah.

To me, it's surprising that people recognise 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. Mirna Valerio. And you can hear more inspiring sports stories on Not By The Playbook, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Finally, two nuns from Brazil have taken the internet by storm with their impromptu musical performance on live TV, thanks to some impressive beatboxing. Harry Bly has been listening.

Sisters Marizely 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 Marizeli 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 Marizeli 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 Timbu Fun made this remix. Vocação

And even added a rap verse. The sisters say music has been a powerful tool for them to help those in need. Oh, oh.

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

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 Bulkley. Our editors, Karen Martin. I'm Oliver Conway. Until next time, goodbye.

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