The Happy Pod: Performing on the street got me Oasis tickets

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This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Service.

I'm Alex Ritson, and in this edition...

Can you believe it?

A piece of cardboard I found in a lodestide dumpster took me to the front low and I wanted Oasis life right in front of me.

The man who played music in the street until he fulfilled his dream of seeing his favourite band live.

The German backpacker rescued after two weeks lost in Western Australia's outback.

Just an amazing girl.

Desperation and true grit I think just got her through in the end.

Plus a new test that could ensure tens of thousands of people with breast cancer get better treatment.

And if I can do it, you can do it too.

You don't have to do what you're told to do.

Yeah, it can be done even with difficult circumstances.

After a life-changing crash, one man finally achieves his goal of becoming a doctor.

We start with a busker or street musician from Japan who came to northern England with the dream of seeing his favourite band live.

That's Mirei Itao playing Don't Look Back in Anger in the middle of Manchester, the home city of his favorite band Oasis.

Tickets for their highly anticipated tour went on sale last year.

When he didn't get one, Mirai travelled from his home in Yokohama to Busk, hoping to raise enough for a ticket.

After weeks of performing to the public, his dream came true when he met a kind stranger.

Mirei spoke to the Happy Pods Holly Gibbs days after he finally saw his beloved Oasis.

In Japan, Oasis is massive.

Of course, not only in Japan, but Oasis is like kind of my childhood.

When I was young, listening a lot,

I really, really wanted to go into the gig, but yeah, of course I couldn't get the online ticket.

I was so sad.

But I couldn't give up.

So that's why I went to Manchester and

came up with a sign strategy.

Because busking would expose me to lots of publicity.

I had no other choice.

Take me back to September when you were busking in Manchester to try and get a ticket.

You had a sign, didn't you, that said, please help me get an OASIS ticket.

Yeah, I did busking over six hours a day in the cold and for two weeks every day, Monday to Sunday.

And then I met someone.

She appeared suddenly and she worked at a production company nearby.

And her boss noticed me during lunch and said, let's sell that guy a ticket, just like that.

I got a two ticket at face value for Manchester and London yeah that alone felt like a miracle just right after she appeared she told me excuse me sir can I give me the your email address and I was quite confused and she explained me so my boss saw you and we can sell you the ticket so I will send you details so give me the email

you know I couldn't couldn't believe it because before that, I met a few scammers and they tried to sell me the fake ticket.

It was unbelievable still today.

So how did it feel when you got the ticket?

My hand was shaking, I remember.

And

I cried.

After that, yeah, so happy.

I remember just so happy feeling.

Yeah.

And as I'm speaking to you, you've already been to the one in in Manchester, but you have not yet been to the one in London.

How was it?

How was the concert?

It felt like a dream.

I checked my ticket that morning.

Yeah, can you believe it?

A piece of cardboard I found in a low-side dumpster took me to the front row and I watched Oasis Live light in front of me.

During concert,

I was crying and out,

and it was the most emotional, joyful moment of my life.

It felt almost like a religion experience.

They were shining so good.

People are nice, and life is truly beautiful.

And I learned how powerful it is to never give up.

I'm so glad I kept going.

Never give up is very, very important.

How lucky I am, no?

That's Mirai Itau speaking to Holly Gibbs.

When the German backpacker Carolina Wilga went missing in Australia's vast outback earlier this month, many feared the worst.

But after 12 days lost in the wilderness, the 26-year-old was miraculously found alive and well.

Helena Burke has been finding out more.

Concerns are growing for the safety of a 26-year-old German backpacker.

Carolina Vilga hasn't been seen or heard from for almost a fortnight.

When Carolina Vilga disappeared into the Outback, more than 300 kilometres from Perth, the country held its breath for bad news.

The expansive wilderness of Western Australia has claimed many lives over the years, with its intense sun, harsh conditions, and dangerous animals.

The state is larger than the entire country of Mexico, and 85% of it is uninhabited.

Carolina was on a solo road trip across the state when her van was found abandoned in the remote bushland of the Caroon Hill Nature Reserve.

A large rescue operation was launched to try to find her, but several days of searching proved fruitless.

That was until a local farmer driving down a bush track stumbled on an unexpected sight.

When you see a person standing on the road waving and you realise straight away and she's very thin

and fragile.

I just stopped and put out of the car and gave her a hug.

I just couldn't think of anything else to do.

She was crying.

She was very upset.

She was really in disbelief that someone had actually come along.

That's Tanya Henley speaking to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

She said the road up to her farm was so remote that it was a miracle she'd bumped into the German.

One way goes to my property, which is, well, the house is 40 kilometres from there.

if you'd gone south back to beacon before she would have got to any house there's probably 60 kilometers so yeah everything lined up that day for her to be found but uh lovely person like i gave her a drink and then she oh it's quite incredible really she um just had maybe a third of a cup or something then she said oh do you want some and i thought gosh if someone's been out in the bush for that long and you really haven't had a lot to drink but yeah just an amazing girl.

After her rescue, the 26-year-old shared the details of how she survived for 12 days in the outback.

Carolina said she'd lost control of her van and it got stuck on some rocky terrain.

Dazed and confused after hitting her head in the crash, the backpacker eventually walked away from the vehicle into the wilderness with no shoes on.

She ate the small amounts of food she had carried with her and drank rainwater, even from puddles.

During the 11 freezing cold nights she spent outside, Carolina sought shelter, including in a cave.

In a statement posted online, the backpacker described Tanya as her guardian angel.

There was something, obviously, because the timing was incredible, but angel, well,

yes, I'm not sure about that.

But I don't know, just desperation and true grit, I think, just got her through in the end.

Carolina was ravaged by insect bites and suffered a minor injury to her foot during the ordeal, but is now doing well.

The backpacker says says she now wants to continue her trip around Australia.

Helena Burke.

Next to a man who's overcome life-changing injuries to fulfil his dream of becoming a doctor, Paul Edwards was preparing for the exams he hoped would take him to university when he was knocked off his motorbike at the age of 17.

He sustained severe injuries, including a broken neck, but after years in recovery, has finally graduated from university with a degree in in medicine.

He's been speaking to the BBC's Emma Grimshaw and started by telling her about his accident.

I had just dropped someone off, and about 30 seconds from my house, I was going towards a road I'd crossed many times before, and someone came to the junction.

It was their first time ever driving an automatic car, and they hit the throttle instead of the brake.

And as a result, they just came into the junction and I hit the side of them.

After that, my next memory is waking up in high dependency, which was about four days after the accident, is my next memory.

I was in hospital for seven days in total,

mostly because I was 17.

And now, being a doctor, I realize that 17-year-olds are young and they bounce.

Generally, they heal quite quickly.

If that were to happen to me today at 32, I think that'd be a very different story.

How long did it take you to be kind of independent after that crash?

A long time.

I had crutches and things like that.

And my goal was to walk downstairs without crutches.

We have banisters, so I do have some support, but to be downstairs without crutches on Christmas Day.

And I did get there in the end.

How many months was that?

Yeah, so after that, it took a few more months to fully heal because the brakes were so bad.

I think I was back on a motorbike in about February or March, something like that, being young and foolish carrying my crutches on my rucksack because I still couldn't walk properly.

Now the pain is still pretty bad.

four or five out of 10 average, I would say, with paracetamol and ibuprofen, but I'm going to be in pain no matter what I do, which is why I choose to be active.

Because if I'm going to sit at home and be four or five out of 10, no matter what, if I go out and do a triathlon, instead of a four or five, I'll be a five or six.

And I think that that price is worth paying.

And once I come off medication, decided I wanted to go back to university, everything kind of opened up for me.

And suddenly I thought, you know, this is possible.

And, you know, here I am, 2025.

Suddenly, I'm now a doctor.

How did you feel when you finally arrived at uni?

Oh, unbelievable.

And I remember as a child walking past Bristol University and thinking, I want to study here one day because it's amazing.

And suddenly I'm walking through the doors for registration and I'm putting my kind of ID in front of someone.

They say, congratulations, welcome to Bristol.

And it all kind of opened up.

I thought, I have done it.

This is incredible.

And from that point on, I've just kind of kept going from strength to strength.

With the pain, it has been very hard.

But yes, going back to applying was incredible.

And then, of course, I did my first degree, which was neuroscience.

And once I got to third year, I thought, you know what?

Medicine is what I want.

And I got my offer, I think, in February 2020, just before lockdown happened.

And I remember running downstairs and being like,

I made it.

You know, mum, dad, I got my spot.

I'm going to be a doctor in a few years' time.

And they were so happy.

And I was just over the moon.

And I had a smile on my face the entire summer.

And knowing what I was going into, phenomenal.

Even with the difficulties of the pandemic, I was so excited to be able to give back.

And

looking back on it, it was a phenomenal moment of my life.

So once or twice a year, I go back to my school or my and/or my college and just say, you know, if I can do it, you can do it too.

You don't have to do what you're told to do.

Nobody told me I could be a doctor, but I thought I can definitely do it.

So yeah, it can be done even with difficult circumstances.

Doctor to be Paul Edwards.

Coming up in this podcast.

This is one small slither for snail

and one giant glide for snail find.

And I think that did it.

The snail racing world championships take place in Britain.

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When you're driving, nothing's better than binging on a podcast.

Well, except maybe binging on rewards from Marathon.

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Now to a breakthrough that will help more breast cancer patients get the right treatment more quickly.

Research shows that a new test can tell after just two weeks whether hormone therapy will work for those with ER positive and HER2 positive tumours.

These affect around 200,000 people around the world every year.

Dr.

Maggie Chiang from the Institute of Cancer Research in London co-authored the study and spoke to my colleague colleague Sean Lay.

It's very hard to actually predict who will do better because the current test that we have could not differentiate more other than the EA positive hertoposis.

So it's very hard.

So what this test does, it helps to distinguish between tumours that can be successfully tackled on a particular form of treatment and others that might need more tougher treatment.

Correct.

That's how it is helping us to actually have the right treatments.

We can actually predict with more precise whether this treatment is working with a certain subgroup of this tumor.

So that means you can tailor the treatment according to the patient?

Absolutely.

And with just two weeks of hormone therapy, this genetic test could help us to actually do a little bit better, differentiate the genetic makeup of the tumor within ER positive heritage positive, help us to understand more whether this certain treatments will work for them.

Does that mean that some cancer patients will not have to go through such brutal treatment as they might otherwise have had to experience?

Yeah, this would spare the financial burden and emotional stresses the patient is actually having to tackle.

So I think this is really help the patient under the guidance with the physician to discuss a more tailored treatment so that they can spare the unnecessary treatments and spare the toxicity for these overtreatments.

If you know within just two weeks whether or not a patient is likely to have a recurrence of the tumor after treatment, how do you have that conversation with the patient?

But hopefully this is a tool that helps the clinician know a little bit earlier that now your tumor showing early resistance to the type of treatment that would only be given in that context.

So what we should think about a little more are newer treatments, CT4C, NBITA or chemotherapy.

What proportion of breast cancer patients could benefit from this test?

80% of breast cancer are ER positive breast cancer.

But with this test and this study, we are focusing on the triple positive group, which is 10% of the breast cancer.

It's about 200,000 patients who actually are diagnosed with this type of tumor yearly.

Dr.

Maggie Chiang from the Institute of Cancer Research in London.

In northern Italy, a group of volunteers have been getting up at dawn to perform a special rescue mission.

They head for the mountain meadows to find baby deer hidden in the long grass before the mowers arrive, and their success rates have improved thanks to thermal imaging drones.

Josef Kutaya got up early to join them.

Morning has broken.

The mountain air is crisp while the sun's rays caress the dolomites, as I join a group of volunteers from the South Tyrol Hunting Association for a special rescue mission

to save fawns from being mangled by the menacing steel cutters of the Cumbine Harvester.

In their early days, baby fawns lie motionless in the thick mountain meadows, hidden from predators.

But this is also the time when farmers in the Alps trim the half-meter grass, which eventually ends up as hay.

So, before they embark on this job, the volunteers comb the meadows to save the fawns, which are then released once the grass is harvested.

Pyrrhmin, one of the volunteers, launches his thermal drone, pointing the camera downwards as it hovers over the steep meadow in front of us.

Before you know it, he sees two yellow dots on his his display panel.

We get moving.

Walking on a precipitous meadow is anything but easy, but two other volunteers follow the drone as quietly as possible.

As we get closer, in a blink of an eye, two fawns hop above the grass and zip up the meadow.

Thomas Eichner tells me what happens the moment they spot a fawn that's stuck in the grass.

We put them into a small box.

We take this box out of the meadow in the forest and there we leave it as long as the farmer needs to cut the grass and then we let it again go

and with a whistle it communicates with the marrow.

The marrow is never far so that they immediately find each other.

Thomas points out that a doe typically gives birth to two fawns which she places approximately 25 meters apart.

This is a survival strategy in case they are targeted by wolves or foxes.

I ask why this project is so important to him.

We really live in an industrialized world, and in all places where people coexist with nature, people continue to understand how nature works and give this on to their children.

And this makes sure that humans respect nature.

Last year alone, volunteers in this region saved around 1,500 fawns that otherwise would have had a different fate.

Thanks Thanks to thermal drones, rescue efforts have become faster.

So, how was it before the advent of aerial surveillance?

It was very hard because the animals are so small and the grass is so high that it's hard to see them.

So, we could not get them all and we need to invest a lot of time.

And as this is all voluntary, it was really not easy to organize.

So, the drone was really the game changer.

When you see these soft, toy-like marvels, the urge to cuddle them is overwhelming.

But Thomas immediately diffuses my excitement.

You need to be very careful to make sure that you don't get on it.

You absolutely need to use gloves not to touch it.

The human touch can throw off the fawn's scent, which could lead to its mother not recognizing it as her baby.

Waking up at 4am in search of fawns before your day job isn't easy.

However, Thomas seems to have a different take on this.

It's so joyful, it's so nice that you always find motivated volunteers that will help and will invest their time.

And then you have a coffee and then you go to your regular job.

Thomas Eichner ending that report from Josef Kutaya.

It's a summer of sport with the women's Euros and the World Athletics Championships.

But one more may have slipped under the radar.

the litter picking world cup.

Teams from all around the globe are in East London to compete in Spogami, the Japanese-invented rubbish collecting game.

And competition is hotting up.

So what do you need to win?

And why do people do it?

Well, one of the organisers is Chris Rofe, and he told me what it was all about.

When I first heard about it, I couldn't believe it either.

But these people take litter picking very, very seriously.

The sport was developed in 2008 as a way to reduce marine litter and get people more involved in litter picking.

And it's just exploded.

There are people from 20 different countries competing in this World Cup and the winners will be going to Tokyo to pick litter for an hour and hopefully the UK will bring home the gold again.

So what do you have to do to win?

I mean, pick litter.

It's as simple as that.

You've just got to pick the highest volume of litter.

Certain types of litter are worth more points.

Cigarette butts are worth a lot of points, but obviously they don't weigh very much.

So there's a bit of strategy in balancing out between what kind of litter you pick up and what's going to score you the most points.

Though this is fun, there is a serious side to it, isn't there?

The area that you're going to in London, I've been there and there is an awful lot of litter on the ground.

One of the great things about spogomi is that once you-

That's right, it's called the Spogomi World Cup.

Spogomi is a Japanese word which is part sports for the spore and then gomi is from gomi hiroyo or picking litter.

But one of the amazing things about spogomi, this competitive litter picking sport, is that once you've gotten prizes or you've gotten points for picking up litter, your brain sort of automatically focuses in on litter.

They've done surveys and tests where once people have played this sport, they're then much more aware of litter around them and they've actually stopped littering themselves.

And you say sport, I mean, the contestants really do dress for it, don't they?

Yep, we've got official uniforms, we've got, you know, whistles and stopwatches and everything is very by the book.

We've got a whole load of referees who will be present on the day just to make sure that the sports side of thing is just as important as the litter picking side of things.

Litter picking World Cup organiser Chris Rofe and from one world championship to another, but a much slower one.

Snails from around the world were invited to the English county of Norfolk to slither and glide in the annual World Snail Racing Championships.

This year's winner was Bilbo Sluggins, inching his way to victory with a time of two minutes and eleven seconds.

His handler was the aptly named British TikTok creator Schell Rowe, who rented the speedy mollusk for this competition.

Shell took home a trophy stuffed with lettuce leaves and spoke to our reporter, Harry Bly.

When Bilbo, my snail, won, they said, what's your name?

And I said, Shell, and it went silent because they didn't.

Trained by your name, Shel!

I mean, understandable.

Let's also talk about Bilbo, your snail.

I never thought I'd say that sentence out loud.

Tell me about Bilbo.

Well, I rented him.

I rented four snails.

Like, you go, we queued in the pouring rain for about an hour to register our snails.

You go, you pick a name.

And I asked the lady if she had any advice for me on picking my snails.

And she said people are either going for the ones that are resting so that they are ready for the race or the ones who are making a break for it because they've got a bit of fight in them.

So I chose the ones that were escaping.

Clever.

Well it paid off.

And for anyone that hasn't seen the video, when you think about a championship race, you might think of the Grand National or Formula One or can you describe how far and what kind of track is it for the snails, for Bilbo Sluggins?

What did he conquer?

So it's on this table and the actual course is 13 and a half inches.

You've got they get placed in the inner circle, which is in a red ring and then 13 and a half inches out is a black circle.

To get the snails to race towards the black circle, they rub like cucumber around the edge and they put water all over the track so that it's easier for the snails to move.

That's why when it's torrential rain, they love it because the snails love it.

So it's a really tiny course, but it's quite nice because then everyone's so close to the action.

And take me through the moment that you knew that Bilbo Sluggins was on course to win.

It was so soon out of the gate.

They said, Bilbo, Bilbo's like

making good pace.

And I looked at him and

he was steaming ahead.

And I just knew.

I knew in my heart of hearts he was going to cross the finish line.

Did you have any words of wisdom to give to Bilbo before he started slithering, if that's the right word?

I did give him a pep talk, and I said that this is one small slither for snail and one giant glide for snail kind.

And I think that did it.

I think it did as well.

Tell me about your future as a snail trainer.

What's your ambitions?

Oh gosh, I mean, I'm going to be back next year defending my title.

It's such a wonderful event.

I couldn't believe how many people had come out, and it was just so much fun.

There was actually some trainers who came over from France, snails that had come from all over the world.

I was talking to the French trainers actually, and they had to bring 10 snails through customs.

Oh, my goodness.

Like that is

so crazy to me, but so brilliant.

Bilbo,

can he compete next year or has he been released into the wild?

I wish I could have brought him home, but I actually travelled like three and a half, four hours to get there, and I just didn't want to have him in the Tupperware to bring him home.

I thought, oh,

I had to give him back, but maybe we'll be reunited.

Who knows?

They might have put him aside.

Snail handler Shell Rose speaking to Harry Bly,

And that's all from the Happy Pod for now.

If you have a story you think we should cover or want to share how anything in this week's episode made you feel, please do get in touch.

As ever, you can send us a voice note or an email, globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk, and you can now watch some of our interviews on YouTube.

Just search for the happy pod.

This edition was mixed by Holly Smith and the producers were Holly Gibbs, Harry Bly and Rachel Bulkley.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Alex Ritson.

Until next time, goodbye.

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