Transcript of The Happy Pod: The 88-year-old veteran given nearly $2m by strangers

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This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritson, and in this edition.

I'm 88. And still working? Yes, I have to.

Why do you have to keep working?

Retired from general mortars in '99. 2012, I went bankrupt, and they took my pension away The 88-year-old shop worker given nearly $2 million by strangers around the world.

One of the few people ever to walk around the world says he was inspired by his rescue dog.

When things were difficult for me, I look at her and she would walk every mile with her tail out high and happy to see what's up ahead. I tried to resemble the same thing where no matter what's going on inside, I would try and just do my job every day, walk those 24 miles.

Also, I'm so passionate about telling people what they can do and what they should do, and they shouldn't let it stop them from doing anything.

The young woman determined to remove the stigma surrounding a medical device. How a metal detectorist in the UK, reunited a family in the US with an important part of its history, plus some big baby news.

She's our youngest member of the herd. She's a first-time mom. Her due date is about 659 days.

Final More preparations for the long-awaited birth of an endangered elephant. We start with a man after our own hearts, the Australian kindness influencer, Samuel Weidenhofer. He's built up a following of more than 10 million people on social media, sharing positive stories and posting videos of himself giving surprises, gifts, and money to strangers. His latest act has been celebrated all around the world after he traveled from Australia to the United States to try to find someone he'd been told needed help. Stephanie Prentis takes up the story.

We've raised you $1. 77 million.

Two men hugging each other in Michigan, US. One has just handed the other a check that's made him a millionaire. Until a few weeks ago, they'd never met. But both of their lives changed when influencer Sam Wiedenhofer spotted a comment on one of his videos where someone mentioned seeing an older man still working in a US Superstore chain and said they were worried about him. The man was Ed Bambus, working full-time on his feet in his 80s because he couldn't afford to retire. Sam jumped on a flight and went looking for him and said when he spotted a friendly older man at a checkout, he knew it was him.

I'm 88. And still working? Yes, I have to.

Why do you have to keep working?

Retired from General Motors in '99. 2012, I went bankrupt, and they took my pension away from me. Oh, my gosh.

Do you have a wife?

She passed away Seven years ago. Seven years ago? She was sick when I lost my pension. I was in the army back in '66.

So you're a veteran, too?

Yes. The thing that hurt me the most was my wife was real sick. When they took the pension, They also took the healthcare coverage.

Sam posted a video with Ed and asked his followers to join him in raising a retirement fund. The video went viral. The first million was raised in under 48 hours, and now more than 65,000 people have donated, and the pot keeps growing. When it hit 1. 7 million, Sam flew back to see his new friend.

This is one of the largest individual fundraisers in GoFundMe history.

If you want, you will be able to retire.

Something that dreams are made of.

It's not the first time a stranger has helped Ed through difficulty stories. After losing his wife, Joan, he says he took the time to speak to all of his customers to try and keep his spirits up.

I talked to everybody that came through my cashier line because it helped me not become the that I'd earn a loss. Made a lot of friends, and everybody would ask me why I worked. I gave them a piece of my life story.

Now that life story starts a new chapter. Ed says He'll clear more than $200,000 of medical debts with the cash and use his new freedom to take up golf again. His only worry these days: finding a way to thank the people from all around the world who donated to help a stranger. Stranger.

It means a terrible burden that I have to find everybody and say thank you. Stephanie Prentis.

American Tom Tursich is thought to be only the 10th person to ever walk around the world. He believes his rescue dog, Savannah, who he picked up along the way, was the first dog to do so. Their journey took in 38 countries and six continents and forged an incredible Tom decided to undertake the trip aged just 16, following the death of a close friend and a chance viewing of the film Dead Poets Society, which focuses on seizing the day. After seven years of planning, he set off from his home in New Jersey. He's been speaking to my colleague, Joe Fidgen.

I really started reflecting on what do I want out of life. I ultimately came to the answer that I wanted to travel. I wanted to be forced into adventure because at the time, I was very timid and introverted and from a small town, and I wanted to grow out of that. And I wanted to understand the world. I didn't just want to walk across America. That would have been a great adventure. I wanted this to define my life. I wanted it to be a big chunk of my life. I thought at the time it would take five years. It ended up taking seven years. But it was, even at the time, was very intentional of this seems like the slowest, cheapest, most immersive, longest way to travel. That was appealing to me on every level.

It was a steep learning curve, and he hadn't realized how hard it was going to be to find somewhere to rig up his tent every night, nor how alone he would feel, how unsafe at night. By the time he reached Texas, he'd resolved to get a dog for security.

The first day I'm in Austin, I think, I'm going to go to this adoption center and just play with this idea, explore this idea of getting a dog. Some volunteers bring out Lulu, was her name at the time, Lulu and her sister. They're these little puppies, and they're mangey, and not in great shape. I thought, Oh, man, she's so cute, but this is crazy. You can't adopt a puppy. I sat on this bench, mulling over my options. There'd be this really high startup cost, but then she would know no other life but a life on the road and walking with me every day. I thought, You know what? I'd like to adopt Lulu. And then she became the greatest companion I could ever imagine.

You describe her as a mangy, scared little puppy. You had been looking for a guard dog. I mean, puppies don't really walk very far, do they? And they certainly don't walk in a straight line. They're quite hard to control. How did that go for you, Tom?

I would say not well. It was challenging. Very quickly, she adapted, and she was a beast. The amount of effort that I put into caring for her came back a thousand % in the enjoyment. The ultimate companion always was ready to walk when I wanted to walk and rest when I needed to rest. When you're walking, everything has changed all the time, and it's really exhausting. Savannah was the only constant. Through all that change, she was always there. When things were difficult for me, I would look at her and she would walk every mile with her tail out high and happy to see what's up ahead. I tried to resemble the same thing where no matter what's going on inside, I would try and just do my job every day, walk those 24 miles.

In that time on the road, had your idea of home changed?

In a certain way, I think I can be at peace anywhere within myself. Home is very much this thing almost that I have developed. Also now home in my just stage of life, I'm older now, is like a choice. It's who are you spending your time with, who Who are you building your life with?

That person is Bonnie.

I met Bonnie on the last leg of the journey in Washington State, and we met and just hit it off, and then she followed me around. It's It was strange because Savannah was everything to me, and I would have given up anything for Savannah, Bonnie included at the time. We had been through something that you just cannot ever replicate. It gave me the most meaningful relationship I might ever have, which is with Savannah. I'm incredibly grateful for all that.

Your fiancée is not going to mind you're saying that Savannah was probably the most meaningful relationship of your life, is she?

Maybe. I don't know. I think she knows that already, though.

You can hear more of Tom and Savannah's story on Outlook wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Now, to a woman on a mission to break the stigma surrounding the medical device known as a stoma bag, Lucy Smith Butler, developed painful ulcers in her bowels as a teenager and aged just 19, decided to have a colostomy where part of the intestine is connected to an opening in the abdomen and a pouch is connected to this hole to collect the waste. Now aged Lucy, from Manchester in North West England, has put on a fashion show where all the models had stoma bags with stylish covers. She's been speaking to the BBC's Asma Eunis.

I made a list of pros and cons of life with a bag and life without a bag. When you saw it written down on the paper of everything that it was going to give back to me, I went into the operation with the mindset of, This is going to give me my life back. I was lucky enough to know my nana, she's got a stoma bag, so I'd seen she'd lived a life with a stoma, and I knew she's done exactly what she wanted for the last 50 years. So it seemed less scary to me because I had someone to relate to. That's such a wonderful mindset to just start off with as you're going into the surgery and then to carry on. Was it that point where you decided you're going to emerge the two loves of your life? Because you're very You're into fashion, aren't you? Yeah, I've wrote a fashion blog since I was 12. So that was my passion, I guess, and my little side hobby. In terms of my clothing, I was 19, so it was like, Well, what am I going to wear? Is that going to affect my style?

And I think In a weird way, I always say it gave me a boost of confidence to just wear what I wanted. I remember buying a bag cover as soon as I left hospital because there's some that you can get off eBay. There's a few people that make quite basic ones. I remember buying a leather print one and I was like, Oh, this is so cute. And then I guess the years have gone on and then I've been like, Oh, maybe I could make my own. Your enthusiasm is so infectious with this. It's obviously taking other people by storm as well because you recently organized a charity catwalk for people with stoma bags. But how was it for you to see models proudly display their stoma bags, to have so much buzz around it as well? It was honestly like, I feel like if I could bottle up that day and that feeling and just being around those people and just save it for a day if you're not feeling great, I would 100% do that because it was honestly amazing. I didn't think that many people would want to get involved. It was just so nice to hear there was girls that walked down the runway that I'd followed on Instagram for the past six years and we followed each other at the start of our journey with the stoma.

Then it was just so nice to finally meet them and connect. That was one of the best things that it was such a range of people that walked down the cat walk. Lucy, Jane, for you, being in this world now for a bit, what's the biggest misconceptions about living with a stoma? I think a lot of the taboos around it are like, it's for older people, it smells, it's dirty, all that thing. It's an embarrassing thing to have because obviously it's to do with your bowels. I mean, it can be to do with... You can have a urostomy as well, but mine's for my bowels. I the misconception of you can't live a normal life, which I think is why I'm so passionate about telling people what they can do and what they should do, and they shouldn't let it stop them from doing anything. Lucy Jane, you also mentioned earlier on you got your first leopard print cover for your stoma, but then since then, you've started making your own. What have the reactions been? Yeah, everyone's loved them. We've done about five or six different designs because obviously, here's such a niche thing that Not everyone needs a stoma back cover, but all very me.

We're working on this donation scheme that we're doing alongside it, which I'm actually off to donate something. So that idea is that some will be donated to hospitals so that it can go directly to the patients that are in hospital right now, just as a little boost of positivity.

Lucy Smith Butler. Coming up in in this podcast, how AI is making cotton farming in India more sustainable.

We work for the betterment of the farmer's livelihood and the environment. We wanted to focus on two big environmental impacts industries, which is fashion and farming.

The imperative for businesses has never been clearer. The age of experimentation is over. We're talking transformation and winning at scale. From AI that actually drives ROI, we are going through that curve of understanding what the technology really can and cannot do, to turning reams of data into real competitive advantage. A lot of these successful companies, they treat data as a product. I'm Chip Kleinexel, host of Resilient Edge, the Smart Executives Guide to Implementing and Sustaining Change. Paid and presented by Deloitte. Available now wherever you listen to podcasts.

The family of a US Air Force veteran who died in 2001 have been reunited with his military identity tag 70 years after it was lost. It was found in a back garden here in the UK. Harry Parkill went along to find out more.

When you find a target, you'll scan across it. Yeah. There you go. Have you found something? Metal detectorist Adam Dryclift. He was called to a house in Lincolnshire in the East Midlands of England. The property's current owners knew the house was a few hundred years old and were fine with seeing what might be hidden underneath the dirt. I've been there to meet Adam. I found all sorts of... Out this garden, we've had toy cars, we've had coins. We've actually found something. That's something else in that hole. So I will be digging that to see what is in that hole. Just walk me through what you were... What were you doing on the day then that you found this? So on the day, what we did, we had I got a word with the owner of the property, asked them if we could have a go on the garden, see if we could find any history. They said yes. We got down to a corner, which is the corner here. And then he got up, shouted to me that I've got a dog tag. And I just thought, he meant me off an ordinary dog. And then all of a sudden he brought over and it was a dog tag from World War Two.

And I couldn't believe it. It's just an amazing experience. It's a buzz. It's a real buzz. I'll be honest, I was shaking a bit because it's like I say, it's just living history to me and To me, it's always something I've always wanted to find, and I did it. We found it. The dog tag or military ID tag belonged to Daniel Rappoo, who died in 2001. He was stationed nearby at REF Sturgate during the 1950s and lived in the house when he was in the UK. After posting about the discovery online, Adam had the help of Anna Draper, a local historian, who helped track down the veteran's family. This is just the thing I love to do. Absolutely love it, and I'm doing it all the time. But to actually find something tangible, another family, I just started searching around, seeing what I could find. Then I found his daughters. I just think it's amazing. My dad, he was in the Second World War, and he passed away, strange enough, in 2001, the same year. To have something from the past that just comes up and says, Hello, I'm here. It's almost like he's speaking just saying, I'm here.

I think. It's a very personal thing. Daniel Rappoult's descendants were then traced to Colorado in the USA. I spoke to his daughter, Katherine Mosbarger. Well, at first I thought, Am I being punked? I just looked at the picture. All my sister said was a picture of somebody holding a dog tag that had my dad's name on it. When I did some more research as to the communication that went on, it became very clear that it was in a garden in Kexby, and that's where I was born and grew up the first two years of my life. So we've been smiling. We've been smiling ever since. To me, it's a blessing. I just feel like he's reaching out to us, which is a neat way to start the year.

Katherine Mosbarga We're ending that report by Harry Parkill. Around the world, the fashion industry faces a huge challenge to reduce its impact on the planet, from its huge carbon footprint and vast water usage to filling up of landfills with clothes that have had little or even no use. But in some areas, new technology is being used to improve sustainability. On cotton farms across India, AI tools are helping to reduce water and pesticide use. Brook, Roberts, Islam, has been finding out more.

Currently, we are working with more than 4,500 farms in India. We work for the betterment of the farmer's livelihood and the environment.

It's a clear calm November afternoon in Maharashtra State in Western India. Kuldip Khatri is visiting a farm on behalf of Matera. A company has rolled out the AI-powered co-farm app to cotton farmers across three states in India.

The purpose of the app is to help farmers to practice regenerative cotton farming.

We exist because we wanted to focus on two big environmental impact industries, which is fashion and farming.

As the company's Director of Nature, it's CoolDeep's job to understand the impact that its technology is having on the ground.

.

Today, he is visiting Rajabal, who grows cotton on six acres of his land and has been using the Cofarm app for the last five months. Cooldeep translates.

You just have to start chatting to our AI, and there are many Any options like weather forecast or the current market price or disease diagnostic.

Just last month, the app sent out a push notification alert, warning farmers of significant rainfall.

He got message of weather forecast, and he did harvesting of cotton before time and could save his cotton from the damage of rainwater.

It helps the farmers avoid being taken advantage of by advising on the fluctuating market prices of cotton.

Whenever a farmer goes to sell the farm produce, the vendor does not always give the reliable answer. Now they can see the current market prices and they can decide whether to sell that farm produce at that point of time or not.

The company is paid by brands to source cotton and passes on an incentive for farmers to use regenerative practices. For Rajabal, this has meant benefits for his livelihood as well as the environment.

You will be saving the soil's health and also improving the crop yield, crop quality, and improving the health of the people on this planet. Thank you, Rajibau, for spending time for this interview.

Matera aims to regenerate over a million acres of Indian land over the next five years. Furthermore, they record the practices and impact on each individual farm.

They share this information with fashion brands to help them identify the most sustainable means of sourcing their cotton.

You can hear more about the positive and negative impacts of AI on the fashion industry in People Fixing the World wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Time to turn our attention to the biggest baby news in the United States. A pregnant, endangered Asian elephant is nearing her due date, and the Happy Pods' Reilly Farrell has been to meet her. I'm here at the Smithsonian's National Zoo inside the elephant exhibit. The air smells like hay, and you may hear the soft rumble of giant footsteps. Somewhere behind a row of metal-lined stalls, an expectant elephant mother waddles about. So there are six elephants that you're in charge of, right?

Soon to be seven.

Soon to be seven. For the first time in a generation, the animal team here is preparing for the birth of an Asian elephant calf. Robbie Clark, the zoo's acting curator and elephant manager, told me more.

Nie Lin is one of our six elephants here at the zoo right now. She's our youngest member of the herd. She's a first-time mom. She is She's 12 years old. Her due date is at about 659 days, which we estimate to be February 18th.

Elephants have the longest pregnancies in the entire animal kingdom. And as Robbie explained, Every birth matters.

Asian elephants, as a species are endangered. We estimate there's less than 50,000 individuals in the world. And when I say that, it's not just the number of elephants in the wild. That actually includes elephants that are human care. A baby Asian elephant will be a huge impact on that. We haven't had a baby Asian elephant here in 25 years. It's not an easy thing for us to just say, Hey, let's have a baby elephant. It's taken years and years of planning and preparation, and dozens, if not hundreds of people and specialists, not just here at the zoo, but colleagues around the world helping us get ready for this.

Robbie showed me the birthing stall where Nielen will welcome her calf and where the team has been rehearsing for months.

This is our mom for these over here.

Oh my goodness.

This stall that she's in, actually, the space is where she's going to have her baby. We practice everything in here several times a day, so she's as prepared as possible. We've been training Lynn to allow us to go in with her. The vet team wanted us to be prepared that if the calf doesn't nurse, can we express milk from New Lynn? So we're actually sensitizing her to a breast pump, like things that you would never think about for an elephant we're doing with her.

I have several follow-ups, but I think the one that's sticking out is how big is a breast pump for an elephant?

We actually bought a human breast pump. I actually had never utilized one either, and I was like, Okay, I'm going to need some assistance. We just desensitized her to the sound, the suction. She's not a fan, but We're working on it.

As we move deeper into the building, half a dozen elephants mozeed around, including the soon-to-be father, Spike.

Spike is cool, calm, and collected. Some zoos have successfully seen males have a fatherly role with calves, with play and coordination, and maybe even some discipline. There's other zoos that have seen the opposite, where there's not a lot of interest, but it'll be quite exciting to see how Spike reacts because he's never been around a baby. But being over 13,000 pounds, hopefully to see him interact with a 300 to 400-pound baby will be positive for everyone.

Baby fever seems to be hitting the zoo's visitors, too.

I've never seen an elephant before like this so close, so This is surreal as well.

Have you ever seen a pregnant elephant before?

No. I mean, it's just amazing. Can't believe it. It's awesome.

I wish everyone could experience the relationship that myself and animal care team for this herd experience on a daily basis. Elephants are extremely social and intelligent. I hope that people realize that elephants are amazing animals and that they deserve the chance to to live as a species.

They'll never forget that. Robbie Clarke ending that report from Riley Farrell. That's all from the Happy Pod for now. If you have a story to share or would like to comment on anything in this episode, we'd love to hear from you. As ever, the address is globalpodcast@bbc. Co. Uk. You can now watch can now watch some of our interviews on YouTube. Just search for the Happy Pod. This edition was mixed by Lewis Griffin, and the producers were Holly Gibbs, Harry Bligh, and Rachel Bulkley. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritzon. Until and until next time, goodbye.