is supported by ads outside the UK.
If you've got a move coming up, you really need to look into United Van Lines, the do-it-all moving specialists.
With United Van Lines, you don't worry about a thing.
You have a dedicated moving coordinator, qualified drivers and full value protection for your possessions.
Compare that to a couple of dudes manhandling your family heirlooms or cramming your things in a container on your driveway.
Rather than hope for the best, you deserve a hassle-free move.
Visit unitedvanlines.com.
Big moves, small moves, all moves.
Easy choice.
Saks Off 5th is your secret to fashion's most wanted deals at up to 70% off.
On the hunt for designer steals that'll turn heads and leave a trail of envy?
Uncover Gucci, Valentino, Versace, Stuart Weitzman, and more.
With new arrivals dropping weekly at prices too good to stay confidential.
Luxe layers, statement boots and tailored essentials from Saks Off 5th will put your wardrobe on the most wanted list.
Head to saksoff5th.com or a Saks Off 5th store near you for a style lineup you won't want to miss.
This is The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service.
I'm Janak Jalil and in this edition I saw the challenges in my family, the people around me, the community, etc.
That is what inspired me to push me harder.
A remarkable 18-year-old who's won a global prize for helping thousands of others get the skills and support they need to lift themselves out of poverty.
Also, how other teenagers are learning life lessons from three-year-olds.
She teaches me that I need to be more confident so I can communicate and help other people.
We celebrate the fat bears of Alaska as they bulk up for winter.
They were playful.
They were mating.
Bears that normally would fight were getting along.
If bears are relaxed and well fed, they're happy.
So people and bears, they have a lot in common as far as this goes.
And... It helps me to see the game how I want to see it.
And it allows me to see the players.
I can see their skills, how new technology is helping partially sighted football fans see the beautiful game in all its glory.
He's only 18, but Indian student Adarsh Kumar is celebrating a remarkable achievement.
Brought up by a single mother, he grew up in poverty in rural Bihar.
And aged just 14, he left home with $10 to get a better education.
A year later, on a tiny budget with a second-hand laptop bought with his mother's life savings, he created a non-profit organisation to help underprivileged young people get skills, mentorship and opportunities.
Since then...
20000 students across India have benefited and Ardosh has just won a global student prize of 100000 from US-based educational technology company Cheggorg for his efforts.
He was selected from more than 11,000 students worldwide.
I couldn't believe, you know, that, okay, this is actually happening.
And, you know, there's been so many first things for me during this trip.
This is the first time I've been traveling apart from India.
So this is like first abroad trip for me.
So I couldn't believe it, you know, everything has happened in such a short span of time.
But at the same time, it was full of gratitude, it was full of emotion.
And you were brought up just by your mother.
Yeah.
I think growing up in Bihar, specifically the rural part, is what has made me what I do today.
I saw the challenges in my family, the people around me, the community, etc.
That is what inspired me to push me harder.
What I believe is that, you know, internet has played a very important role in my life.
And like any other kid, I also started searching things like how to hack service of a game you know, temple run, et cetera, et cetera.
But I stumbled upon things like coding, entrepreneurship.
And you know because I had seen so many problems.
Entrepreneurship, coding technology seemed to be a solution to both problems.
And every day there's been some challenge in life.
You are reading stuff online and you're getting inspired to do something.
You're reading about Mahatma Gandhi, you know, the great leaders of the world, Nelson Mandela.
And you're so inspired to do something.
So that curiosity led me to learn about a lot of things and, you know, take action.
That's how I started my first startup in grade eight.
How were you able to access the Internet?
My mother spent, you know, her entire life saving to buy me a secondhand laptop.
So that's how I got the internet and the laptop, you know, to walk.
So your mother is clearly a big inspiration in your life.
Thousand percent.
I remember, you know, like when my mom actually moved out of the village and she used to walk for kilometers, just you know, and she used to say OK, if I pay for this public transport, you know I'll spend, you know, 10 rupees, which is not I don't know, it's not even half cent here.
So she used to always tell us we could buy potatoes, vegetables for this money.
So all of those things, I think, stayed within me and I was too young.
So like all of those have been instilled inside me.
And I think the most important, I've learned.
You know hard work, grit and frugality from my mother, which I use in my daily life startups.
You know whatever I do.
I mean, you're clearly very talented, but what inspired you to create a mentoring scheme for so many other young students when you yourself have a lot of obstacles that you had to overcome?
Yeah.
So, as I mentioned, when I got the Internet, you know I was doing a lot of stuff and I was trying to learn skills myself.
So while I was learning skills, you know, sitting in a village, i face a lot of challenges in terms of getting exposure, getting mentorship, getting opportunities, getting recognition.
You know, look for people who can just believe in you.
Right, say that.
Oh others, just go for it.
You can do it.
And when i moved out of my hometown at the age of 14 and when i met all of these great people, i thought why not connect both of these networks?
Okay, now i have access to mentors, now understand that pain point, now understand that problem.
So i can't wait for someone else to solve this.
So let's solve this, and entrepreneurship is all about problem solving.
And tell me, what will you do with the money you've won 100000.
That's a very good question.
I think you know this money has come for.
You know purpose, as you know someone.
Some great person said great power comes with great responsibility.
So I think I'll mostly gonna spend the money, use the money very well for the impact creating.
You know, better quality impact and also increase in terms of numbers.
So quantity and quality.
You're only 18 now.
The world is your oyster.
What's your end goal?
When I was very, very young.
I think I'm still young, but when I was very, very young, I wanted to make a utopian world.
I wanted to make everything perfect.
You know, no one should be hungry.
No one should be illiterate.
Everyone should have access to everything.
Now growing up, you know, after having you know sort of years experience, I think I've realized, you know I've narrowed down and you know what I want to do is that I want to use policy education, entrepreneurship to bring change in society.
And, in fact, in the world and I always say this that you know, my first step of changing world is to change Bihar, which is my home state.
So I'll start from there, changing the lives of people you know doing social development and hopefully you know bring it to the world, entire world.
Inspirational student Ardosh Kumar, the founder of the mentoring scheme Skillzo.
This time of year sees students returning to school in many countries around the world, and while many children swiftly get back into the swing of things, for others it's not so easy.
One charity here in the UK has come up with an unusual idea to help teenagers who struggle with attendance and engagement.
As Rebecca Wood reports, it involves pairing them with pre-school children.
13-year-old Sienna never thought she'd be taking life lessons from a three-year-old.
She teaches me that I need to be more confident so I can communicate and help other people.
I thought it'd just be something fun to do, but it's helped me really a lot.
Sienna's part of a scheme that pairs teenagers with toddlers from a local nursery in a bid to help their engagement with school and learning.
Before meeting three-year-old Tia, she says she was often absent.
I'd never been to school, I'd be like hiding somewhere or I'd be at home.
I just had a lot of anxiety, but then, ever since I came here, I've learned more about how to communicate, so it's been a lot better.
And then my attendance has improved.
The issue of school avoidance is a big one around the world.
Many assume it's a problem accelerated by the Covid pandemic, when schools were shut for long periods of time.
In reality, statistics appear to show global attendance has seen improvements since then.
But for many countries such as the UK, persistent absence rates remain a concern.
Twelve-year-old Miller is another pupil taking part in the scheme.
He's struggled to stay in class because he has a lot of energy, making it hard for him to sit still.
But after his sessions with three-year-old Andrew, he's been able to focus more on his schoolwork.
I was a bit, like, nervous.
It took me like two weeks to like say yes, because I was like really energetic and this will just make me like really, really calm.
Power Two.
The charity that runs the scheme gets referrals from schools, then takes teenagers out of class for one afternoon or morning a week to mentor their nursery buddy.
Sam Marcus is the director of services and says a lot of thought is put into the pairings.
We try and match them on personality, so we might have some young people who really struggle to contain their energy, if you like.
So we pair them up with similar types of smaller children and it just helps them to balance out.
I think it's more often than not young people are not given those positions of trust and responsibility and they really thrive in that environment.
And it's not just the teenagers who benefit.
Often the toddler has additional needs, such as speech and language delays or difficulty making friends.
Lisa, who teaches at one of the nurseries involved, said it has a big impact on the younger children too.
They know it's their special person and just having that one-to-one time for that hour each Friday.
It's just lovely to see when the teenagers come in, them children going over, hugging them.
It's just amazing.
Dr Daniel Weisberg is a consultant clinical psychologist and regularly works with young people who are feeling disconnected from their education.
So why do schemes like this work?
Think about when children are at school.
There's a lot of rules and none of it is under children's control.
This programme in particular says, what if we give them a responsibility?
If children are responsible for a little child, they feel empowered, they learn from what works and what doesn't, and children feel like they're making a real difference.
And while this scheme is just one small programme aiming to help with a very complex issue of school avoidance, it's something or indeed someone so small that can sometimes make the biggest difference.
Rebecca Wood.
Countries can get competitive about their national dishes, and Nigeria has just turned up the heat in a food debate that has lasted for decades.
Who makes the best jollof rice?
It's a popular meal across West Africa, typically made from long grain rice, tomatoes and spices, often with other vegetables or meat.
But each country has its own version.
And in a friendly rivalry known as the Jollof Wars, people clash over the origin of this staple dish and, of course, whose tastes best.
Now, as Kieran Galpin reports, a woman in Nigeria has secured the Guinness World Record for the largest ever pot of it.
Music, ten chefs and 9,000 kilos of food, all for a Guinness World Record attempt in Lagos, Nigeria.
While many of us are bored by the humdrum of daily cooking, one woman had a different view, cooking as much jolliffe rice as she possibly could.
This announcer narrated her effort.
We want to make history right now.
We're about to do something amazing tonight.
We ain't slipping.
The dish required a huge amount of ingredients 4000 kilos of rice and 170 kilos of goat meat, for example.
And 300 people took two months making the pot, which still broke as the dish was weighed.
But there was enough evidence to win her world record.
Here's the head chef, Hilda Bassey.
We always say Nigeria, we are the giants of Africa.
And Jollof Rights is a discourse that has been happening, you know, within so many African countries.
And sometimes if you go to random countries, you would find someone and say you're Nigerian.
The first thing they ask you is about Jollof Rights, right?
So I figured as the giants of Africa.
It only makes sense that we are the ones that pioneer making the largest pot of Nigerian Jollof Rights.
Those who had queued up to watch got behind her attempt and were supportive of her culinary patriotism.
She's placed us on the map and she's doing it again.
It's amazing like setting a very good record for Nigeria and Nigerians, like she's representing everybody.
So it's amazing.
I'm so happy.
Jollof Rice, you know the vibe.
Now how they talk about Ghana Jollof and Nigerian Jollof.
Nigerian Jollof, the best.
Some felt the Jollof Wars were settled after United Nations cultural organisation UNESCO declared Senegal the originator of the dish.
But with this Guinness World Record, Nigeria can claim a different piece of Jollof heritage.
That report by Kieran Galpin.
Still to come in the Happy Pod... I'm one of the best mates ever...
Yeah, they might think I'm a little bit weird or different, but that's exactly why they like me.
Because being different isn't a bad thing, it's just me.
How a 12 year old is helping to improve our understanding of autism.
If you've got a move coming up, you really need to look into United Van Lines, the do-it-all moving specialists.
With United Van Lines, you don't worry about a thing.
You have a dedicated moving coordinator, qualified drivers and full value protection for your possessions.
Compare that to a couple of dudes manhandling your family heirlooms or cramming your things in a container on your driveway.
Rather than hope for the best, you deserve a hassle-free move.
Visit unitedvanlines.com.
Big moves, small moves, all moves.
Easy choice.
Welcome to The W, where legends are made and history is written under the brightest lights.
The WNBA delivers nonstop action and world-class talent every single game.
And now, it all comes down to this.
Who will win it all this season?
This is where champions rise and legacies are defined.
Watch the WNBA Finals, currently underway on ABC and ESPN.
Thank you so much for joining us all five of her best-selling products, including the amazing youth activating melon serum.
This next generation serum has the power of melon leaf stem cell technology.
It's melon leaf stem cells encapsulated for freshness and released onto the skin to support a visible reduction in the appearance of wrinkles.
With thousands of glowing five-star reviews, why not give it a try?
Subscribe today and you can get the amazing Meaningful Beauty system for just $49.95.
That includes our introductory five-piece system free gifts, free shipping and a 60-day money-back guarantee.
All that available at MeaningfulBeauty.com.
In the shadows and flames, primals will fall, and from the blood and ash, new gods will rise.
Poppy was never meant to awaken and consequences are devastating, stirring ancient powers from their slumber, transforming Castile and Ciaran in ways the fates couldn't foresee.
The Great Conspirator has returned to stop the primal of death.
The gods have awakened, harboring blood-soaked secrets, and every choice can undo everything.
The Primal of Blood and Bone, perfect for fans of Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yaros.
Available in print, e-book, and audiobook.
Now to Alaska, where the race has been on to crown the winner of the prestigious annual Fat Bear Week.
People have been voting for their favorites in Katmai National Park as the bears eat their way to adequate fatness to prepare for winter hibernation.
Organizers encouraged voters to pick the one they believed best.
Exemplifies fatness and success in brown bears.
And this was the announcement on TV.
We have a winner.
Chunk, a towering brown bear with a broken jaw, has taken the top prize in Alaska's popular fat bear contest.
This is Chunk's first win after narrowly finishing in second place the three previous years.
The annual competition.
For those who haven't been following it, it allows viewers to follow 12 bears on live webcams.
Then they can cast their ballots in a bracket style single elimination tournament.
By the way, Chunk weighs an estimated 1,200 pounds.
I know, and he's a broken jaw.
So he's playing injured.
That's true.
And he still prevailed.
Yes.
What an athlete.
Well, Chunk took the title from two-time winner Grazer, but Grazer's cub, Little Miss Biggie, was crowned junior champion.
Adrienne White spoke to a park ranger at Katmai, Christine Loberg.
What we like to do with this celebration is to celebrate these bears and how they're going to survive through hibernation.
It's definitely from an environmental perspective.
It's to keep people involved with the environment, to learn about bears, to learn about our national parks, all those three.
And it does work.
People, they watch these programs.
They do want to come to parks and see bears or just enjoy wildlife in general, which is really important.
This year at Katmai National Park, we had a record salmon run.
It was one of the It could have been 100 years even.
And the bears did amazingly fine this year, eating plenty of calories by taking advantage of the salmon run.
They could go anywhere to get salmon this year, which was really exciting.
You could walk along anywhere and see bears.
And they were playful.
They were mating.
Bears that normally would fight were getting along.
It was just to show us what happens when people are relaxed, how they act.
Bears are the same way, because if people are relaxed, they're happy.
If bears are relaxed and well-fed, they're happy.
So people and bears, they have a lot in common as far as this goes.
People are mainly interacting with the bears virtually, aren't they?
How do you think having people engaged that way, that plays an important role in preservation of environment.
It does play a big role because this way people, if they cannot make it to Katmai or any national park, they still could enjoy wildlife in their living room.
And so this is really nice that exploreorg has these cameras not just at Katmai, but all over the world.
You could go to Africa, you could go to other places to watch, you know, other animals.
It educates people how important our world is and how important wildlife is in our world and how important preservation of wildlife, these amazing animals all over the world not just a cat, my happens to be because this is a our planet's amazing planet and we have amazing animals and we need to preserve all these wild creatures that are roaming around the earth.
I love just enjoying and looking at what we have to offer to show people from all around the world in our national parks.
And one thing that our national parks do is they preserve land.
So it won't be developed.
So it's pretty much the way it was found a long time ago at the beginning of time.
So the habitat is there, is protected.
So we can have wildlife in all our national parks.
And this is everywhere, from Katmai National Park in Alaska, Denali National Park all the way down to the lower 48s, where we have Yellowstone Yosemite, Tetons.
All parks have something different to offer.
Even the Everglades, every park has something unique to offer.
And people will go to their nearest national park to explore the animals.
It could even be sea animals.
It could be the Channel Islands.
It could be whatever.
And they have these amazing experiences interacting with nature and wildlife and then they want to be out in wildlife and nature as well.
Why do you think people love bears so much?
I think they love bears because they are a mystery.
I mean, let's face it.
We don't know too many animals that the size of a bear.
They'll go on hibernation for many months and then come out and just start acting.
You know living life again.
That's very fascinating to many people.
And people I believe, love looking at anything that's unteamed in today's world that seems like it's shrinking.
To know that there's somewhere in the world where animals are still like they were hundreds of years ago, living like they were hundreds of years ago in places that aren't developed.
It makes it special for them because they go back in time and they're really having a nice experience by just enjoying nature.
Up close and personal in their living room or in person.
Catmine National Park ranger Christine Loberg.
And you can see the bears and animals from across the world at explore.org forward slash livecams.
New technologies helping football fans with sight problems to get more out of going to live games.
It's being developed with the English Premier League club Crystal Palace.
And 12-year-old Sophia, who is registered blind, is one of the first to try it.
Ricky Boleto went to meet her.
It's match day at Crystal Palace.
We're here at Selhurst Park where loads of people are getting excited for kick-off, including superfan Sophia.
I've been a fan since I was nine years old.
Since you were nine.
What do you love about the game?
I love the atmosphere, the crowd, the girls.
Sophia is now 12 and is registered blind due to a rare condition called bimacular atrophy.
Can you remember what it was like when you went to your first match?
I couldn't really see the players' facial expressions or who scored that goal.
I can't really see all of the detail in the game.
It's very blurry for me and also I can't really see the players kicking the ball.
According to the Royal National Institute of Blind People, blind and partially sighted fans are half as likely to attend live sporting events compared to the UK average.
But now, thanks to cutting edge tech and a South London football club willing to lead the charge, that might be about to change.
Crystal Palace has become the first football club in the world to offer new sight enhancing headsets at home games, helping visually impaired fans experience football like never before.
When I put it on, it helps me to see the game how I want to see it.
And it allows me to see the players.
I can see their skills.
So you're seeing all of that footage, which could be so far away, up close in front of your eyes.
The technology is made by London-based startup GiveVision.
Joanna Lidington explains how it works.
The headset Sophia's using works in two main ways.
There's a camera on the headset itself, which Sophia can choose to look at whatever she wants to.
With this joystick, you can zoom in, you can zoom out.
But the other function is she can connect in with the TV cameras.
So around the pitch there's lots of different people filming what's going on, and that's what you see at home.
And she's getting what you see at home in her headset in real time at the stadium.
And the difference for Sophia has been remarkable.
Before it made me disconnected and now I feel like I'm part of the crowd.
As the game begins, a wider vision takes shape and the hope that other London clubs will follow Palace's lead.
This could be a goal!
And after the final whistle, a surprise.
Sophia meets her hero, Palace Captain Mark Gay.
Did you know you were going to meet Mark today?
No.
No!
So this is a huge surprise.
It's so important that Sophia's here today, because she's using this special kit to make sure that she can see.
Do you think it's something that lots of children should be able to get access to?
I think so.
I think so.
Giving children the opportunity to experience what we experience and maybe things that they're not able to experience to the fullest.
Definitely something that I think everyone should be able to do.
Would you agree?
Yes.
Good, good, good.
This could be the beginning of a brighter, clearer future for fans with sight loss.
That report by Ricky Boleto.
We've been hearing how the internet helped a poor boy from India to achieve great things as well as winning a big prize.
And another wonderful thing about the internet is that, however niche your hobby is, you can probably find an online community of people who share it.
Facebook alone claims more than one and a half billion people use its groups every month.
But what about running these online communities, giving up your free time to approve posts and stop the endless inevitable arguments?
Our reporter, Will Chalk, has been meeting people who do it and asking them why.
My name is Jeff DeChambeau.
I'm...
I'm turning 40 in a couple of months.
And yeah, I guess years and years ago I got fired from my job and got into Simpsons memes and wound up co-creating Simpsons board posts.
Jeff's Facebook group is for people who like to make memes based around American TV show The Simpsons.
They'll take a freeze frame from the show, modify it or put some text over it to make a joke and post it in the group.
If you think it sounds niche, you're wrong.
It's got more than 400,000 members from all over the world.
And running it, Jeff says, can feel like a full-time job.
If you're not good with boundaries, it could take up your entire day.
The bulk of the work, according to Jeff, is making sure new posts follow the group's rules and the arguments in the comments section don't violate Facebook's rules and get the group banned.
Jeff has never made a single penny for his efforts.
So why do it?
Well, his answer is more life affirming than you might expect.
We really tried to have a culture of like encouraging people to create a new meme for the very first time.
And then they would just love it.
And then they would make another one and another and just get better and better and better.
Yeah, I really liked having that impact on people's lives, basically.
You know, you load up the group, you're not feeling good.
You see some memes, you laugh.
Hopefully that spirals out a little bit.
In another corner of the internet, I meet Jodie, who's from Leeds in England.
I feel like everybody likes memes.
It's the thing that you do when you want to cheer somebody up, you send them a funny meme.
She gives up around two hours a day to moderate three meme pages based around Harry Potter, Marvel and Squid Game.
She says the people on the meme pages, who she's never met, are some of her best friends.
I speak to some of these people more than I speak to my own family.
These people become like super, super close that you just almost forget the online aspect of it.
It's.
I never thought that I could be so close to people that you know lived in like Bangladesh or America or Pakistan or South Africa.
Like it's been an eye opener and it's yeah, I wouldn't change it.
Meme fan Jodie ending that report by Will Chalk.
We started this episode with an inspirational 18 year old and we thought we would end it with an inspirational 12 year old boy who's been attracting widespread praise on social media across Australia and beyond for opening up about being autistic.
Leo Bird chose to talk personally about his diagnosis in front of his whole school in Sydney in the hope of helping others, and his mother then posted it online.
Leo, who also has ADHD, compared himself to a limited edition Lego set, saying His speech, which won the school's Young Communicator competition, was designed to help people understand the condition and give other young people with autism someone to relate to.
Even if you show me something 475 times, I still might not remember, especially if it's boring.
But if it's something I love, I'll remember every detail.
I also worry about a lot of things, like food.
What's for dinner at 7am?
What card we're taking to school?
What time we're leaving?
What time we're coming back?
Basically, I'm the family's unofficial calendar.
I sometimes stiff, which means I do little movements that help me feel calm.
Especially when I'm anxious.
And yes, I toe walk, but I like to think of that as giving myself some extra height.
I also say really random things that make no sense in conversations, like telling someone what year traffic lights were invented.
No, seriously, it was 1868.
You're welcome.
Some autistic kids struggle to make friends, but I've got the best mates ever.
Yeah, they might think I'm a little bit weird or different, but that's exactly why they like me, because being different isn't a bad thing, it's just.
Me.
So if you ever meet someone with autism, don't be mean to them.
They might just have a limited brain with bonus features like me.
Anyway, if you'll excuse me, I've got an elevator video to watch on YouTube.
Thank you.
That was 12-year-old Leo Bird from Sydney.
And that's all from The Happy Pod for now.
But if you want to comment on anything in this episode or you have a happy or inspiring story you think we should cover, we'd love to hear from you.
Send us an email or a voice note to 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.
The producers were Holly Gibbs, Harry Bly and Rachel Bulkley.
The editor is Karen Martin.
I'm Janette Jalil.
Until next time, goodbye.
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.
