I'm Nico Evans, currently living in Bavaria in Germany. You're listening to The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service.
I'm Janet Gillier and in this edition we hear about a surprising similarity between us and dolphins. When the first dolphins start smiling, the other dolphins most of the time respond with the same facial expression. A medical breakthrough with the world's first fully robotic double lung transplant.
It's amazing what it's done for me. Thank you is not a good enough word. This has gave me my life back. And? The more stressed you get about not being able to talk, you get even more dysregulated which makes it even harder to talk. Our clothes are making it easier for autistic people to communicate.
Researchers have found that just as we smile at friends, dolphins change their expressions too when they're interacting. They can often be observed playing with objects and chasing each other seemingly just for the fun of it. Now researchers have found that bottlenose dolphins have an, quote, open mouth expression that they use to communicate with each other during play, like a human smile.
The research published in the journal Eye Science looked at 22 bottlenose dolphins and found that when they opened their mouths at their friends, they would often mimic the facial expressions back. Dr. Elizabetha Palagi from the University of Pisa described the findings to the happy pods Isabella Jule. The main conclusion is that animals that usually play a lot like dolphins seems to use visual cues
while working together. When we went for the first time to gather data collection on dolphins, we have not in mind any hypothesis about the use of visual cue and fashion cueing these species, because as many scholars and people know, these species strongly rely on acoustic cues to communicate.
So we were really surprised to see and observe opening the mouth while playing together. And what we discover is that they very, very rarely opened their mouth during solitary play, but they opened their mouth when they had the opportunity to play with individuals of the same species. It seems that while opening the mouth,
Dolphins were attentive to the other's faces in order to be sure or to increase the probability to be seen by the playmate. We know that humans smile generally to communicate friendliness or happiness. Do we know anything about what the dolphins are trying to communicate with their open-mouthed expressions? Yes. Also, when we laugh and we laugh together with other people, we tend to interact in a face-to-face interaction.
And when we engage the other gaze, our laughter is much more. Looking at each other in the eyes, it seems to be extremely important to advocate the similar facial expression. And it is exactly what it occurs also in dolphins. So when the first dolphin starts smiling, the other dolphin, most of the time, respond with the same facial expression within one second,
which is the same criteria used for humans for rapid facial mimicry. Since our facial expressions are the same, the emotion underlying the same, this facial expression are probably the same too. So if I smile and use smile, probably we are in the same mood of pleasure. Of course, it's difficult to say if this facial expression of dolphins
is a smile, is a true smile, but the similarities in which they use their open mouth, it is incredible similar and seems to have the same function that has been found in other species.
Dr. Elizabetha Palagi talking to Isabella Jaul. Now to an exciting medical achievement, the first fully robotic double lung transplant. Cheryl Merka, who's 57, had the operation in New York last month and is already able to walk around unaided. This way of carrying out surgery builds on minimally invasive procedures and aims to shorten hospital stays as well as speeding up the healing process. Stephanie Zachrysson reports.
In an operating room on Manhattan, surrounded by monitoring doctors, it is a robot that is the star of the show. The Da Vinci cheese, multiple white tall arms are slowly performing a double lung transplant on 57-year-old Cheryl Merker.
Cheryl, a paramedic, had suffered with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease for a decade, becoming even more fatigued after a bout of COVID. She needed at-home oxygen therapy and her husband retired to become her carer before she became eligible for a transplant. Once they put me on the list, I figured, okay, I have a couple more months to go, and five days later I got the call. They said they have a 98% match,
and how soon can you get here? And my first reaction was, holy, you know what? And I'll be there in two hours." The Tima NYU Langone Health Center had already broken medical ground earlier this year when they performed the country's first ever fully robotic single lung transplant. Now, Dr. Stephanie H. Chang was taking on the challenge of conducting the operation with two lungs.
We've made lots of advances with robotic technology for lung cancer surgery, lots of other thoracic surgery and even heart surgery. And so this is really the first major step towards moving it towards lung transplantation. Robots assisted surgery has been in development for decades. With the first recorded use of a surgical robot in 1985, then a Puma 560 was used in a brain biopsy procedure to reduce movement due to hand tremors.
As the technology has progressed, robots have been put to use in more and more types of surgery, ranging from orthopedic to gynecological procedures. Earlier this year, the world's first fully robotic heart transplant was performed in Saudi Arabia.
During showers procedure, the team of doctors worked in tandem with the robot as it entered the body, removed the diseased lungs and then implanted the donor lungs, all through a small cut on each side. As a result, compared with typical lung transplant surgeries, the use of a robot minimises blood loss and the incisions are significantly smaller, as Dr Stephanie H Chang explains. Instead of something that is probably
eight inches in terms of an incision, we can get it down to a two-inch incision. So there's significantly less trauma on the chest wall, so better healing for the patient and less post-operative pain. Roughly a month after going under the knife, Sharon Marker is already up and walking around the hospital where she's come elassing. When I walk around, I don't need oxygen to do that and I can breathe. Sometimes my legs get a little tired, but
At least I could still breathe. It's amazing what it's done for me. Thank you is not a good enough word. I don't know what word to use. This is huge. This has gave me my life back.
Cheryl Merka, ending that report by Stephanie Sakhrasen. Now to an innovative way of helping autistic people to express their emotions, something many of them often struggle with. May found it difficult to be at school and gave up college at 16 because of mental health issues. Then a couple of years ago, May, who uses the pronouns they and them, hit on the idea of what's become known as communication clothing. William Kramer has been finding out more and spoke to Myra Anubi.
So it's a black hoodie or sweater and it has baby bats with different facial expressions. What's going on here? So yeah, on the front of the sweater, there's five super cute pictures of the cute on the of bats doing different things. So the one on the left is flapping its wings in a sort of excited way, sort of a bit buzzy. Then the next one is maybe looking a bit sad. The next one is happy. Yeah. The idea is that if somebody's wearing that jumper and they find that they
can't talk, they can point at one of these pictures and the person they're with will understand how they're feeling. There's also, if you look on the sleeves, it says yes on one sleeve and no on the other. So they can answer questions. May explain to me that when they get really overwhelmed, without a way to communicate, things can actually spiral out of control.
The more stressed you get about not being able to talk, you get even more dysregulated, which makes it even harder to talk. I used to get a lot of panic attacks or it causes full meltdowns or something like that. So it's like a negative cycle of non-communication and stress. And I'm at a young boy who lives near London who, just like me, is really affected by this. Hi, I'm Aston. I'm 10 and I like playing video games. They also like animals.
Like a lot of autistic people, Aston suffers from anxiety.
Now, in that clip, you can also hear Aston's grandma Gloria. Recently, for Aston's birthday, she gave him a communication jumper. Now, Aston's jumper wasn't designed by May, but by Key and Lorne, who started a company recently called My Best Interest. Myra, I've got one just like Aston's here. Take a look.
Okay, so it's another hooded jumper, but I'm noticing this one has little animals on the sleeves. We have an overwhelmed owl with ear defenders. We also have a hungry fox and a very sick hedgehog. Also, on the other sleeve we have, let's see, this is a bird that wants to fly home, a happy frog and a sad badger.
My gosh, she was so excited. It had to be put on straight away. We were going to go out for an evening meal. So I'm wearing this. I'm not changing my beleap and bring me a posture. I'm wearing this. And in actual fact, it came in very handy walking to the pub, didn't it?
because he suddenly got very quiet and he looked at me and he tapped my arm and I went, are you all right darling? And he went overwhelmed. Just to be clear, Aston wasn't saying the word overwhelmed, but he was pointing at the picture of the overwhelmed owl on his new jumper. So we had a little chat and I said, well, it's been a long day. It should be your birthday. You don't usually get the evening to eat. So you're probably also
Where's the hungry one? Hungry. You're also probably hungry. He went, yes, I am. I am. I'm very hungry. I find it really interesting in that Aston's grandma worked with him using the jumper to work out what his emotion was and figure out that he was hungry.
And actually with this clothing, although it was designed really for autistic people, a lot of professionals have been buying them. So for example, special needs teachers at school have been buying them and using them in the class to help them communicate with their children. And May, who we heard from earlier, has sold 10,000 sweaters with their company inside my head. And they ship them all around the world. May says that this has completely transformed their own life. It's given them a sense of purpose.
Growing up, I had very, very, very low self of steam. When I think about my 15 year old self who just believed the world was better off without them. And now I think about my 21 year old self who helps 10,000 people. That's like such a big full circle moment. I'm so happy that I stayed and did this and tried. And now I actually help myself and so many other people, which is just wonderful. And you can hear more on people fixing the world wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
Coming up in this podcast. My mom was staying with me that night. She kind of knew that I was down, which isn't typically me. And she was like, what's wrong? And I was like, Mom, I don't think I ever be able to play baseball again. The man who turned a life-changing accident into a major sporting achievement.
You may remember the story of four children, one of them a baby who were lost for 40 days in the Amazon rainforest after surviving a plane crash which killed their mother and two other adults. The search and rescue mission that followed caught the world's attention in 2023 and has now been made into a Netflix documentary. For several days there has been no evidence that the children are alive. Brothers have faith.
Children please, if you can hear this, stay where you are. We are going to bring those four kids back.
The ages of the four indigenous children were 13, nine, four and nearly one year old. The documentary shows how the children managed to survive thanks to the 13 year old's knowledge of the jungle's many dangers. And it also depicts the grueling search by the Colombian military and indigenous volunteers to try to locate the children and bring them home safely. The film's director Orlando Von Eincedel spoke to Krupa Patti.
I suppose, like, 10 to millions of other people around the world, the moment I heard about this operation playing out, I was completely gripped and I followed it until the children were found. But it was really when I learned about the actual search and rescue operation that I became interested. This story of two groups of people, the Columbian Special Forces and these indigenous volunteers, who historically have had a lot of mistrust and animosity between each other and how they
had to come together and work together for this shared goal. We live in a very polarised world and this felt like a story that we could all draw inspiration from. When I was watching it I found that there were so many themes in the documentary, human instinct, survival, culture, trust and you show how the Colombian military and indigenous people worked together to overcome their mistrust.
Exactly, and it was unbelievable how deep that mistrust lies. There had been decades of war in Colombia. So, you know, everyone went into this with enormous amounts of apprehension and resentment, and actually watching how they ended up coming together to achieve something extraordinary was quite beautiful. Explain to us what we've learnt since about how these children survived.
Part of the reason really is testament to Leslie, who was the eldest girl. She's an indigenous child. She's from the Whitoto community in Columbia, and she had some skills. She knew about what fruits that the children could eat while in the forest, and she knew about gathering water. But ultimately, the facts that they could survive 40 days with no medical supplies, and they'd survive the plane crash as well, is extraordinary.
I mean, you know, I guess the story ends happily in some way, but it's a story with a lot of tragedy at its heart, not just the children's family, but also, you know, what we try to do in the film is tell it the wider story about Columbia and Columbia's history, and that's been a very difficult history. But
I'd like to think that overall this story, this is almost a parable, is about the best things about humanity, the things that bring us together rather than divide us, the strength of the human spirit, human resilience. And that's the film that I've tried to make.
Orlando von Einstein, who directed the documentary The Lost Children. Now to San Marino, where the tiny landlocked country's football team have made history, despite being the world's lowest ranked. They've been promoted in the nation's league after their first ever win away from home against Lichtenstein. It was also the first time they scored more than once in a competitive game, going on to win 3-1.
Matthew Amolewala caught up with San Marino's team manager, Michaela Raski. They are all happy. They maybe still have to realise what they did, but they wrote an historical page of football in San Marino and for European football because half of our team is made by workers that during the daily life at the end of the work, they go to the pitches to train with their club.
while the other half of the team is composed by people that is playing in a Italian championship and the group is made of young people and young professional players that are growing up all together and they did something extraordinary and we hope to do even better in the future. Yes, even better. By the way, we join the moment and we enjoy the party and
So they're still celebrating, but it is still sinking in just what they've actually achieved. Yeah, maybe in two or three days when they saw all the newspapers, they realized they did something great. Yeah, tell me, as a manager, look, you won that first game a couple of months ago at home. Now you've won away. What have you done differently? Because it's been 20 years since you've had any sort of win.
I'm the manager since this January 24th and the people who were before me in this role made a great job to create a group that did something great in the last Nations League. I think the technical staff made the difference in this year workers because in 11 months our head coach and the technical staff changed the mind of the players.
That's incredible. San Marino going to actually play in the qualifiers for the World Cup. I just want to ask you a word about the supporters because what do you make of them? They for years have followed you around Europe watching the team get absolutely thumped. So what is it like now when they actually get to see you win?
It's incredible because even the group of supporters is growing better and better and more and more and we beat the record of traveling supporters since there were around 50 supporters in Lickstein in Gibraltar on October, they were around 40 so their group is growing and they are evolving more.
more and more people from all the world, not only Europe, is fascinated by the summer international football team and they love our romantic history of local football that play internationally. San Marino's team manager, Michaela Raski.
In today's hyper-connected world, telephone scams have evolved into sophisticated operations catching even some of the most vigilant off-guard. Well, one telecom operator in the UK has come up with a way to use artificial intelligence to reduce the number of suspect calls received by its customers. Daisy, the AI granny, works around the clock answering calls that have been marked as spam, wasting the scammer's time.
Our reporter, Will Chork, has been speaking to Daisy. Oh my dear, I'm not too comfortable sharing that. I'm a bit cautious with personal information. This is Daisy, a lovable old lady with a passion for knitting. And I'm trying, in an admittedly cack-handed way, to scam her. You couldn't just give us your bank details, could you? Oh, bless your heart.
That's very kind of you, but I don't think I should be giving out my bank details to anyone. Except Daisy isn't really an old lady, and I'm not really trying to scam her. She's an AI chatbot designed to waste the time of fraudsters, and she's been developed by the British telecoms giant Virgin Media 02. As part of a launch event, they've allowed journalists like me to talk to her.
Hello, is that Daisy? Oh, bless. Yes, dear. It's Daisy here. How can I help her you today? What was the name of the street you grew up on, Daisy? Oh, dear. That's a lovely question. I grew up on Willow Lane in Mormsbury. Such fond memories there. We had the most beautiful gardens. Do you have a favourite street from your company? The company is clearly proud of Daisy and says she's indistinguishable from a real person.
But is she? As well as the very noticeable delay, she also garbles some of her sentences. But then again, over a bad line, these could probably pass as connection issues. And given Daisy's design to waste people's time, it's not necessarily a bad thing. According to her creators, she really does work. They've posted her phone number on forums known to be used by scammers. And say since then, she's taken a thousand calls and has kept some of them on the phone for up to 40 minutes.
I'm Murray Mackenzie. I'm Director of Fraud for Virgin Media Auto. I think the key thing that we've got to remember here is we're not talking about one fraudster in a basement making a lot of phone calls. There's huge numbers of people involved in these criminal gangs. There are teams that are professional call centres targeting people and for them to all be educated about what one scam bot sounds like is incredibly tricky for fraudsters to manage. This is a great example of us doing what we can to make the life of a criminal significantly harder. Can you please come to the homepage in your computer
For now AI bots like Daisy are relatively small fry in the global battle against scams. But as the tech improves and becomes more widely available AI could become an increasingly useful tool for both the people looking to fight scammers and the scammers themselves.
We'll talk. Two years ago, after a boating accident, which led to one of his legs being amputated, 18-year-old Parker Bird, a talented baseball player, thought his dreams of sporting glory were over. But in a remarkable comeback, he has become one of the first, possibly only the second man to play in a Division I college baseball game with a prosthetic leg. Now Parker is dreaming of making it to the Major Leagues. He spoke to Caroline Barker.
10 yards or so from the boat, the driver put the boat in reverse, he got not into reverse somehow and essentially ended up sucking me under the boat which led to the propellers in both of my legs and my left hand as well. All the guys started tying, turning it from my legs, the best I could with a shirt while trying to lay down other boats for help because
Our boat wasn't able to move due to the route we call the propeller. The second boat stopped and all that boat were two couples, one of the ladies was actually a nurse. So she knew more what to do. I stayed at the hospital for a total of four weeks and had 22 surgeries in a matter of 45 days. It was definitely a long too much for sure.
Gosh, your whole dream, you know, the baseball was everything. The minute you know, you're going to lose your leg. What's going through your head then? A lot of questions, a lot of, not only baseball related, but just a life in general, like maybe a week or so, like the baseball factor definitely came in. I was like, my mom was staying with me that night. I was just talking to her and she kind of knew that I was down, which isn't typically me. And she was like, what's wrong? And I was like, Mom, I don't think I ever be able to play baseball again.
What was it like that first moment, then, when you were back in your uniform, ready to just throw a ball about? I mean, the emotions were really unreal. So kind of a moment that I'll never forget because I mean, the crowd, the atmosphere, the boss song was awesome. Your family there.
They worry. Yeah, they captured a great video of them. And I mean, that makes them emotional every time I see it, just because of how emotional they are. I mean, they were there every step of the way. And they know that how hard it was. So it was a cool moment. What was the reaction from your teammates? They were pumped. They were like, they were there all the way too.
Some of the guys that were on the boat were in the delia watching. So I think it was a really cool moment, like just a full circle moment that I was back and I think it was just as special as me. I mean, it wasn't me just because they're my brothers and they they were there every step of the way. Just finally you talked about wanting to change and be an inspiration for so many people. Have there been kids that have reached out to you and said thanks for what you're talking about?
I've seen kids start playing baseball that were missing some form of land that they never thought they would be able to, just because they thought it was impossible. Because, I mean, like I said, not many people do it. Like, you know, I was just saying probably TNF PT start playing baseball just from my story, which is awesome. And those are the only ones that have reached out. So Lord knows how many of these actually started or
not only based on just another sport in general or just facing some form of adversity I never thought they'd be able to do so it's really cool to see the moments because it's so easy to get caught up in the day in life and the ground of things but you see stuff like that it really allows you to step back and casting the bigger picture and understand like hey I'm
doing this for more than just myself. Inspirational baseball star Parker Bird and you can hear the full interview on sports world wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
And that's all from The Happy Pod for now. If you'd like to introduce a future episode, you can send us a voice note to say your name, where you are and the words you're listening to The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service. And you can add a bit more about why you listen, like Nicole. Listening last commuting 40 minutes by bike each day ensures a dose of positivity and an insight into some of the incredible things being achieved by people from all walks of life across the globe. It definitely starts each day with a smile.
As ever, the address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. This edition was mixed by Callum McLean. The producers will holly Gibbs and Rachel Boggley. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Janet Gileo. Until next time, goodbye.
