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Global News Podcast

The Happy Pod: Love, cake, and a long-lost mother

Global News Podcast

BBC

News, Daily News

4.38.3K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We hear how a man's search for his birth mother ended in an unexpected but familiar place - his favourite local bakery. Vamarr Hunter was shocked to discover that the bakery's owner, whose company and motherly advice he'd enjoyed for years, was the woman who'd given him up for adoption when she was 17. Lenore Lindsey says being reunited has made her a warmer person and it feels like they were never separated.

Also: The international football star who cycles to work, uses public transport and wears second-hand clothes. Héctor Bellerín, who plays for Real Betis in Spain, uses his profile to champion greener choices - arguing that with power comes responsibility.

Green turtles have recovered from the brink of extinction, in what scientists are describing as a major conservation victory. They've been classed as endangered since the 1980s but their numbers are bouncing back.

The winner of one of the world's most prestigious prizes describes how he initially thought his wife was playing a joke on him. Fred Ramsdell missed the official announcement that he'd been awarded the Nobel Prize for Medicine because he was on a hiking trip.

Plus the cafe that's providing work as well as food for the homeless, and a kind stranger who drove hundreds of miles just to return someone's lost bag.

Our weekly collection of inspiring, uplifting and happy news from around the world. (Photo credit: Lenore Lindsey)

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.

0:05.8

This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Service.

0:14.1

I'm Celia Hatton, and in this edition, how one man's search for his birth mother

0:19.3

let him back to someone he already knew.

0:22.7

It's like I automatically knew him.

0:24.3

I felt like I hadn't been separated from him.

0:27.1

She was already a lady that I respected.

0:29.3

And I felt like the conversation was always like that of a mother figure.

0:34.9

Also.

0:36.0

With power comes responsibility. And hopefully, you know, with this platform, we can

0:40.9

become stronger, you know, and be able to change all these things that truly can be changed.

0:46.1

The international football star who cycles to work and wears secondhand clothes.

0:52.1

Green turtles have bounced back from the brink of extinction.

0:55.6

It just tells this great story of how people across the planet can come together to turn

1:01.2

things around and that is amazing. Plus, why the man who won one of the world's most prestigious

1:07.4

awards initially thought his wife was joking.

1:15.6

She started screaming, my God, my God, and she said, you won the Nobel Prize.

1:17.5

And I said, I did not win the Nobel Prize.

1:21.0

She said, I have 200 text messages that said you won the Nobel Prize.

1:32.8

Well, first, we start with an incredible story about separation, love, and cake.

1:39.1

Vermar Hunter loved to visit the Gimme Some Sugar Bakery in his home neighborhood in Chicago,

1:44.9

enjoying the cakes, pies, and cookies, but also the warm company of the owner, Lenore Lindsay.

...

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