The Happy Pod: Meeting a princess while climbing a mountain
Global News Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 8.3K Ratings
🗓️ 4 July 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Pete Haslam was carrying his paraplegic son Ted up a mountain, helped by friends and family, when they bumped into Catherine, Princess of Wales. She was doing the same climbing challenge, known as the Three Peaks, and stopped to chat to them three times. Pete says he almost didn't recognise Catherine in her walking gear but, when they got talking, she was very kind and motherly to Ted.
Also: in a story suggested by a listener, we hear from the US man who crossed Africa on a skateboard. Jason Vanporppal was raising money for a skatepark in Uganda which he hopes will inspire young people.
The unusual object that saved a man's life after an accident at sea. He survived by clinging to a cool box for four hours.
Plus the twins who married twins, the Nigerian chef awarded 'icon status'.
And the surprise school trip to a star studded movie premiere. Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson arranged for the pupils to see his latest film, Moana, after they'd tagged him in a socials video.
Our weekly collection of inspiring, uplifting and happy news from around the world.
(Photo: Pete Haslam talking to Catherine, Princess of Wales, on Ben Nevis. Credit: Pete Haslam)
Presenter: Holly Gibbs. Music composed by Iona Hampson
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.5 | American politics can sometimes feel like a different language. |
| 0:11.1 | But our podcast can help you translate. |
| 0:13.3 | Make sense of what's happening in the US, |
| 0:15.2 | with new podcast episodes arriving throughout the week. |
| 0:18.1 | AmeriCast, listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:21.2 | This is the happy pod from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:30.9 | I'm Holly Gibbs and in this edition, |
| 0:33.6 | a chance encounter with royalty. |
| 0:36.1 | I was just dumb, bandfounded, to be honest. |
| 0:38.3 | Because she had all the walking gear on, I think I might have just walked past her, to be honest. |
| 0:42.5 | But yeah, she was lovely. |
| 0:43.9 | She was being very motherly to TED, seeing if it was warm enough. |
| 0:47.9 | How her family met the UK's future queen while climbing a mountain. |
| 0:52.4 | Also, why a man from the US decided to skateboard across Africa. |
| 0:57.1 | I want them to feel inspired, knowing that that skate park was built off of this, like, chasing a |
| 1:01.8 | dream, you know, and I want people to skate that knowing they could do way more than what |
| 1:05.5 | they believe they can do. Plus, how an unusual object saved a man's life at sea. |
| 1:11.2 | He had a cool box and he was able to hold on to that and was in the water for about four hours. |
| 1:16.9 | Just surviving that is pretty remarkable. |
| 1:20.0 | Double the love as twins marry twins in Nigeria. |
| 1:24.3 | And the children who went on a school trip to a star-studied movie premiere. |
... |
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