The Happy Pod: The cafe where mistakes are expected

Global News Podcast

BBC

Daily News, News

4.2 • 7.8K Ratings

🗓️ 13 December 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

A pop-up cafe in Tokyo is giving people with dementia a place to volunteer as well as a sense of community. A volunteer there, Toshio Morita, has become something of a local celebrity. At the Orange Day Café, muddled orders, long pauses and gentle confusion aren’t mistakes — they’re the point.

Also:

A Northern Irish man who suffered a cardiac arrest had his life saved after his golden retriever, named Polly, alerted his wife after he stopped breathing. Polly the dog has been hailed a hero by the charity, the British Heart Foundation.

A revolutionary gene therapy has successfully treated patients with aggressive and previously incurable blood cancers.

In Kenya, the Rare Gem Talent School has been set up specifically to teach dyslexic children. A condition that is believed to impact around 10% of people globally.

A woman in Kerala, India, has started a camp to help women who are going through a divorce.

And a French man in London has become the face of a homelessness charity after his virtuoso piano playing at a train station went viral.

Our weekly collection of inspiring, uplifting and happy news from around the world.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:05.7	This is the Happy Pod from the BBC World Service.
0:16.7	I'm Joanna Keane and in this edition,
0:19.8	everybody needs a place to be needed.
0:22.6	Since they need identity, they need a place.
0:26.6	They need a place to be himself or herself.
0:31.0	The cafe in Tokyo that allows people with dementia to volunteer as servers.
0:36.5	It's not a day I go by right.
0:37.8	I don't think about that far,
0:39.1	and forever indebted to the both of them.
0:41.6	And thankfully, I get to tell them and thank them every day,
0:46.0	give Polly a big hug.
0:47.7	We meet the man whose life was saved by his dog.
0:51.4	Plus,
0:52.3	I can't compare that level of happiness to anything that I have ever felt,
0:56.6	like the amount of emotion and just going from a place where you thought that you were never going to grow up.
1:05.5	The groundbreaking gene therapy, which has helped people with previously incurable blood cancers.
1:11.7	The school in Kenya set up for dyslexic children and a camp for women in India who are going
1:17.7	through divorce.
1:18.9	Trekking up the mountains or sitting by the beach, listening to each other and playing
1:24.0	games together, dancing together and also listening to music together.
1:33.6	We start in Tokyo where one small cafe has become famous for far more than its cakes and coffee.
	...

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