The Happy Pod: Playing the piano saved my life
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Hello, I'm Katya Adler, host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. Each weekday, we break down one big news story with fresh perspectives from journalists around the world. From artificial intelligence to divisive politics tearing our societies apart, from the movements of money and markets to the human stories that touch our lives, we bring you in-depth insights from across the BBC and beyond. Listen to the Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts.
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This is The Happy Pod from the BBC World Service.
I'm Alex Ritson and in this edition... I am so grateful and so appreciative that people have allowed me into their lives and into their hearts. Thank you so much for changing my life. They've saved my life.
The homeless man whose piano playing went viral, allowing him to raise money to help others. How love has inspired a husband in Iowa to turn his whole street into a winter wonderland. A remarkable survival story.
The guy was screaming, cut, cut, please, cut. We thought he has some medical problems and actually was screaming, we have to take care about his cat.
His tiny ginger cat helped him stay alive in snowy mountains for eight days and... ..the AI programme that can tell where a dolphin is from by its accent. We begin with a man whose hidden musical talent is helping him turn his life around and supporting others. Earlier this year, Rhys Wynne-Jones was homeless and had gone to a church with friends for something to eat. He sat down at a piano to play and as everyone stopped to listen... a volunteer started filming. The video from Penzance in south-western England went viral on social media and his performance of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody has even been praised by the group's drummer Roger Taylor as dazzling. Now, Rhys has been performing concerts and raising thousands of dollars for charities helping other homeless people. Rhys has been talking to my colleague Evan Davies.
The director came over to me because she saw that I was suffering and she asked me, is there anything that you needed? It just struck into my mind that a church like this might have a piano for me to play on. So I asked the night church, do you have a piano? And I was expecting the answer to be no. But instead she said, yes, we have a piano in the church. And she showed me over to this lovely baby grand piano in the corner. I started playing and the reaction to everybody in the church was wow. Everybody came into the main church room to see me play and I ended up getting recorded. And it went viral.
Yeah, it's an amazing story. And then, well, you decided to actually perform concerts. So you went from becoming a social media phenomenon to live performance.
The transition to that was due to the social media presence. There was a lot of comments saying that, oh, I would love to see him do a concert. And, oh, he's really good. When is he going to perform live? It planted a seed in my head and also in Night Church's heads about the possibility of doing a concert. And I was very reluctant at first to come forward about who I was and my identity because of all that I suffered. Being homeless is like another level of pain that you can't really experience in society. But when you're in that place, you make friends in the homeless community and you see them dealing with the pain as well. When I finally got the confidence to do a concert, the night church said, oh, that'd be brilliant. And all the money that you raise will help you get out of your situation. You can profit from this. But after everything I've seen, I was like, how can I? How can I take any money from myself?
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Speakers
26 identified
Alex Ritson 6 min
Rhys Wynn-Jones 4 min
Dan Benga 3 min
Nketchi Ogbonna 2 min
Katya Adler 1 min
Cameron Angus Mackay 1 min
Isabella Jewell 1 min
Norma Johnson 1 min
Dr Julie Oswald 1 min
Rebecca Wood 1 min
Toyin Saraki 1 min
Stephen Fairhead 1 min
Charles Anderson
Nonye Nweke
Lucid Ad
Stephanie Prentice
Dr. Chinyere Ezaka
Evan Davies
Claire Macdonald
Derek Alexander-Hamilton
John Reichardt
Flora
Pat
Judy Crabb
Neighbour
Sarah Anderson
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