Speaker 1: Pushkin. I'm a Higgins and this is Solvable Interviews with
Speaker 1: the world's most innovative thinkers working to solve the world's
Speaker 1: biggest problems. My name is Dixon Shibanda and my solvable
Speaker 1: is breaking the wall of depression by training grandmothers all
Speaker 1: over the world in basic cognitive behavioral therapy so they
Speaker 1: can provide care in their communities. Dixon Shabanda is an
Speaker 1: associate professor at the University of Zimbabwe and he's the
Speaker 1: director of the African Mental Health Research Initiative. He's also
Speaker 1: one of only sixteen psychiatrists in the whole of Zimbabwe.
Speaker 1: Now that country has a population of thirteen million people.
Speaker 1: So Dixon Shabandah created the Friendship Bench that's a place
Speaker 1: for people to seek and access therapy for mental healths.
Speaker 1: These friendship benches are run by women in the community.
Speaker 1: They're fondly referred to as grandmothers, and their work is
Speaker 1: proving hugely successful. It's even beginning to catch on around
Speaker 1: the world with a bench popping up here in New
Speaker 1: York and also throughout Kenya. We certainly need solvables like
Speaker 1: this because mental health is a global issue today and
Speaker 1: estimated three hundred and twenty two million people around the
Speaker 1: world live with depression, and the majority of those people
Speaker 1: are in non Western nations. Now, mental health is fundamental
Speaker 1: to our collective and our individual ability as humans to think,
Speaker 1: to experience emotions, to interact with each other, to earn
Speaker 1: a living, and really just to enjoy life. In low
Speaker 1: income countries likes and bad Way, where seventy two percent
Speaker 1: of the population live below the poverty line, you can
Speaker 1: imagine that getting access to really any form of mental
Speaker 1: health therapy, it's not only difficult, it's nearly impossible. But
Speaker 1: that's changing thanks to today's guest Dicks in Shabandah. You'll
Speaker 1: hear how in this conversation with Jacob Weisberg, I wanted
Speaker 1: to ask you what brought you to this problem? Well,
Speaker 1: the problem that I experienced, you know, as a junior
Speaker 1: psychiatrist in Zimbabwe, where I first started my work was
Speaker 1: just you know, quite huge, you know, just the sheer
Speaker 1: amount of work and the need for professionals. And I
Speaker 1: realized from a very early stage that working from a
Speaker 1: hospital which just wasn't going to enable me to reach
Speaker 1: out to the thousands of people that needed care, particularly
Speaker 1: for depression. And when I lost a client of mine
Speaker 1: Erica through suicide, I realized the need to actually take
Speaker 1: mental health to the community, and this is how this
Speaker 1: whole concept of working with grandmothers started. You know, a
Speaker 1: need to take evidence based mental health to the community
Speaker 1: and not just provided within health facilities or clinics. It's
Speaker 1: been a real struggle in this country, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: there's a different version of it Zimbabwe that you live through.
Speaker 1: But to put mental health on a par with physical health,
Speaker 1: people who will readily concede that everyone should have access
Speaker 1: to healthcare sometimes think that mental healthcare is secondary or
Speaker 1: a luxury of some kind. Yeah, that is unfortunately a
Speaker 1: problem which is a global problem. A lot of people
Speaker 1: do not realize that by sidelining mental health you inevitably
Speaker 1: have challenges in addressing the physical health issues because coal
Speaker 1: morbidity is kind of the norm in a lot of
Speaker 1: chronic diseases. If you think of things like hypotension or diabetes,
Speaker 1: you know a lot of people who from these chronic
Speaker 1: diseases do have core morbid mental health issues. And when
Speaker 1: you tackle just the physical and not tackle the mental
Speaker 1: health or the emotional well being or a person, you
Speaker 1: actually do not improve the outcomes or the physical aspect
Speaker 1: as well. So it's very important to have a very
Speaker 1: holistic approach. This is what the work that I do
Speaker 1: is all about. You know, it's not really just about
Speaker 1: mental health, but it's ensuring that mental health results in
Speaker 1: improved outcomes of other conditions that people may have and functionality,
Speaker 1: for instance, the number of people who struggle in the
Speaker 1: workplace as a result of mental health issues. You know. Again,
Speaker 1: if you address the mental health issues, you improve people's functionality.
Speaker 1: Organizations function better, companies produce better results, you know. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of endless if you think of the link
Speaker 1: of mental health with the challenges that are out there
Speaker 1: that the world is trying to address. What type of
Speaker 1: mental and emotional issues are you dealing with? How serious?
Speaker 1: So when we first started, our focus was on what
Speaker 1: we call common mental disorders, which in essence include things
Speaker 1: like depression anxiety disorders PDSD. And we use an algorithm
Speaker 1: to enable us to determine the severity of the symptoms
Speaker 1: that a person presents with. And so if someone is,
Speaker 1: for instance, a red flag, someone is for instance, suicidal,
Speaker 1: the grandmothers on the bench will refer that person to
Speaker 1: the next level. So we have these algorithms that enable
Speaker 1: us to address the needs of pretty much everyone who
Speaker 1: comes to the bench, either directly on the bench or
Speaker 1: by referring them to the next level, depending on what
Speaker 1: it is they present with, Jackson, How did you come
Speaker 1: up with this idea of the bench? So when I
Speaker 1: first made the decision to introduce something at community level,
Speaker 1: a lot had been happening in my country. In two
Speaker 1: thousand and five, the country went through a lot of
Speaker 1: social or economic upheavals, and it was against the background
Speaker 1: of these upheavals that a need to introduce something at
Speaker 1: community level came. And unfortunately, because there were no psychiatrists
Speaker 1: or doctors available, I was instructed to try and come
Speaker 1: up with a solution using community grandmothers. And because we
Speaker 1: couldn't use any of the buildings, we were also told, well,
Speaker 1: try and come up with something outside of the building.
Speaker 1: So it was really more of necessity, you know, and
Speaker 1: through an iterative process with the grandmothers, we eventually came
Speaker 1: up with the idea of actually delivering therapy on a bench.
Speaker 1: It was really necessitated by the fact that there was nothing,
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing, and so all I had with these grandmothers
Speaker 1: and the idea of doing something on a bench. So, Dickson,
Speaker 1: you've seen the effectiveness of the friendship bench. Can you
Speaker 1: give us an example. Sure, let me give you an
Speaker 1: example of Derek. Derek was a young man who was
Speaker 1: employed in the tea industry in Zimbabwe and he was
Speaker 1: referred to the friendship bench after a third unsuccessful attempt
Speaker 1: to kill himself. And this was the first time really
Speaker 1: he had the opportunity to tell his story. And when
Speaker 1: the grandmother invited him to share his story, he suddenly
Speaker 1: had this overwhelming sense of relief because he could really
Speaker 1: then share his story with the grandmother and that was,
Speaker 1: in essence, the beginning of his healing. Often it's simply
Speaker 1: about letting people share their stories. And after he shared
Speaker 1: his story, the grandmother worked through and enabled him to
Speaker 1: prioritize the things that needed to be done in order
Speaker 1: to help him through the challenges that he was facing. See,
Speaker 1: Derek was living with HIV and he was struggling to
Speaker 1: get his medication. He was struggling to come to terms
Speaker 1: with being HIV positive. And that was his story. And
Speaker 1: today Derek is still functional and he's kept his job. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that is a great story. The grandmothers can't prescribe drugs.
Speaker 1: I'm assuming what do they do with patients who are
Speaker 1: in need of some medical and intervention. Well, they refer
Speaker 1: so as I said earlier on, we have this algorithm
Speaker 1: and based on the severity of symptoms that a client
Speaker 1: presents with, they will then refer to the next level,
Speaker 1: and the next level will establish whether there's need for medication.
Speaker 1: If there's need for medication, the clinic nurse will prescribe
Speaker 1: the medication, not the grandmother or the psychiatrist will prescribe
Speaker 1: the medication. So the entry point into Friendship Bench is
Speaker 1: a screening of basic symptoms for common mental disorders. For instance,
Speaker 1: the questionnaire will include questions related to sleep. You know,
Speaker 1: how have you been sleeping in the last week, and
Speaker 1: have you found it difficult to cope in the last week?
Speaker 1: Have you found yourself feeling tearful in the last week?
Speaker 1: Have you had thoughts of ending your life? Those kind
Speaker 1: of questions, And depending on the number of yes responses
Speaker 1: that the grandmother gets, she will then know where to
Speaker 1: place a client. You know, whether this is a client
Speaker 1: that should receive the full Friendship Bench or they should
Speaker 1: immediately be referred because it's a red flag, So we
Speaker 1: try to use those categories to ensure that we really
Speaker 1: don't cause any harm to anyone through this intervention. So
Speaker 1: it's really an essence as stepped care kind of approach
Speaker 1: to addressing the treatment gap with a bulk of the
Speaker 1: client and so are taken care of by grandmothers and
Speaker 1: those that they can't help go to the next level. Dickson,
Speaker 1: you said it's evidence based. What is the evidence that
Speaker 1: you have about how the effectiveness of this compares to
Speaker 1: other more conventional forms of initial treatment. Yeah, that's a
Speaker 1: great question, you know. So in the world of research,
Speaker 1: the gold standard for effectiveness is what we call the
Speaker 1: the randomized trial, and so we carried out a cluster
Speaker 1: randomized controlled trial of the Friendship Bench, which is actually
Speaker 1: published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. And
Speaker 1: in this cluster randomized controlled trial, we had twenty four
Speaker 1: clinics that we're randomized into intervention arm, which was the
Speaker 1: Friendship bench or usual care, which essentially is being seen
Speaker 1: by a clinic nurse or a psychiatrist or receiving rozac
Speaker 1: for depression. So that was one arm and we compared
Speaker 1: the primary outcome was HQ nine, which is a measure
Speaker 1: for depression symptoms, and we followed our clients over a
Speaker 1: six month period and after six months, our results showed
Speaker 1: that grandmothers were statistically much better than usual care, which
Speaker 1: include nurses and psychiatrists in alleviating symptoms of depression on
Speaker 1: the bench, you know, and so that evidence is published,
Speaker 1: it's out there and people can look at it. But
Speaker 1: not only that, we have well over fifty peer reviewed
Speaker 1: publications about the Friendship Bench, how it works and why
Speaker 1: it works, both quantitative publications and qualitative publications which describe,
Speaker 1: you know, the process, which describe the experience of both
Speaker 1: the grandmothers and the experience of the clients. So the
Speaker 1: evidence is quite rigorous that we have managed to together
Speaker 1: and publish over the past couple of years. There's often
Speaker 1: stigma attached to depression, and the stigma is different in
Speaker 1: different cultures. What's it like in Zimbabwe and how do
Speaker 1: you deal with that? So there's no difference in Zimbabwe
Speaker 1: with regards to stigma attached to different forms of mental illness.
Speaker 1: But the way we've dealt with it on the Friendship
Speaker 1: Bench is we have avoided the medicalization or the use
Speaker 1: of clinical terms to describe clients that come to the bench.
Speaker 1: The first thing that we emphasize on the Friendship bench,
Speaker 1: for instance, is the desire for our team to improve
Speaker 1: a person's quality of life, and we do not refer
Speaker 1: to clients based on their diagnosis. And the other thing
Speaker 1: is we use local indigenous terms to describe what they're
Speaker 1: going through, like for instance, we would never use the
Speaker 1: word depression. The term that is used on the Friendship
Speaker 1: bench in my language is kufungi sisa, which literally means
Speaker 1: thinking too much, and that often resonates with people when
Speaker 1: it comes to depression. When you think of the actual
Speaker 1: intervention itself on the bench, the different sessions we use
Speaker 1: language again which resonates with the community. We talk about
Speaker 1: kuvurap funga, which literally means opening up the mind. We
Speaker 1: talk about kusimud zera, which literally means uplifting, and then
Speaker 1: we talk about kusimbisa, which is strengthening. You know, none
Speaker 1: of those terms are medical in whatever way you look
Speaker 1: at them, but they are very powerful and communities resonate
Speaker 1: with those words. They can identify with kuvapunga or opening
Speaker 1: up of the mind, because that's really what people want
Speaker 1: when they present their story. They want to open up
Speaker 1: their minds so they can see how through that story
Speaker 1: they can get healing. Through that story, they can get
Speaker 1: a sense of direction in terms of what needs to
Speaker 1: happen in their lives. And again, if you look at
Speaker 1: New York City, they are pretty much doing the same thing.
Speaker 1: They are not labeling people, they are creating an opportunity
Speaker 1: for people to tell their stories. That's wonderful. And do
Speaker 1: you think that would apply as well in the developed
Speaker 1: world or is there something about traditional culture of the
Speaker 1: kind you were operating in a Zimbabwe and the role
Speaker 1: of grandmothers there that makes it specially effective. I think
Speaker 1: it would apply in the developed world as well. What
Speaker 1: we've learned from Friendship Bench is that grandmothers are the
Speaker 1: custodians of local culture and wisdom, and using grandmothers in
Speaker 1: any culture is a great way of connecting people and
Speaker 1: really addressing some of the issues around, for instance, loneliness.
Speaker 1: You know, so, I think, as I said earlier on,
Speaker 1: this model works and it's kind of universal. I think
Speaker 1: from what we're seeing in terms of, you know, the
Speaker 1: different places in the world that are using Friendship Bench.
Speaker 1: I also wonder, Dickson, is there something about doing this
Speaker 1: therapy out of doors as opposed to in a closed room.
Speaker 1: That makes a difference to the patients. See from the
Speaker 1: feedback that we get from patients doing this kind of therapy,
Speaker 1: Outdoors almost kind of takes away the stigma that is
Speaker 1: associated with being indoors and seeing a therapist who is
Speaker 1: formally dressed or a psychiatrist. In fact, the name itself,
Speaker 1: you know, the Friendship Bench, just takes away the stigma.
Speaker 1: When we first started, you know, we actually called it
Speaker 1: the mental health bench. And guess what, no one wanted
Speaker 1: to come to the mental health bench and the grandmothers,
Speaker 1: the grandmothers advised that I changed the name, change the
Speaker 1: name to Friendship Bench, because that's what really was happening. Yet,
Speaker 1: this was about creating friendship through stories. And when we
Speaker 1: change the name, you know, again it's it took away
Speaker 1: that that clinical aspect or clinical connotations, and it just
Speaker 1: became a lot more acceptable. I think that one of
Speaker 1: the powers of Friendship Bench, whether you look at Friendship
Speaker 1: Bench in New York City, it's it's that it's outdoors,
Speaker 1: which gives people that freedom to express themselves. What's it
Speaker 1: like for the grandmothers? First of all, do they get
Speaker 1: paid and second of all, do they all take to
Speaker 1: it in the same way. I mean, I imagine that
Speaker 1: this is the kind of work that is on the
Speaker 1: one hand, very fulfilling, but on the other hand, very difficult,
Speaker 1: including emotionally. For that. Yeah, it was one of our concerns,
Speaker 1: you know, a few years ago and a colleague of mine, Ruth,
Speaker 1: who is a clinical psychologist working on the friendship bench,
Speaker 1: she actually took it upon herself to try and look
Speaker 1: into how the grandmothers, you know, we're coping with doing
Speaker 1: all these work. So that was really her PhD topic
Speaker 1: to really look into how the grandmothers were managing to
Speaker 1: do all this. Our hypothesis was, you know, we're probably
Speaker 1: going to see a lot of these grandmothers stressed, burned out,
Speaker 1: and they will they will themselves have very high rates
Speaker 1: of common mental disorders. But surprisingly, out of a random
Speaker 1: sample of hundreds of grandmothers, we found that the actual
Speaker 1: rates of common mental disorders amongst the grandmothers who were
Speaker 1: working on the friendship bench who was much lower than
Speaker 1: the community of people who were not working on the
Speaker 1: friendship bench. And we then went deeper into it to
Speaker 1: find out how this was possible, and the themes that
Speaker 1: kept emerging from their grandmothers, you know, had a lot
Speaker 1: to do with altruism. Working on the bench for the
Speaker 1: grandmothers in their communities gave them a sense of purpose
Speaker 1: and over the years that sense of purpose, you know,
Speaker 1: resulted in mastery of a skill to really empower others
Speaker 1: in the community and help others in the community. And
Speaker 1: it also gave the grandmothers a sense of autonomy which
Speaker 1: is very empowering. So in essence, the grandmothers are benefiting
Speaker 1: from this work while they help people. And are they
Speaker 1: paid and does that matter? So they do get an
Speaker 1: allowance from the city Health Department. I must say recently,
Speaker 1: the government of Zimbabwe this year finally after a long time,
Speaker 1: it decided to endorse Friendship Bench as a national program
Speaker 1: which is now integrated in the health system of the country.
Speaker 1: So they do get an allowance. But we also get
Speaker 1: a lot of people who do Friendship Bench for free,
Speaker 1: who volunteer. For instance, we've taken Friendship Bench to schools.
Speaker 1: As you know, mental health issues are quite topical with
Speaker 1: young people. In fact, young people at the most affected
Speaker 1: by depression. If you look at some of the statistics
Speaker 1: coming out of the world Health organization, and so we've
Speaker 1: been taking Friendship Bench to universities where we're introducing a
Speaker 1: peer driven Friendship bench where university students are trained to
Speaker 1: sit on the bench to provide the service to other
Speaker 1: students because Zimbabwe has one of the highest suicide rates
Speaker 1: in that part of Africa, and so we see this
Speaker 1: as an effective intervention where young people are reaching out
Speaker 1: to provide support to other young people. And again it's
Speaker 1: all rooted in storytelling. You referred a little obliquely to
Speaker 1: what's happened in Zimbabwe, but obviously you have this devastating
Speaker 1: combination of long term political repression with economic collapse. Has
Speaker 1: that produced special circumstances or a larger number of people
Speaker 1: in need of this kind of cognitive therapy. So, while
Speaker 1: Zimbabwe is unique in the sense that it has a
Speaker 1: lot of problems, when you look at the global burden
Speaker 1: of common mental disorders, it's not unique to Zimbabwe. The
Speaker 1: whole world is desperately in need of evidence based interventions
Speaker 1: such as Friendship Bench that really seek to narrow or
Speaker 1: reduce the treatment gap for these conditions so that everyone
Speaker 1: everywhere has access to this much needed help. So, yes,
Speaker 1: Zimbabwe has a whole lot of challenges. I mean historically,
Speaker 1: you know, if you look at Zimbabwe, it's a country
Speaker 1: that is characterized by several generations of trauma. When you
Speaker 1: think of the right in the eighteenth century, the Pioneer Column,
Speaker 1: and then you had the Rhodesian Bush War, and then
Speaker 1: you had the massacre of more than twenty thousand debility
Speaker 1: speaking people. You know, the farm invasions where white folks
Speaker 1: were kicked off their farms and a lot of them killed.
Speaker 1: It's just a history of tragedy and with that history
Speaker 1: comes a need for healing. And I see the Friendship
Speaker 1: Bench as a platform providing an opportunity for healing, not
Speaker 1: only for Zimbabwe, but for the world. And as I
Speaker 1: said earlier on, people thrive through storytelling, and we all
Speaker 1: have a story to tell. And if we can leverage
Speaker 1: our ability to use these stories to facilitate healing, I
Speaker 1: believe that we could be moving in a direction where
Speaker 1: the world becomes a better place for all of us.
Speaker 1: And so, in a small way, that's what I believe in,
Speaker 1: you know, and that's why I keep carrying on doing
Speaker 1: this work on Friendship Bench. It's not just about mental health,
Speaker 1: it's about the big picture takes a news say in
Speaker 1: a small way, but not that small anymore. What's the
Speaker 1: scale of friendship Bench now in Zimbabwe and then everywhere else?
Speaker 1: So in Zimbabwe we are seeing thousands of people every month.
Speaker 1: I mean in the last two years we reached out
Speaker 1: to over sixty thousand people, and we don't have accurate
Speaker 1: figures for places like Malawi, Zanzibar and Kenya where we've
Speaker 1: recently introduced. What we do know is friendship Bench New
Speaker 1: York City in the Bronx and Harlem is doing extremely
Speaker 1: well and they managed to reach out to over eighty
Speaker 1: thousand people a year ago, and so I guess the
Speaker 1: numbers are growing exponentially. But what I really would like
Speaker 1: to see is a situation where friendship Bench is reaching
Speaker 1: out to millions of people across the world and also
Speaker 1: friendship Bench being recognized as a platform that really can
Speaker 1: enable people to open up and tell their stories in
Speaker 1: a safe environment, telling their stories so that we have healing.
Speaker 1: It's clear the idea of spreading around the world, But
Speaker 1: what's next for the bench as a project. So as
Speaker 1: a project, we are now really looking at how we
Speaker 1: can reach our first million clients, not just you know,
Speaker 1: in Zimbabwe, but in the different parts of the world
Speaker 1: where we've introduced friendship Bench. We are about to introduce
Speaker 1: friendship Bench in Rwanda, we are planning to go to Liberia,
Speaker 1: you know, we've just started in Kenya. And so what
Speaker 1: we're really working on is how to bring on board
Speaker 1: a digital component to enhance the work that the Grandmothers
Speaker 1: are doing because now we're really dealing with big data,
Speaker 1: and with big data, we need to really look at
Speaker 1: how best we can learn from the data that is
Speaker 1: being collected. How can we improve friendship Bench. How can
Speaker 1: friendship Bench continue to serve communities, How can friendship Bench
Speaker 1: continue to improve lives across the world. So that's really
Speaker 1: our next big challenge. And for all of that, obviously
Speaker 1: we need support and we are we are looking for
Speaker 1: partners who can help us to really reach every corner
Speaker 1: of the world and make mental health, you know, evidence
Speaker 1: based mental health accessible for all. Well, that brings me
Speaker 1: to the last question I always like to ask, which
Speaker 1: is how can listeners advance this? How can they get involved?
Speaker 1: How can they help? If you want to help friendship Bench,
Speaker 1: people can do is really within themselves in their communities,
Speaker 1: try to create space for healing. The world today is
Speaker 1: facing numerous challenges, numerous problems. You know, on the one hand,
Speaker 1: we have all these technological developments. You know, we've done
Speaker 1: so well technologically as a human race, but when you
Speaker 1: look at relationships, it's going the other direction. And one
Speaker 1: simple thing that we could all do is try to
Speaker 1: create space for healing in our communities. Try to create
Speaker 1: space to listen to the stories that our neighbors have,
Speaker 1: the people in our neighborhood have, people in our communities.
Speaker 1: You don't have to be a psychiatrist or a clinical
Speaker 1: psychologist to make a difference in your community. You simply
Speaker 1: have to be able to give space for people to
Speaker 1: share their stories and you have to listen, and that
Speaker 1: in itself is very very powerful. And of course, as
Speaker 1: Friendship Bench, we want to take Friendship Bench to every
Speaker 1: corner of the world, and so we're very happy to
Speaker 1: work with people to collaborate with people who feel that
Speaker 1: a Friendship Bench in their community or in their organization
Speaker 1: could help address mental health challenges or just generally improve
Speaker 1: the quality of life and make the world a bit
Speaker 1: of place. Dixon Shabanda, thanks for joining us Unsolvable Pleasure.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. Wow Schka Saszina, he's a
Speaker 1: director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse
Speaker 1: at the World Health Organization said, when it comes to
Speaker 1: mental health, we are all developing countries, and that really
Speaker 1: stayed with me. And I think that this episode has
Speaker 1: been such a fitting last episode of this season of
Speaker 1: Solvable because communicating, talking, sharing, these are all proven to
Speaker 1: potentially keep hopelessness at bay. And it's been such a
Speaker 1: privilege for me and I hope for you too to
Speaker 1: hear from all of our guests, each one of them
Speaker 1: a leading thinker, a leading doer, each one of them
Speaker 1: with their own Solvable and each one of them taking
Speaker 1: actions every day to solve the world's biggest problems. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much to them, and thank you too to
Speaker 1: our brilliant presenters over this series, Jacob Weisberg, Malcolm Gladwell,
Speaker 1: Ann Applebaum and Ahmed Ali Akbar. And remember you can
Speaker 1: hear all thirty episodes wherever you get your podcasts, and
Speaker 1: you can learn more about solving today's biggest problems at
Speaker 1: Rockefeller Foundation dot org slash Solvable. We will be back
Speaker 1: with more inspiring conversations with brilliant problem solvers in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: I'm May Higgins, Now go Solve It. Solvable is a
Speaker 1: collaboration between Pushkin Industries and the Rockefeller Foundation. Produced by
Speaker 1: Laura Hyde, Hester Kant, Laura Sheeter, and Ruth Barnes of
Speaker 1: Talk and Blade. Pushkin's executive producer is Neil la Belle.
Speaker 1: Engineering by Jason Gambrell and the great folks at GSI Studios.
Speaker 1: Research by cher Vincent, original music composed by Pascal Wise,
Speaker 1: and special thanks to everybody at Pushkin, including Maya Kanig,
Speaker 1: Maggie Taylor, Heather Faine, Julia Barton and Carlie Migliori, and
Speaker 1: to Christine Heenan, Rachel Roberts, Sierra Remersheed, and Rajiv Shah
Speaker 1: at the Rockefeller Foundation for making this series possible.