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0:15
Pushkin. I'm
0:18
a Higgins and this is Solvable Interviews
0:21
with the world's most innovative thinkers working
0:23
to solve the world's biggest problems.
0:27
My name is Dixon Shibanda and my solvable
0:30
is breaking the wall of depression by
0:32
training grandmothers all over
0:34
the world in basic cognitive
0:37
behavioral therapy so they
0:39
can provide care in their
0:41
communities. Dixon
0:44
Shabanda is an associate professor
0:46
at the University of Zimbabwe and
0:49
he's the director of the African Mental
0:51
Health Research Initiative. He's
0:53
also one of only sixteen psychiatrists
0:56
in the whole of Zimbabwe. Now that
0:58
country has a population of thirteen million
1:00
people. So Dixon Shabandah
1:03
created the Friendship Bench that's
1:05
a place for people to seek and access
1:07
therapy for mental healths. These
1:10
friendship benches are run by women
1:12
in the community. They're fondly referred
1:15
to as grandmothers, and their work
1:17
is proving hugely successful. It's
1:19
even beginning to catch on around the world
1:22
with a bench popping up here in New York
1:24
and also throughout Kenya. We
1:26
certainly need solvables like this
1:29
because mental health is a global
1:31
issue today and estimated
1:33
three hundred and twenty two million people
1:35
around the world live with depression,
1:38
and the majority of those people are in
1:41
non Western nations. Now,
1:43
mental health is fundamental to
1:45
our collective and our individual
1:48
ability as humans to
1:50
think, to experience emotions,
1:53
to interact with each other, to earn
1:55
a living, and really just to enjoy
1:57
life. In low income countries
2:00
likes and bad Way, where seventy two percent
2:02
of the population live below the
2:04
poverty line, you can imagine
2:06
that getting access to really any
2:08
form of mental health therapy, it's
2:10
not only difficult, it's nearly impossible.
2:13
But that's changing thanks to
2:16
today's guest Dicks in Shabandah. You'll
2:18
hear how in this conversation with
2:20
Jacob Weisberg, I wanted to
2:22
ask you what brought you to
2:24
this problem? Well, the
2:26
problem that I experienced,
2:29
you know, as a junior psychiatrist in
2:31
Zimbabwe, where I first started
2:34
my work was just you
2:36
know, quite huge, you know, just the sheer
2:39
amount of work and the need
2:41
for professionals. And I realized
2:44
from a very early stage that
2:46
working from a hospital which
2:49
just wasn't going to enable
2:51
me to reach out to the thousands
2:53
of people that needed care, particularly for
2:55
depression. And when I lost
2:57
a client of mine Erica
3:00
through suicide, I realized
3:03
the need to actually take
3:06
mental health to the community, and
3:08
this is how this whole concept of
3:10
working with grandmothers started.
3:13
You know, a need to take evidence based
3:15
mental health to the community and
3:17
not just provided within health
3:20
facilities or clinics. It's been a
3:22
real struggle in this country, and I'm sure
3:24
there's a different version of it Zimbabwe
3:27
that you live through. But to put mental
3:29
health on a par with physical
3:31
health, people who will readily concede
3:34
that everyone should have access to healthcare
3:37
sometimes think that mental healthcare
3:39
is secondary or a luxury of some kind.
3:42
Yeah, that is unfortunately a problem
3:45
which is a global problem.
3:48
A lot of people do not realize that
3:50
by sidelining mental health you
3:53
inevitably have challenges in
3:56
addressing the physical health
3:58
issues because coal morbidity
4:01
is kind of the norm in a lot of chronic diseases.
4:04
If you think of things like hypotension or
4:06
diabetes, you know a lot of people
4:08
who from these chronic diseases
4:11
do have core morbid mental health
4:13
issues. And when you tackle just
4:15
the physical and not tackle the
4:17
mental health or the emotional well being
4:19
or a person, you actually
4:22
do not improve the outcomes or the physical
4:24
aspect as well. So it's very important
4:26
to have a very holistic approach. This is
4:28
what the work that I do is all about. You know,
4:30
it's not really just about mental health,
4:33
but it's ensuring that mental health
4:35
results in improved outcomes
4:38
of other conditions that people may have
4:40
and functionality, for instance,
4:43
the number of people who struggle in the
4:45
workplace as a result of mental health issues.
4:47
You know. Again, if you address the mental health
4:49
issues, you improve people's functionality.
4:52
Organizations function better, companies
4:54
produce better results, you know. So it's
4:57
kind of endless if you think of the
4:59
link of mental health with the challenges
5:01
that are out there that the world is trying to address.
5:04
What type of mental and emotional issues
5:07
are you dealing with? How serious? So
5:09
when we first started, our focus was on
5:12
what we call common mental disorders, which
5:14
in essence include things like
5:16
depression anxiety disorders PDSD.
5:20
And we use an algorithm to
5:23
enable us to determine the
5:25
severity of the symptoms that a person
5:27
presents with. And so if
5:29
someone is, for instance, a red flag,
5:32
someone is for instance, suicidal,
5:35
the grandmothers on the bench will refer that
5:37
person to the next level. So
5:39
we have these algorithms that enable
5:42
us to address the needs of pretty
5:44
much everyone who comes to the bench, either
5:46
directly on the bench or by referring
5:48
them to the next level, depending on what
5:51
it is they present with, Jackson,
5:53
How did you come up with this idea of the
5:55
bench? So when I
5:57
first made the decision to introduce
6:00
something at community level, a lot
6:02
had been happening in my country. In
6:04
two thousand and five, the
6:06
country went through a lot of
6:08
social or economic upheavals, and
6:11
it was against the background of these
6:14
upheavals that a need
6:16
to introduce something at community level
6:19
came. And unfortunately, because
6:22
there were no psychiatrists
6:25
or doctors available, I
6:28
was instructed to try and come up with a
6:30
solution using community
6:33
grandmothers. And because
6:35
we couldn't use any of the buildings, we
6:37
were also told, well, try and come up with
6:39
something outside of the building. So it
6:42
was really more of necessity, you know, and
6:44
through an iterative process with
6:46
the grandmothers, we eventually
6:49
came up with the idea of actually delivering
6:51
therapy on a bench. It was really
6:54
necessitated by the fact that there was nothing,
6:56
absolutely nothing, and so all
6:58
I had with these grandmothers and
7:01
the idea of doing something on a bench. So,
7:03
Dickson, you've seen the effectiveness of the
7:06
friendship bench. Can you give us an example.
7:08
Sure, let me give you an example of Derek.
7:11
Derek was a young man who
7:14
was employed in the tea
7:16
industry in Zimbabwe and
7:19
he was referred to the friendship
7:21
bench after a third
7:24
unsuccessful attempt to
7:26
kill himself. And this
7:28
was the first time really he had
7:30
the opportunity to tell his
7:32
story. And when
7:35
the grandmother invited him
7:37
to share his story, he
7:40
suddenly had this overwhelming
7:42
sense of relief
7:45
because he could really then share
7:47
his story with the grandmother and that was,
7:49
in essence, the beginning of
7:51
his healing. Often it's
7:53
simply about letting people share
7:56
their stories. And after
7:58
he shared his story, the grandmother
8:01
worked through and enabled
8:03
him to prioritize the things
8:05
that needed to be done in order to
8:08
help him through the challenges
8:10
that he was facing. See,
8:12
Derek was living with HIV and
8:15
he was struggling to get his medication.
8:17
He was struggling to come to terms with
8:19
being HIV positive. And
8:21
that was his story. And today Derek
8:24
is still functional and he's
8:27
kept his job. Yeah,
8:30
that is a great story. The grandmothers
8:32
can't prescribe drugs. I'm assuming
8:34
what do they do with patients
8:37
who are in need of some medical
8:39
and intervention. Well, they refer
8:42
so as I said earlier on, we have this
8:44
algorithm and based on the
8:46
severity of symptoms that a client
8:49
presents with, they will
8:52
then refer to the next level,
8:54
and the next level will establish
8:56
whether there's need for medication. If there's
8:58
need for medication, the clinic
9:01
nurse will prescribe the medication,
9:03
not the grandmother or the psychiatrist
9:06
will prescribe the medication. So
9:08
the entry point into Friendship
9:10
Bench is a screening of
9:13
basic symptoms for common
9:16
mental disorders. For instance, the questionnaire
9:18
will include questions related to
9:20
sleep. You know, how have you been sleeping in the
9:22
last week, and have you found it
9:24
difficult to cope in the last week?
9:26
Have you found yourself feeling tearful
9:29
in the last week? Have you had thoughts
9:32
of ending your life? Those
9:34
kind of questions, And depending on the number
9:36
of yes responses that the grandmother
9:39
gets, she will then know
9:41
where to place a client.
9:44
You know, whether this is a client that
9:46
should receive the full Friendship Bench
9:49
or they should immediately be referred because
9:51
it's a red flag, So we
9:53
try to use those categories to ensure
9:56
that we really don't cause
9:58
any harm to anyone through this intervention.
10:01
So it's really an essence as stepped care kind
10:03
of approach to addressing
10:06
the treatment gap with a bulk of
10:08
the client and so are taken care of by
10:10
grandmothers and those that they
10:12
can't help go to the
10:14
next level. Dickson, you said it's evidence
10:16
based. What is the evidence that you have
10:18
about how the effectiveness
10:21
of this compares to other
10:23
more conventional forms of initial
10:25
treatment. Yeah, that's a great question,
10:27
you know. So in the world of research,
10:30
the gold standard for
10:33
effectiveness is what we call
10:35
the the randomized trial,
10:38
and so we carried out a cluster
10:40
randomized controlled trial of
10:42
the Friendship Bench, which is actually
10:45
published in the Journal of the American Medical
10:47
Association. And in
10:49
this cluster randomized controlled trial,
10:52
we had twenty four clinics
10:54
that we're randomized into intervention
10:57
arm, which was the Friendship bench or
11:00
usual care, which essentially
11:02
is being seen by a clinic nurse
11:05
or a psychiatrist or receiving
11:09
rozac for depression. So that was
11:11
one arm and we compared the
11:13
primary outcome was HQ nine,
11:15
which is a measure for depression
11:18
symptoms, and we followed our clients
11:20
over a six month period and
11:23
after six months, our results
11:25
showed that grandmothers were
11:28
statistically much
11:30
better than usual care,
11:32
which include nurses and psychiatrists
11:35
in alleviating symptoms of depression
11:38
on the bench, you know, and so that
11:41
evidence is published, it's
11:43
out there and people can look at it.
11:45
But not only that, we have well over fifty
11:48
peer reviewed publications about
11:50
the Friendship Bench, how it works and why
11:53
it works, both quantitative publications
11:56
and qualitative publications which
11:58
describe, you know, the process, which
12:00
describe the experience of both the grandmothers
12:03
and the experience of the clients.
12:05
So the evidence is quite rigorous
12:07
that we have managed to together and
12:09
publish over the past couple of years. There's
12:12
often stigma attached to depression,
12:15
and the stigma is different in different
12:17
cultures. What's it like in Zimbabwe
12:20
and how do you deal with that? So
12:23
there's no difference in Zimbabwe
12:25
with regards to stigma attached
12:27
to different forms of mental illness.
12:30
But the way we've dealt with it on
12:32
the Friendship Bench is we have
12:35
avoided the medicalization
12:38
or the use of clinical
12:41
terms to describe
12:43
clients that come to the bench. The
12:46
first thing that we emphasize on the Friendship
12:48
bench, for instance, is the
12:50
desire for our team to
12:52
improve a person's quality of life,
12:55
and we do not refer to clients
12:57
based on their diagnosis. And
13:00
the other thing is we use local
13:03
indigenous terms to describe
13:06
what they're going through, like for instance,
13:08
we would never use the word depression. The
13:11
term that is used on the Friendship
13:13
bench in my language is kufungi
13:15
sisa, which literally means thinking
13:18
too much, and that often
13:20
resonates with people when it comes to depression.
13:23
When you think of the actual intervention
13:25
itself on the bench, the different
13:28
sessions we use language again
13:31
which resonates with the community. We
13:33
talk about kuvurap funga, which
13:35
literally means opening up the mind.
13:38
We talk about kusimud zera,
13:40
which literally means uplifting, and
13:42
then we talk about kusimbisa, which
13:45
is strengthening. You know, none of those
13:47
terms are medical in whatever
13:49
way you look at them, but they
13:51
are very powerful and communities
13:54
resonate with those words. They can identify
13:56
with kuvapunga or
13:58
opening up of the mind, because that's really
14:01
what people want when they present their story.
14:03
They want to open up their minds so they
14:05
can see how through that story they
14:08
can get healing. Through that story,
14:10
they can get a sense of direction in terms
14:12
of what needs to happen in their lives.
14:15
And again, if you look at New York City,
14:17
they are pretty much doing the same thing. They are not
14:20
labeling people, they are creating
14:22
an opportunity for people to tell their
14:24
stories. That's wonderful. And
14:26
do you think that would apply as
14:28
well in the developed world or
14:30
is there something about traditional
14:32
culture of the kind you were operating
14:34
in a Zimbabwe and the role of grandmothers
14:37
there that makes it specially effective.
14:40
I think it would apply in the developed world
14:43
as well. What we've learned from Friendship
14:45
Bench is that grandmothers are the custodians
14:48
of local culture and
14:50
wisdom, and using
14:52
grandmothers in any culture is
14:54
a great way of connecting
14:57
people and really addressing
14:59
some of the issues around,
15:02
for instance, loneliness. You
15:04
know, so, I think, as I said earlier on,
15:06
this model works and it's
15:09
kind of universal. I think from what we're
15:11
seeing in terms of, you know, the different places
15:13
in the world that are using
15:16
Friendship Bench. I also wonder, Dickson,
15:19
is there something about doing
15:21
this therapy out of doors as
15:23
opposed to in a closed room. That
15:25
makes a difference to the patients. See
15:28
from the feedback that we get from patients
15:30
doing this kind of therapy, Outdoors almost
15:33
kind of takes away the stigma
15:35
that is associated with being
15:38
indoors and seeing a therapist
15:40
who is formally dressed or a psychiatrist.
15:43
In fact, the name itself, you know, the
15:45
Friendship Bench, just takes away
15:48
the stigma. When we first started,
15:50
you know, we actually called it the mental health
15:53
bench. And guess what, no one
15:55
wanted to come to the mental health bench and
15:58
the grandmothers, the grandmothers advised
16:01
that I changed the name, change
16:03
the name to Friendship Bench, because that's what really
16:05
was happening. Yet, this was about creating
16:08
friendship through stories. And when we change
16:10
the name, you know, again it's
16:13
it took away that that clinical aspect
16:15
or clinical connotations,
16:18
and it just became a lot more
16:20
acceptable. I think that one of the
16:23
powers of Friendship Bench, whether you look at Friendship
16:25
Bench in New York City, it's it's that it's outdoors,
16:27
which gives people that freedom to express
16:30
themselves. What's it like for the grandmothers?
16:32
First of all, do they get paid and
16:35
second of all, do they all take
16:37
to it in the same way. I mean, I imagine that
16:39
this is the kind of work that is on the
16:41
one hand, very fulfilling, but on the other
16:43
hand, very difficult, including
16:46
emotionally. For that. Yeah, it
16:48
was one of our concerns,
16:50
you know, a few years ago and a colleague
16:52
of mine, Ruth, who is a
16:54
clinical psychologist working on the friendship
16:57
bench, she actually took
16:59
it upon herself to try
17:01
and look into how
17:04
the grandmothers, you know, we're
17:06
coping with doing all these work. So that was
17:08
really her PhD topic
17:10
to really look into how
17:13
the grandmothers were managing to do all
17:15
this. Our hypothesis was, you know,
17:17
we're probably going to see a lot of these
17:19
grandmothers stressed, burned
17:21
out, and they will they will themselves
17:23
have very high rates of common mental
17:26
disorders. But surprisingly,
17:28
out of a random sample of
17:30
hundreds of grandmothers, we found
17:33
that the actual rates
17:35
of common mental disorders amongst
17:37
the grandmothers who were working on the friendship
17:39
bench who was much lower than
17:42
the community of people who were not
17:44
working on the friendship bench. And
17:47
we then went deeper into it to find
17:49
out how this was possible,
17:52
and the themes that kept emerging
17:54
from their grandmothers, you know, had a lot to
17:57
do with altruism. Working
17:59
on the bench for the grandmothers in their
18:01
communities gave them
18:03
a sense of purpose and
18:05
over the years that sense of purpose,
18:08
you know, resulted in mastery
18:11
of a skill to really empower
18:13
others in the community and help others in the
18:15
community. And it also gave the grandmothers
18:18
a sense of autonomy which is very
18:20
empowering. So in essence,
18:22
the grandmothers are benefiting
18:25
from this work while they help
18:27
people. And are
18:29
they paid and does that matter? So
18:32
they do get an allowance from
18:34
the city Health Department. I must say
18:36
recently, the government of
18:39
Zimbabwe this year finally after
18:41
a long time, it decided
18:43
to endorse Friendship Bench
18:46
as a national program which
18:48
is now integrated in the health
18:51
system of the country. So
18:53
they do get an allowance. But we also get a
18:55
lot of people who do Friendship Bench for
18:57
free, who volunteer. For
18:59
instance, we've taken Friendship Bench to schools.
19:02
As you know, mental health issues are
19:04
quite topical with young
19:07
people. In fact, young people at the most affected
19:10
by depression. If you look at some of the statistics
19:12
coming out of the world Health organization,
19:15
and so we've been taking Friendship Bench to universities
19:18
where we're introducing a peer
19:21
driven Friendship bench where
19:23
university students are trained to sit
19:26
on the bench to provide the service to
19:28
other students because Zimbabwe
19:30
has one of the highest suicide
19:32
rates in that part of Africa, and
19:34
so we see this as an effective intervention
19:37
where young people are reaching out to
19:40
provide support to other
19:42
young people. And again it's
19:44
all rooted in storytelling. You
19:47
referred a little obliquely to
19:50
what's happened in Zimbabwe, but obviously
19:52
you have this devastating
19:55
combination of long term
19:57
political repression with
20:00
economic collapse. Has
20:02
that produced special circumstances
20:05
or a larger number of people
20:07
in need of this kind of cognitive
20:10
therapy. So, while Zimbabwe
20:13
is unique in the sense that it has
20:15
a lot of problems, when
20:18
you look at the global
20:20
burden of common
20:23
mental disorders, it's not unique
20:26
to Zimbabwe. The whole world
20:28
is desperately in need of
20:30
evidence based interventions
20:33
such as Friendship Bench that really
20:36
seek to narrow or reduce
20:38
the treatment gap for these conditions
20:40
so that everyone everywhere has access
20:43
to this much needed help. So,
20:45
yes, Zimbabwe has a whole lot of
20:48
challenges. I mean historically, you
20:50
know, if you look at Zimbabwe, it's a country
20:52
that is characterized by several
20:54
generations of trauma. When
20:57
you think of the
21:00
right in the eighteenth century, the Pioneer
21:02
Column, and then you had the Rhodesian Bush
21:04
War, and then you had
21:07
the massacre of more than twenty thousand
21:09
debility speaking people. You know, the farm
21:11
invasions where white folks were kicked
21:14
off their farms and a lot of them killed.
21:16
It's just a history of tragedy and
21:19
with that history comes
21:22
a need for healing. And
21:24
I see the Friendship Bench as
21:27
a platform providing
21:29
an opportunity for healing, not
21:32
only for Zimbabwe, but for the world.
21:34
And as I said earlier on, people
21:37
thrive through storytelling, and we
21:40
all have a story to tell. And
21:42
if we can leverage
21:45
our ability to use
21:47
these stories to facilitate
21:51
healing, I believe that we could
21:53
be moving in a direction where the
21:56
world becomes a better place for all of us.
21:58
And so, in a small way, that's what I believe
22:01
in, you know, and that's why I keep carrying on
22:03
doing this work on Friendship Bench. It's not
22:05
just about mental health, it's about the big picture
22:08
takes a news say in a small way, but not
22:10
that small anymore. What's the scale
22:12
of friendship Bench now
22:15
in Zimbabwe and then everywhere
22:17
else? So in Zimbabwe
22:19
we are seeing thousands of people every
22:22
month. I mean in the last two years we reached
22:24
out to over sixty
22:26
thousand people, and
22:28
we don't have accurate figures for places
22:31
like Malawi, Zanzibar and
22:33
Kenya where we've recently introduced.
22:36
What we do know is friendship Bench New
22:39
York City in the Bronx and Harlem
22:41
is doing extremely well and they managed
22:43
to reach out to over eighty thousand
22:46
people a year ago, and
22:48
so I guess the numbers
22:50
are growing exponentially. But what I
22:53
really would like to see is a situation
22:55
where friendship Bench is reaching
22:57
out to millions of people across
23:00
the world and also
23:03
friendship Bench being recognized as a
23:05
platform that really can
23:07
enable people to open up
23:10
and tell their stories in
23:13
a safe environment, telling
23:15
their stories so that we have healing.
23:18
It's clear the idea of spreading around
23:20
the world, But what's next for the bench
23:23
as a project. So as
23:26
a project, we are now really looking
23:28
at how we can reach
23:30
our first million clients,
23:33
not just you know, in Zimbabwe, but in
23:36
the different parts of the world where we've introduced
23:38
friendship Bench. We are about
23:40
to introduce friendship Bench in Rwanda,
23:44
we are planning to go to Liberia,
23:46
you know, we've just started in Kenya.
23:49
And so what we're really working on
23:51
is how to bring on
23:53
board a digital component
23:56
to enhance the work that the Grandmothers
23:58
are doing because now we're really dealing
24:00
with big data, and with big
24:03
data, we need to really look
24:05
at how best we can learn from the
24:08
data that is being collected. How can we
24:10
improve friendship Bench. How can
24:12
friendship Bench continue to serve communities,
24:15
How can friendship Bench continue to improve
24:17
lives across the world. So that's
24:19
really our next big challenge. And for
24:21
all of that, obviously we need
24:24
support and we are we are
24:26
looking for partners who can help us to
24:29
really reach every corner
24:31
of the world and make mental
24:33
health, you know, evidence based mental health accessible
24:36
for all. Well, that brings me to the last question
24:38
I always like to ask, which is how can
24:40
listeners advance this?
24:43
How can they get involved? How can they help?
24:46
If you want to help friendship Bench,
24:48
people can do is really
24:50
within themselves in their communities,
24:53
try to create space for healing.
24:56
The world today is
24:58
facing numerous
25:01
challenges, numerous problems. You know, on the
25:03
one hand, we have all these
25:05
technological developments. You know,
25:08
we've done so well technologically
25:10
as a human race, but
25:12
when you look at relationships,
25:14
it's going the other direction. And
25:17
one simple thing that we could all do is
25:20
try to create space for healing
25:22
in our communities. Try
25:25
to create space to listen
25:27
to the stories that our
25:29
neighbors have, the people in our neighborhood
25:32
have, people in our communities.
25:35
You don't have to be a psychiatrist or a
25:37
clinical psychologist to make a difference
25:39
in your community. You simply have
25:41
to be able to give space
25:43
for people to share their stories and you
25:45
have to listen, and that in
25:48
itself is very very powerful.
25:50
And of course, as Friendship Bench,
25:53
we want to take Friendship Bench to every
25:55
corner of the world, and so we're very
25:57
happy to work with people to collaborate
25:59
with people who feel that
26:01
a Friendship Bench in their community or
26:03
in their organization could help
26:06
address mental health challenges
26:08
or just generally improve the quality
26:11
of life and make the world a bit of
26:13
place. Dixon Shabanda, thanks
26:15
for joining us Unsolvable Pleasure.
26:17
Thank you for having me. Wow
26:20
Schka Saszina, he's a director
26:23
of the Department of Mental Health and Substance
26:25
Abuse at the World Health Organization
26:28
said, when it comes to mental health,
26:31
we are all developing countries,
26:33
and that really stayed with me. And
26:35
I think that this episode has
26:38
been such a fitting last episode
26:40
of this season of Solvable because
26:43
communicating, talking, sharing,
26:46
these are all proven to potentially
26:48
keep hopelessness at bay.
26:51
And it's been such a privilege for me
26:53
and I hope for you too to hear from
26:56
all of our guests, each one
26:58
of them a leading thinker, a leading
27:00
doer, each one of them with their own
27:03
Solvable and each one of them taking
27:05
actions every day to solve
27:07
the world's biggest problems. Thank
27:10
you so much to them, and thank you
27:12
too to our brilliant presenters over
27:15
this series, Jacob Weisberg,
27:17
Malcolm Gladwell, Ann Applebaum
27:19
and Ahmed Ali Akbar. And
27:22
remember you can hear all thirty
27:24
episodes wherever you get your podcasts,
27:27
and you can learn more about solving
27:29
today's biggest problems at
27:31
Rockefeller Foundation dot org
27:34
slash Solvable. We
27:36
will be back with more inspiring conversations
27:39
with brilliant problem solvers in
27:41
twenty twenty. I'm May Higgins,
27:44
Now go Solve It. Solvable
27:49
is a collaboration between Pushkin Industries
27:51
and the Rockefeller Foundation. Produced
27:54
by Laura Hyde, Hester Kant, Laura
27:56
Sheeter, and Ruth Barnes of
27:58
Talk and Blade. Pushkin's executive
28:01
producer is Neil la Belle. Engineering
28:04
by Jason Gambrell and the great folks
28:06
at GSI Studios. Research
28:09
by cher Vincent, original music
28:11
composed by Pascal Wise, and
28:13
special thanks to everybody at Pushkin,
28:16
including Maya Kanig, Maggie
28:18
Taylor, Heather Faine, Julia Barton
28:21
and Carlie Migliori, and
28:23
to Christine Heenan, Rachel Roberts,
28:26
Sierra Remersheed, and Rajiv
28:28
Shah at the Rockefeller Foundation for
28:31
making this series possible.
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