The Happy Pod: The healing power of singing

27m

A singing group designed for women with post-natal depression has been shown to deliver long lasting improvements in their wellbeing. A three year study found that it helped them with symptoms like low mood, stress and anxiety and that these benefits lasted for several months after the sessions ended.
Also: big celebrations as Cape Verde qualifies for the men's football World Cup. It's the second smallest country by population to reach the finals.
The women reviving Aztec traditions on Mexico's island farms. Chinampas are an early model of sustainable agriculture but were at risk of disappearing.
An ingenious way to fix broken life-saving equipment at remote hospitals that can't get the spare parts they need. The DJ with a difference who's filling dancefloors in Sweden - with people over the age of 50. Plus engineering meets art with a unique dinosaur sculpture, and why people love goat yoga.

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

Presenter: Vanessa Heaney. Music composed by Iona Hampson.

Press play and read along

Runtime: 27m

Transcript

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Speaker 7 This is the happy podge from the BBC World Service.

Speaker 7 I'm Vanessa Heaney, and in this edition, the healing power of singing.

Speaker 6 Other baby classes are great to meet mums, but it doesn't have the same sort of calming influence, especially when you've had issues with anxiety or stress.

Speaker 9 This is really nice for mums to come together, mums that have been through things to relate.

Speaker 10 Also, I've been saying to my kids, this is history to make it. A tiny little country like ours, and being just thrown into the spotlight like this is just amazing.

Speaker 7 Celebrations as a tiny country qualifies for football's biggest tournament. A smart way to get equipment in remote hospitals working again.

Speaker 7 The women reviving an ancient Aztec farming method, plus a DJ with a difference.

Speaker 11 Oh she's just fantastic. I mean at that age and that energy she's the best ever ever DJ we have in Sweden.

Speaker 7 We start in London with a group of new mothers who are finding comfort in singing.

Speaker 7 That's from a melodies for mums class especially designed to help those with postnatal depression. Some women who've taken part have said it's made a real difference.

Speaker 7 And now a three-year study has found they're clinically effective at tackling symptoms like low mood, stress and anxiety. Our reporter Jim Reed went along to find out more.

Speaker 12 At a children's centre in South London, a dozen mums are sitting together in a circle with babies on their laps.

Speaker 12 The singing all starts with a simple call and response.

Speaker 12 Everything here, from the songs to the layout of the room, has been designed to help those at risk of postnatal depression.

Speaker 6 Other baby classes are great to meet mums, but it doesn't have the same sort of calming influence, especially when you've had issues with anxiety or stress.

Speaker 9 This is really nice when mums to come together, where mums that have been proved things to relate and sing and sing is very healing.

Speaker 13 So, if you come to a Breathe Melodies for Mums session, it's not your usual mum and baby singing group, it's not nursery rhymes.

Speaker 12 Yvonne Farcarsson is the founder of Breathe Arts Health Research, the non-profit behind the idea.

Speaker 13 This is an intervention that is very much focused on the mental health and well-being of the mother.

Speaker 12 Practically, how is it different? How do you design that in a way to address that particular need?

Speaker 13 So, for example, we choose a group size of about 10 to 12 women, so that creates a good sense of community. We sing songs in multiple languages, in four-part harmonies.

Speaker 13 The reason we sing in rounds is to encourage eye contact amongst mothers. So through singing, we're getting them to make that kind of social connection.

Speaker 12 The organisers say these classes don't have to replace therapy or medication, but they can be an option for some when waiting times for other support can be lengthy.

Speaker 14 Hi, my name's Holly, and this is Etti. For me, the hardest part was actually pregnancy.

Speaker 14 Post-birth, I was actually a lot better than I thought I would be, but I did feel very vulnerable and very anxious and quite lonely.

Speaker 14 I'd never heard of anything like this. And after the very first session, I walked in and I was like, oh, I'm safe here.
Yeah, it did make things a lot easier.

Speaker 12 The project is now part of a major study to research how arts interventions might improve health.

Speaker 17 My name is Rebecca Bend, and I'm a postdoctoral research associate at King's College London.

Speaker 17 So, by postnatal depression, we mean mothers who are experiencing symptoms of low mood, sadness, feelings of guilt or worthlessness. And this can even start in pregnancy and continue on.

Speaker 12 Dr. Bend and her colleagues followed 200 mothers with those symptoms, comparing those assigned to the singing course with those offered more typical support like play classes.

Speaker 17 What we saw was that the mothers and their babies who participated in the singing intervention experienced a really nice and steady decline in their depressive symptoms and more importantly what we found was that that actually lasted up to six months.

Speaker 17 So not only did they experience immediate effects but they also had long-lasting antidepressant effects.

Speaker 12 The study showed the dropout rate from the singing course was much lower and researchers believe the songs and the skills were brought home afterwards. Jay is here with her son, Ezra.

Speaker 13 Just being able to be with people

Speaker 18 who you know are also kind of struggling, that's not kind of the focus of the session.

Speaker 18 You know, you're there, you're having a great time, you're singing, but you know that these people are also experiencing what you're experiencing.

Speaker 7 Jim Reed reporting. Next to some big celebrations in one of the world's smallest countries.
countries.

Speaker 7 There was jubilation in Cape Ferde earlier this week when their men's football team qualified for next year's World Cup finals.

Speaker 7 As you may have heard in our global newspod, the chain of 10 islands off the west coast of Africa, which has a population of around half a million people, is the second smallest country by population ever to make the finals, behind Iceland.

Speaker 7 So we wanted to hear more about what it means to the people there.

Speaker 7 Tracy's originally from the UK but now lives in Cape Verde. She sent us a message from Santa Maria.

Speaker 7 Everybody's all dancing in the streets.

Speaker 20 This is what it's like just for us to get through to the World Cup. You imagine when we start playing in the World Cup.
It's absolutely fantastic atmosphere, really amazing.

Speaker 20 There's thousands and thousands of people.

Speaker 20 This part is going to be going on at least 24 hours.

Speaker 7 Cape Verde beat Eswatini 3-0 to finish top of their group, but it was a tense match for the fans with all the goals coming in the second half.

Speaker 7 Also at the party was Lizzy, a Cape Verde from the island of Sal.

Speaker 10 Oh my gosh, the first half we were like, oh, well we're going to do it or we're not going to do it, just, you know, play the ball, that kind of stuff. But it was just such an amazing atmosphere.

Speaker 10 Well, I've been saying to my kids, this is history, the naked. Tiny little country like like ours, and being just thrown into the spotlight like this is just amazing.

Speaker 10 It's just really, really, really good.

Speaker 7 Cape Verde's campaign saw them claim five victories in a row, including a famous 1-0 home win against Cameroon last month.

Speaker 7 Their success has been put down partly to football bosses spending years tracking down players from around the world who, because of their parents or grandparents, might be eligible to play for the Blue Sharks.

Speaker 7 One of them is Roberto Pico Lopez from Dublin in Ireland, who was approached to join the team through a message on the social network LinkedIn.

Speaker 21 I can't put it into words, there's an overwhelming sense of relief, there's joy, there's all sorts of emotions. It's an amazing feeling.
We did it. This is our goal, our objective.
And we did it.

Speaker 21 It means everything to me.

Speaker 21 Since I was a little boy, and I know it's the same for the guys I dressed to him, since we were all little kids playing football, we dreamed of playing football at the highest stage.

Speaker 21 And there's no bigger bigger stage than the World Cup.

Speaker 21 So to do this, to be the first Cape Verdean team here, to lift all the people of the nation to put them on that stage, there's no better feeling than that.

Speaker 7 Roberto Pico Lopez.

Speaker 7 A group of women in Mexico City are on a mission to preserve their heritage and the environment by taking over small island farms and turning them into flourishing ecosystems.

Speaker 7 The floating structures known as chinapas date back to the Aztec Empire and are on an early model of sustainable agriculture. But they were under threat, and that could have impacted the whole city.

Speaker 7 Stephanie Prentice has this report.

Speaker 22 Xochimilco, in the heart of Mexico City, is a historic borough full of wetlands that date back more than 2,000 years.

Speaker 22 But their future is at risk. Within these waters lie some of the last remnants of the Aztec Empire, the Chinampas, or island farms.

Speaker 22 What look like large floating gardens are actually structures made of complex layers of mud, branches, and trees secured in frames within the shallow water.

Speaker 22 The nutrient-dense land is then farmed, and the islands act like sponges, meaning no irrigation is needed.

Speaker 22 They're passed through generations of families and traditionally given to men, but many have been abandoned or turned into urban developments. Cassandra Garduno's grandfather used to farm here.

Speaker 23 One of the first memories I have when I was a child was my grandfather planting, and in the Chinampa, he would always plant flowers. So for me, coming to the Chinampa was like paradise.

Speaker 22 Cassandra moved abroad as an adult, but after a few return trips, she decided she had to come home.

Speaker 23 Every time I came back, I saw the degradation of the ecosystem. I saw the abandonment of land.
I saw how the water levels were getting lower and lower.

Speaker 23 And I think that's when I started to become aware that I was part of this space and part of my responsibility was to safeguard it.

Speaker 22 Now she's part of a small group of women taking over island farms and doing the hard work of keeping them afloat. Yasmin Ordonez is one of them.

Speaker 15 We extract the mud, place it on the beds, and sow the seeds directly here. And this is part of the world's agricultural heritage.

Speaker 22 Preserving the heritage isn't just about traditions. The area is seen as critical for regenerating the ecosystem, for biodiversity, and also the rich soil stores carbon.

Speaker 22 With one estimate saying that temperatures could rise by two degrees in Mexico City without the wetlands.

Speaker 22 The group of female farmers have joined forces with local conservationists, and their message is that even a small team can make a big change.

Speaker 23 I like to think that each generation is a layer, a layer that keeps adding to the soil, enriching it.

Speaker 22 And for Cassandra, keeping farms in the family is a way to secure their future.

Speaker 23 Every time I come here, I always think, I hope the layer I leave behind is good enough for the next generation to have the same care for their land and the same way of thinking about the world.

Speaker 7 That was Stephanie Prentice Reporting.

Speaker 7 Here on the Happy Pod, we love a glitter ball, a good tune, and a chance to boogie. But sometimes it feels there just aren't enough places to dance if you're over a certain age.

Speaker 7 My children are still a bit small, but I know they would run a mile if I showed up at a club. But if you're in Sweden, you're in luck.

Speaker 7 There's a DJ who fills the dance floor, spinning her discs for anyone who loves a good groove and is over 50.

Speaker 7 Picture the scene. DJ Gloria is at the decks with rhinestone headphones and a sequin top sparkling under the bright nightclub lights.
She smiles, sways and waves her arms to the beat.

Speaker 7 She looks really happy.

Speaker 7 The dance floor is packed out and everyone is having a great time. Gloria, whose real name is Madeline Manson, isn't your typical DJ.
She's 81.

Speaker 7 Gloria or Madeline found her calling when she was 62 after spending nine years as a round-the-clock carer for her late husband.

Speaker 26 Why did I become a DJ? Well, I trained as an aerobics instructor. I put a lot of work into movement and the music.
People loved my music, and I changed the music for every session.

Speaker 26 And one fine day, I heard myself say that I thought I was going to become a DJ.

Speaker 7 Madeleine began having private lessons from a friend's son. At that point, not a single club in Sweden opened before 11 p.m.
But Madeline wanted to be home and in bed by 11pm.

Speaker 7 So now her gigs start around 6pm and wrap up around 11.

Speaker 26 I've been a DJ for 16 years. Today, I'm really good.
I think so myself. But I was really bad in the beginning.
Today I feel confident and secure. So I dare to take risks and I dare even more.

Speaker 26 When you're uncertain, you don't have as much confidence. Then you just play it safe.

Speaker 25 There are certain songs that are spot on.

Speaker 26 It's much more fun if you mix it up with the unexpected.

Speaker 7 Madeleine has many fans. This is Ava.
She's 63.

Speaker 11 Oh, she's just fantastic. I mean, at that age and that energy, she brings all our all our people that are health she brings her so much energy and love.

Speaker 11 Before I mean it's not so

Speaker 11 I mean if you are 55 plus it's not so easy to find somewhere to go and Gloria just started this for all of us.

Speaker 7 Louise is 69 and says DJ Gloria is a huge inspiration.

Speaker 11 Gloria she's the best ever ever DJ we have in Sweden. She's over 80 years old.
She promotes all those women.

Speaker 11 She makes them strong.

Speaker 11 Look at them. They are youngsters forever.

Speaker 7 And if you happen to be in Sweden and fancy a boogie, you can catch DJ Gloria playing in Stockholm on Halloween.

Speaker 7 And if you want a treat, not a trick, don't forget to take proof you're old enough to get into the spirit.

Speaker 27 Coming up in this podcast, they've achieved something quite unique by a combination of very high-tech engineering combined with what I would call ancient craft.

Speaker 27 And the judges are really impressed with that.

Speaker 7 Engineering meets art to create an amazing dinosaur sculpture.

Speaker 2 Staples presents. That was easy.

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Speaker 28 This is the story of the one. As a custodial supervisor at a high school, he knows that during cold and flu season, germs spread fast.

Speaker 28 It's why he partners with Granger to stay fully stocked on the products and supplies he needs, from tissues to disinfectants to floor scrubbers.

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Granger for the ones who get it done.

Speaker 7 Our next story is about an ingenious way to get broken hospital equipment working again.

Speaker 7 Around the world, vital machines like ventilators or baby incubators often lie unused because the spare parts needed just aren't available due to issues like cost or transportation.

Speaker 7 But the charity Field Ready is trying to change that using 3D printing. Craig Langren has been speaking to the man in charge of the charity's operations in Syria.

Speaker 8 My name is Ahmad Nasharanyam. I'm from Aleppo, Northwest Syria.

Speaker 24 Aleppo University Hospital had six incubators for newborn babies, but none of them were working. So Emmed and his team had a light bulb moment.

Speaker 24 What if they could make the replacement parts themselves?

Speaker 8 The doors of these baby incubators are loose, so we cannot close them. So it means that we cannot put a baby in.
We said, so what if we bring a new door only for this?

Speaker 8 They said, we tried, but we couldn't. We said, what if we design and bring a new one for you? They said, that would be perfect, but we don't know if you can do that.

Speaker 24 When Emma showed me pictures and videos of his workshop on a video call, it became clear just how they operate.

Speaker 24 A workshop equipped with 3D printers, laser cutters, and traditional tools that only gets electricity for around two hours a day, running entirely on solar panels.

Speaker 8 So we go to the company website. and we try to see if there are any sizes or if there are any specific model, but in most of the cases we couldn't.
So we start the design from zero.

Speaker 8 The team start working on the drawing to make sure that the sizes are right. Then we use the 3D printer to start printing.

Speaker 24 It's trial and error really. A single part might take 12 hours to print, only to discover it needs tweaking and reprinting.

Speaker 24 But when they finally delivered the the repaired incubators back to the hospital, the reaction was immediate.

Speaker 8 When we brought them after five days, so they were really shocked. And when they checked them, and they are closing very well, they told us that they really look better than the original doors.

Speaker 8 They were very happy.

Speaker 8 And they told us that, unfortunately, many of these babies couldn't survive because of not having these incubators.

Speaker 24 And crucially, Emad's solution is affordable.

Speaker 8 It costs us about $150

Speaker 8 and this baby incubator itself is about from $8,000

Speaker 8 and more.

Speaker 24 Hospitals can report broken equipment through a mobile app and then Emad and his team assess each case, design the parts, print them and train the hospital staff to maintain them.

Speaker 8 We are working currently with about 13 hospitals. In the last month we have fixed fixed twenty machines.

Speaker 24 They've seemingly tackled everything, from X-ray cooling systems that were wasting thousands of liters of water every day, to ventilators, ultrasound machines, any sort of surgical equipment.

Speaker 24 For Emad and his team of engineers, there's something deeply personal about this work.

Speaker 8 Our role here was really different.

Speaker 8 Like we could save lives through engineering interventions.

Speaker 8 I just imagine how when we are going to fix this incubator and I just imagine how babies will benefit from these incubators and that we can save their lives.

Speaker 24 The fall of the Assad regime back in 2024 has opened up new possibilities too. Suddenly Ahmad's team can access the whole country and they're training local engineers to carry this work forward.

Speaker 24 And in the meantime, his designs are available online, open source for anyone who might want to have a go at fixing a broken bit of hospital equipment.

Speaker 24 When he talks about his workshop, the smells of iron and wood and melting plastic from the 3D printer, he sees something that others simply might not.

Speaker 8 For us, we smell the future. We smell the hope.
This is the hope. This is what we feel, that we are doing what we can.

Speaker 7 Ahmad Nasher Alniam, ending that report by Craig Langren. And you can hear more about innovative ways of improving healthcare on People Fixing the World wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

Speaker 7 Now, if I say the words structural engineering, you might be forgiven for glazing over. But we're not talking about things like roads and bridges.

Speaker 7 This is engineering as art, a unique life-size bronze sculpture of a dinosaur. Fern the Diplodocus at London's Natural History Museum is a 25-metre-long replica of a skeleton with no supports.

Speaker 7 It's a world first and is among the shortlisted nominees for this year's Istruck T structural awards. Harry Bly spoke to one of the judges, Professor John Orr from the University of Cambridge.

Speaker 27 Because it's standing on its four feet, it feels much more like an alive thing and the team have managed to create that by taking lots of inspiration from nature.

Speaker 27 The bones being hollow is like the bones in a real skeleton and the tendons are like ligaments that you would have again in a real skeleton.

Speaker 27 The team had no precedent to build upon, and they've achieved something quite unique by a combination of very high-tech engineering combined with what I would call ancient crafts, so bronze casting.

Speaker 27 And how on earth do you make bone-shaped segments out of bronze?

Speaker 27 So it's that lovely, technically brilliant combination of digital stuff, high-tech, with techniques that have been around for a very, very long time. The judges are really impressed with that.

Speaker 1 This award is celebrating projects which show innovation and sustainability and social impact.

Speaker 1 This dinosaur is

Speaker 1 not what you would necessarily expect if someone said to me, structural engineering.

Speaker 27 So, Fern really proves that structural engineering isn't just about buildings and bridges. Structural engineering is about how you assemble materials and you combine materials to create something.

Speaker 27 So, structural engineering is imaginative, playful. It's as much about art and beauty as it is about doing calculation and mathematics.

Speaker 27 And here we have a great example where Fern the Diplodocus is not what you would immediately think about if you thought of structure engineering.

Speaker 27 But without a structure engineer, this thing wouldn't stand up in such a way that it can stand outside for a hundred years, subjected to wind and rain and all the other things that go on outside, and do that in a safe way that inspires the public's imagination.

Speaker 27 So, for us, it's a really great example of the collaboration that structure engineers undertake between the people who make stuff, the contractors, the architects, the craftspeople, and the calculations, and how those things can come together to create a really beautiful, beautiful sculpture.

Speaker 1 And it is indeed beautiful. For the awards, Fern is, like you mentioned, shortlisted.
What's the competition like?

Speaker 27 We receive entries from all over the world. So there are stadiums, there are schools, but there are also retrofit projects and renovation projects.
And sculpture is just one part of that.

Speaker 27 But it's not just about those things. It's about how you use materials and put them in the right place to achieve something really fantastic.

Speaker 27 And ideally, adding social value, improving the environment, innovating technically and collaborating with across disciplines.

Speaker 1 You're a professor of structural engineering at Cambridge. You've given your life to engineering, haven't you?

Speaker 27 Yes, so far I have.

Speaker 1 So what is it about engineering?

Speaker 1 Tell me how you first got into it.

Speaker 27 I first got into engineering in a very classic way, building things with Lego. When I was a teenager, I demolished and built a garage at my parents' house.
So I've always loved making things.

Speaker 27 And I think with structure engineering you have that really great interplay between actually making stuff and designing it. So that is why I really love structure engineering.

Speaker 27 It's a combination of the art of what something looks like, but also thinking about what's the impact of materials, where do they come from, how do we improve the environment by using certain types of materials and that really is what gives structure engineers their power.

Speaker 27 They really have at their fingertips control over what goes into a structure and that gives us huge responsibility responsibility in making sure we use those materials in a very sensible and environmentally conscious way.

Speaker 7 Professor John Orr from the University of Cambridge.

Speaker 7 How do you feel about a gentle wrestle with a baby goat? Well, if you do, then you should try goat yoga, which is apparently a big thing.

Speaker 7 Rachel Wright went to a session at a farm in the south of England and was met by a couple of sheep.

Speaker 15 Oh, Louis, don't eat the microphone.

Speaker 15 Michaela, tell me, when did you start and why do you do it?

Speaker 29 Started about 18 months ago and it was really a response to demand, basically.

Speaker 15 I mean, people were clamouring for goat yoga.

Speaker 29 I used to take Snape and Trevor, my oldest goats, walking around the farm. I had so many people come up to me saying, Could you do goat yoga? 'cause they knew I was a yoga teacher in schools.

Speaker 29 It came from America. Lady over there who started doing yoga in her garden, her pet goats happened to be there, started jumping on her.
She sent pictures to her friends'cause she thought it was funny.

Speaker 29 And within three months, she had thirty thousand people on a wait list to come and do goat yoga.

Speaker 15 I mean, you know, I've done this, I did it last week, they're not small.

Speaker 29 They're not small. No, you have to be robust to take our class.

Speaker 15 We have one man here so far.

Speaker 30 Probably not the most flexible person, so the yoga element is going to be exciting as well. Then we're adding uh a goat.
Excited and nervous at the same time.

Speaker 15 Okay, and and and what about you? Is this your first time? It's our first time, yeah.

Speaker 22 So it was a present for my daughter who loves animals.

Speaker 15 And where are you from?

Speaker 2 chug republic it's your birthday so you have no idea what's about to happen no idea no oza heard the word goats just now that's about and i can hear i can hear something

Speaker 15 and then it was time for the goats to be released from their hut so we've got about five goats that have come out the rest are still eating their breakfast all of the uh participants are sitting on their pink mats taking pictures

Speaker 15 And almost immediately the goats jumped onto one of the women, helped by an assistant who'd put some food on her back.

Speaker 15 How do you feel with the goat on your back?

Speaker 2 It's quite nice actually, it's like a little massage.

Speaker 15 You appear to have a goat on your back.

Speaker 30 I do indeed and I'm loving it.

Speaker 2 And he's now waiting my hair.

Speaker 15 He's nibbling at your plait.

Speaker 15 There were quiet moments when people looked serene and stuck their legs in the air, but mostly it was a little chaotic.

Speaker 2 It was worth the drive.

Speaker 14 We'd do it again in a heartbeat.

Speaker 15 Did it hurt when they jumped on your back? Because they're not small. It didn't hurt, but you can definitely feel it.

Speaker 16 It was a little bit shocking when they jumped onto your back, but it was all good fun. I had one under me, one on top of me.
So it was fun.

Speaker 15 And then, hurrah, it was my turn.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 2 Who jumped on me then? You had plunder, but you got. Oh, that's better.

Speaker 15 That one's a bit smaller. And banging me on the head.
That's nice.

Speaker 15 Okay. Oh, hello.
Hello. That was a bit of a smoosh, wasn't it, from Trevor? I'm just going to tickle his bottom.

Speaker 2 There you are.

Speaker 7 And that was the deeply relaxed and rather sore Rachel Wright.

Speaker 7 And that's all from The Happy Pod for now. But if you have a story you think we should cover or you'd like to comment on anything you've heard, we'd love to hear from you.

Speaker 7 As ever, the address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

Speaker 7 And you can now watch some of our interviews on YouTube. Just search for The Happy Pod.
This edition was mixed by Pat Sissons and the producers were Holly Gibbs, Harry Bly and Rachel Bulkley.

Speaker 7 The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Vanessa Heaney.
Until next time, goodbye.

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